Don’t dare think in Saudi Arabia.

And don’t even dream of having an opinion.

This AP report is a pretty good indication of what would happen there to The Accidental Theologist:

The founder of a liberal Web site has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes after angering Islamic authorities in Saudi Arabia, the newspaper Al Wattan reported Tuesday. The site created by Raif Badawi urged Saudis to share opinions about the role of religion in the country, which follows a strict form of Islam. According to Al Wattan, a judge in the Red Sea port of Jidda imposed the sentences but dropped charges of apostasy, which could have brought a death sentence.

Here’s an earlier report from Amnesty International on  his case:

Raif Badawi, founder of a website for political and social debate, “Saudi Arabian Liberals”, has been detained since 17 June 2012 in a prison in Briman, in Jeddah. He was charged with “setting up a website that undermines public security” and ridiculing Islamic religious figures. His trial began in June 2012 in the District Court in Jeddah, and was marred by irregularities. According to his lawyer, the original trial judge was replaced by a judge who had advocated that Raif Badawi be punished for “apostasy”. His lawyer contested the judge’s impartiality in the case.

The charges against Raif Badawi relate to a number of articles he has written, including one about Valentine’s Day – the celebration of which is prohibited in Saudi Arabia. He was accused of ridiculing Saudi Arabia’s Commission on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (also known as the religious police) in the conclusion of his article. The charges against him also mention his failure to remove articles by other people on his website, including one insinuating that the al-Imam Mohamed ibn Saud University had become “a den for terrorists”. On 17 December, the District Court in Jeddah referred the case to the General Court in Jeddah, recommending that he should be tried for “apostasy”. On 22 December the General Court in Jeddah had Raif Badawi sign documents to enable his trial for “apostasy” to proceed.

On 21 January the General Court sent the case back to the District Court stating that they did not have jurisdiction to review his case and that they had found that he had not insulted Islam and therefore it did not amount to an “apostasy” charge. The general prosecutor however is still insisting that Raif Badawi be tried for apostasy. The case is currently before an appeal court to determine whether the case should be heard by the District Court in Jeddah or another tribunal, in particular the General Court in Jeddah, to which it was previously referred.

Amnesty International considers Raif Badawi to be a prisoner of conscience. Act now to call on the authorities for his immediate and unconditional release.

I don’t know why this took me by surprise. Maybe because I’m not a big sci-fi reader — with exceptions made for the likes of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson. And Robert Heinlein and Mary Shelley and H.G.Wells and Ray Bradbury. And Margaret Atwood and Neil Stephenson. And how could I have not led with one of my literary heroes, Jorge Luis Borges? But still, you get my point (I think), which is that I don’t usually think in terms of science fiction becoming applied science.

More fool I.

Last week, Christof Heyns, the man burdened with the unenviable title of “United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions,” called for a global moratorium on the testing, production, and use of armed robots that can select and kill targets without human command.

They are known as “lethal autonomous robots.” And yes, this is indeed a nightmarish killer-robot movie come marching off the screen and into all too non-virtual reality.

Yet the report of Heyns’s call didn’t even make the front page of America’s “newspaper of record.” Soothingly buried on an inside page of the New York Times, and calmingly including the reassurance that such robots weren’t “yet” in production, it elicited little comment. It seems our alarm systems have been lulled by the use of drones, so conveniently deployed halfway round the world in all sorts of places most Americans can’t even find on a map.

Drones, it’s now clear, are only the warm-up stage. Think of lethal autonomous robots as drones with minds of their own. Just program them and set them loose, secure in the knowledge that nothing can possibly go wrong. No way their electronics will go haywire. No way they’ll become just a little bit too autonomous. With the kind of fail-safe electronics that exist only in android dreams, humans can sleep secure. So long as they’re not the targets.

But wait just a moment: who gets to say who the targets are? Who’s going to program the robots? And according to what criteria? Will they be programmed to search out “suspicious behavior,” as human drone operators do? But then what makes behavior suspicious? The skin color of the person doing the behaving? Anyone with a beard? Anyone moving too fast, or maybe too slow? In too large a group or suspiciously alone? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are all over this, leading a new coalition of groups in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, officially launched just two weeks ago.

But it seems to me that an important question to ask here is this: Who is going to be raking in the billions on these robots? Who exactly is doing the research and testing, and will presumably get the huge military contracts? Consider this report last year from San Diego public radio station KPBS on who’s profiting from the $12 billion drone industry (yes, you read the last five words correctly — that’s for the years 2005 to 2011). The top three? How could you possibly not guess? Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman. It’s enough to make me ashamed of ever having gotten my pilot’s wings.

And then consider the lengthy, detailed report on the military robot market (mind-numbingly referred to as “Military Ground Robot Mobile Platform Systems of Engagement”) prepared by an outfit called WinterGreen Research. Here, in the kind of mangled grammar that seems to accompany lip-smacking anticipation, is a short extract from the press release:

Even as the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down, automated process implemented as mobile platform systems of engagement are being used to fight terrorists and protect human life. These robots are a new core technology in which all governments must invest. Military ground robot market growth comes from the device marketing experts inventing a new role as technology poised to be effective at the forefront of fighting terrorism. Markets at $4.5 billion in 2013 reach $12.0 billion by 2019. Growth is based on the adoption of automated process by military organizations worldwide.

Just five hours before President Obama announced Sunday night that Bin Laden was dead, instantly capturing the collective mind of the world, there was something else on American television that I wish would capture the world mind just as effectively.   CBS reporter Lara Logan spoke out on the news program ’60 Minutes’ about her extended mass rape in Tahrir Square in the middle of the celebrations on February 11, the night of Mubarak’s resignation.

I’m running the clip here partly in shame, because I was among those whose first reaction was to say “Oh, she’s exaggerating, she was just badly groped.”  That is, I didn’t want to know — not then, not there.  I didn’t want the jubilation of that evening spoiled by such ugly reality.  I was in denial.

Yes, this was rape.  Multiple rape.  Rape aimed at pulling her apart, inside and out.  So first, take 13 minutes and watch this video of her account:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/_g0S6UQem1k]

And if you still question the title of this post, consider these extracts from a New York Times story two days later on Iraqi victims of torture (by the Iraqi army, American forces, Saddam’s thugs, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and various militias):

He described… daily horrors like the suicide of a young prisoner who electrocuted himself with wires from a hot plate after being raped by soldiers.

An 11-year-old girl and her family revealed that she was raped by a group of men who then shaved her head and threw her on a trash heap.

A woman whose husband was an interpreter for the Americans had water and salt thrown on her and was then tied to electrified metal bars.  Then: “They raped her more than once in front of us,” R. said, looking down as he spoke. “She died two or three days later.  There were four guys who raped us….  I was destroyed.  It feels as if something is missing.  I don’t mingle at all with people.”

As Susan Brownmiller made crystal clear in Against Our Will (published in 1975 and, sadly, as essential reading today as it was then), rape has nothing to do with sexual attraction.  It’s brutalization:   the forced domination of another person through their genitalia, whether female or male, 5 years old or 90 years old, close relative or total stranger.  The means of this can be a hand or a penis, a gun or a knife or a broken bottle, a baton or a broomstick or a bathroom plunger (remember Abner Louima?).  Whatever the weapon, the aim is to violently, deliberately, and painfully invade and break another person’s physical and psychological autonomy, will, integrity, humanity.  That is:  torture.

Rape was recognized as a war crime in 1949 (the Fourth Geneva Conventions) and as a crime against humanity in 2001.  Amnesty International has consistently reported on rape as torture: “In every armed conflict investigated by Amnesty International… the torture of women was reported, most often in the form of sexual violence.”  But when rape happens in a dorm room or at a party — even one as large as Tahrir Square on February 11 — we seem less able to recognize it for what it is.  Which is why Amnesty International also reports that in peacetime Europe as elsewhere, victims of rape are consistently denied justice.

This is what we need to get straight in our minds, once and for all:

Whenever rape happens, wherever it happens, and whatever form it takes, it is a crime against humanity.

A crime, that is, against every one of us.