Here’s another one out of the Mid-East that should make everyone go, huh? Yes folks, husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly - - this declaration from a Saudi judge  during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday.

So was the seminar promoting domestic violence or was the judge saying that slapping you wife was not considered domestic violence?

Oh, but the judge provided clarification:  Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that ”if a person gives $320 to his wife and she spends $240 to purchase an abaya [the black cover that Saudi women must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.”

Al-Razine “also pointed out that women’s indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country,” it added.

Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN that Saudi women routinely face such attitudes.  ”This is how men in Saudi Arabia see women,” she said in a telephone interview from the Saudi city of Dahran. “It’s not something they read in a book or learned from a friend. They’ve been raised to see women this way, that they’re less than a person.”

Al-Huwaider added that “I’m not surprised to see a judge or a religious man saying that - they’ve been raised in the same culture - a culture that tells them it’s ok to raise your hand to a woman that this works.” 

Another Saudi judge, in the city of Onaiza, was the source of a separate recent controversy: he twice denied a request from the mother of an 8-year-old girl that the girl be granted a divorce from her 47-year-old husband.

Ahhh, but where would we be without our politically correct liberalized-American culture where we celebrate such attitudes in the (self) interests of tolerance. Just don’t wish anyone a Merry Christmas, because that would be too offensive for any enlightened hypocrite to tolerate! Leave a comment…