Anchor: The fundamental purpose of the women protection act was (is) to provide women with the right to file cases on the basis of circumstantial and forensic evidence, making convictions of rape easier. Where is the obscenity in that?

Munawar Hasan: This bill has been part of law for years, how has that affected the rights of women in Pakistan? What is the one issue that can be pointed out as a success of this law?

Anchor: One blaringly obvious problem with the Hudood law was the need to present four witnesses in order to convict a rapist, failure to do so resulted in the arrest of the woman on charges of confession to adultery, that was the main issue.

Munawar Hasan: What is the problem in that?

Anchor: The problem is this sir, that according to the 2003 national commission status of women report 80 per cent women were forced to languish in jails because of inability to produce witnesses of their rape.

Munawar Hasan: The objective of Islam is to discourage such acts, no one can be shameless enough to commit such an act in the presence of four people. Making it impossible to prove such acts, therefore the whole idea is to discourage bringing such acts into public light. Discouraging it to the extent that the act is never quoted. If such a crime occurs and since there are no witnesses than both men and women are suppose to keep it under wraps and not discuss it in public.

Anchor: Sir, are you suggesting that a woman should stay silent after she is raped? That she should not report the crime?

Munawar Hasan: I am saying she should keep quite if she has no witnesses. If she has witnesses than she should present them.

Anchor: What kind of an argument is that? A woman is raped and she has to look for witnesses to prove the crime?

Munawar Hasan: Argue with the Quran and not me.

Anchor: I am not questioning the Quran, I am questioning your argument.

This is unbelievable. Why do extremist Islamists always make the poorest, most ignorant religious arguments?

In the Qur’an, four witnesses are required to prove zina (adultery), not rape. That is a key distinction, and the Qur’an is merciful, in that by requiring 4 witnesses, the standard for proving adultery is set so high as to be impossible. That is as it should be, since the penalty for adultery is so severe (100 lashes – the Qur’an does not prescribe stoning). But adultery is not rape. If you are raped, you did not commit adultery. Adultery is a category of illicit, but mutually consensual, sexual intercourse. Obviously in rape, the sexual intercourse is forced by one party upon the other without their consent – that is the very definition of rape.

In fact, centuries of Islamic jurists have established consensus that rape is not a category of adultery, but rather of hirabah (terrorism). Here is an excellent resource from MuslimAccess on rape in Islam by Uzma Mazhar – from which I am copying liberally:

During the time of the Prophet (saw) punishment was inflicted on the rapist on the solitary evidence of the woman who was raped by him. Wa’il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was raped. Later, when some people came by, she identified and accused the man of raping her. They seized him and brought him to Allah’s messenger, who said to the woman, “Go away, for Allâh has forgiven you,” but of the man who had raped her, he said, “Stone him to death.” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud)
[...]
Islamic legal scholars interpret rape as a crime in the category of Hiraba. In ‘Fiqh-us-Sunnah’, hiraba is described as: ‘a single person or group of people causing public disruption, killing, forcibly taking property or money, attacking or raping women (hatk al ‘arad), killing cattle, or disrupting agriculture.’

The famous jurist, Ibn Hazm, had the widest definition of hiraba, defining a hiraba offender as: ‘One who puts people in fear on the road, whether or not with a weapon, at night or day, in urban areas or in open spaces, in the palace of a caliph or a mosque, with or without accomplices, in the desert or in the village, in a large or small city, with one or more people… making people fear that they’ll be killed, or have money taken, or be raped (hatk al ‘arad)… whether the attackers are one or many.”

Al-Dasuqi held that if a person forced a woman to have sex, his actions would be deemed as committing hiraba. In addition, the Maliki judge Ibn ‘Arabi, relates a story in which a group was attacked and a woman in their party was raped. Responding to the argument that the crime did not constitute hiraba because no money was taken and no weapons used, Ibn ‘Arabi replied indignantly that “hiraba with the private parts” is much worse than hiraba involving the taking of money, and that anyone would rather be subjected to the latter than the former.

The crime of rape is classified not as a subcategory of ‘zina’ (consensual adultery), but rather as a separate crime of violence under hiraba. This classification is logical, as the “taking” is of the victim’s property (the rape victim’s sexual autonomy) by force. In Islam, sexual autonomy and pleasure is a fundamental right for both women and men (Ghazâlî); taking by force someone’s right to control the sexual activity of one’s body is thus a form of hiraba.

Rape as hiraba is a violent crime that uses sexual intercourse as a weapon. The focus in a hiraba prosecution is the accused rapist and his intent and physical actions, and not second-guessing the consent of the rape victim. Hiraba does not require four witnesses to prove the offense, circumstantial evidence, medical data and expert testimony form the evidence used to prosecute such crimes.

To summarize, rape is hirabah (terrorism), not zina (adultery) – punishment should be meted to the rapist, and the victim of rape should not be punished in any way. A statement of being raped is not a confession to adultery. All of this is not some modern reinterpretation on my part, but a robust, centuries-old consensus of all major schools of jurisprudence in Islam.

The transcript of the video above is via Sana Saleem at Dawn.com, who also makes the point that the 2006 debate about the Hudood Laws in Pakistan really laid bare the issue. She writes:

In 2006, a much-heated debate on the Hudood Laws revealed the anatomy of rape, conflicting legalities involving misinterpretations of Shariah Laws and the deeply engrained distorted public perceptions. For those who followed the debate, there should be no qualms in admitting that it made the inherent flaws in interpretations of the law and the systematic distortion of a society sensitive to violence and abuse evident.

Saleem notes that it was the debate in 2006 that led to the Protection of Women Act later that year, which extremists like Jamaat-i-Islami opposed. Clearly, they haven’t evolved or become any more enlightened in the past five years. This all points to the difficulty of legislating morality – what’s needed is not top-down reform but a sustained campaign for civil rights at the grassroots level to change the public perception. This is how civil rights were won in the United States, by the most downtrodden and persecuted group in American society. I wonder if Pakistani women can do the same. Certainly not overnight, and not with a single law.

The full post by Sana Saleem, entitled “Your rape culture is not my religion“, is a must-read in full.

Reprinted from City of Brass, by Aziz Poonawalla on blog.beliefnet.com

Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins, continues to stir controversy and provoke debate in many religious circles. Whether Bell is correct or not about who gets into heaven and who will go to Hell is not something which anyone can know.
Both Bell’s theories and those of the people who dispute him about what a loving God would do are simply mirrors of both his and their pre-existing definitions about love, God, and the afterlife. More importantly, those beliefs are great predictors of how people behave in this life and since that is the one we all share, it’s the one upon which we ought to focus.
Tell me a person’s beliefs about the afterlife, including the absence of such belief, and I’ll tell you how they function in this life, for better or for worse. Notions of the afterlife reflect our most deeply held values about this life, which because they are not always realized here, are deferred to the next life. Like all ideals, they represent that to which we aspire, and if we are serious about our aspirations, those conceptions of the hereafter impact how we live in the here and now.
Debates about what will “really” occur in the future are best left to the future. But the implications of the beliefs that people hold, have enormous impact not only on their own lives, but on the lives of all the people around them – especially those who don’t share their beliefs.
Whether there is an afterlife, how important its existence is to any individual or group, their belief about who gets in, who doesn’t, and why – all of these shape how they live and how they relate to others, especially to those who do not share their beliefs. Ultimately, it is this last issue which is the most important.
At the end of the day, it is far easier to hurt and even to destroy another human being whom one already believes is cursed by God. After all, the hurt done to them in this life is nothing compared to the suffering they will endure in the next life and, so the argument goes, reflects God’s ultimate will and may even cause them to repent of whatever sins they are supposedly guilty.
Over the centuries, millions of people have been subjected to everything from regular degradation to the most horrendous suffering, including mass murder, all because they were outside of some other group’s salvation scheme. That tragic behavior continues to this very day in more places and ways than we can name.
Unfortunately, even those who are well-intentioned, including Rob Bell, may be guilty of perpetuating this problem. While not necessarily as toxic as consigning people with whom he disagrees to Hell, Bell’s description of them as “truly humbled, broken, and desperate for reconciliation” is not much better. Am I in that category because I am a non-Christian? Are atheists in that category because they don’t believe in the existence of God?
While Bell argues for love, he does so in a way which embraces a belief in the still real spiritual failings of what I am sure equals billions of people. While his approach is a big deal within Christian theological circles, and is certainly an upgrade on those beliefs which regard many of us not only as damaged but as eternally cursed, it’s far from where I think such beliefs need to be.
Personally, it strikes me as arrogant to imagine that when we are done in this life, there is nothing that comes after. But it strikes me as both arrogant t and dangerous to believe that whatever is coming will be measured by any one set of beliefs that obtain in this word, and certainly not that people will be measured by the rules of those communities to which they did not belong when they were here.

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/1045

I look forward to reading her biography of the Prophet SAW. And I think her insights on the Qur’an align perfecty with Michael Sells’ brief volume, “Approaching the Qur’an“, which does not pretend to be a translation. I have a review copy and really need to talk more about that book. Highly, highly recommended, as I am sure Hazleton’s book will be.

Incidentally if she had asked me, I would have saved her a lot of trouble by pointing her to Quran.com where she could have read all three translations and the Arabic simultaneously instead of doing it the hard way (that slide of her desk was cringe-inducing).

Reprinted from City of Brass, by Aziz Poonawalla on blog.beliefnet.com

Despite all the over-blown claims about the “clearly” positive meaning of Egypt’s so-called January 25th Revolution by some, and the outright fear-mongering about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood by others, the only thing that’s clear, is that the situation in Egypt and throughout the Middle East’s Muslims nations, is anything but clear. Whether or not the unfolding situation will bring positive change vis a vis the United States’ relations with those countries depends on the level of openness which the parties can maintain.

Egypt, Tunisia and any other countries which join them in overthrowing non-democratic regimes will have to channel their passion for change, not only into democratic government, but into democracies which value openness and some form of rights-driven government which puts individual citizens ahead of any particular religious system. Neither Egypt, Tunisia, nor any other Muslim country is the US, nor should they be.
They will however have to embrace unprecedented, for them at least, levels of cultural and legal openness if they hope to see a new era in relations with the United States.

United States policy-makers will have to figure out what it means to see hope where they have often trained themselves to see only hopelessness. They need to get past overly simplistic dichotomies which force us to choose between individual dictators and the dictatorship of a particular faith. We need to embrace the notion that there are many ways to create the kind of political and legal cultures which we treasure, including the possibility of doing so within an Islamic context. To be sure, no nation in the Muslim world has really done that, but places like Turkey are trying and we dare not declare impossible that which is simply unprecedented.

The future of US relations with Muslim countries depends on the willingness of both sides to open their collective minds to new possibilities and the discipline to realize that despite having taken some very interesting steps in the past weeks, the journey is far from over. In a world of over-eager apologists and small-minded cynics, we need clear-eyed optimists – people who know that naiveté can be deadly, but that without hope, we are already dead.

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet

Reprinted from City of Brass, by Aziz Poonawalla on blog.beliefnet.com

Is it appropriate to simply right him off as a kook? Can we afford to stand silently by? The answers to those questions have nothing to do with how one feels about Islam in general, or about the proposed cultural center and mosque to be situated a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center.

Whether one opposes the mosque or not, this proposed Koran burning is obscene. Tragically and ironically, this is an expression of Christianity which parallels the parts of Islam which represent a genuine threat to the human race. I guess it’s an irony Pastor Jones misses, but reminds us all that it’s not the faith which kills; it’s the fanatical attachment to it.

Before deciding what you think is the appropriate response, think for a minute about the response you would hope for, if it were bibles that someone proposed to burn? What would be the appropriate response to a religious leader calling for the public burning of a Torah scroll?

We cannot call for a vocal response from Muslims when Muslims engage in hateful acts towards the followers of other faiths unless we, who cherish those other faiths, speak out when our religious leaders behave hatefully. Ultimately, this moment is not a test of Pastor Jones, but for the rest of us. I hope we pass. I guess we’ll see.

Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet