It hasn’t been a good week for women in the Arab/Muslim world.
Women may neither vote nor run in Saudi Arabia’s first nationwide elections, the government announced today, dashing hopes of progressive Saudis and easing fears among conservatives that the kingdom is moving too fast on reforms.
Some women considered the move yet another indignity in a country where they need their husbands’ permission to study, travel or work. But others said they wouldn’t trust themselves to judge whether a candidate is more than just a handsome face.—-“Women are capable of voting and making the right choices,” said Ahmed, a 22-year-old marketing graduate. “Why aren’t men and women equal in this issue?”“We aren’t,” countered her friend Sarah Muhammad. “We have so little interaction with men that we will vote with our emotions, choosing candidates for their looks and sweet talk rather than for what they can deliver.”Rima Khaled, 20, said Saudi women are not used to playing a role in public life, and many social and traditional restraints should first be removed before they can.“What’s the point of voting?” she asked. “Even if we did vote, we would go home to the men in our lives who will have the last say in whatever we do.”
An Iranian woman has taken her husband to court in a bid to secure a judicial order for him to beat her once a week instead of every night, press reports said Wednesday.“My husband is violent and beats me virtually every evening. I thought that he would stop after the birth of our child, but in fact it has got worse,” the woman, identified only as Maryam J., was quoted as saying in court by the Mardomsalari paper.“I don’t want a divorce or compensation. My husband is violent. It is in his nature. I just want him to promise to beat me only once a week,” the woman argued, reportedly causing the judge and audience to burst out into laughter.
An Iranian woman has been sentenced to death for murdering and chopping up her drug addict husband who allegedly tried to rape her daughter, press reports said Wednesday.The woman was identified as 33-year-old Fatemeh Haghighat-Paju, and she is expected to be hanged “in the next few days”, Etemad newspaper reported.She reportedly told a judge that her husband had been constantly eyeing up her 15-year-old daughter — from the woman’s first marriage — and that she was told by the husband that he had lost the girl in a gambling match.Haghighat-Paju later discovered that her husband, only identified as 30-year-old Bahman, had tried to rape her daughter.“The same night, while he was taking drugs, I strangled him with a scarf and chopped his body up into small pieces in the bath,” the woman was quoted as confessing.She then stored the body parts in the fridge and slowly threw them into a river, before being caught. The crime took place some seven years ago, the reports said.
Granted, she did go a little overboard with the whole Hannibal Lecter routine.
An Iranian woman killed herself by setting herself on fire after her husband rejected her repeated demands for a colour television set, Kayhan newspaper reported on Monday.
