Christian Muslim marriage

7 Comments

• Jehanara

  December 23, 2012 9:13 am

  Reply

  In many Muslim countries, rape is common but the idea that there should be four witnesses to prove the rape can be hard to produce as rape can take place when the aggressor and the victim are totally alone.
  Some women prefer not to report the rapist for fear of scandal as sex outside marriage or rape is seen as dishonouring their family.

  The Islamic law or sharia condemning the aggressor to lashes or death is practised in very few countries like Saudi Arabia. In other Muslim countries like Morocco the penalty is imprisonment and a fine or the aggressor with the consent of the victim in case of deflowering her should marry her.

  Another point is that in many Islamic countries rape within marriage isn’t recognised as the woman should be at the beck and call of her husband even in sexual matters. But in countries like Morocco, there are associations formed to help women in difficulties with their husbands, including the sexual abuse they can be exposed to.

  In view of the traditional restrictions on sexual freedom in Muslim countries and the desire for a romantic relation, many women fall victims to rape resulting in deflowering which is considered as a loss of dignity for the woman and a dishonour to her family.

  To deal with the problem of rapes and to have real statistics about it in the Muslim world, taboos on this should be lifted and open debates should be organised to sensitise women about the legal procedures they should follow as well as sensitizing societies and families to provide the victim with support instead of looking down on her as a shame to her surrounding

• Alex

  December 22, 2012 8:57 am

  Reply

  Hello Angela,

  This is a very interesting website and thank you for your articles.

  I am catholic christian and I have been dating a muslim for one and a half years and we want to get married for a long time now. During the relationship he has always said that its okay for the kids we’ll have to go to church with me and when they are older about 18 they can choose which religion they want- christianity or islam. I always thought this to be that he accepted they would be christians. How wrong was I about 3 days ago where he has insisted that the kids have to be muslim and that is his religion and he is not willing to compromise on that. I felt so hurt and initially I said I wanted them to be catholic, now I’m willing to compromise that they should learn about both religions and he is absolutely refusing this and thinks I will change my mind if I love him. I have said that we need to compromise as we have different religions and the kids are half of me and half of him. I cannot see myself changing my mind and the thought of them being muslims does not sit well with me, because firstly I dont know so much about islam apart from them praying 5 times a day, ramadan, women covering their head, the big dividion between men and women e.g. cannot pray next to eachother in the mosque, the men appearing very controlling, also as a christian I would feel left out and dont see how I can fulfil my mothering duties without understanding islam, also its not even a case that I can go to the mosque and pray next to my muslim male boys. I know how very involved I need to be as a Mother, I am also concerned about the extreme rules and pressure from the wider community. To me it seems all too contrived. I am catholic but i am very liberal and like my kids to be liberal too, I dont want the girls to cover their heads and bodies(neither do i want them to walk about in too revealing clothes) but also to believe there is one God.

  I just cant see any future in this relationship and also a main concern is how strongly he holds on to his faith and he is not willing to compromise to me spells further issues. I feel I have wasted my time. I met him when I was 32 , now I am 34.

  What advice can you give me please.

  Thanks

  Alex

  Christian-Muslim marriage, comment to Alex at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=3825

• Saimah

  December 22, 2012 10:50 am

  Reply

  Hello

  I am Saimah from Davavo City, Phillipines and in love with a Hindu Boy for the last 4 years.We both are working in the same hotel, he is a manager and my self in a staff category, mainly attending tours and travels part of guests. He is settled in Phillipines belong to India, some where in Punjab state.

  He wants to marry me and I too. My parents being liberal also wants him to their son in law being well understood by them. Next month he is going to India and he wants me to also visit with him.

  My parents have given permission to see India with him.I have yet to process for visa clearance.

  Reply to Saimah at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=3827

• Zeenat

  December 22, 2012 9:36 am

  Reply

  Islamic ideology supporting domestic violence against women

  The Quran and Sharia Law provide the “boundaries” for marital sex and violence:
  “Women are your fields; go, then, into your fields whence you please.” (Surah 2:223)
  It is obligatory for a woman to let her husband have sex with her immediately when a) he asks her, b) at home, c) she can physically endure it, and d) the husband has paid the marriage price. (Reliance of the Traveler, para. m5.1)
  A husband possesses full right to enjoy his wife’s person in what does not physically harm her. (R of T, para. m5.4)
  The husband is entitled to insist that his wife undertake both the measures necessary for having sex (like bathing) and those necessary to the full enjoyment of her (like shaving her private parts). (R of T, para. m5.6)
  Apart from providing her husband full lawful sexual enjoyment, if the wife cooks food or washes clothes for him, that is merely considered a “voluntary charity.” (R of T, para. m10.12(3))

  A wife is in rebellion if she fails any of these obligations, and the sanction is first a warning, then banishment from the marital bed, and finally beating. This applies to daughters, as well. The Quran and Sharia Law are quite specific:
  “As for those [women] from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” (Surah 4:35)
  “If she commits rebelliousness, he . . . may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow.” (R of T, para. m10.12)
  “Umar reported the Prophet as saying: ‘A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.’” (Hadith of the Sunan of Abu Dawud, Chapter 709 – On Beating Women, #2142)
  There is no retaliation for a father or mother for killing their offspring or their offspring’s offspring. (R of T, para. o1.2(4))
  There is no indemnity for killing someone who has left Islam. (R of T, para. o4.17)

  Violence against Women is a Crime

  In most Western countries, wife-beating and sexual battery are against the law. Usually, the legal provisions are very specific and quite comprehensive. The California Civil Code, Section 1708, states:

  Every person is bound, without contract, to abstain from injuring the person or property of another, or infringing upon any of his or her rights. A person commits a sexual battery who does any of the following: Acts with the intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact with an intimate part of another, and a sexually offensive contact with that person directly or indirectly results. For the purposes of this section “intimate part” means the sexual organ, anus, groin, or buttocks of any person, or the breast of a female. A person who commits a sexual battery upon another is liable to that person for criminal penalties as well as financial damages, including, but not limited to, general damages, special damages, and punitive damages.

  Domestic violence includes injury, abuse, and offensive conduct and any credible threat to commit such acts. Injury or abuse includes a pattern of conduct by the abuser whereby the plaintiff reasonably feared for his or her safety, or the safety of an immediate family member. An immediate family means a spouse, parent, child, any person related by consanguinity or affinity within the second degree, or any person who regularly resides, or, within the six months preceding any portion of the pattern of conduct, regularly resided, in the plaintiff’s household. Offensive contact means contact that offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity. A credible threat means a verbal or written threat, including that communicated by means of an electronic communication device, or a threat implied by a pattern of conduct or a combination of verbal, written, or electronically communicated statements and conduct, made with the intent and apparent ability to carry out the threat so as to cause the person who is the target of the threat to reasonably fear for his or her safety or the safety of his or her immediate family.

• Zeenat

  December 22, 2012 9:18 am

  Reply

  The Veil and Violence against Women in Islamist Societies

  Submitted by admin on 7 August, 2007 – 10:17
  Iran
  Islamic states
  IHN 2007.2 August
  International Humanist News
  Women

  Recent reports on the Islamic regime of Iran’s crackdown on women who are ‘badly’ veiled (bad-hejab) and their resistance to the regime’s campaign of arrest and harassment has been reported quite extensively in comparison to other similar events over the years. This is partly due to amateur video footage taken via mobile phones by passers-by uploaded on YouTube for the world to see.

  There are two pieces of footage that everyone should take a look at. One is of an unveiled woman shouting ‘we don’t want the veil; we want freedom’. The other is of a young girl who is being questioned by security agents for being ‘badly veiled’; she pulls off her veil in front of them and is kicked into a waiting car to be driven away.

  Given that veiling is compulsory in Iran, these acts of defiance are all the more heroic.

  This ongoing battle between the Islamic authorities and women over the veil clearly reveals why it has become a symbol like no other of the violence women face under Islam and why ‘improper’ or ‘bad’ veiling and unveiling have become a symbol of resistance to Islam in power and its violence against women. It is for this very reason that the slogan ‘neither veil nor submission’ has become a rallying cry ever since the regime imposed compulsory veiling on women after expropriating and crushing the revolution to consolidate its rule.

  With the myriad examples of violence against women in Islamist societies – from stoning to legally sanctioned domestic violence – the ‘fuss over veiling’ may seem overboard for those who have heard about the ‘right to veil’ and ‘freedom of clothing’ from Islamists who deceptively use rights language in an effort to make the veil palatable to a western audience.

  But the veil is anything but a piece of cloth or clothing. Just as the straight-jacket or body bag are anything but pieces of clothing. Just as the chastity belt was not a piece of clothing. Just as the Star of David pinned on Jews during the holocaust was not just a bit of cloth.

  The veil is a tool for the suppression and oppression of women. It is meant to segregate. It is representative of how women are viewed in Islam: sub-human, ‘deficient’, ‘inferior’, without rights, and despised. Trapped in a mobile prison not to be heard from or seen.

  The veiled woman is veiled to prevent her from being seen or touched by anyone other than those who have some form of ownership over her – her father, husband or brother.

  In many instances it is a matter of life and death. In Iran just recently paramedics were denied access to two sisters who needed emergency assistance because their brother deemed it sinful for the paramedics to touch them. They died as a result. And we have all heard of the example of Saudi Arabia where girls’ schools are locked as usual practice to ensure the segregation of the sexes. In 2002 when a fire broke out at a school in Mecca, the guards would not unlock the gates and religious police prevented girls from escaping – to the point of even beating them back into the school – because they were not properly veiled; moreover they stopped men who tried to help, warning the men that it was sinful to touch the girls. Fifteen girls died as a result and more than fifty were wounded.

  As I said – a matter of life and death.

  Moreover, the veil imposes sexual apartheid and the segregation of the sexes very much like racial apartheid in the former South Africa. But in this instance, in addition to the segregation that is carried out in society, such as separate entrances for women in certain government offices, separate areas for women’s seating on buses, the banning of women from certain public arenas like sport stadiums, a curtain dividing the Caspian sea for segregated swimming and so on, woman are forced to carry the divide on their very own backs.

  And don’t forget the more subtle aspects to it, though just as detrimental, like the sun never touching a woman’s hair or body and the adverse health effects of that. And how depressing it must be to be deemed so vile and dangerous as to need constant cover…

  And imagine the effects of the veil on girl children. Sexualized from age nine, kept segregated from boys, taught that they are different and unequal, restricted from playing, swimming and in general doing things children must do – nothing short of child abuse.

  And this is not only the situation for women and girls in countries where Islam rules. At least in places like Iran, there is mass resistance in the form of a social protest movement. The veil is also imposed on many women in Europe via threats and intimidation. But because of the respect the veil and religion are granted due to racist cultural relativism, women and girls are often left to the mercy of regressive Islamic organisations and parasitical imams.

  A mullah in Green Lane mosque in Birmingham has said, for example: ‘Allah has created the woman deficient’ and a satellite broadcast from the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, beamed into the mosque suggested that children should be hit if they don’t pray and don’t wear the hijab. Then there is Australia’s senior Islamic cleric, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, who has compared unveiled women to ‘uncovered meat’ implying that they invite rape and sexual assault. ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.’

  That women transgress the veil daily is a testimony to their humanity and not the laws, states or groups that impose it by force or intimidation.

  No apology, justification, appeasement or cultural relativism can deny the indignity and violence that the veil is and represents.

  The veil is an offence to 21st-century humanity. It has to be opposed unequivocally.

• Sabia

  December 22, 2012 9:03 am

  Reply

  I am a Muslim woman and, like my late mother, free, independent, sensuous, educated, liberal, contrary and confrontational when provoked, both feminine and feminist. I style and colour my hair, wear lovely things and perfumes, appear on public platforms with men who are not related to me, shake their hands, embrace some I know well, take care of my family.

  I defend Muslims persecuted by their enemies and their own kith and kin. I pray, fast, give to charity and try to be a decent human being. I also drink wine and do not lie about that, unlike so many other “good” Muslims. I am the kind of Muslim woman who maddens reactionary Muslim men and their asinine female followers. What a badge of honour.

  Female oppression in Islamic countries is manifestly getting worse. Islam, as practiced by millions today, has lost its compassion and integrity and is entering one of the darkest of dark ages. Here is this month’s short list of unbearable stories (imagine how many more there are which will never be known):

  Iranian painter Delara Darabi, only 22 and in prison since she was 17, accused of murdering an elderly relative, was hanged last week even though she had been given a temporary stay of execution by the chief justice of the country. She phoned her mother on the day of her hanging to beg for help and the phone was snatched by a prison official who told them: “We will easily execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Her paintings reveal the cruelty to which she was subjected.

  Meanwhile Roxana Saberi, a 32- year-old broadcast journalist whose father is Iranian, is incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin prison, accused of spying for the US. She denies this and says she has been framed because she was seen buying a bottle of wine. This intelligent, beautiful and defiant woman is on hunger strike. Over in Saudi Arabia, an eight-year-old child has just divorced a 50-year-old man. Her father, no doubt a very devout man, sold his daughter for about £9,000.

  I have been reading Disfigured, the story of Rania Al-Baz, a Saudi TV anchor, the first woman to have such a job, who was so badly beaten up by her abusive husband that she had to have 13 operations to re-make her once gorgeous face. Domestic violence destroys females in all countries, but in Muslim states, it is validated by laws and values. As Al-Baz writes, “It is appalling to realise that a woman cannot walk down the street without men staring at her openly. For them she is nothing but a body without a mind, something that moves and does not think. Women are banned from studying law, from civil engineering and from the sacrosanct area of oil.”

  Small optimistic signs do periodically appear in this harsh desert, says Quanta A Ahmed, a doctor who worked in Saudi Arabia and then wrote her account, In the Land of Invisible Women. She describes the love she finds between some husbands and wives, idealists who think better rights will come one day.

  That faith in the future is echoed by Norah al-Faiz, the Deputy Minister for Women’s Education, chosen in this week’s Time magazine list of the world’s most influential people. They hope because they must, I guess, even though they can see the brute forces lining up on the horizon ready to crush them by any means necessary. This country has spread its anti-female Wahabi Islam across the globe, its second most important export after oil.

  In Afghanistan Ayman Udas was a singer and songwriter who wore lipstick and appeared on TV, defying her family. She was a divorced mother of two who had remarried. Ten days after this she was shot dead, allegedly by her brothers, who must think they are upright moral upholders with places reserved in paradise. In March President Karzai gave monstrous tribal leaders what they demanded, absolute control over wives by husbands and the right to rape them on the marital bed. Protests by brave women in that country and international outrage has forced him to step back from this commitment but there is concern that he is too weak to hold out, and once again women will become the personal and political playthings of men.

  Let’s to Pakistan then shall we, the country that once elected a woman head of state. The divinely beautiful Swat Valley has, for reasons of political expediency, been handed over to the Taliban, and there they have blown up over a hundred schools for girls and regularly flog young females on the streets. The girls are shrouded and forbidden to scream because the female voice has the potential to arouse desire. Or pity perhaps.

  I am aware that my words will help confirm the pernicious prejudices that fester in the minds of those who despise Islam. Yet to conceal or excuse the violations would be to condone and encourage them. There have been enlightened times when some Muslim civilisations honoured and cherished females. This is not one of them. Across the West – for a host of reasons – millions of Muslims are embracing backward practices. In the UK young girls – some so young that they are still in push chairs – are covered up in hijabs. Disgracefully, there are always vocal Muslim women who seek to justify honour killings, forced marriages, inequality, polygamy and childhood betrothals. Why are large numbers of Muslim men so terrorised by the female body and spirit? Why do Muslim women encourage this savage paranoia?

  I look out of my study at the common and see a wife fully burkaed on a sunny day. She sits still. Her children and husband run around, laughing, playing cricket. She sits still, dead, buried, a ghost. She is complicit in her own degradation, as are countless others. Their acquiescence in a free democracy is a crime against their sisters who have no such choices in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

  Al-Baz says: “I am a disruptive presence because I give women ideas.” Me too. To transgress against diehard obscurantists and their unholy rules is an inescapable sacred duty. Yet how pathetic that sounds. Progressive believers tilt at windmills driven by ferocious winds of self-righteousness. Our arms and legs weaken and we are brought to our knees. I fear there is only worse to come.