Flogging, Caning and Starving Women under the guise of Sharia

It is truly sad that these three news-reports came were published within days of each other. I do hope that there is at least some outrage from reformists and Muslim liberals on these issues.

Excerpts from Afghan Husbands Win Right to Starve Wives by Robert Mackey (17th August):

…Last week…Human Rights Watch discovered that a revised version of the Shiite Personal Status Law had been quietly put into effect at the end of July (in Afghanistan)…Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

.

Excerpt from Abusing Women and Islam by Mona Eltahawy, published on 15th August:

July, hot and usually slow for many of us, was a month of humiliation and pain for 164 Muslim women sentenced to a public flogging for “crimes” as varied and absurd as wearing trousers in public to having sex outside of marriage in countries as far afield as the Maldives, Sudan and Malaysia,

The most famous of those 164 is Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese journalist who was among 13 women arrested by police at a Khartoum café on July 3 and charged with violating the country’s “decency laws” by wearing trousers.

…thousands of other Sudanese women — Muslim and non-Muslim southern Sudanese women…have served as the whipping girls for the Sudanese regime’s cheap game of flogging women to show off its “Islamic principles.”

The International Criminal Court has indicted President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. His janjaweed allies in Darfur have been accused of rape. Trousers are “indecent” but rape is just another reminder of how useful women’s bodies are in conveying the message.

Mr. Bashir is an unabashed dictator. How then to explain the silence of the Maldives’ liberally-inclined President Mohamed Nasheed at the flogging sentences handed out to 150 of his countrywomen in July for extramarital sex?

…Ruling according to “Islamic law,” courts in the Maldives sentenced about 50 men along with those 150 women to flogging.

Why is the ratio of women-to-men to be flogged 3-to-1? Men can escape a flogging for extramarital sex just by denying the charges. Women who become pregnant after the sex find their babies used as evidence against them.

…Also on July 5, an “Islamic court” in Malaysia sentenced a Muslim woman to be flogged with a rattan cane for having a beer with her husband in a nightclub.

One hundred and sixty-four women were sentenced to flogging in July alone. Where is the outrage?

And finally, excerpts from a story that appeared on 19th August Model to be Caned for Drinking Beer in Malaysia:

…A Muslim part-time model will be caned next week, becoming the first woman in Malaysia to be given the punishment under Islamic law, after she pleaded guilty to drinking beer, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

An Islamic court in July ordered that Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, be lashed six times with a rattan cane after she was caught drinking alcohol in a raid on a hotel night club in eastern Pahang state last year.

…Muslims, who make up about two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million people, are governed by Islamic courts in all civilian and Islamic matters. Most alcohol offenders are fined, but the law also provides for a three-year prison term and caning.

..Malaysian clubs and lounges typically serve alcohol and are not legally required to check if customers are Muslims before serving them.

Related Posts:

Excerpts from “Can Islam Reform Itself?”

Is a reformation within Islam finally under way?

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B Shantanu

Political Activist, Blogger, Advisor to start-ups, Seed investor. One time VC and ex-Diplomat. Failed mushroom farmer; ex Radio Jockey. Currently involved in Reclaiming India - One Step at a Time.

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10 Responses

  1. Like they say from Horse’s mouth it self. Well, this is from the mouth of those who ardently follow the horse’s word to the letter: You can rape your wife. She has to satisfy your needs and answer to your call even if she is by the stove. Its considered Kosher Halal in Islam. Blah blah blah.

    http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/06/29/raping-your-wife-permited-and-kosher-halal-in-islam/

    What filth. It disgusts me to my gut the more I find about the cult.

  2. B Shantanu says:

    Excerpt from The Trouble with Islam by Tawfik Hamid:

    …It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the “end of days.” The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

    The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah.

  3. Ajitabh DAS says:

    Mr.Bhagvat,
    This is true that women in the Muslim community is not very nicely treated because certain Islamic teachings supports mal treatment with female member of society. On the contrary, the sanatan dharm treats women as equal as men if we see our history. Women used to participate equally in every action of life as compared to their male counterpart, a very good example of that can be the famous shashtrarth between Shankarachary and Mandan Mishra’s wife.

    Despite of all that glorious past of women’s position in Indian society, do the Hindus today treat their women properly? Then from where did the practice of sati, dowry death and devdasi appear in our culture? If our ancient value system gives so much of rights to our women, then why do we have so many cases of female feticide in every state of the country? Does it not cast a shadow on our way of behaving insanely with women where we have the tradition of worshiping goddesses?

  4. B Shantanu says:

    Ajitabh: I agree…Hindu society’s recent record on this count is hardly exemplary..Thankfully the reforms that bagan more than a 100 years ago have had some impact…

    Unfortunately, a lot more still needs to be done…which is why I keep on saying that if I had a migic bullet to do just one thing in India, I would say let us ensure every girl child is well-fed, healthy and educated. That should solve more than half of our woes.

  5. Ajitabh DAS says:

    Thanks Mr.Bhagvat for your reply!

    The situation of women can improve only if they’ll be given equal chance to be heard themselves; it means they should have equal right to make their decision at personal level which can be possible if they have financial independence. So they can be equal stakeholder in society if they have economic liberty of their own rather than being dependent on father, brother, husband or even son.

    That enlightenment can come only if every girl, woman is encouraged to get high education and to take up a job, so that they’d be able to be independent of their patriarchal pressure which exists in every strata of society in our country. Domination of women from their male counterparts becomes evident while entering into marriage institution where women’s’ right is mostly ignored and compromised.
    So to improve the situation, first high education, then reform in the marriage institution, I know the second one is too difficult because Indians don’t believe in reforming their intuitions!

    I feel in larger context that it’s not about religious beliefs ( as I said Sanantan dharma does not make any distinction on the basis of gender, it gives equal right to both, but situation in our society is not encouraging at all) it’s more about power struggle between the male and female gender where because of patriarchal structure, the latter is dominated by the former. But that was the story in West too, after industrial revolution when they had to come out by shading off the uniform of “house wife”, then they got recognition by men of being equal contributor to industrial production thus to the progress of society too. I must add that renaissance and enlightenment(siècle de la lumière) and lately feminist movements after world war, all these movements consolidated their position in the western society. Unfortunately apart from the independence movement, no other such thing happened in our country, though with voting right, a lot has been changing but still a long-long way to go. And I must not forget that no society can progress over all without women’ equal participation.

  6. B Shantanu says:

    Good points Ajitabh.

  7. B Shantanu says:

    Brief (and shocking) extract from THE STRAIGHT POOP ON RADICAL ISLAM by Burt Prelutsky

    GETTING BACK TO MUSLIMS, there are people who would insist that we should distinguish between those who cut off the heads of their innocent victims and those who just want to live and let live. Well, I keep trying, heaven knows, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

    For instance, recently I read about a stomach-turning incident that took place in Phoenix, Arizona. It seems that four boys between the ages of nine and 14 lured an eight-year-old girl into a shed and took turns raping her. While that was pretty damn loathsome, what was even more disgusting is what took place afterward. In the little girl’s presence, her father, a Muslim refugee from Liberia, told the police, “Take her. I don’t want her.”

    It seems that in what passes for their culture, the child had brought shame on the family.

    Burt further notes:

    As did the majority of reports of the incident, The Arizona Republic wrote it up as another casualty of the Liberian war. The word “Muslim” does not appear in the report. See
    http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/07/26/20090726liberia.html.

    Yet, the family’s rejection is clearly a response — a mild one at that — to the fact that the family’s honor was violated, which requires that a family cleanse itself of the stain, usually by killing the rape victim

    Sad, unbelievably sad – and shocking.

  8. B Shantanu says:

    Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys

    Death reopens debate over ‘honour’ killings in Turkey, which account for half of all the country’s murders

    Tragically Sad…

    Also here:

    The girl, identified by police only by her initials M.M., was said to have a large amount of soil in her stomach and lungs, indicating she had been buried alive.

    “The autopsy result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl – who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood – was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,” one anonymous expert said.

    The girl had been reported as missing by her family. Police have arrested her father, mother and grandfather.

    …The case is expected to bring further attention to the issue of “honor” killings in Turkey. Official figures indicate that more than 200 “honor” killings take place each year – almost half of all murders in Turkey.

  9. Krishen Kak says:

    In Public Without A Man? That Would Be 300 Lashes

    Close on the heels of an American businesswoman in Saudi Arabia being jailed for having coffee with a man who wasn’t her husband, another woman has just been sentenced to 300 lashes and 18 months in jail for appearing in public without a male guardian.

  10. B Shantanu says:

    BBC Self-censorship at its best. Interviewer says (at 1:01): “victims are invariably Muslim women” http://bbc.in/sqBDf9
    Fact conveniently ignored in this report on the web http://bbc.in/vmEFnb