A Muslim can't rape his wife, Imam says

Ed. tells me I should clarify that headline. It doesn't mean that a Muslim isn't allowed to rape his wife. It means that if a couple is married, according to Islamic principles violent, non-consensual sex is not rape.

In other words, rape isn't rape when it occurs within a marriage. So says Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain.

In an interview with the blog "The Samosa", he said "Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity."

The sheikh (or imam) was speaking about a new (2008) "Muslim Marriage Contract", drafted by the London-based Muslim inssitute to modernize the contract that governs most Muslim marriages in the UK. The contract says, among other things, "The husband undertakes not to abuse his wife/child(ren) verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually."

Sayeed said the revamped contract just serves "to make it exactly as the Western culture demands is as if we are compromising Islamic religion with secular non-Islamic values." [My emphasis. Walt.]

But, the imam told the blog, "It is not an aggression, it is not an assault, it is not some kind of jumping on somebody's individual right. [My emphasis again.] Because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage. Of course, if it happened without her desire, that is no good, that is not desirable."

Not desirable, but also not a crime, he said. Instead, if a man rapes his wife, he should seek forgiveness from his wife and Allah, Sayeed said. That's what good Muslims believe.

Footnotes:

1. Walt was unable to locate "The Samosa". The source for this post is an article in "DownloadsEdge". Similar articles have appeared today in a number of British and Canadian newspapers.

2. There is a series of clips on YouTube -- actually one documentary divided into sections -- called "Islam: what the West needs to know". Chililng subtitle: "An examination of Islam, violence, and the fate of the non-Muslim world." Click here to see the 4-minute trailer; then, if you wish, follow the YouTube links to see the whole thing.