Imagine if Australian women were flogged for drinking a beer

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 1 March 2010

If my women friends lived in Malaysia, and we happened to be Muslim, we'd – with a few exceptions – be badly battered and bruised. Our bodies would be red raw from constant thrashing. I wonder if we'd wear those lashing marks with pride. Or would the pain and humiliation of official caning eventually break our spirit, and reduce us to a pitiful submission?

The humiliation certainly got to 32-year-old Kartika Shukarno. Last year when the former model and mother of two was sentenced to a flogging for the crime of drinking a beer in a nightclub, she asked them to get on with it. As the judge in the Syariah High Court read out her sentence – six strokes of the rotan and a three-year jail term or hefty fine – he explained that the caning would make the accused ''repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims''. Kartika bowed her head, kept calm, and after withdrawing her appeal said, ''I will accept this earthly punishment, let Allah decide my punishment in the hereafter''.