Arab Logic

Talal Nasser al-Sabah, a member of Kuwait’s ruling family has been sentenced to death. He was caught in his home with more than 10 kilos of cocaine and 75 kilos of hashish.

There is a debate in this country about whether he will be pardoned because of his royal status. As an ordinary citizen, his fate would be sealed.

What impressed me was the judge’s reasoning on why such a harsh sentence was given.
Al-Sabah "deserves the death sentence ... for dealing with drugs and narcotics that threaten the security of society and lead its youth into the mire of addiction," according to the ruling.

It is not only in the Arab world that the penalty for being caught with drugs is death. Many countries in Asia have the same consequences. I remember being in the airport in Taipei and seeing a big sign as you walked towards your luggage stating that the penalty for being caught with drugs is death.

Meanwhile the governments in North America concede that they have lost the war on drugs. They keep on citing statistics from the Netherlands, with its liberal drug culture, showing that the soft approach is right.

I have been to China, Taiwan and Turkey, an Arab country. Being a foreigner, I may have been shielded from the sordid side of life, but I didn’t get the feeling that drugs were a problem at all in any of these places. I imagine that there are people who are taking them, but there is a general stance of non-tolerance to them and there is no evidence on the streets of any problem.

Notice that the death sentence statement doesn’t merely deal with Al-Sabah. It also looks at the consequences of his actions. He is part of society, so he bears some responsibility to it. Compare this with our individualistic way of life in North America.

What gets me is that we criticize some of the practices of other countries that to our eyes limit freedom. What we fail to realize is that, while we may have much more freedom, we are not responsible in the way we handle it.

We are preaching the democratic way to countries without the sensitivity that they may not want the social ills our society has created.