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TechnoratiLaw Will Let Afghan Husbands Starve Wives Who Withhold Sex
BAMIYAN, Afthanistan - An Afghan law which legalised rape has been sent back to parliament with a clause letting husbands starve their wives if they refuse to have sex.
![[Afghan women attend a gathering in support of presidential candidate Mirwais Yasini for the August election, in Kabul July 7, 2009. An Afghan law which legalised rape has been sent back to parliament with a clause letting husbands starve their wives if they refuse to have sex. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani (AFGHANISTAN ELECTIONS POLITICS)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/afghanwomen-2.jpg "afghanwomen-2.jpg")
President Hamid Karzai ordered a review of the legislation after The Independent revealed that it negated the need for consent within marriage.
President Barack Obama described it as "abhorrent", Gordon Brown said Britain would "not tolerate" it, and other Nato countries threatened to withdraw their troops unless the legislation was drastically re-written.
The amendments were passed to the cabinet this week and signed by Mr Karzai on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said last night.
The women's rights activist Wazhma Frough, who was involved in the review, said that conservative religious leaders had pressured the Justice Ministry to keep many of the most controversial clauses.
"There have been a few little changes, but they are not enough," she said. "For example, if the wife doesn't accept her husband's sexual requirements then he can deny her food."
According to civil society groups, the law, which regulates the personal affairs of Afghanistan's minority Shia community, still includes clauses which allow rapists to marry their victims as a way of absolving their crime and it tacitly approves child marriage. The law sparked riots in Kabul. Hundreds of Shia women took to the streets in protest. They were attacked by mobs of angry men who launched counter demonstrations outside the capital's largest Shia madrassa.
It is due to be ratified by parliament, which first passed the legislation in March with hardly any debate.
"Violence against women is already endemic," said Razia Jan, who is building a women's community centre in Afghanistan's Shia heartland, Bamiyan. "Men pay thousands of dollars for young girls and they are treated like slaves. Women here are already so vulnerable."
Critics claim that Mr Karzai signed the law to appease Shia leaders, ahead of the presidential polls on 20 August.
26 Comments so far
Show AllThe women do the cooking ... they have the knives ... if the husband forces himself on her, she very well could cut him off ... permanently.
The women DO have the power in Islam.
As a Muslim who follows the shariah I find this law and many other in other so-called Islamic countries to be repulsive and totally out of touch with the Shariah and the practice of the Holy Prophet (SAWS). So much of the Islamic world today is very backwards and illiterate (even some of the revered so-called scholars) and this is what has made Al-Islam so badly misunderstood in the West and indeed the world! We have made ourselves poster children for stupidity and ignorance and until their is a renaissance of the mind among the Ummat we will remain so! And, believe it or not it starts with the woman! She is the first teacher and the first nourisher of the human being and to hold her in ignaorance and contempt is to condemn your own society and people to ignorance! It's not just Afghanistan; most of the Muslim dominated world is almost as bad. From Arabia to Indonesia ignorance reigns! May Allah protect us from the ignorant among us!
Assalamalaikum.
"May Allah protect us from the ignorant among us!"
Good for you Furqan. Christians should have the same prayer.
I am glad to see this post from you. I commented on a prior posting of yours( see above)because I was worried; sloppy thinking habits have a tendency to creep back in on us if we don't root them out ruthlessly. I learned of my sloppy logic from someone taking your sloppy logic up a peg and would hate to see either of us regress ;-)
Sounds like a personal problem! Where in our Constitution does it require us to intervene?
Some American wives starve themselves anyway and won't give their husbands sex.
I know you are being tongue in cheek, ezeflyer. There's a huge difference between doing something yourself, and having it done to you against your will.
What a "progressive" post from ezeflyer.
wow AmeriKKKa backing a goverment that sanctions RAPE and starving of women I'm surprised NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alexander the Great didn't think much of the area now called Afghanistan when he conquered it. The people he found barbaric and their rulers totally without merit. But he married one of them, Roxanne, purely for political reasons. She later caused the death of a rival wife's son, whom she believed could usurp her own son's chances for succession.
Somehow, I don't think Afghanistan has improved much over the last two thousand three hundred years. Islam certainly didn't civilize it. The Soviets had a chance at improving things, but we (the US) scotched that. Ho! What goes round comes round.
G. Markley: I hope you are not suggesting that we in the West and USA in particular have a "Civilising Mission" and duty to bring our western values and ways to the tribal societies of Afghanistan and the NWFP of Pakistan.
They may be medieval and barbaric to us, but does that mean we have to spend a few trillion, kill thousands of innocents, and sacrifice many of our young to this noble cause? Are you personally willing to go over there and help do this?
Perhaps the British (remember the Anglo-Afghan Wars?) and Soviets failed because they saw a military solution. I guarantee that US/NATO shall fail as well, and all that blood and treasure will be a complete waste.
What I mean is that we should leave them alone. I don't want to 'civilize' them. If they can't do it on their own, let them continue to grow poppies and terrorize their women. Something tells me the women will have the last laugh.
By the way, the Soviets failed because certain wealthy neo-conservatives in the United States convinced our government to fund the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen was made up of the same people we are fighting now. They represent the traditional leaders of Afghanistan and they are thugs, dope traders, and terrorists when necessary. They are essentially the same breed that Alexander was disdainful of. Our involvement was part of the Cold War, in which we were dedicated to denying the Soviets of oil. It was that, and not Reagan, which brought down Soviet Russia. It's not the first time we've been in that briar patch.
I am glad that you are not advocating ethnocentric imperialism; BTW the Soviet Union collapsed because of chronic economic mismanagement, Afghanistan was just the last straw.
It's insane to think that up until 1975, laws like this were on the books in every state across the US as well. It took Britain until 1991 to outlaw spousal rape, and the last US State did so in 1993.
While you're all pointing the finger at the Shia, remember, we too just went through these same struggles, and not very long ago at all.
And remember that it is the Shia women who were protesting this law.
The Shia denomination seems to contain people who both agree strongly and disagree strongly with this law.
Leave it to Karzai and NATO to out Taliban the Taliban.
The devolution to Fundamentalism and such behaviour in a society tends to happen in reaction to disasters or calamaties such as Plaques , Famines and Wars.
It is at these instances in history that the religous leaders of every stripe will come and and declare the hardships are punishments sent from some God because the people are not behaving as God had intended.
The People, be it moderates questioning the power of the priesthood, or Women questioning their subjugation, have forgotten their place thus the entire society must pay the price.
This logic is the very same used by that Politician in Oklahoma who claimed the economic downturn a consequence of "immoral behaviour" and the peoples turning their back on god.
It is as a result of these disasters that these people can stay in power.
The way to Combat this is NOT by starving the people. It is NOT be visiting upon them Plagues. It is NOT by bringing War to the country and trying to force change via violence. All of these are the catylysts that lead towards it.
Nor is it via an economic system where one group of people is kept tremendously wealthy, and the rest EXPLOITED due to their utter poverty.
actually, sunni islam is far more prevalent than shia in afghanistan. those evil people, iran, southern iraq and southern lebanon are shia, where i guess the women are treated far better. pashtuns are all sunni.
but this article as much highlights afghani cruelty/ backwardness/ inequality as much as western ignorance of its culture. nad does it even highlight that or merely reflect who cntrols the reigns of power.
for the past 300 years, and at various other times in history, afghanistan has been a jousting ground for empires. its soil and natural resources are poor. its population is illiterate (women more so). marriage is not viewed as companionship, but as means to obtain children, labor and sex.
this is the practice, as old as time.
the only meaningful effort at uplifting the status/ education of women in the past 50 years occurred under soviet support to the afghan regime prior to the soviet invasion.
do we expect deeply ingrained cultural practices to change with no stimulus.
the respectable status of women at various times, codified in law and cultural practice ( ottomans/ mughals/ recent and current iraq, jordan and lebanon) lead me to believe that the current status of women in afghanistan is multifactorial not primarily of religious origin.
we also see that in the god fearing scientifically advanced west, to a good degree, women are seen as sex objects/ cannot breast feed their infants in public/ 7-10% can be sexully assaulted while in state custody(prison)/cannot walk the city streets safely at night(they can, in iran) and can get imprisoned or at least have their newborn confiscated if the child is exposed to drugs in utero (south carolina), in which off course they have been educated by an all male establishment.
none of this comment is in any way to suppport this law.
cast ye the first stone....
Yes, and because of proposed laws like this we difinitely need to send in more Marines and step up the drone attacks. That'll civilize'em. Or we can just kill them all an be done with the problem that way.
Seriously, such laws are abhorrent, but there is nothing that the US can do that wouldn't just make things worse. Such extremism is a completely predictable reaction to trying to force western "modernity" on them from the barrel of a gun - first the British, then the Soviets, now the US.
"first the British, then the Soviets, now the US."
Two down, one to go.
This is mentally and criminally insane. Is this what the US and NATO support ? Why not make it legal for women to do the same to their husbands?
My once ailing wife, now recovering, may not be interested in having sex but I respect her decision even if I do feel disappointed about it. I would never starve her to death most of all. If I had done that, she and I would never have the opportunity in life to have a little fun together tickling each other and laughing in the rain to cheer us up. I went through a lot of time and trouble to help her overcome her long term illness even when I was the only one employed. She is not sure that she wants to go back to working since her last job which turned out to be stressful might have had a lot to do with her illness. There too, I would never act like a disgruntled husband.
Any Afghan man who does this to his wife is asking for his own demise. Nobody is gonna provide food and comfort for him when the wife is gone.
Bennett Miller
Shreveport, LA
"Hundreds of Shia women took to the streets in protest. They were attacked by mobs of angry men who launched counter demonstrations outside the capital's largest Shia madrassa."
It's nice to hear that Shia women are demanding that their "human rights" be recognized. We can only hope that the global community will support them. Violence against women must be stopped!
It's much more basic than human rights. No animal that I know of will withhold food from it's mate when denied sex. Shia Muslim males are really brutal, aren't they. This type of Islam should be wiped from the earth, along with a few of the men who practice it.
George Markley,
I remember a few weeks ago you made a similar remark and another poster held you accountable for the disjointed logic of your thinking. It was along the lines of 'if a nominal Christian man treated a woman or women in a bad way, you'd probably object to all Christian men being tarred with a single individual's behavior. Therefore don't make blanket statements about Muslim men and their treatment of women." I thought through the threads of comments that you( and then I ) had been shown the error of our ways of thinking and I am sorry to see it didn't stick with you. I wish I knew the prior discussion and poster's name, maybe SiouxRose or Moondoggy , you guys might remember, we were all posting quite a bit then.
Sorry if you've misunderstood me, netminnow. I should have said Shiite men in Afghanistan. I realize that there are many wonderful men of the Islamic faith and I've met a few of them. What is happening in Afghanistan might be more cultural than religious, but Islam is being used to justify it. If a Christian male used the Bible to justify his acts of barbarity towards his wife, I'd condemn him, not all Christianity. But I would condemn all of Christianity for not censuring that man for representing Christianity.