Ever wondered what might be the correct “Islamic” way to beat your wife, or what a Saudi princess’s greatest wish might be if she were king?

The wires were buzzing Thursday with reports of “oohs” and “ahs” from the elitist World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, complete with applause for a Saudi royal princess, Lolwah al-Faisal, after she asserted that her first executive move would be to “let women drive.”

Amazingly, according to the Associated Press news dispatch on this lame comment, the audience erupted in applause.

How can what passes as an elemental right in today’s world — when uttered by a Saudi female belonging to the most oppressive, religiously fanatical ruling family in the world — be treated as a sign of progress in a kingdom of darkness?

The problem with Western sycophants toadying up to Islamic oppressors for money or favors is that those Westerners insult the oppressed majorities by treating their tormentors as precocious 12-year-olds to be coddled when stating the obvious or giving the “right” answer.

Princess Lolwah has since returned to her country where she — and all other women — has practically been erased from society by law. It is a place where women are reduced to walking black tents, where they are denied basic rights to education, work, travel, and equality, and where they are left with the options of being someone’s first, second, third, or fourth spouse. Indeed, a place where imams are allowed to preach the proper way to beat a wife and whip non-Muslim infidels.

Western enablers at the World Economic Forum fail their most fundamentalist reformist obligations by overlooking these oppressive practices. Instead, the Davos forum should have focused on illuminating landmarks such as the U.N. Arab Human Development Report of 2005, which described in excruciating details the many ways women have been cancelled as human beings under Saudi Arabia’s religious jihad.

So woeful are the violations detailed in the report that one apologist, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, the president of the Arab Gulf Program for the U.N. Development Organizations, attempted in a lame foreword to disassociate religion from such abuses, writing that Islam had “no connection with any of the mistaken practices carried out against women.”

Just as with his relative, the disconnected princess in Davos, Prince Talal is wrong on factual grounds. Saudi Islam as practiced today and proselytized to the rest of the world with oil money is an oppressive and anti-life discipline.

Less than two years ago, there was a priceless piece of Islamic jurisprudence that illustrated how disconnected talk of reform is from practice in the Arabian Peninsula under Saudi hegemony. An eminent, and very pro-Saudi, Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdullah Aal Mahmud of Bahrain, enshrined himself with a television broadcast on June 20, 2005, on the Bahraini government-owned network as he asserted that Islam indeed sanctions the beating of wives and instructed his millions of viewers on the “correct” way to do it.

“If the husband wished to use beatings in the treatment of his wife, it is essential, absolutely essential, to never do it in front of the children. The beating must remain between him and her and with the conditions outlined, which are that he does not draw blood nor leave a perceptible bruise on her body and avoid her face as well as dangerous [sic] parts concerning the body. If the husband violates these directives, he then violates the limits set by the almighty. … Because the woman is not to be seen as merchandise to which he can do whatever he pleases.”

Amazingly, the sheik was sincerely trying to show how humane Islam is in its prescriptions on how to treat women.

For the princess’s Western enablers at Davos, the same sick logic applies. To show a symbol of oppression as one of liberation treats twisted views as worthy of respect. It is irresponsible.