Not radically different

The new issue of Free Inquiry is online, and my column is one of the items not subscribers-only this time. It’s about the odd fact that we consider Islamic State an enemy while we consider Saudi Arabia a valuable ally. (By “we” of course I mean Anglophone countries at government level.)

Saudi Arabia is officially an ally of many liberal democracies, yet it spurned the UDHR in company with newly apartheid South Africa and authoritarian communist states. This should seem stranger to us than it does. The hostility toward human rights of apartheid South Africa eventually made it a pariah state, and its pariah status in turn forced an end to apartheid. The stark absence of human rights in the Soviet Bloc eventually helped cause it to crumble. Why has nothing similar happened to Saudi Arabia? Why has global outrage not made something similar happen to Saudi Arabia? Why were conditions in South Africa and East Germany treated as human-rights issues while those in Saudi Arabia were not? Why now is the Islamic State a dreaded enemy while Saudi Arabia is still an ally? I would really like to know.

The two are not radically different, after all. Islamic State beheads people, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State enslaves women, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State kills people for “apostasy” and “blasphemy,” and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State considers Sharia law absolute and binding, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State hates the Jews, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State considers itself a legitimate state, and so does Saudi Arabia.

More.

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