The Dubai sex on the beach and the Nigeria 86 wives cases have been held.
By Tom Miller — Written on Sep 11, 2008
Remember how stuff sometimes happens in other parts of the world and we think it's weird? Like how some Middle Eastern countries (even the really progressive ones) are a little uptight about PDA and sex on the beach? Or how some African countries are down with polygamy but have their limits? Well, we've got updates on a few cases that bear a striking resemblance to those examples.
Quick prelude; 2 British citizens were caught doing the deed on a Dubai beach a few months ago. They were charged with public indecency, sex outside (of marriage), and assaulting an officer after being caught for the second time in 1 evening. They faced up to 6 years in the Dubai slammer for all of the charges. Not that being locked up in a foreign country is ever advisable, we’ve heard that Dubai's prisons are actually sort of not too bad (Dallas Austin spent a little time there and he seems pretty cool).
The latest, per Reuters, is that 2 Britons have pleaded not guilty to the sex and indecency charges but are willing to own up to boozing without a license (thought the woman, Michelle Palmer, actually does have an alcohol permit). At any rate, this saga is going to continue at least another month as the arresting officer did not show up to court earlier this week. In the good old US of A, it's the happiest day of your life when the officer flakes on court day, it's your word against nobody's. But the system is structured a little differently in those parts. We're guessing that the Westerners will get a time-served sort of sentence and that'll be that. This all could have been avoided with a little common sense, when traveling in a foreign land always think "What would Gary Glitter do," and then do the opposite. Do what you gotta do, just don't rub the locals' faces in it.
Quick prelude: A Nigerian preacher has 86 wives (and 140 kids). He was instructed by local religious authorities to drop 82 of those wives to get back in line with Sharia (Islamic law based on Koran and Sunnah and other things the Mohammed may have said). The preacher, Mohammed Bello, has decided to take the case all the way to whatever court would listen to him.
Per Reuters, he claims that his rights and liberties and freedoms have been infringed. So, given all that new information, the court in the Niger region has decided to chew on this until Thursday the 18th of September. Mohammed Bello has already crushed the average Nigerian life expectancy by 37 years, maybe the hope is that if they keep delaying a trial that he'll just die on them at some point. Maybe all the wives and kids running around keep him young, he might outlive all of us.
Sure Nigeria has a lot of hungry mouths to feed despite huge petroleum resources but it is really in anyone’s interest to turn out 84 wives to fend for themselves? And can you imagine what a pain it would be to sort out all of the kids? Sure, in the future it would be a good idea to limit the number of wives someone has but this is a little like getting thrown out of the Synagogue for have Trichinosis, let it be a cautionary tale: don't marry more than 4 women and lay off the white steak.