Saudi judge: It’s okay to slap your wife

A post by "Miss Pavla" To see more posts click here

As the world becomes one big melting pot of culture, communication, and thought, it’s still interesting to me just how distant certain cultures are when it comes to equality.  Furthermore, of all the cultures that we are familiar with here at home, I think the one that we least understand and have the most conflicting feelings about are those in the Middle East.  We vilify most Middle Eastern countries’ stances on women and religion, which speaking of religion is the main basis for how most of their decisions are made.  But it is hard to stay impartial when we have countries like Saudi Arabia, which is an Arab country and declares the Qur’an as their constitution and Islamic law as their rule-of-thumb and holds such a bad track record on women’s rights.  To boot, Saudi Arabia’s eye-for-an-eye paradigm (from Wiki):

“The Saudi legal system prescribes capital punishment or corporal punishment, including amputations of hands and feet for certain crimes such as murder, robbery, rape, drug smuggling, homosexual activity, and adultery. The courts may impose less severe punishments, such as floggings, for less serious crimes against public morality such as drunkenness. Murder, accidental death and bodily harm are open to punishment from the victim’s family. Retribution may be sought in kind or through blood money.”

Recently, a Saudi judge, Hamad Al-Razine, commenting on why domestic violence in Saudi Arabia had increased, said that, “if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.” This is all amidst recent attention being brought to domestic violence in the country as prevention programs and activism are on the rise to combat it.  So needless to say there were some pissed off women in the crowd.  They should have shoe’d the jerk judge the way that reporter did to George Bush in my opinion.  That would have definitely made their demands for equality heard.

I think it will be interesting to watch this equality battle in Saudi Arabia.  This is something I will be monitoring for you all as we go along but unfortunately, it seems like they have a bigger mountain to climb when an eight-year-old child has to divorce a 47-year-old man.  How the hell did that happen?  History continues to repeat itself…

udothedishes