In Saudi Arabia getting gang raped is a crime almost as severe as complaining about it. Recently, a rape victim was sentenced to six months in jail and 90 lashes. She appealed and won a retrial. In the second trial, the court doubled the number of lashes. Evidently, the “judges” were upset that she whined to the press. The rape victim will now receive 200 lashes.

Riyadh – A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman – whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms – was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for “being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape”, the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media”.

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

Last year, the court sentenced six Saudi men to between one and five years in jail for the rape as well as ordering lashes for the victim, a member of the minority Shi’ite community.

By contract, in Judaism, witnessing a rape and not intervening is a sin. The witness is authorized to save the woman by killing the rapist. Crimes Against Humanity, a Torah lesson by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, illuminates the subject.

The Torah distinguishes between a sex act that takes place in a populated area in a city where, if the woman was being victimized she could cry for help, and a rape that takes place in an isolated spot in the field:

“But if the man comes upon the engaged girl in the open country, and the man lies with her by force, only the man who lay with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the girl. The girl did not incur the death penalty, for this case is like that of a man attacking another and murdering him. He came upon her in the open; though the engaged girl cried for help, there was no one to save her” (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).

The text – by comparing the rape to a murder, and also by stating that a woman who doesn’t cry for help while being assaulted in the city is essentially consenting to illicit sex – implies that if a third person were to come upon a man about to rape a woman or hear her cries for help, he would be obligated to kill the would-be rapist to save the woman, just as a witness to attempted murder is obligated to kill the would-be attacker to save the victim.

The Mishnah, in the eighth chapter of the Tractate Sanhedrin, rules that this is indeed the case; however, at the same time, the Mishnah insists that if the sin involved were the desecration of the Sabbath or the worshipping of an idol (sins against God, rather than humans), then it is forbidden for any passer-by to intervene.

Likewise, Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya writes in Mishnah Yoma that while sins between humans and God are forgiven through Yom Kippur rituals, sins between human beings are not. These must be forgiven by one’s fellow human beings. Judaism deplores the possibility that social infractions can be healed by heavenly directed rituals.

The eternity of the covenanted nation depends upon its commitment to the highest standards of ethical conduct. Judaism will only emerge triumphant if we excel in our human relationships.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.