“You have no business putting on an event at a location where my sister can be sentenced by law with the death penalty."
The brother of two-time world champ Tyler Wright has launched a wild fusillade against the World Surf League after it added a surfing event to the 2025 world tour at a man-made wave park in Abu Dhabi, where Sharia law is incorporated into the legal system.
Sharia law, if you didn’t know, is the moral and religious code for the souls among us who practice Islam. It considers homosexual acts as sinful and punishable and recommends imprisonment, floggings or the death penalty, sometimes even adding a stoning into the mix for laughs. Note: stoning, the penalty for adultery, was discontinued in the UAE in 2020.
My Sharia Amour!
In the comments pane of the WSL’s own post detailing the new schedule, Mikey Wright, who is thirty-two, tees off:
“You have no business putting on an event at a location where my sister can be sentenced by law with the death penalty. So much for equality and equal rights, only when it’s convenient to wsl. You have supported the LGBTQ flag on her shoulder but now you want to strip it and be hush hush to get her to a location that she’s at risk of this punishment. You have the responsibility to protect your athletes, interested to see how you think you can protect her against the law.”
Tyler Wright’s sister-in-law, Shenay, Mikey’s wife, even has a swing:
“Nice to see you guys are factoring in the safety of the contestants lives when choosing locations.”
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The pair have come in half-cocked, as it were, as, happily, there are no documented cases of executions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) specifically for the crime of homosexuality.
And while the UAE’s legal system theoretically allows for capital punishment for same-sex sexual activity under certain interpretations, in practice, there have been no verified reports of such sentences being carried out.
This is supported by various human rights reports and indicates a gap between legal provisions and their actual enforcement in the UAE.
You might get one to fifteen in the can for being gay in the UAE, however.
It ain’t quite so sanguine in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and in Hamas-controlled Gaza, however, where the extra-judicial killings of gays is quite a thing. Queers for Palestine! Yay!