home
Husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi judge said recently during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday. Arab News, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that “if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia 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.”
Women in the audience immediately and loudly protested Al-Razine’s statement, and were shocked to learn the remarks came from a judge, the newspaper reported. Al-Razine made his remark as he was attempting to explain why incidents of domestic violence had increased in Saudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that “nobody puts even a fraction of blame” on women, the newspaper said. 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.”
