CR IP TI ON BS SU
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2016
Son embraces Fadhel’s ideas of modernity, development
Sorrowful France marks first ’versary of Paris massacre
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SAFAR 14, 1438 AH
Egypt mourns ‘The Magician’ star Mahmoud Abdel Aziz
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reinstates ex-MP Hashem
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3Court bars 7 royal 40candidate, 18 Damkhi slams Iran • Ashour blasts sectarianism • Hackers target Ghanem
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By B Izzak
New Saudi rules, fees for helpers, vehicles, cattle By Hanan Al-Saadoun KUWAIT: The interior ministry’s relations and security media department announced that Saudi Arabia has started implementing new measures concerning the entry of domestic helpers accompanying Kuwaiti families into the kingdom. The department highlighted that the new visa fees for helpers would be 2,000 riyals per visit instead of the earlier fee of 200 riyals. In addition, vehicles with Kuwaiti license plates can only remain in Saudi Arabia for a maximum period of three months. The department noted that the Hamteyyat land border exit has been closed and cattle owners who want to take their herds to graze in Saudi Arabia can only go through the Khafji and Reqee land border exits. Accordingly, the department urged all citizens to respect the new rules in order to avoid delays at these exits. Separately, the department said the manager of the domestic helpers department Mohammed AlAjmi announced the cancellation of 42 domestic help offices that failed to legalize their statuses as Continued on Page 13
KUWAIT: People attend an electoral campaign meeting of Islamist former MP candidate Adel Al-Damkhi on Saturday. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat
Myanmar Rohingya villages set on fire
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KUWAIT: The appeals court yesterday upheld a decision by the election authorities to bar ruling family member Sheikh Malek Al-Humoud Al-Sabah from running in the Nov 26 polls. The court overturned a ruling by the lower administrative court which last week said in a landmark verdict that members of the ruling family can contest parliamentary polls. The Kuwaiti constitution does not explicitly bar ruling family member from competing in parliamentary elections, but its explanatory note states that they cannot run in order to keep the ruling family away from politics. The lower court said last week the explanatory note does not amount to a ban and allowed Sheikh Malek to remain in the race. But the appeals court rejected the ruling and insisted that ruling family members cannot run in polls. The issue will be settled by the country’s top court, the cassation court, whose rulings are final. If that court decides he can run, the interior ministry will register him. The appeals court also rejected the candidacy of Khaled Dehrab, supporting the decision of the election authority. It however reinstated former MP Safa AlHashem who was barred by the election authority, but reinstated by the lower administrative court. The case will now go to the court of cassation, but it is unlikely the court will bar her. The appeals court also reinstated three other candidates including Khaled Al-Mutairi. It set tomorrow as the date to issue its verdict on the case of former opposition MP Bader Al-Dahoum. Continued on Page 13
Pak, China open new trade route
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US Muslims reeling and scared Alabbar, Saudi SWF launch $1bn e-commerce site IDRIS KHUBBAZ, Iraq: In this handout image provided by Human Rights Watch, destroyed houses are seen in this Iraqi village. — AP
Iraqi Kurds destroy Arab villages: HRW Forces recapture Nimrud ERBIL, Iraq: Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State in northern Iraq unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime, US-based rights group Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi armed forces have faced a common enemy in Islamic State since the militants took over large parts of Iraq in 2014. Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters make up the 100,000-strong, US-backed alliance currently battling to retake Mosul. But animosity persists, going back to decades of mistreatment of Kurds by ruling
Arabs in Baghdad, especially under Saddam Hussein. Reuters found last month that Kurds are using the battle against Islamic State to settle old disputes and grab land in ethnically mixed territory separating the Kurdish region in the north from the majority Arab south. Human Rights Watch said in its report that violations between Sept 2014 and May 2016 in 21 towns and villages within disputed areas of Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces had followed “a pattern of apparently unlawful demolitions”. Continued on Page 13
DUBAI: Dubai business magnate Mohamed Alabbar announced yesterday the launch of a $1billion regional e-commerce site in a joint venture with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and other Gulf investors. Noon.com is to go online in January with a 50-percent investment from the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund and the rest from around 60 investors led by Alabbar, who heads the emirate’s real estate giant Emaar. He told a press conference that distribution centers are being set up in the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, along with a giant warehouse the size of 60 football stadiums in Dubai. “We expect to become a world player but will concentrate firstly on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” said the president of Emaar, the company which built the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. With an initial inventory of 20 million products, the online retailer aims to expand to Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous state, at the end of next year or early in 2018. It is also looking at Kuwait and Oman. Alabbar, quoted by Bloomberg, said Noon would be traded on stock markets after five to seven years. — AFP
NEW YORK: On the morning after the election, Alia Ali had a sickening feeling as she headed to her job as a secretary at a New York City public school, her hijab in place as usual. Ali is a Muslim who lives and works in one of the most diverse places in the US, and yet the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House left her wondering how other Americans really
viewed her. “Half of America voted one way and half of America voted the other, and you’re like, ‘Which half am I looking at?’” she said. “You become almost like strangers to the people you’ve worked with. Is this person racist? Do they like me? Do they not like me? Because that’s what this election has done.” Continued on Page 13
NEW YORK: Enas Almadhwahi, an immigration outreach organizer for the Arab American Association of New York, stands along Fifth Avenue in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn on Nov 11, 2016. — AP
Britain ‘sharia courts’ under scrutiny
KISH, Iran: Iranian men walk past a giant sculpture displayed on the beach in this southern resort island on Nov 1, 2016. Iranian investors are pouring money into Kish Island in the Gulf, hoping its white sand beaches, coral reefs and more relaxed rules could make it a major tourism destination. — AFP (See Page 38)
LONDON: For more than 30 years, sharia courts enforcing Islamic law have been operating quietly across Britain. But two official inquiries have put them in the spotlight amid accusations that they discriminate against women. Very little is known about them, even their number, which one study by the University of Reading puts at 30, while the British think tank Civitas estimates there are 85. Sharia courts or councils, as they prefer to be called, mainly pronounce on Islamic divorces, which today constitute 90 percent of the cases they handle. They range from groups of Muslim scholars attached to a mosque, to informal organizations or even a single imam. But while they are aimed at helping resolve family and sometimes commercial conflicts within the Muslim community, some stand accused of undermining women’s rights. Campaigners cite instances where courts have refused to grant religious divorces to women who are victims of domestic abuse, and accuse them of legitimizing violence.
The government and MPs on parliament’s home affairs committee both opened inquiries this year into whether the councils are actually compatible with British law. They are looking into the function and possible discriminatory practices of the courts. The first sharia court appeared in London in 1982 under the government of Margaret Thatcher, who rolled back state intervention in many areas, including mediation in family conflicts, which was delegated to faith groups. But religious courts have existed for hundreds of years in Britain, whether in the Catholic Church or in the Jewish community - the Beth Din - notes Amin Al-Astewani, lecturer in law at Lancaster University. As with sharia councils, the decisions of those bodies are not legally binding, but they represent a strong moral and social constraint for those who use them, he wrote in a submission to the parliamentary inquiry. For Shaista Gohir, the chairwoman of Muslim Women’s Network UK who gave evidence to the
parliamentary inquiry, sharia councils are useful for Muslims but should be framed by a “strong code of conduct”. She also urged the government to make civil marriage obligatory for couples marrying under Islamic law, to ensure women are legally protected, saying that 40 percent of women who contact her organization only had religious marriages. But for other Muslim feminists, the courts constitute a “parallel legal system” and should be banned altogether. An open letter to this effect was signed by more than 200 national and international women’s organizations, while legislation which would limit the scope of sharia councils has been put forward by a member of the House of Lords. “They are discriminatory, they are abusive, they endorse and legitimize violence,” in particular marital rape, Maryam Namazie, spokeswoman for the One Law for All campaign, told AFP. She added: “ These courts are linked to the rise of the Islamist movement.” — AFP