Olive, whichever system you are in there is a one-size-fits-all rule that is applied. I'm not taking either side in this, I'm just saying that the Sharia legal position has a sound rational basis.
Actually, if 10% of step-fathers beat a step-child, then I am astonished that Western law hasn't been adjusted in line with Sharia.
In almost every area of Western civil law, the most improbably risk of someone being injured is considered unacceptble (a baseball manufacturer was fined a fortune recently for not putting a warning on a bat that the balls it hit might cause injury or death). Yet the mother's right to the child is considered to outweigh a one-in-ten chance of that child being beaten and a 120-fold increased risk of being murdered. That is actually extraordinary.
Olive, whichever system you are in there is a one-size-fits-all rule that is applied. I'm not taking either side in this, I'm just saying that the Sharia legal position has a sound rational basis.
Actually, if 10% of step-fathers beat a step-child, then I am astonished that Western law hasn't been adjusted in line with Sharia.
In almost every area of Western civil law, the most improbably risk of someone being injured is considered unacceptble (a baseball manufacturer was fined a fortune recently for not putting a warning on a bat that the balls it hit might cause injury or death). Yet the mother's right to the child is considered to outweigh a one-in-ten chance of that child being beaten and a 120-fold increased risk of being murdered. That is actually extraordinary.