Muslim Wife: Repeatedly beaten. Koran says It's Ok.

Guilty for beating devout Muslim wife

By MEGAN GILLIS, SUN MEDIA

A judge said she had to consider "cultural and religious norms" in convicting a man whose devout Muslim wife kept returning to him even after he beat her the day after she gave birth.

Justice Dianne Nicholas yesterday convicted Ahmed Abada, 31, of assaulting his wife four times -- once causing bodily harm -- and threatening to kill her.

He'll be sentenced in July.

"She was new to this country and a devout Muslim," Nicholas noted in her written decision. "I attach little significance to the fact that she kept returning to the apartment he had been throwing her out of during this incident.

"She has testified that the Koran gives permission to a husband to beat his wife," Nicholas continued. "I accept that she is a deeply religious Muslim woman who lives her life according to the Koran." The court heard that Abada, a PhD candidate, and his wife, a master's student in engineering, met online and he brought her from Egypt.

She testified during the five-day trial to a string of assaults in just over a year, beginning after the birth of their first child.

On the first occasion, he beat her and threw her out barefoot in the winter and without the hijab she wears whenever outside.

In another, he hit and punched her when she returned home after the birth of their second child.

BULLYING CLAIMS

The judge found Abada argumentative and volatile. She dismissed his claim that he was defending himself against a bullying wife he "diagnosed" as schizophrenic after a single psychology course.

The complainant, meanwhile, was thoughtful, subdued -- not vindictive -- and withstood vigorous cross-examination, Nicholas said.

The woman testified that her husband controlled the money, including her student loans, and she has no family here.

The woman was afraid her children would be taken by the CAS and she'd be deported if she called police.

"This is a case where the cultural and financial restraints that this Muslim woman lived with are critical to the analysis of the evidence," Nicholas wrote.

"You simply cannot expect her to feel that she had the same self-autonomy that one might expect from an equally educated North American woman."

Judges must be sensitive to cultural differences in these difficult cases, she said.

"Abada may well have believed that it was his right to beat his wife," Nicholas wrote. "Whatever those cultural differences may be, and regardless of the dictates of the Koran, it is settled law in this country that the intentional application of force without consent constitutes an assault.

"The law applies to all residents."