UAE: Sharjah police hunt for unmarried couples

Source: The National 22 April 2010
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Sharjah police are conducting a door to door hunt for unwed couples.  Officers have already arrested one couple living together in al Qadissiya since the new campaign began on Monday. Police say they will initially target more densely populated residential areas before spreading the net to include the whole emirate.
Police are knocking on doors and demanding to see evidence that couples under the same roof are married.
Brig Musa al Naqbi, the head of Sharjah Police CID, said yesterday: “We managed to find one couple, an Arab man and an Asian woman, illegally staying together. The couple also had two children. One was two years old and the other one was four.
“This campaign is continuing throughout Sharjah because women and men having children outside wedlock is not allowed in the UAE, as well as being against Islam.”
Couples found to be breaking the law will be referred to public prosecutors, and lawyers say they could technically face lashes under the emirate’s strict Sharia.
Salah Mabrouk, a Dubai based lawyer who regularly handles cases in Sharjah’s courts, said: “First of all, we need to know that such cases in this country are not guided by criminal laws but by Sharia law.
“In Sharia law the punishment for a fornicator is different to one of an adulterer, a fornicator is lashed 100 lashes while an adulterer is stoned to death.”
However, Mr Mabrouk said it was more likely that offenders would face a prison term of less than a year, followed by deportation if they were expatriates.
Brig al Naqbi said the couple arrested in al Qadissiya have confessed to cohabiting out of wedlock.
One unmarried couple who live together on weekends in Sharjah said they were worried about being caught in the new campaign.
“I am afraid to go back to his house, I don’t know if the police don’t want lovers to meet as well,” said the Filipina woman, who works as a sales assistant.
Her partner, an Egyptian Muslim, felt slightly safer because the pair are not together under one roof during the week.
“Unless some evil person tips police that she has come, their search would most likely find me alone at home,” he said.
Under federal law, cohabiting couples face two possible sets of charges depending on their circumstances, according to Jouslin Khairallah, another Dubai-based lawyer whose case load often takes her to Sharjah.
“If you have a flat with a man living in one room and a woman living in another, they would immediately face an unlawful residency charge,” she said.
However, if it could be proved that the couple were sharing a room, they could be charged under "crimes of honour" legislation that carries a heavier sentence of up to three years in jail.

Dubai: Not a melting pot, more of a tossed salad

A very interesting article on the friction that results from cultural differences and expectations in Dubai.  The article is from the Gulf News and written by Mishaal Al Gergawi who's an Emirati commentator on socio-economic and cultural affairs in the UAE.
Picture: Art Parts Clip Art
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Everyone has heard about the case of the British woman who was celebrating her engagement with her fiancé in a Dubai hotel on New Year's Eve. The next day the woman claims she was raped by a staff member of the hotel while lying semiconscious in the toilet.
The couple reports the case to the police and, upon questioning, admit to having consumed alcohol and having sex out of wedlock. Since this is illegal in the UAE, the police charge them both with illegal drinking and adultery.
Things become further complicated once it becomes clear that the woman is Muslim because her actions contravene Sharia law. Of course, the original rape accusation is also recognised as a separate case, but this charge was proven to be false after reviewing CCTV footage.
Law
Are the police wrong to file two separate cases? No, not technically at least. The official statement has made it clear that such admissions to breaking the law cannot be ignored. But is that really what we're talking about here? No. There is a larger issue at stake here. I have heard that unmarried couples who had vacations to Dubai planned have been reconsidering.
Are they overreacting? No. The rape factor is insignificant here. The message that comes to any tourist's mind while planning a vacation when considering Dubai is this: There are hotels that are licensed to sell me alcohol but I can be arrested for consuming it. There are hotel rooms that I can check into but I can be arrested for having sexual relations with my partner in them. Is this really the Dubai we know? Is this the city that prides itself on tolerance and harmonious coexistence?
It is one thing, though still controversial in my view, to prosecute unmarried couples who cohabit or have extra-marital relations. After all, they are residents in your city and by choosing to live here they must observe its values. But it is a completely different thing to prosecute tourists, people who are coming to your city for a short vacation, for consuming alcohol in licensed bars and restaurants and having sex privately in their hotel room.
What is the big idea here? Are we telling the world only come if you're married? Why do we expect people to come to our country and completely abandon their personal values? Yes, these are personal values.
The ability and choice to have a relationship with someone in a private space is an extremely personal value. This is completely different from the now infamous public beach sex case of 2008. This was sex that occurred in the privacy of a legally occupied hotel room.
How did this private action offend anyone? And to demonstrate the inherent contradiction, I wonder why the hotel allowed them to check into the same room in the first place. The same applies to the alcohol situation. That's akin to Switzerland's ban of the minarets because it offends the Swiss Christian population and France's proposed legislation to ban the burqa because it is un-European to cover one's face.
Tolerance
The issue at hand is much more than the unfortunate application of the UAE's law. The bedrock of Dubai is an unwritten social contract between the government, its locals and residents where the latter two groups are free to conduct their lives in as liberal or conservative a fashion as they please as long as it doesn't upset Dubai's delicate identity; this balancing act is the essence of Dubai's appeal.
This is why this incident and the message Dubai is sending by prosecuting this couple is more dangerous than the ill-timed and ill-managed debt standstill request by Dubai World just before the holidays.
Dubai is not unique because of its world-class infrastructure or business-friendly climate; these things can be replicated. It is unique because of its ability to accept people from around the world with different, and often contradictory values, provided they adhere to the lifestyle range that Dubai is willing to accept in the public sphere.
It was always understood that this would not be exercised in private spaces and spaces designated for specific activities. If this case is actually the beginning of a campaign to end this understanding then we will be living in a very different city very soon.
Dubai is not a melting pot, it is a tossed salad. No one changes when they come here; they simply apply Dubai's dressing which makes it work. Now if someone starts changing this salad, removing the tomatoes, citing that cucumber and lettuce are enough, then I'm not sure the salad would taste the same. I like my salad just fine, please don't reinvent it for me.
As for the police, who remind us that they cannot ignore such offences, I in turn remind them that they, and we, are better off focusing on clamping down on what seems to be an untouchable reality. Yes, I am referring to prostitution. I would like to see the police focus on this before arresting foreigners who do not even live here for simply having different values than their own. Dubai doesn't need such misguided vigilance. I have no doubt that the couple will receive a pardon because if they don't then much of what we've heard would've been rhetoric all along.