Islamic Clerics: Rape and Domestic Violence OK

I have been told more than once that I, as a Christian, Western white woman, cannot speak out about the rights of girls and women living under Islam – nor can I condemn the practices which oppress them.
This hesitancy is often borne from an earnestly held commitment to political correctness – with just enough anti-colonialism & cultural relativism to give the speakers a sense that they have the moral high ground – even as they give a nod to acts that are rejected and illegal in our culture.

But despite what some may tell you, there are culturally respectful and philosophically sound ways to evaluate world views and speak from one context into another. One way is to take multiple examples from the culture itself and see the views that that culture expresses and encourages.

So today, I focus on the experiences of married Muslim women and their sadly all too common experiences of rape & domestic violence.

These clips are of course not definitive, but they are located firmly in Islamic culture: two are examples of clerics speaking, and one is of a woman speaking. Two come from those within Islamic societies (taken from Muslim television networks) & one from the Islamic diaspora (a Mosque in Germany):

First this clip from Egyptian cleric Galal Al-Khatib who offers a theological case for domestic violence by husbands against their wives. It’s impossible for us to ‘interpret’ our way out of Al-Katib’s words, “Beating is one of the punishments of religious law.”

Second, this clip from a mosque in Germany, where the ‘teacher’ explains away the existence of marital rape. In his own words: “A wife is not allowed to say “No” under any pretext.”

Photo by ghetto_guera29