An intriguing aspect of Brunei’s barbarous Shariah laws is that if they were to be really enforced, a few of the sultan’s ridiculously wealthy, jet-setting kin would be leading candidates for death by stoning. Adultery is one of the crimes for which the archaic penalty is prescribed under the stern laws that went into effect on April 3 — along with sex between men, abortion and rape — and tabloids around the world have accumulated plenty of evidence against some Bruneian royals.

Such royal hypocrisy may seem to be the norm among autocratic rulers sitting atop oceans of oil who place no limits on their own dissolute lifestyles and yet impose cruel Islamic law on their subjects. And tiny Brunei, a country roughly the size of Delaware that shares the island of Borneo with Malaysia and Indonesia, might not seem worth getting worked up about.

Yet it is, for several reasons. First is that “this is the way we do it” is no longer a viable excuse for cruelty and barbarism anywhere. The world has gone way past times when witches were burned, homosexuals castrated or adulterers branded, and Brunei has signed (but not yet ratified) the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Brunei’s cruel, inhuman and degrading penalties are not a relic of history, like the sodomy laws that stayed on the books of American states well into the 20th century, but the whim of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72, who has ruled the Lilliputian nation since 1967 and ranks among the most ludicrously wealthy people on earth. He has long pushed his predominantly Muslim nation toward a conservative and restrictive form of Islam, and he first announced the new penalties — which, in addition to death by stoning for gay male sex, include amputation for theft and 40 lashes for lesbian sex — six years ago .