Mick Hartley

Here's something you don't see very often: an article in Arab News in praise of the US. It's drawing attention to the contrast in the way in which the plight of abused women is dealt with in Saudi Arabia and in America:

Not so long ago, hard-liner turned-reformed cleric Ayed Al-Garni wrote a piece entitled, "I wish I was American" on the plight of a married Saudi woman caught in an abusive marriage and far away from home.

The story revolves around a Saudi student who went to the United States to work on his MBA. He was accompanied by his wife and two children, a daughter aged 8 and a son who was 6 years old….

It was not long after that the husband's abusive nature toward his wife began to display itself, first with words and then physical assault that on more than one occasion caused bodily harm….

After one such incident where he had left her in pain, she called her father and brothers in Saudi Arabia, only to be told that she had to sort this out with her husband, and that a wife had to put up with her fate, whatever it was. It was then that she mustered up enough courage to call the local police.

Within minutes, five patrol cars were around the house. The husband and wife were questioned separately, and the children were taken to another area with a police psychologist who gently drew more information from them. After the cops were satisfied that this was indeed a case of domestic violence and the husband was an unrestrained abuser, they decided to take him into custody. They also moved the wife and children to a nearby hotel where they would not be isolated.

As the wife could not drive and had no means to sustain herself, the next day, the police arranged for one of the patrol cars to take the children back and forth to school. They even arranged with the social welfare services to provide food, some spending money and other necessities for the family while the husband was being held for questioning.

It all ends happily, with the wife able to get a divorce and apply for US citizenship. And the moral?

The point of this whole story is, as Al-Garni puts it, what the Americans practice are the principles of Islam that somehow we chose to ignore here in our own country. He is somehow surprised that the codes and ethics in their laws are so eerily similar to the doctrines of Islam. 

Not the conclusion that leapt out at me, I'll admit, but it's something. At least they admit there is a problem.