On Monday, the nation of Saudi Arabia had its court system sentence a 75-year-old woman to receive 40 lashes and 120 days in prison – and after that she will be expelled from the country.

Her crime: having an non-relative male in her home. She was arrested by the state’s religious police, who are charged with enforcing the fundamental interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism that governs the U.S. ally’s polices.

Being a secular person in my own beliefs, I can’t find a better argument for separation of church and state better than showing what happens in those countries without it.

I’m not just bashing on Islam; Christianity’s history is rife with violent intolerance towards woman, other religions, and gays too, but I can’t remember the last time I read a story about America’s religious extremists that provoked such blind outrage and demonstrated such clear ignorance on behalf of the government. (The “Monkey trial” of John Scopes?)

Like a creation from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the religious police in Saudi Arabia are called “The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” and the courts fall under the guise of the “Ministry of Justice.”