Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and Jim Forest in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, circa 1973. (Photo courtesy of Jim Forest)
“The king commanded and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions,” it is reported in the Book of Daniel
. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., a frequent captive, was well named. “How many times have you been locked up?” was a question journalists often asked him. “Not enough” was his usual response.
Dan Berrigan spent much of his life in various lions’ dens at home as a child when his father was in a rage, in paddy wagons and prisons, in demonstrations that were sometimes targets of violent attacks, in a city (Hanoi) under bombardment, in urban neighborhoods police regarded as hazardous yet lived to be 94, dying peacefully in bed.
Would it surprise you to know that women in Saudi Arabia need a male guardian s permission to get married? Or that if they want to divorce, they have to justify it to a male judge s satisfaction, even though husbands may divorce with neither justification nor judicial decree? Did you know that a Saudi woman s testimony in court is worth only half that of a man’s? A woman s child custody can be revoked if she doesn t dress what is deemed modestly enough to male superiors or if she works full time or remarries.
Many of those practices stem from a particularly strict interpretation of Muslim Sharia law called Wahhabism, according to Human Rights Watch, which says Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to completely observe it. The Saudi government denies those practices are in the law.