A German Judge Cites Koran in Divorce Case
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,473017,00.html
By Veit Medick <mailto:vmedick@web.de> and Anna Reimann
<mailto:anna_reimann@spiegel.de>
He beat her and threatened her with murder. But because husband and wife
were both from Morocco, a German divorce court judge saw no cause for
alarm. It's a religion thing, she argued.
The case seems simply too strange to be true. A 26-year-old mother of two
wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive
marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate
the
two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May
2006.
The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after
they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.
A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was
unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by
German
law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband
would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she
filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both
felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the
"hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.
In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case.
The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a
passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean
that
a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of
intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of
the
right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by
Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau
quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the
judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.
"The husband can beat his wife"
"The right to castigate means for me: the husband can beat his wife,"
Becker-Rojczyk said, interpreting the judge's verdict.
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Becker-Rojczyk said the judge
indicated
to her that it makes no sense to insist on an accelerated divorce. The
judge's advice? Wait for the year-long waiting period to elapse.
The lawyer and her client were shocked. Immediately, they filed a claim
alleging that the judge should have recused herself due to a conflict of
interest. They felt that, because of the point of view presented by the
judge, she was unable to reach an objective verdict. In the reply sent to
Becker-Rojczyk, the judge expressly referred to a Koran verse -- or sura
--
which indicates that a man's honor is injured when his wife behaves in an
unchaste manner. "Apparently the judge deems it unchaste when my client
adapts a Western lifestyle," Becker-Rojczyk said.
On Tuesday evening, Becker-Rojczyk expressed amazement that the judge was
still on the bench, given that the controversial verdict was handed down
weeks ago. Becker-Rojczyk had elected to go public with the case to
attract
attention to the judge's conduct. It seems to have worked. On Wednesday,
after the Tuesday evening publication of the story on SPIEGEL ONLINE, the
attorney received a fax from the Frankfurt court granting the conflict of
interest claim and excusing the judge from the case.
Still, it is unlikely that the case will be heard again before the
mandated
year of separation expires in May. But the judge who heard the case may
have
to face further consequences for her decision. On Wednesday, numerous
politicians in Berlin voiced their horror at the verdict -- and demanded
disciplinary action against the judge.
"In my opinion, this is a case of extreme violation of the rule of law
that
can't be solved with a mere conflict of interest ruling," Social Democrat
parliamentarian Dieter Wiefelspütz told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "There have to be
further consequences. This is a case for judicial supervision -- this case
needs to be further investigated."
The deputy floor leader for the Christian Democrats, Wolfgang Bosbach,
agreed. "This is a sad example of how the conception of the law from
another
legal and cultural environment is taken as the basis for our own notion of
law," he said on Wednesday.
This isn't the first time that German courts have used cultural background
to inform their verdicts. Christa Stolle of the women's rights
organization
Terre des Femmes said that in cases of marital violence, there have been a
number of cases where the perpetrator's culture of origin has been
considered as a mitigating circumstance -- although such verdicts have
become seldom in recent years.
But there remains quite a bit of work to do. "In my work educating sexist
and short-sighted Muslim men," asked Michaela Sulaika Kaiser of the
Network
for Muslim Women, "do I now have to convince German courts that women are
also people on the same level with men and that they, like any other
human,
have the right to be protected from physical and psychological violence?"
With reporting by Franziska Badenschier and Severin Weiland
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