Religious conservatives are annoying regardless of where they live and what religion they adhere to. It doesn’t get much lamer than defending marital rape as a requirement needed to keep the patriarchal family together. Yet, that’s what the Sunni religious leaders in Lebanon are saying.
Lebanon’s highest Sunni Muslim authority on Friday rejected a bill aimed at protecting women against domestic violence and marital rape, saying it would lead to the demise “of the family as in the West.”
“Islam is very aware of and concerned with… resolving problems of poor treatment… but this should not happen by cloning Western laws that encourage the breakdown of the family and do not suit our society,” said the influential Dar al-Fatwa in a statement on its website.
Dar al-Fatwa also slammed as “heresy” a clause in the bill that criminalises marital rape, accusing those behind the draft law of “inventing new types of crimes.”
“This will have a negative impact on Muslim children… who will see their mother threatening their father with prison, in defiance of patriarchal authority, which will in turn undermine the moral authority” of fathers, it said.
“We must continue to follow sharia (Islamic law) as concerns the Muslim family,” it added.
We may have some problems with weak family structures in the West, but I can’t imagine trading them for the freedom of our men to beat and rape their wives. As if such a trade were even possible…
You do realize that spousal rape wasn’t considered a crime in most US states until the late 1970’s, don’t you? Feminists had to fight Christian conservatives to change the statutes. So it’s really not THAT hard to imagine a society in which which this happens.
you’re obviously misreading my use of the word “imagine.”
This post gives me a racist vibe…kind of like some of Nick Kristof’s columns.
You do realize that sexist violence in the United States is not that much better? We DO have the “freedom” to beat and rape wives. It happens all of the time, and it wasn’t that long ago where it was not a criminal offense. Rape barely ever gets reported in the West, let alone prosecuted when it does.
Look at the stats, man. Domestic violence is just as prevalent. The only difference is it’s not encourages/encoded in our laws; it’s just as encouraged in our society.
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You’ll find the religious fundamentalists everywhere … in the West, East, North and South. I’ve written about the custody case of my daughter and domestic abuse `lite’ called coercive control. Physical violence evolves into mental violence and often the only escape for women leads to drastic decisions.
Gender equality is not accepted by culture or fundamentalist religion in many countries …
Netherlands
Israel
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Right. I can say anything about white whackjobs but God forgive me if I criticize Arab whackjobs.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."…and when you criticize white religious whack jobs, you will never, ever find comments in your threads saying that Arab whack jobs are bad, too.
But just as the most important point to make whenever you criticize Republicans is “But Democrats did something bad once,” the most important point to make whenever you criticize anyone in the Middle East is “But Americans are bad, too!”
Sexist violence in the USA is no longer supported by the laws and that is no small thing. Domestic abusers are bullies and the fact that a woman can call the police on an abuser is no small thing, it is a live saver.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."So, France criminalized marital rape years ago, and launches campaigns to root it out, while Lebanon legalizes it and pushes back against efforts to restrict it.
Good point; your comment really does a good job demonstrating the difference.
What is the fundamental organizing unit of society – the family or the individual? If the family unit is the basic unit of their society then allowing wives to sue or press charges against husbands (or conversely, husbands to sue wives) would be to fundamentally change the basic organizing unit of their society. We may insist that it’s a necessary change, but it’s no trivial matter to be dismissed with missives about “whackjobs” – religious or otherwise.
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Is a matter of respect, not assault whether within a family unit or on a partnership basis. It’s not the freedom of filing a lawsuit, it’s the physical or emotional abuse that needs to be halted, always!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It’s a question of the state’s relationship to the population. Think of it this way: the UN can issue a resolution about the conditions within a member country, but it can not itself enforce any resolution since the member nations have not ceded their sovereignty to the UN. Likewise, if a culture is organized around sovereign families (however they define a family, often a man and his possessions) then the state has no authority within the confines of the sovereign family, much like in our culture we believe that the state has no authority over a woman’s sovereign reproductive rights…
If the family is the basic unit then fathers have the right to rape their daughters living under their roof. And their sons for that matter.
That would be true. I’m not saying this is a good thing or how it should be; I’m saying that in a society with that perspectve the one who advocates the status quo isn’t a whack job – they’re normal.
Right. An abusive family is not a real family. Rapists forfeit the right to be husbands/fathers.
False choice.
Marital rape, like any other kind of violent domestic abuse, is bad for families.
there are other options not just family or individual, other kinds of collectivities.
Sunnis represent 27% of the population of Lebanon.
Roman Catholics represent 23.9% of the US population.
I think that if you accept that defending domestic violence and marital rape is being a whackjob, so is opposition to abortion and contraception.
And then there are the smaller religious groups in the US who would agree with the improbably named Dar al-Fatwa. Is that his name or his title?
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Dar al-Fatwa is Lebanon’s highest spiritual Sunni authority and is headed by Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani (Sunni leader pro-Saudi Arabia & US, opposed to Palestinians and Hezbollah).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Apparently, you’ve never seen any polling of Catholics.
The vast majority of American Catholics support the use of contraception, and support for abortion rights is almost 50/50.
“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson
“Kabul is safer than many American cities…”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13914252
You do know that the story you linked to isn’t about Kabul, right?
Let me take a step back: you do know that Kabul is one city in Afghanistan, and that there are many part of Afghanistan that aren’t Kabul, right? Such as Logar Province, where the story you linked to took place.
Swing and a miss!
This is the kind of marriage that is destroyed by marriage equality – and good riddance I say.