Just Don’t Call It Sharia
by digby
From Kyle at Right Wing Watch I learn that Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is very upset at Islamic clerics’ primitive views toward women. And who can blame them? They really are awful:
A leading Muslim cleric in the United Kingdom said that it is “clearly” impossible for men to rape their wives, and it should not be considered a crime.
Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, told the human rights Web site Samosa, “Sex is part of marriage. In Islamic Sharia, rape is adultery by force.”
“So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape,” he continued. “It is reprehensible, but we do not call it rape.”
Sayeed also claimed many married women who allege rape are lying.
And he’s not the only one:
Could you clarify some of the statements that you made … last year about marital rape?I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That’s what marriage is all about, I don’t know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn’t mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn’t rape, it’s a he said-she said where it’s just too easy to lie about it.
Was the way in which your statement was portrayed correct?
Yes. Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them.
So you see this as more of a tool used by people to get out of marriages than as legitimate-Yes, I certainly do.
Sharia law is just terrible and obviously way out of any mainstream thinking in America, and thank goodness the Christian Broadcasting Network is standing up against such archaic thinking.
Oh sorry. It turns out that second person is a fine American Christian and it’s a terrible mistake for me to confuse her with one of “them.” It’s political activist Phyllis Schlafly, enthusiastic endorser of GOP candidates and defender of Alan Grayson’s Reconstructionist opponent Daniel Webster. Obviously one can’t compare her in any way to a Muslim cleric.
Never mind.
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