Muslim United Arab Emirates
Court in UAE says beating wife, child OK if no marks are left
October 19, 2010
(CNN) -- A court in the United Arab Emirates says a man is permitted under Islamic law to physically discipline his wife and children as long as he leaves no marks and has tried other methods of punishment, the country's top court ruled.
The ruling came in the case of a man who slapped his wife and slapped and kicked his 23-year-old daughter, the document said.
The daughter had bruises on her right hand and right knee and the wife had injuries to her lower lip and teeth, the ruling said.
The court ruled that a man has the right to punish his wife and children. That includes beating them, after he has tried other options, such as admonition and then abstaining from sleeping with his wife.
However, the court ruled that in this case the man exceeded his authority under sharia, or Islamic law. His wife was beaten too severely and his daughter was too old to be disciplined, the ruling said.
"Although the [law] permits the husband to use his right [to discipline], he has to abide by the limits of this right," wrote Chief Justice Falah al Hajeri in a ruling issued this month and released in a court document recently. It was reported in the English-language publication The National.
"If the husband abuses this right to discipline, he cannot be exempted from punishment," according to the ruling.
Several experts said it is against Islamic law to permit wife-beating.
Jihad Hashim Brown -- the head of research at Tabah Foundation, which specializes in the interpretation of Islamic law -- couldn't comment specifically on what the courts did and didn't say because he hadn't read the ruling.
However, he said he feels confident that the UAE court didn't sanction injury or abuse. He said sharia law is complex and has been open to interpretation.
But he argued that in Islamic law it is "absolutely unlawful" to abuse a wife, injure her, or insult her dignity.
"When a situation in a marriage reaches the point where people feel like they need to hit someone, that is time for divorce. Anyone who would abuse, injure or even insult the dignity of their wife, this has now become a criminal offense which can be prosecuted in a court of law."
Canadian-Egyptian scholar Dr. Jamal Badawi, who has written about this topic, said "wife beating is not allowed in Islam" and said the Quranic verses and sayings back "the prohibition of any type of wife beating," especially on the face.
Summer Hathout, a lawyer and an activist for women's rights in California, argued that the UAE rulings are based on maintaning a patriarchal elite power structure.
"To those of us who know Islam and the Quran, violence against women is so antithetical to the teachings of Islam," she said.
Abused women find refuge in controversial UAE shelter
Friday, May 19, 2006
By Ali Khalil
Veiled Sharla says she is aware of many campaigns to distort the image of the
shelter, mainly by ‘abusive husbands of women who were helped by the shelter’
SHARLA’S mobile phone hardly stops alerting her with messages from women victims
of domestic violence seeking help or refuge in the Dubai-based shelter she runs.
Some sound very desperate. “Help me find a place to stay. This mentality isn’t
right ... There is no respect at all,” said a message from an American woman who
has been married for some 20 years to an Emirati.
“Why am I letting him treat me like garbage? I’m under his feet,” the message
read.
Sharla Musabih, one of the directors of two shelters known as the City of Hope
is herself American and married to a local man.
She said the desperate mother of five is married to a wealthy man who “beats and
rapes her” and does not provide her with food despite housing her in a mansion.
Sharla said complaints have increased sharply since she started the shelter with
a group of Western women back in 2001.
“I used to get one case a month ... But for the past six months, I get at least
one case a day,” she told AFP.
Another message is from a caseworker informing her of a fellow American whose
abusive local husband told her a traditional midwife was coming to circumcise
her.
“He’s planning to tie up his wife, and cut (her clitoris) off,” the message
read, saying the woman, a Muslim convert in her mid-twenties and married for six
years, had run away.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), as it is referred to by human rights
organizations, is not common in the United Arab Emirates. Sharla said it was the
first time in her 25 years in the country that she has heard of such a
“shocking” case.
But for a Sunni cleric who sees the shelter going against the conservative
culture of the society, Sharla is a “suspect foreigner who is inciting women
against their husbands”.
“There are courts and law in this country. A woman who is being beaten by her
husband can file a lawsuit and the judge would divorce her,” Iraqi Sheikh Ahmad
al-Kubaisi said.
The UAE-based cleric said people are very wary of the role of the shelter,
claiming that some see it as a stop to traffic women into prostitution.
Veiled Sharla said she was aware of many campaigns to distort the image of the
shelter, mainly by “abusive husbands of women who were helped by the shelter”.
Kubaisi said marital problems should be sorted first through the family, and
government departments if needed, but not by running to a “suspect” shelter.
Sharla agreed that the first port of call for a woman subjected to domestic
violence should be the police’s human rights department, which usually refers
her to hospital for a medical report.
But she complained that human rights officers are generally not trained to deal
with cases of domestic violence. She said they tend to call in the husband of a
pleading wife, promising to make him sign a pledge not to abuse her again.
“That’s why most women don’t want to go to the police because that triples their
problems,” claimed Sharla, pointing out that women later suffer the revenge of a
husband who feels humiliated.
In court, women who demand divorce over domestic violence have to wait a long
time, even years.
“By the time a woman gets a divorce she is ready to give up all her rights
because she would have lost her mind,” she added.
A Muslim man can divorce his wife instantly without resorting to a court, but a
woman needs to have a strong case to convince the judge to grant her a divorce.
In one of the City of Hope shelters, located in a two-storey villa in an
affluent neighborhood of Dubai, a handful of women and several children shifted
between the small backyard and the living room.
The two shelters can accommodate around 80 women but they currently host a total
of 22 women, Sharla said, adding that donations in kind and money keep the
facility running.
The majority of women who seek help from the shelter are foreigners. They are
married either to local men or other Arabs, or subjected to violence from family
members. Some are abused domestic workers.
“Local women run to their mother’s house and they sort it out between families,”
said Sharla, pointing out that the shelter reflects the demographic diversity of
the UAE population of around four million, which is a patchwork of ethnicities
and nationalities.
A 22-year-old veiled Asian girl told AFP she ended up in the shelter after
repeated attempts to escape being abused by her family, which had confiscated
her passport and tried to force her into an arranged marriage.
“My mother and younger brother were violent with me, beating me with fists and
pulling my hair,” she said, requesting anonymity.
She had emigrated to a Western country, but when she came back to the United
Arab Emirates for a visit her family forced her to stay.
She said her country’s embassy refused to issue her a new passport to be able to
leave the UAE, telling her: “It is wrong to go against your family’s wishes.”
There are no independent statistics on violence against women in conservative
Gulf countries.
A conference on combating violence and discrimination against women held in
Manama in 2005 called on Gulf countries to establish a regional centre to
“collate regular statistics on violence against women”. AFP