The consensus of the scholars
A charming item from Deutsche Welle:
Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid is not really that old. Nevertheless, despite being born to Palestinian refugees living in Syria in 1960, and having lived in Saudi Arabia since he was a child, the opinions issued by this religious scholar read like documents from a time long, long ago.
He publishes his opinions on “IslamQA.info,” the most popular Salafist website in the Arab speaking world. There, for instance, a young man asks him for the answer to a seemingly difficult question: What is the status of the many “slaves” that live in his home of Saudi Arabia? Can one have sexual intercourse with them? Even if one is married? The questioner himself does not define a “slave” – he assumes that this is common knowledge. In Saudi Arabia the term refers to the many Southeast Asian housemaids that work in the country.
Isn’t that pretty? All by itself, before we get to the “scholar”‘s answer? Isn’t it pretty that women from Southeast Asia who work in Saudi Arabia are called “slaves”? And that men are asking if they have religious permission to rape them?
No, it’s not, it’s disgusting enough to make me want to wash my eyes after reading it.
The religious expert knows the answer: “Islam allows a man to have sexual intercourse with a slave, no matter whether the man is married or single.” As justification, the scholar recites Koran passages, the biography of the prophet Mohammed and the opinions of leading sheikhs. “The scholars,” he summarizes, “are unanimous in this assessment, and no one is permitted to view this act as forbidden, or to forbid it. Whoever does so, is a sinner, and is acting against the consensus of the scholars.”
Not only is it permitted to rape women “slaves,” it’s forbidden and a sin to say it’s not permitted to rape women “slaves.” It’s just the most hateful, callous, contemptuous view of what’s good and what isn’t, and of human rights, and of women, and of foreign women, and of domestic servants, I can barely stand it. What a shit-colored awful loathsome place Saudi Arabia must be, steeped in that way of thinking.
The fatwa on the sexual availability of Asians, who have in fact only come to Saudi Arabia to carry out home cleaning duties, is just one of a universe full of fatwas that Saudi religious scholars publish on the role of women day after day.
Because that’s what religion is for – working out the details of how to provide men with as much fucking as possible.
The Tunisian feminist and historian Sophie Bessis says that Islamic theologians are trying harder than ever to force a religious identity on Middle Eastern countries.
She says that identity is based on signs and symbols reflected in traditionally dressed Muslim women. “Identity = religion = veiled women, is a triptych that Islamist movements propagate to Arabs,” writes Bessis in her book, “The Arabs, Women, Freedom.”
For years, the veil has been the sign that Muslims and non-Muslims alike have most strongly identified with Islam. But signs can have many meanings. What could the veil mean? Over the last several years many Western feminists have wanted to see it as a symbol of female emancipation.
But Ibtissam Bouachrine, who was born in Morocco and is now an associate professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, disagrees. In her book, “Women in Islam. Myths, Apologies and the Limits of Feminist Critique,” she writes that, “As a ‘mobile home’ the veil is always a reminder that the natural place for the woman in Islam is at home.”
At home, being raped, while elsewhere in the house “the slave” is scrubbing toilets and wondering when it will be her turn to be raped.
Nice, and then punish the slave for adultery if either she or her rapist are married; or for having sex outside marriage if she isn’t. What a shit hole of a barbarous nation. I’ll believe there is such a thing as moderate Islam when I see large scale street protests against this (and other such repugnant) behaviour in Malaysia and Indonesia.
There’s that word again. Identity.
When something is perceived as part of someone’s identity, it seems, it’s not only OK, it’s wrong to even question it.
I’m going to have to add Bessis’ book to my wishlist…
Isn’t it strange that so many of the self-declared moderates in The West haven’t a thing to say about this?
I’ll believe there’s a moderate Islam when rank and file Muslims organize a complete boycott of the Haj until such time as Saudi Arabia cleans up its act.
How can any Muslim in good conscience ( ie committed to basic human rights ) possibly set foot in this shit hole?
@#4 John: Hear hear.
John – that’s like the ad FFRF ran a few years ago asking Catholics to reject the church until it cleaned up its act. I doubt that many did after reading the ad, but I’m hoping at least they feel ashamed. Of course, they will probably say, like most have said to me (the liberal Catholics) that this isn’t Catholicism, it’s a few bad apples and it has nothing to do with the church. My question to them is, if so many priests are violating the tenets of Catholicism and remaining priests, then why do you remain part of the church?
People who take their religion of Islam seriously can’t conceive of not making the haj, because that is about God and not about Saudi Arabia in their mind. They believe they have to make the haj for salvation, and it’s going to take something powerful to shake that. Simply going a bit further in their oppression of women isn’t likely to be enough.
You can’t compare Roman Catholicism and Islam in this regard.
And it’s misleading to say this is only about Saudi Arabia and NOT Islam. Islam IS the constitution of Saudi Arabia. Laws promulgated in the ‘kingdom’ are directly inspired by Islam’s core texts which, unfortunately, sanction slavery. The rejection in Pakistan last week of a law banning the marriage of underage girls, the accusation it was blasphemous, is a similar example. This is an ideology anchored in *The Divine* and it’s one which considers many basic human rights as blasphemous and ‘demonic’.
Slavery was widespread in S.A. until 1962 when it was pressured by America to ‘outlaw’ it. they engaged in a bit of window dressing…enough to satisfy those seeking the oil…but de-facto slavery is still widespread in the country. It’s quite banal, actually.
I don’t believe that it is just about Saudi Arabia, John. It is about Islam, which is why it is a bigger problem, and why you won’t get people to not go on haj. Islam is their life, and they believe their salvation depends on it, otherwise, they will have their skin burned off every day and restored every night to be burned off again the next day.
But I think you can compare Catholics with Islam – the idea is that you have a great big organization that is abusing people for its own purposes, and getting people to go along with that. There may be differences in degree of severity (now), but to fail to recognize the patterns is to essentially fall into a “Dear Muslima” – hey, kid, sorry you were raped, but it’s a lot worse in Saudi Arabia. From the tenor of your posts here, I don’t think you mean it that way, but that’s how it read to me.
Of course it’s about Islam and not just S.A. That’s why I cited the example from Pakistan.
The opposition Christians like Wilberforce showed towards slavery was derived directly from The New Testament.
I can remember confronting members of an anti-war group over 35 years ago at uni. They claimed that if slavery had been abolished, then war could be abolished as well.
When I informed them that slavery was still alive and kicking in certain cultures, it drew a blank.
They seemed of the opinion that if slavery no longer existed in Alabama, then it no longer existed anywhere else.
There’s no Dear Muslimah to any of this. In Western nations abuses of workers are still prevalent…and perhaps even getting worse, but de-jure slavery is gone. That doesn’t excuse the abuse, but we’re talking about two different things. Abused workers in Canada can avail themselves of many labour laws, and indeed they have with great success. No such laws exist in S.A. And there’s no scriptural basis in Islam, no tiny embers even, from which we could coax a bonfire of such laws
The post is about Islam and Saudi Arabia. SA is peculiarly horrible, and it’s a valued ally of the US and the UK as well as other liberal democracies. It’s a god damn outrage.
I wrote my column for the next Free Inquiry on this subject.
Well, it’s a dirty job but it needs doing.
;-)
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