A WOMAN was walking with her husband inside a huge shopping centre in one of the flourishing Gulf cities when her husband received a Bluetooth message from an unknown person. He opened the message only to find a video clip of his wife dancing and clad in indecent clothes! Infuriated, the husband lashed out at his wife, who was pregnant with their daughter at the time. He used the video clip to humiliate his wife, who vehemently denied that she was the woman in the clip! The wife later gave birth to their daughter but her relationship with her husband remained unstable. She then filed for divorce at one of the emirate’s courts as she could no longer bear living with her husband, who continued to humiliate her due to the video clip. The husband, in turn, wanted to retaliate so he filed a complaint against his wife at the same court, using the video clip to substantiate his claim. The court ruled in favor of the wife, granting her the divorce and custody of their child. The Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. After the divorce, the estranged couple continued to fight over their daughter’s custody and the video clip, especially since the court dismissed the man’s lawsuit on grounds that he received the video clip while they were in a neighboring state.

The Bluetooth case was then referred to the relevant court in the state where the shopping centre is located. The prosecution accused the woman of engaging in an immoral act as she had undressed in front of an unknown person, hugged him and allowed him to film her with his mobile phone.
She denied the charge, asserting she was not the woman in the video clip and that she was a decent person, who respects her ex-husband and their child. The court forwarded the video to a specialized criminal laboratory before ruling on the case. A tripartite committee, consisting of a sound expert, a video expert, and a forensic doctor, was formed to study the clip.
A report from the Public Administration for Criminal Identification stated the accused has three dark birth marks - one in the visible part of the face, another under the left eye and the third under the right cheek. These features were then compared to that of the woman in the video and they discovered that despite the similarities in the physical features of both women, they were different due to the birthmarks of the accused.

In the sound sample, the report said that after hearing the voice of the accused and the woman in the video, the sound expert noted differences in the accent, speed of speech, pronunciation, nature of the voice, strength, sound bundle pathways, stops and frequency gaps.
In conclusion, the report affirmed that the accused was not the woman in the video, so the court acquitted her. After five long years of torture and being accused of engaging in an immoral act, the woman admitted she used to be annoyed by her birthmarks and inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’ properly, but God used these ‘deficiencies’ to save her from a false accusation. She added that she once visited a doctor to inquire about the possibility of removing two of her birthmarks and he advised her not to mess with them. She also visited another doctor to correct her speech but he told her the procedure might affect her pronunciation of other letters. She exclaimed, “Praise God! I was not satisfied with the presence of two birth marks in my face and my inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’ properly, but God made me keep them to prove my innocence and maintain my dignity. (Gulf Newspaper, UAE, 14/6/2010).

We narrated this story to convey a clear message to the public that we should not push for change according to our whims. We can cite as an example our annoyance over the performance of some lawmakers like Mohammad Hayef, Waleed Al-Tabtabaei, Musallam Al-Barrak and Khaled Tahous, along with the Hasaballah band, which usually stands behind them whether they are right or wrong, on the press street.
If God wants us to be away from these ‘disturbing’ personalities, maybe he intends to put us among the more troublesome people. In the old times, Kuwaitis used to say, “Hold on to your crazy man, so you will not get one who is crazier!”

Email: alialbaghli@hotmail.com