It’s good to know that America doesn’t have a monopoly on judges who make stupid decisions:
FRANKFURT, March 22 ? A German judge has stirred a storm of protest here by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman?s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.
In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which she said it was common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse.
(…)
In January, the judge turned down the wife?s request for a speedy divorce, saying that the husband?s behavior was not an unreasonable hardship because they were both Moroccan. ?In this cultural background,? she wrote, ?it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife.?
(…)
In a statement defending her ruling, Judge Datz-Winter noted that she had ordered the man to move out and had imposed a restraining order on him. But she also cited the verse in the Koran that speaks of a husband?s prerogatives in disciplining his wife. And she suggested that the wife?s Western lifestyle would give her husband grounds to claim that his honor had been compromised.
I wonder what how you say “overturned on appeal” in German.
