Sheikh, President of the District Court in Riyadh, has said that any husband who “slaps or beats his wife severely” should be punished. Al-Sheikh, speaking on the issue following remarks by a Saudi judge earlier this month saying that wives deserved to be slapped by their husbands if they overspent on clothes, said that Islam “has honored human beings by protecting them from any assault and abuse. Islam has stipulated the penalties for anyone who commits mistakes.” “The husband may discipline the wife if she commits a mistake, but that doesn't mean slapping her in the face or beating her cruelly,” Al-Sheikh told Okaz newspaper. “Some Ulema (religious scholars) have said that he may only discipline her with the Siwak stick (a small twig used as a toothbrush), but slapping in the face is definitely forbidden in all cases, whether the wife is guilty or not,” Al-Sheikh said. “Domestic violence should be punished by the law, even if the wife withdraws her complaint,” he added. Earlier this month Judge Hamad Al-Razine was quoted as saying that a wife who is given SR1,200 and spends SR900 of it on an abaya could be slapped. “If her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment,” Al-Razine said. The judge made the comments, in which he also stated that women were equally responsible for domestic violence yet escaped blame, at a seminar in Abha for the National Family Safety Program.
