Rape 'impossible' In Marriage

[Terse]

A Muslim cleric, doing himself and his fellow Muslims no favours at all.

 

LINK

 

A senior Muslim cleric who runs the country's largest network of sharia courts has sparked controversy by claiming that there is no such thing as rape within marriage.

 

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, said that men who rape their wives should not be prosecuted because "sex is part of marriage". And he claimed that many married women who alleged rape were lying.

 

His comments have angered senior police officers, who say that such statements undermine the work they do to encourage women to report rape, a notoriously under-reported crime.

 

Sheikh Sayeed made the comments in an interview with the blog The Samosa, before reiterating them later when contacted by The Independent.

 

He told the website: "Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity... 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."

 

Later he told this newspaper: "In Islamic sharia, rape is adultery by force. So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape. It is reprehensible, but we do not call it rape."

 

British law was changed in 1991, making rape within marriage illegal.

[ballaughbiker]

Unbelievable! Mind you with many of the other stuff spouted by these clerics, its hardly a surprise they think like this. How can you apply 7th C stories and teachings to 21st C life?

[Gladys]

I knew it would be a Muslim cleric's comment before I even opened the thread.

[jimbms]

Nothing religious nuts of any persuasion say surprises me anymore.

 

 

[ptarmigan]

Rape within marriage was recognised in law in England and Wales until 1991, although this recognition has not been accompanied by prosecutions, still less by convictions. Prior to this course in England and Wales held the same view, broadly speaking, as the Muslim cleric quoted. It took the Court of Appeal to overturn previous precedent. Can't remember the court case but see here http://www.newstatesman.com/life-and-society/2008/03/partner-rape-women-violence (apologies if not inserted the link correctly).

.

[ptarmigan]

OK - here we go - off Wikipedia - but seems fairly accurate.

 

 

History of the exemption in England and Wales

The marital rape exemption was abolished in England and Wales in 1991 by the House of Lords, in its judicial capacity, in the case of R v R [1992] 1 AC 599. The exemption had never been a rule of statute, having first been promulgated in 1736 in Hale’s History of the Pleas of the Crown, where Hale stated:

 

But the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract.

Hale's statement was not supported by any judicial authority but was believed to be a logical consequence of the laws of marriage and rape as understood at the time. Marriage gave conjugal rights to a spouse, and marriage could not be revoked except by private Act of Parliament – it therefore seemed to follow that a spouse could not legally revoke consent to sexual intercourse, and if there was consent there was no rape....

 

...There are at least four recorded instances of a husband successfully relying on the exemption in England and Wales. The first was R v Miller [1954] 2 QB 282, where it was held that the wife had not legally revoked her consent despite having presented a divorce petition. R v Kowalski (1988) 86 Cr. App. R. 339 was followed by R v Sharples [1990] Crim LR 198, and the fourth occurred in 1991 in the case of R v J, a judgment made after the first instance decision of the Crown Court in R v R but before the decision of the House of Lords that was to abolish the exemption. In Miller, Kowalski and R v J the husbands were instead convicted of assault or indecent assault.

 

R v R in 1991 was the first occasion where the marital rights exemption had been appealed as far as the House of Lords, and it followed the trio of cases since 1988 where the marital rights exemption was upheld. The leading judgment, unanimously approved, was given by Lord Keith of Kinkel. He stated that the contortions being performed in the lower courts in order to avoid applying the marital rights exemption were indicative of the absurdity of the rule, and held, agreeing with earlier judgments in Scotland and in the Court of Appeal in R v R, that “the fiction of implied consent has no useful purpose to serve today in the law of rape” and that the marital rights exemption was a “common law fiction” which had never been a true rule of English law. R’s appeal was accordingly dismissed, and he was convicted of the rape of his wife.

[Chinahand]

This isn't a matter of law though is it.

 

The issue is the moral one.

 

A man does not have the right to force himself on his wife whenever he pleases. She can perfectly rightly say she does not want to have sex at that time.

 

The Mullah tries to nuance it saying:

 

Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity... 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.

 

But he really misses the point. Agression and indecency are more minor points - the major one is coercion, and the Mullah is simply in denial if he thinks that there cannot be coercion in sex within a marriage.

 

There often is, and that is wrong. Marriage is not about giving the man permission to be coercive in his sexual relationship with his wife. Quite the opposite - it is about mutual consent, which must be continually renewed in all aspects of the marriage in order for it to work.

[jimbms]

With CH here, penetrative sex between two people be they male/female, male/male, female/female (yes it is legally possible) if not done without full consent of both parties is rape, there can be no other word for it and marraige or legal partnership cannot be seen as given consent.

[P.K.]

The Mullah tries to nuance it saying:

 

Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity... 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.

 

What did the Mullah say about headaches?

[somewhatdamaged]

I also knew that this would inevitably have came from a muslim. Pretty backward religion in my opinion.

[Gilly G. Ossenfeffer]

I also knew that this would inevitably have came from a muslim. Pretty backward religion in my opinion.

Why single out just one religion? All religion is bonkerooni. Just been reading earlier today about the massive objection to gay marriage by the Roman Catholics in Spain before it became law. What a strange thing to object to - two people wanting to be in a loving relationship - with all the cruelty and horrors in the world they could usefully be shouting about.

[Bombay Bad Boy]

Pretty difficult in this marriage