| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
All of this depends on one's definition of abuse. Is child marriage abuse? Is hitting your wife abuse? Not according to the dictates of the Qur'an and Islamic law, and Saudi Arabia of all places about the least likely to decide differently anytime soon. Then, this discussion, while it is a slick public relations move, boils down to where the line is between acts permissible in Islamic law, and is bound to become a rather subjective exercise in deciding what's just going too far. And that calls into question how much this conference can truly help Saudi women and children.
"Islam Does Not Condone Domestic Violence: Forum," by Nuha Adlan for Arab News, May 8:
RIYADH, 8 May 2008 — A two-day conference on domestic violence ended yesterday with participants saying there is no justification in Islam for abuse of women and children. They also came up with a list of demands and recommendations to tackle the problem.
Experts from across the Kingdom participated in five sessions of discussions at the first National Experts Meeting to Fight Domestic Abuse Against Women and Children, with all participants agreeing that Islam does not condone abuse and that the problem should be brought to an end.
“Traditions that allow abuse should be brought to an end,” said Dr. Maha Al-Munief, executive director of the National Family Safety Program (NFSP), which organized the event. “We will start training courses for people who work with abuse victims... We need cooperation from all NGOs,” she said in a press conference held to announce the recommendations.
One of the forum participants, who asked her name not be published, said, “Why do we have to wait until a crime happens and someone dies? Why can’t we interfere early. Privacy is not an excuse for our silence.”
Dr. Hissa Al-Alsheikha, a board member of the NFSP, said there are no proper statistics about the problem and all available figures are inaccurate.
“Although nothing is 100 percent true, one thing is very clear: Abuse has become a phenomenon... if one has an inclination to it, he will find an excuse to abuse someone,” she said.
The recommendations, which comprise 21 articles, included a suggestion for the need to have a clear fatwa about the topic that would serve as a legal basis to approach a court. The fatwa would also serve to disprove misconceptions that Islam sanctions abuse of one’s family members.
“We aim to set up a national strategy to minimize the effects of domestic abuse,” said Al-Munief. “We want NGOs to come forward in support of the program... We want women and children to know their rights and ask for them.”
Dr. Majid Al-Essa, head of the Medical Section at NFSP, said that it is the foremost responsibility of every individual to help change the mindset accepts abuse. “People must realize that they need to change,” she said.
“The language of violence that was claimed to be religion should be corrected,” she said. “We need to criminalize violence and all kinds of abuse... There is nothing on earth that justifies abuse.”
The forum was inaugurated by Princess Adela bint Abdullah on Tuesday. “Abuse of women and children is a real threat to the stability of our society. It is a worrying universal phenomenon, not just a local one,” she said in her opening speech.
Speakers in Tuesday’s session included Sheikh Salman Al-Odah, supervisor of the Islam Today website, and Dr. Suhail Zain Al-Abideen, head of the Women’s Section at the National Society for Human Rights.
The participants stressed the need for enacting clear rules against domestic violence and discussed such varied issues as punishments for perpetrators and agencies responsible for handling complaints.
Posted by Marisol at May 8, 2008 12:02 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
Islam doesn't condone domestic violence, it creates it.
Starting with valuing women as worth only half of a man.
And running downhill from that point on.
A pathetic mess of obfuscations trying to hide the inherent Koranic misogyny from the blithely inattentive and fatally naive in the infidel camp.
Posted by: profitsbeard![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 8, 2008 12:42 AM
From article: “The language of violence that was claimed to be religion should be corrected,”
And just how do they propose to do that? Apostasy is only a breath away when you start fooling around with Allah's words. Allah is watching. Correcting your religion is changing your religion, and you know what Mohammad said about that...Some muslims talk about doing that, but none actually do it.
Even talking about it is risky in some company...
at May 8, 2008 12:57 AM
It seems the misunderstanders of the Religion of Peace™ have once again, misunderstood their very own scriptures, you know, the ones that the menfolk....and in the Utopia of Islam, is there any other kind of folk that matter...have internalized from infancy. And yet, they have continuously misunderstood those scripture which obviously extol restraint and kindness, forgiving and other wholesome virtues.
Posted by: Jewel Atkins at May 8, 2008 1:02 AM
For a first-hand account of what things are like for women in the suburbs of a Saudi Arabian city, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel".
While her family lived in Saudi Arabia, they heard, night after night, the screams of women being beaten by their husbands. Everyone knew it was happening. No-one did anything about it.
Saudi Arabia, the heartland, the holy land of Islam, its centre and source, left upon Ayaan - and remember, she had just come out of African-Muslim Somalia wracked by civil war and tribal conflict - an overwhelming impression of cruelty. The place was suffused with it. Cruelty, confinement/ imprisonment ( for women and girls), and fear.
Interestingly, after they left Saudi Arabia they lived in Ethiopia, before settling in Kenya. Ethiopia - so much poorer than Saudi Arabia, and itself just emerging from the Mengistu years - 'felt' different to the young Ayaan. Why? KINDNESS. People were kind to one another in the streets. She felt happier, freer and safer in Ethiopia than she had done in Saudi Arabia.
Cruelty behind closed doors and in the streets of Saudi Arabia, centre and focus of Islam; kindness from strangers, in the impoverished streets of - MAJORITY-CHRISTIAN - Ethiopia.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at May 8, 2008 3:06 AM
To any new reader or visitor here - pick up a Quran and read Surah 4: 34.
"Men have authority over women because allah has made the one superior to the others, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them.
Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because allah has guarded them.
AS FOR THOSE FROM WHOM YOU FEAR DISOBEDIENCE, admonish them and send them to beds apart AND BEAT THEM. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Allah is high, supreme." [My emphases added].
Note, furthermore, that if you read the passage carefully, you will see that the Quran is counselling, so to speak, a pre-emptive strike. The wife does not have to have *actually* 'disobeyed' or 'rebelled' (and interpretations of what THAT involves, are many and varied); all that matters is that the husband SUSPECTS, or FEARS, that she MIGHT be going to disobey or rebel.
Think about it. A woman may be beaten 'upon suspicion'.
Now reflect upon the observable behaviour of the Muslim {male} 'street' - the lynch-mob mentality, the almost immediate resort to extreme violence upon the flimsiest of excuses. Allow yourself to wonder what it might be like to live at the command of such touchy, suspicious, violent people.
Finally: if any first-time visitor here is tempted to remark, 'but all religions are the same', or 'Christianity oppresses women too' - I can say with complete certainty that there is not to be found even one verse, anywhere in the Bible, not even in those portions such as Leviticus which are most difficult for a modern reader, that either commands, or commends, or permits, or even describes, wife-beating. There are Jewish and Christian men who commit domestic violence; but NOTHING in their holy books either commands or commends it.
at May 8, 2008 3:22 AM
"Saudi conference insists there is "no justification in Islam for abuse of women and children" "
So, if the Quran would justify abuse, it would be ok?
The better guideline would be reason, conscience and decency.
Posted by: FreeSpeech at May 8, 2008 3:38 AM
But there is justification for the abuse of tilth and crops.
Posted by: Dhimmisoftheworldunite at May 8, 2008 9:00 AM
More taqiyya.
Posted by: tanstaafl at May 8, 2008 10:27 AM
"Denial" isn't just a river in Egypt! This is pure, unadulterated taqiyya!
The "Cur-an" justifies domestic violence (at the mere SUSPISION of the lack of total submission) and child abuse. Being that this is "the immutable word of Allah", there is zero possibility of reformation.
My Heavens, in their instructions for divorce, there is even allowance for the fact your "wife" may have not even reached the "age of menses" yet! Civilization accepts the premise that marriage is restricted to adults, (chronologically, mentally and emotionally) not so of Islam.
This lame attempt at immitating civilization should be held in the derision it deserves!
at May 10, 2008 4:27 PM
"Denial" isn't just a river in Egypt! This is pure, unadulterated taqiyya!
The "Cur-an" justifies domestic violence (at the mere SUSPISION of the lack of total submission) and child abuse. Being that this is "the immutable word of Allah", there is zero possibility of reformation.
My Heavens, in their instructions for divorce, there is even allowance for the fact your "wife" may have not even reached the "age of menses" yet! Civilization accepts the premise that marriage is restricted to adults, (chronologically, mentally and emotionally) not so of Islam.
This lame attempt at immitating civilization should be held in the derision it deserves!
at May 10, 2008 4:28 PM
"There is nothing on earth that justifies abuse.”
the Qur'an does.
at May 10, 2008 8:30 PM
Comments are turned off and archived for this entry.
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dhimmi Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)