Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai | 04/06/2009 2:45 pm

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai Orders Review of Controversial 'Rape' Law

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

Critics have spoken out against Afghanistan’s so-called "rape" law — and it appears that President Hamid Karzai listened.

Karzai ordered a review of the new law after numerous Western leaders, including President Obama (who called it "abhorrent") and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — as well as many women’s groups — blasted the law, aimed at Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. Supporters of the law – which essentially says a "wife is obliged to fulfill the sexual desires of her husband," among other things — say it’s important for minority rights and maintaining tradition.

The new rules also provide more rights to women, although the United Nations thinks the law will ban Shia women from working or receiving an education without their husbands’ permission. The law also reportedly would force women to get permission to leave the house, look for a job and go to the doctor.

"I ordered the justice minister to review the law, and if there is anything that would contravene … the freedom our constitution gives to Afghan women … there will be changes in it," Karzai said Saturday, although he says the media is misrepresenting the law’s actual scope.

The Washington Post reports on how the country’s Shiite population is trying to find a balance between a strong tradition of male family dominance and a slow but sure evolution of women’s rights. Karzai’s law has catapulted the usually private struggle into the world’s eye. From the Post:

The contretemps has raised questions about the government’s commitment to women’s rights, the degree to which Afghan society is capable of cultural and religious change, and whether the president is sacrificing democratic progress to court support from conservative Shiite leaders in order to run for reelection in August. Much like previous controversies over the legal prosecution of Afghans who converted to Christianity and questioned aspects of the Koran, the foreign furor over restrictive Shiite family law has highlighted a startling disconnect between this conservative Muslim society and its supporters in the Western world.

Remember when the U.S. government said it was bringing democracy to Afghanistan? Well, the country may have the vote, but not the mindset. Which is more important?

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I believe the vote is important first. The mindset will follow once the law is in force for women’s rights. Eventually, the women will exercise those rights without fear of prosecution and humiliation.

Who are these Shiite women? And how have Iraqi women responded?

If politics hinges on religion, religion is also political.

”Iraqi women," says UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, ”have a reputation for being persistent in terms of their rights. I’m skeptical that anyone will be successful in rolling back their rights. The population is too diverse and the women too educated." One of the top contenders for prime minister, a religious Shi’ite, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, claims his doctor-wife as his modern credential.

So no one expects Iraqi women to be kept from the schools or from the highways or, certainly, from the polling booths. A third of the members of parliament are women. At the same time, there are places in Iraq where women no longer dare to go out into the streets uncovered. Some were assassinated because they dared to run for office.

But in many Muslim countries the public square is governed by secular laws and the private sphere by religious laws. That’s likely to happen in Iraq. What we have to watch is family laws about marriage, divorce, child custody, and ”obedience" to husbands.

No less a woman’s advocate than Zainab Salbi, head of Women for Women International, says, ”Let’s not be surprised, let’s be prepared." Iraqi women, she says, have to be prepared to follow the lead of Muslim women in other countries and argue their rights in the language of sharia.

Iraqi women need a prominent role in drafting the constitution. As Salbi says, ”Women are the barometer of the whole society. If women’s rights are restricted and they are pushed back to their homes, they will pull back the whole society."

They are also engaged in a dance between politics and religion that is not all that foreign to our own ears. Secular or sharia? What the laws are called will be less important than what they say."

Read more on this topic…..
http://www.scholarofthehouse.org/neciwriinshi.html

By deber B on 04/06/2009 3:09 pm

e-mail alert

This was us not so very long ago when women were considered the property of their husbands and had very few rights. It was a struggle to change that here and it will be a struggle to change that there.

By DeBúrca obj on 04/06/2009 7:09 pm