United Arab Emirates: Where It’s Okay To Beat Your Wife and Kids
October 22, 2010 by Anushay Hossain · 4 Comments
Seems like Emiratis have been working so hard over the past decade to make sure one main message gets across to the international community: We are modern, we have money, come build in our desert. Not enough water for you? We will import it in. Too hot for your liking? We will create 30 tons of snow per day (no joke) and maintain a wintry ski resort inside of a dome.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the word “excess” have always gone hand in hand. But with the recent crash of Dubai, countless unfinished real estate ventures, overwhelming debt and a slew of bad press on migrant worker abuse, the Emirati states have gone into damage control overdrive to fix their broken image abroad.
So what made them think it would be a good idea to have their highest court legalize domestic violence?
The Federal Supreme Court of the UAE ruled this month that “a man can beat his wife and young children as long as the beating leaves no physical marks,” the Huffington Post reports. The decision was made after a case in which a man left cuts and bruises on his wife and daughter after beating them up. The court stated that Islamic codes allow a man to mete out “discipline” if no marks are left.
Somebody needs to let the Emirs of the Emirates know that it is not okay to beat women and children, and it is especially not okay to make the act legal. Somebody also needs to let the Emirs know that the progress of a society is heavily tied to the progress of its women. The level of security in a society can be measured by how safe women are.
A few years ago a study [PDF] released by the United Nations on Arab Human Development stipulated that one of the reasons the Middle East lags behind so many other regions is because it systematically discriminates against 50 percent of its population: women. While many other Muslim countries, like Bangladesh, are moving towards more democratic societies that value women’s rights and want them to be equal contributors to their countries, the UAE seems to be stepping closer to the Stone Age.
You can make all the gold palaces and snow worlds that you want, but nothing lets the world and the international community know what you are really about, and what you really value, if you deny half your population their rights and make it legal for women and their children to be physically beaten.
Welcome to the United Arab Emirates, where it is okay to beat your wife and kids. Just be sure to not leave any marks.
Photo of Ski Dubai indoor snow park by Flickr user muness under Creative Commons 2.0.
Thank you for drawing attention to this breach of human rights. However, I must tell you that at the beginning of 2010 several mosques in Germany were raided by police and booklets removed in which the faithful were advised how to beat their wives without leaving marks. Unfortunately, in the over-tolerant atmosphere which reigns in Germany, the press barely mentioned the raids and played the whole thing down. Women's rights in Germany are being sacrificed daily on the alter of religious freedom. The words 'religious tolerance' take on a whole new meaning in this context – they now mean politics and people in general tolerate human rights violations against women in the name of defending religion. And we women's rights activists who critisice the misogynist nature of patriarchal religions are denounced as being right-wing populists. But our work is helping to make people aware of the reality of women's lives. Today the German parliament will debate on whether to make forced marriage a crime in its own right – a demand we have been fighting for for several years.
Legalizing the beating of women and children was undoubtedly approved by males in that country, just as the laws are passed or unenforced in other countries that affect women and children's lives. The reason for the ruling that a beating should leave no marks is to protect the male from criticism that he is an inhuman brute who bullies the powerless.
In America women are killed by denying them free or low-cost contraceptives and morning-after and similar pills, as well as denying abortions through various "legal" and illegal methods. The lack of reproductive health care results in women's deaths, with one every few minutes worldwide from pregnancy-related causes. The males who control the purse strings allow that injustice, also.
"Domestic violence" should be dropped as a legal term and the more accurate term "assault and battery" used instead, which is what it is whether done by a domestic partner or a stranger and whether the marks show or not.
How unfortunate…this article is yet another example of ignorance, an author abusing her position by presenting a one sided discussion, taking a particular issue out of context and generalizing an isolated incident to the whole population…when are you going to learn that ethnocentrism is the worst kind of judgmental reductionism? When are you going to accept that you cannot suffocate members of other societies with your own set of values and belief systems?
Worry about issues that are devastating your own country rather than blindly criticizing others. Have you ever done any research regarding the judicial system of this country you so casually insult here?
How ironic that even with clear rules and regulations in the US against such issue as domestic violence, each day, women are terrorized by men who feel they can use their force and aggression on women, even to the point of death.
Just in case you didn’t come across this info in your research:
In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.1 That's an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner.2
(http://www.nnedv.org/news/national/770-new-survey-presents-snapshot-of-us-domestic-violence-services.html)
A new survey conducted by NNEDV reveals telling information about domestic violence services in the U.S. On September 15, 2010 – one 24-hour period – domestic violence victim advocates served more than 70,000 adults and children and answered more than 20,000 emergency hotline calls. During the same 24 hours, more than 9,000 requests for services went unmet, largely due to lack of funding.
Across the nation (in the US) on September 15, 2010, three women were murdered by their intimate partners. Thirty-six babies were born to mothers living in domestic violence shelters. Three-hundred-ninety-one survivors started new jobs. Three men committed suicide – one after murdering his wife, another after a failed attempt to kill his girlfriend, and the third after holding his partner hostage and a standoff with the police.
So should the US be blamed entirely for this or the individuals who behave in a barbaric way?
Dubai Stats:
In 2008, 47 cases of domestic violence were reported to Dubai Police, accounting for a mere 1.5 per cent of the total number of family disputes referred to Dubai Courts.
So should the US be blamed entirely for this or the individuals who behave in a barbaric way?
So exactly 47 cases were reported in Dubai in 2008; the rest knew of the law that it was OK to beat the women if they had no marks. Reporting has nothing whatsoever to do with it. How many Arab women report rapes? Very few, as they are shamed and termed "unclean", even killed because they are "soiled". Does that mean it doesn't happen? Of course not.
Instead of using other countries to compare to, how about admitting the truth in the UAE? Another case of dodging the question by criticizing someone else.
In my mind, Arab women can eitehr stand up for themselves, or accept the treatment, as you do. Makes no difference to me.