Mission & Justice

Nasser Arrabyee; 20/7/08

The Yemen Women’s Union has demanded Parliament condemn a recent religious fatwa banning women from political participation and running for seats in parliament. “We want parliament to explicitly condemn such a fatwa because it is a confiscation of personal and public freedom,” Ramziah Al Eryani, chairperson of the Yemen Women Union, told Gulf News.Al Eryani said a meeting with the speaker of parliament and a number of Members of Parliament (MPs) to discuss the issue was scheduled to take place on Sunday but was postponed because of the speaker’s other commitments.

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Alia Al Theeb; 20/7/08

Wife-beating was the most common crime dealt with by Dubai Police’s family security department last year. The department dealt with a total of 455 cases related to various family problems. Lt Col Arif Baqer, director of the family security department, said the department dealt with 126 cases of wife beating. He said the department also dealt with 113 cases of disputes among spouses, 35 swearing cases, 50 cases involving psychological and social counselling, 26 disputes between parents and children above 18 years, 18 cases of nuisance, 17 cases of disputes over child custody and 8 cases of psychological and social threats, such as threats of divorce.

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Peter Hartcher; 18/7/08

This week we have the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, telling us “there is a crisis in the Western world” because “no Western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable”. At the same time we have a visiting US economist, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, telling us that we need to curb population growth globally: “The planet, everyone can feel, is just right at the limits right now in terms of food, in terms of energy supply, in terms of land use.” He urged that we “stabilise through voluntary means the world’s population at around 8 billion, not the over 9 billion [by 2050] which is our current trajectory right now”. So what should we do? Encourage more population growth, or less? Who is right?

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Cynthia Johnston; 18/7/08

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and most say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey shows. The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. “Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis,” said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights.

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Emma-Kate Symons; 18/7/08

France has taken a united stand against the burka and the veil with a leading Muslim minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s Government condemning head-to-toe Islamic dress as “a prison and a straitjacket”. Following a landmark appeal court ruling denying French citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wore a burka at the behest of her French husband, Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara said all Islamic coverings for women, including the popular head and shoulder veil or hijab were “symbols of oppression”. “The burka is a prison; it’s a straitjacket,” she told Le Parisien. “It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy.”

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16/7/08

Question: A pregnant woman has been advised by her doctor to have an operation to ensure that she does not get pregnant again. She had previously given birth twice, each time delivering by Caesarean section. The doctor’s advice is based on that three abdominal operations is the maximum that a woman can have. Otherwise, the risks to her health are considerable. Please advise whether such an operation is acceptable. M. Iqbal
Question: In my home country, some people call themselves Saalik. They deliberately put on a crude and austere appearance, wearing a large white turban and applying henna to their beards and heads. They claim that seven parts of our bodies have to say the name of God many times during the day. Their guides assign to them a particular supplication for each of the seven parts, and they have to repeat it hundreds of times during the day. They have special mosques to which they go. Please comment. Name withheld

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Rana Husseini; 15/7/08

The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced a 26-year-old woman to 15 years in prison for murdering her husband in January 2005. The court declared N. R., a housewife, guilty of shooting her 34-year-old husband to death with his unlicensed gun while he was taking a shower at their family home on January 10, 2005. The court also ordered the defendant to pay JD3,100 in compensation to the victim’s family. Defence lawyer Zahra Sharabati told The Jordan Times that she plans to appeal the sentence. “My client killed her husband in self-defence and in a moment of extreme fear and lack of balanced thinking. The victim was constantly abusing her and had threatened to kill her minutes before she shot him dead,” Sharabati said, calling the sentence “high”.

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Nasser Arrabyee; 16/7/08; See: http://www.gulfnews.com/news/gulf/yemen/10229323.html

A group of Yemeni clerics warned women from getting out of their homes. The order, they claim, is to protect society from “vice and sexual chaos”. The clerics also said that political role for women contradicts Islamic values. “We warn against opening the door for women, who will get out of their houses and mix with men,” the clerics stated in a booklet distributed during a meeting. “Women getting out of their houses and mixing with men in places of work will lead to non-marital relations … loss of decency, adultery and illegal children,” the booklet said.

Maha Fahd Al-Hujailan; 14/7/08

Alarabia.net reported on Friday that a 60-year-old man in Hail Province would shortly marry a 10-year-old girl. This report comes on top of another stating that the Hail Province has the dubious distinction of being home to the youngest husband and wife in the world. There could, no doubt, be several unreported instances of old men taking minor girls for wives in other regions of the Kingdom. While a Saudi newspaper, Shams, expressed outrage at the reported practice of “selling” brides, several people wanted the government to step in and stop the marriage. “Selling” in the context refers to the fact that a girl’s father would agree to marry her to an old man only if he offered an enormous amount of money to the father.

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Ebtihal Mubarak; 14/7/08

Representatives of the Family Protection Organization, the National Society of Human Rights (NSHR), the government-run Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the Safety Committee at the Social Affairs Ministry met here on Saturday to discuss ways of cooperating to improve the services provided to women victims of domestic abuse. The meeting was held at Jeddah’s first and only women’s shelter, run by the Family Protection Organization. Samira Al-Ghamdi, board member of the Family Protection Organization, said that the meeting was called to set out clear guidelines for streamlining the work of these organizations.

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