YEMEN: Writer gets online flogging
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
An article advocating physical violence against women in Yemen’s main English-language newspaper understandably has sparked quite an uproar across the blogosphere.
In his Yemen Times piece, ‘There must be violence against women,’ writer Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy argues that it’s better for a man to use violence to control his disobedient wife, sister or daughter than for the alleged indiscretion to slide. He takes unnamed human rights groups to task for arguing that women should report such violence to authorities:
In some cases, violence is necessary, but there must be limits. Those “good human rights organizations” don’t make any exceptions in their solutions because their aim is to serve society. Will it be a better society once we see wives, mothers, sisters and daughters going from one police station and one court to another, complaining against their husbands, fathers, brothers and even sons?
No, he insists, he didn’t just write the article for shock value. The lengthy piece makes a number of arguments as to why beating women is justified, often citing the Koran. All are taken apart throughout the blogosphere.
‘It reads like it’s straight out of The Onion,’ writes Neal Ungerleider of Media Bistro‘s Fishbowl NY. ‘But the op-ed is pathetically real.’
Esonlinji, the blogger at the website Phlebas Considered called the piece “a collection of rationalizations, flawed arguments that to my mind completely fails to achieve what the author aimed to say.” The writer then proceeds with a paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of the piece:
What reasons justify beating your wife? Let me see, I’m thinking, I’m thinking. No, none. Wife beating is wrong, and the wife is right to seek to prevent further beatings. And this does generalize to other types of violence. Violence is wrong, it should be prevented, victims should be protected and offenders punished.
One visitor to the gossip and fashion site Jezebel noted the irony of justifying violence against women in the name of Islam without applying the same standard to men:
Ever notice it’s always daughters and sisters violating Islamic ‘norms’? You never hear of a girl killing her brother because he broke Islamic law by say, drinking a beer or dressing in Western clothing.
Still, a number of American bloggers used the piece to draw generalizations about the Muslim world and in particular the conduct of Muslims living in the West. The website Jihad Watch uses the piece to decry Islam as a ‘culture whose leaders persist in denial, obfuscation, and finger-pointing instead of honest dealing with the problem.”
In a lengthy posting, Rob Taylor at the conservative Red Alerts website refers to the recent case of an Egyptian immigrant in Dallas who allegedly killed his two daughters, possibly because he disapproved of their Western ways, according to news reports.
How many Muslims in the West are reading it now and applying that “wisdom” to their own families? We in the West sit silent as Muslim women, seeking only to enjoy the same freedoms as every other westerner, are massacred. Why? Is it because to discuss assimilation into Western society, even of the most basic value of not murdering your daughter, has become off limits due to political correctness? Is it an affront to multiculturalism to tell Muslim men that religious beliefs aside women cannot be treated as property here?
— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut