Voice for Abused Women Upsets Dubai Patriarchy

[bluey]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/wo...i&st=nyt&scp=1

Excerpt from article:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — For years, Sharla Musabih has fought a lonely battle to protect battered wives and victims of human trafficking here. She founded the Emirates’ first women’s shelter here and she became a familiar figure at police stations, relentlessly hounding officers to be tougher on abusive husbands.

She has also earned many enemies. Emiratis do not often take kindly to rights advocates drawing attention to the dark side of their fast-growing city-state on the Persian Gulf, better known for its gleaming office towers and artificial islands.

Ms. Musabih, 47, a boisterous American transplant who was born and raised on Bainbridge Island, Wash., argues that confrontation is essential in fighting the patriarchal Arab traditions that allow men to beat their wives with impunity. She and her supporters also say the Emirates have not acknowledged the severity of their problem with human trafficking, the brutal business in which foreign women are lured here with promises of jobs and then forced into prostitution or servitude. Last year the United States State Department placed the Emirates and 31 other countries on a watch list for failing to effectively combat the illegal trade.

“When a woman has three broken bones in her back, and the police don’t take it seriously, yes, I get angry,” Ms. Musabih said.

Others say Ms. Musabih’s aggressive approach — which includes appeals to foreign news media as well as tough, face-to-face lobbying — is inappropriate in the Arab world, and has needlessly fueled the backlash she now faces. That assertiveness may also have made it easier to dismiss her as an outsider. Although she has lived here for 24 years, converted to Islam, is an Emirati citizen, wears a veil and has raised six children here with her Emirati husband, Ms. Musabih is still unmistakably American, from her moralistic zeal to her habit of calling the women in her shelter “darlin’.”

“I have told her sometimes I think she is wrong, she goes too far,” said Lt. Gen. Dahi al-Khalfan, the chief of the Dubai Police, who has supported Ms. Musabih in the past but now tends to criticize her work as divisive. “There is a case between husband and wife; let the court decide! Leave it.”

Safety and a Ticket Home

Ms. Musabih dates her work as an advocate from 1991, when she started tracking domestic violence cases and offering women shelter in her home in Dubai. In 2001, she rented a two-story house in the Jumeira district and opened a shelter for abused women and their children, naming it City of Hope.

On a recent afternoon, children’s toys littered the floors in the shelter’s sunlit living room, and several women snacked in the kitchen, while others sprawled on couches watching television upstairs. Although Ms. Musabih has had some dedicated assistants over the years, it is basically a one-woman show; she deals with everything from belligerent former husbands to buying plane tickets, sometimes with her own money, for foreign women to return to their home countries.

“I’ve repatriated 400 victims in the past six months,” said Ms. Musabih, a fast-talking, energetic figure who presides over the shelter like an overworked mother.

Some women who have spent time in the shelter say this tough approach is necessary. The police in Dubai “won’t do anything to protect you while you’re legally married,” said one former resident of the shelter, who declined to give her name because she still fears repercussions, from her husband and from others who oppose Ms. Musabih.

After her husband beat her repeatedly, the woman said, she appealed to the police, who made her husband sign a promise that he would not do it again. He violated the pledge again and again, she said, but the police did nothing, even after he broke into another house where she was seeking refuge and raped her.

“The police told me, ‘We can’t do anything, he’s your husband,’ ” she said.

But Ms. Musabih’s approach clearly shocked and angered many, and not just the husbands whose wives found shelter.

A prominent cleric, Ahmed al-Kobeissi, recently gave interviews to Dubai newspapers in which he said Ms. Musabih’s work “goes against the traditions of Emirati people” because she “instigates wives against their husbands.” Mr. Kobeissi also voiced indignation at Ms. Musabih’s suggestion that Emirati men are among the clients of Dubai’s many prostitutes.

Ms. Musabih’s work took on a higher public profile when she joined a crusade against the practice of using children, some as young as 4, as camel jockeys, once common in the Persian Gulf. Her advocacy led to a number of television and newspaper reports about the horrific abuses practiced on young jockeys, and appears to have helped lead to a ban on the practice in the Emirates in 2005.

[Jamroll]

If there was more justice in the legal system, then there wouldn't be any need for this women to do her work. Beatings and abuse will always take place in some form since some humans are idiots. But if the authorities cannot deliver justice for the oppressed, then what good is there in a justice system?

[bluey]

Jamroll said

If there was more justice in the legal system, then there wouldn't be any need for this women to do her work. Beatings and abuse will always take place in some form since some humans are idiots. But if the authorities cannot deliver justice for the oppressed, then what good is there in a justice system?

I agree. There needs to be more rights for abused/oppressed people, both Men and Women, not only here, but in other societies too. Considering this happens nearly somewhere in every other part of the world. Which leads me to the point, do we become detached to a certain extent as a community to people who are being abused that we don't exactly take action or speak out unless it is someone close to us?

[Jamroll]

bluey said

I agree. There needs to be more rights for abused/oppressed people, both Men and Women, not only here, but in other societies too. Considering this happens nearly somewhere in every other part of the world. Which leads me to the point, do we become detached to a certain extent as a community to people who are being abused that we don't exactly take action or speak out unless it is someone close to us?

I think we probably do to an extent. You know how it is... if it's some unmarried girl who's been attacked, people who are not even family or close friends are lining up to beat the living crap out of the guy. But if it's a married woman, most of us make a pained expression and suck the air through our teeth, but effectively do nothing more than wring our hands and say "well, it's bad, but they're married, they need to sort it out between themselves".

[Rambo]

Dubai Dubai DUbai, everybody seems to be discussing Dubai these days. Its really getting annoying

[jinnzaman]

I don't think the problem is a lack of rights, so much as its a problem of enforcing already existing laws.

Muslim countries, in general, have a problem with law enforcement. The criminal justice systems are pretty corrupt.

[Skinwalker]

I'm glad that this woman is making a noise about it and helping people who need someone to stand up for them. She's a hero. Great article.