Legalising rape in marriage

[Monkeyandbooba]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8000209.stm

This is so shocking I feel outraged on behalf of those campaigning against this ruling.

This is sickening. And our troops are over there supporting the very government which is making these rules. We're paying for this.

NOT IN MY NAME I say!

"President Karzai ordered an urgent review of the law - which he says has been misinterpreted by Western journalists - earlier this month."

So giving him the benefit of the doubt, how has it been misinterpreted? It 'only' applies to the Shia community, so if we assume the women of this population support the law, why does it need to be a law at all?

It is awful.

For all that is wrong with this country I thank my lucky stars that I live here.

Personally, I refuse to see why we should have our armed forces in this country supporting this regime.

I'm still trying to find out what this alleged misinterpretation is all about. Al Jazeera has this which only adds that the legislation was drafted "upon their [the Shia community's] request because of differences with Sunni Muslims about Sharia, or Islamic, law, the AFP news agency reported".

I still don't get it. If Shia Afghan women want to seek their husband's permission in order to work, and submit to sex once every four days, fair play to them, get on with it. If the Shia Afghan men desire this legislated and the women do not, this cannot be justified in any country in the world.

I think there is a definite grain of truth in the speculation that Karzai didn't anticipate that the West would give a toss about the women of Afghanistan. It's what we did for years, after all.

If all they have to do is say "ok I am not Shia any more" then they have nothing to worry about.I seriously doubt it's as easy as that though. They probably need their husbands permission to change religion.

Also I expect they want to keep being Shia, but not have this law.

Exactly onagar - "sorry dh, I've gone off being Shia cos I don't actually want to have sex today", that doesn't make any sense.

Of course this law is just awful.

As I understand it, Kharzai is between a rock and a hard place. Elections are looming and the Taliban is gaining ground. The real reasoning behind this law is to try to stop Kharzai's supporters switching their allegiance to the Taliban.

It's very difficult. What do we do with a country that is determined to treat women like slaves (although, in terms of the proportion of women in Parliament, Afghanistan does better than the US and the UK)?

Do we send troops in with the express purpose of imposing Western standards of female empowerment?

This is what happens when religious people get to run things. It's not simply that islam is worse. Christianity has been just as bad in some places and times, but that it is in charge!.

Policywonk, that's a good question. I lean towards saying that other countries can do what they think is right regardless of our opinions. However we have the right to say "we will never speak to you, trade with you or even acknowledge your existence until you change"

That's one way onager - but Afghanistan was pretty much an international pariah before 9/11. And look how that turned out...

I don't know what the answer is. NGOs work by trying to empower people from the ground up - it's very slow and painstaking work, and it can take generations before any real change occurs.

We could hope that a country like Afghanistan, if given help to develop its economy and improve its education and health systems, would gradually inch towards decent standards where women are concerned.

God this is a shocking and terrible law, poor women.

Im speachless.

Trouble is, this is the way people think there. It's all very well to say it's savage and wrong, but that is their point of view. A couple of years ago they wanted to execute a apostate (convert to Christianity), 90% of the population approved of it, but they didn't kill him because of international pressure.

You can change a government, but you can't change a culture so easily.

And btw, it's complete bollocks to say that Christianity is just the same. Clearly it is not.

Yes, Policywonk. Like, er, Saudi Arabia and Dubai perhaps.

SomeGuy - Christianity isn't the same now (except for among some cults), but it was used to oppress women viciously in Christian cultures for hundreds of years.

I don't think this is a religious issue - it's a development/cultural issue, and it can be incredibly difficult to change ingrained cultural attitudes, especially in short periods of time. You could argue, given the perception in the Muslim world of the US/UK, that overt attempts to change the culture would actually make things worse. They regard us as their enemy.

LGP - I take your point that development/industrialisation doesn't always work. But it does work in a lot of instances.

Karzai's own wife - an obstetrician - hasn't worked since he became president. Says it all really.

Of course it's a religious issue. There are places where Christianity and Islam exist alongside each other, and invariably it's the Islamic side which is more 'primitive' (judged by the standard of us in the UK).

You won't find Sharia law in Christian parts of Indonesia, or anything like it, but you will find it in the Muslim areas.

Then she must have had adequate time to explain how the legislation translates itself to something that doesn't want to make me die

I want to see the government, even in South Africa, that would today sign legislation aimed at oppressing a propotion of its people. Because they would not. What message would I like to send to our troops in Afghanistan? Thank you. You can't make the policy but thank you for what you have done.

SomeGuy, Christianity was used as a pretext for oppressing women for hundreds of years. It can't be used as a cover so easily now because the global heads of Christianity no longer sanction these attitudes. By and large, the direction of Christianity has been tied to industrialisation and development.

Islam is a much younger religion, and has been largely tied to states that have taken a different development path.

There are certainly some things in the Qu'ran and things that are Hadith that I, as a feminist, find insufferable. But you can find some pretty nasty stuff in the Bible about women, if you look hard enough. Not to mention in the writings of early Christian thinkers.

er, so it's not just religion then is it. It's not Buddhism. It's not Hinduism. Unfortunately, certain major forms of Islam are linked to many horrible practices.

Hinduism is a good example, as it happens. There are plenty of absolutely appalling cultural practices in India WRT women: suttee (women being burned alive on their husbands' funeral pyres), widespread abortion of female foetuses and the abandonment of girl babies are just some examples. But nobody goes around saying 'Hinduism is a religion that hates women'; people seem to be able to make the distinction between Hinduism as a belief system and ingrained cultural practices. But people are less able to distinguish between the two when it comes to Islam.

Female genital mutilation, for example, existed before Islam; it just happened, broadly speaking, to exist in the countries that went on to adapt Islam. And it became (or not, this is a controversial point) accepted as Hadith in some more extremist forms of Islam. But to say that Islam causes FGM is putting the cart before the horse. FGM predated Islam; it's a cultural practice. (None of this makes it any less horrifying.)

'The UK court held that a husband is not immune from prosecution for raping his wife. It rejected the argument that a husband cannot rape his wife because she has surrendered her person to him and concluded that the only question to be asked is whether the wife consented to the acts complained of.'

This was the ruling in S***d v HM in March 1989 (Yes, only 20 years ago)which opened the door for the first 'Rape in Marriage' prosecution in Scotland. 'In Marriage' because the couple were neither divorced nor legally separated. At the subsequent trial the Judge instructed the Jury that although it was clear that the wife had objected, there was nothing to prove that the husband understood that she was saying no. The husband claimed that she liked it rough and often screamed No! No! No! He was aquitted on the charge of rape but found guilty of assault to severe injury and false imprisonment, (beat her up, tied her up, locked her in a wardrobe) but having served 6 months on remand because he broke bail conditions, he walked free from court that day. His ex-wife had to go into hiding.

Yes, Christian Britain, less than 20 years ago. Someone from Rape Crisis could probably give you more recent examples.

Actually in areas where FGM exists, it is very strongly associated with, and promulgated by, Islam. For instance, Indonesian Christians do not do it, but the overwhelming majority of Muslims do, and if converting from Christianity to Islam, women will undergo it (as indeed will men).

Similarly in Africa, in countries where it is predominant, the tribes that do not practise it are invariably Christian/animist, rather than Islamic.

I've heard the line that FGM has nothing to do with Islam before, and it's complete nonsense.

Sati, btw, is almost completely extinct, while female infanticide has no basis in Hinduism.

Granny23 - you have slightly gone off point here. The problem with rape trials in Uk is that, by the very nature of the crime, there are no witnesses - bar the victim.