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"When asked which parent should be loved and respected more,
the prophet Mohammad answered: your mother first, your mother second,
your mother third, and then your father," said Mohammad Mehdi,
then director of the National Council on Islamic Affairs in New York
during an interview at the height of the Abequa domestic drama.
"But in practice, many Muslim countries remain very macho.”
"It is largely a sexist society," Mehdi said. "Many
Muslim countries have not kept pace with human rights….Jordan has a
few women members of Parliament now, but there has not been much
progress there.
“If the father says the mother was unfit, he may win some leniency
from the Jordanian courts,” Mehdi said. “Sometimes, since the
trial would be so far from the crime, there are problems of
evidence."
Before Dokur even left the United States, Gen. Yahyeh Abequa fired
the first shot in what was destined to be a complex legal and
diplomatic battle. At a hastily convened press conference the general
declared, “the kids are Jordanian nationals and, according to
Jordanian laws, their grandmother has the right to keep them in
Amman."
Although the children had been born in the United States and
carried U.S. passports, the children were considered Jordanian under
local laws by virtue of their father's Jordanian nationality.
Officially, the U.S, government had to be sensitive to Jordan
sovereignty. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the U.S. was
prepared to leave the matter to the discretion of the Jordanian courts
and government.
"The children are physically present in Jordan and therefore
Jordanian law has the authority," Gary Sheaffer, spokesman for
the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, said at the time.
And there was a chilling note in a statement made by a spokesman
for the Jordanian mission to the United Nations in New York shortly
before Dokur and her entourage left for Amman. The spokesman warned
that Dokur would have to file an application for custody of the
children and added that the Sha’aria would likely award custody to a
relative living in Jordan.
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