Rania al-Baz (Arab News)
Battered Saudi wife and former TV presenter Rania Al-Baz has left Saudi Arabia and will not go back. After all, with Sura 4:34 (the wife-beating verse) still part of the Qur’an, what’s to prevent this sort of thing from happening again and again, to other women as well as to Rania herself? And before you start reminding me that there are battered women in the West also, let me remind you that in the West the perpetrators of such crimes are prosecuted. They are not given a pass because of words in a holy book.
“Rania Flees, “˜Won’t Come Back”,” from Arab News, with thanks to all who sent this in:
JEDDAH, 8 October 2005″” Saudi television presenter Rania Al-Baz whose near-death assault by her ex-husband Mohammed Al-Fallata was widely reported, has fled the country and decided not to return. Reports of her alleged escape aboard a foods lorry bound for Bahrain and from there to Paris were posted on Arabic websites two days ago.
The reports claimed that she was prevented from traveling when she went to Jeddah International Airport last week for a trip to Paris where she was supposed to attend a conference on women’s rights. She has been traveling to Paris regularly to continue her plastic surgery treatment of multiple facial fractures caused by her ex-husband’s brutal beatings.
A report in The Guardian newspaper confirmed that she was in Paris and that she “won’t go back”. She said that she was looking for a place to live and find work either in Paris or London.
As for the reason why she fled, Rania told the British paper: “I was not safe any more in Saudi Arabia.”
She left her children, two boys from Al-Fallata and a daughter from a previous marriage, in Jeddah and was “thinking about” them.