Sugar Cubes

I’ve stumbled upon a number of excellent of Arabic blogs which we, English bloggers, are not giving the proper attention they deserve. I myself is guilty of this bad habit of being reluctant to read Arabic entries , for some reason I tend to enjoy Arabic works of literature but not political articles or rigid stories about society for example.

This entry is dedicated to khadder kenaan of Jordanian Issues. Khadder discusses the latest and hottest political, economical and social phenomenas in Jordan. He provides a closer look at what is really going on in Jordan, something we, Jordanian expats around the World, strive to have.

Here’s an excerpt from Jordanian Issues, it should give you some kind of clue of the purpose and direction of Khadder’s blog:

شؤون اردنية محاولة لملء فراغ متعاظم على شبكة المعلوماتية فيما يخص الاردن . هذا الفراغ مرتبط بانعدام التناول الجدي والمتواصل، إلافيما ندر، لما يجري في الاردن. إن ما اود القيام به هو محالة اخرى على هذا الصعيد، من اجل ان يكون لمواطني الاردن قناة اخرى، على محدوديتها، بعد ان اصبحت القنوات المتاحة تضيق بهم في الداخل والخارج

Let me try to translate:

Jordanian Issues is an attempt to fill the enormous void on the Internet with regard to Jordan. This void is caused by the lack of constantly and seriously tackling of what is happening in Jordan, except rarely. And that is what I’m trying to do, to give the citizens of Jordan another channel (despite its limitedness) after all the provided channels, both external and internal, have grown restricted and narrow.

And while at it, check out some other Arabic blogs that I found interesting and worthy of reading:

I’m sure there are many excellent Arabic blogs out there but those are the ones I got when I’ve searched for “الأردن”. I wonder why do we not read Arabic blogs and why aren’t they taken seriously like their English counterparts. I can understand why blogging in Arabic is not attractive to the International audience, but what I can not fully comprehend is why are they being ignored by the Arabic audience as well?

I am afraid of answering my own questions, just yesterday I translated an English word literally to Arabic and used it while talking to my brother, it happened so spontaneously that it really disturbed me.

Manama: Women’s rights activist Ghada Jamsheer on Thursday hailed a court decision to jail a wife-beater as “a right step to end an endemic plight”.

“I applaud the decision because it will certainly help to put an end to the widespread phenomenon of battering women,” Jamsheer told Gulf News.

“What is needed is that more people become involved in the drive to minimise and eliminate domestic violence,” she said.

Jamsheer was commenting on a three-month sentence handed by a local judge against a Gulf national who broke the arm of his Bahraini wife and mother of their seven children for refusing to have intercourse with him.

According to press sources, the court case papers said the wife reported her husband to the public prosecutor after he abused her physically and broke her arm.

The wife said that her husband became infuriated after she told him that she could not have proper physical contact with him because she was menstruating.

But the husband refused to be put off by the wife’s claims and insisted that marital relation was a right granted by God and he wished to exercise his right.

The argument between the spouses developed into a fight and the husband started beating his wife until he broke her arm.

The husband, who does not live in Bahrain but makes regular visits there, told the judge that he had a divine right to beat his wife whenever she disobeyed him.

The unimpressed judge said that the man would have to pay 300 Bahraini dinars (Dh2,926) if he wanted to avoid jail.

[Source]

Thumbs up! we need more people like this judge.

I wonder when are some men going to understand that beating their wives is not a right given by Islam. The beating mentioned in Qura’an was interpreted in more than one way by scholars, however, the fact that the Prophet (PBUH) had never layed a hand on any of his wives nor had any of his companions defame the claims for an Islamic right of men to beat their wives to begin with. In the worst scenarios, beating was described by hitting with a Siwak, smart people will know that what is meant is the emotional effect because I do not think a sane man will actually carry a Siwak and hit his wife once or twice, it sounds like a joke. A wise man will deliver the message of being disatisfied or annoyed in so many ways, beating is definitely not one of them, if anything at all, abusing your spouse whether emotionally or physically is inhumane.