This report, characteristically enough, never mentions Islam, and implies that these laws are all particularly Sudanese. Yet every legal provision it mentions is Sharia-based. It sounds from this as if Sudan's rape laws are based on Sharia, which allows for rape and adultery to be established only by the testimony of four male Muslim witnesses who actually saw the act. This is based on Qur'an 4:15 and other passages, along with ahadith about an accusation of adultery against Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha.
By Amber Henshaw for BBC News (thanks to JE):
Sudan must overhaul its legal system to stop mass rape from being committed in the war-torn region of Darfur, an aid agency says in a report.Rape victims have almost no access to justice and even risk being prosecuted for having had sex outside marriage.
Because if they cannot produce four witnesses and they end up giving birth to a child, the pregnancy becomes evidence against them.
Refugees International said government soldiers and affiliated militias were often responsible for the rapes.Khartoum denies that rape has been used as a weapon of war in Darfur and says Sudan already punishes rape harshly....
Refugees International said the government was more likely to take action against those who reported and documented rape than those who committed it.
Its report said the Sudanese rape laws needed to be completely revised to protect women and girls from systemised sexual attacks.
The report said the high incidence of sexual violence in Darfur had been well documented in the past, but existing regulations made it "all but impossible" to prosecute rapists.
It added that women who admitted being raped also risked being prosecuted themselves for having sex outside marriage - an offence punishable by 100 lashes or death by stoning.
That is in accord with Qur'an 24:2, which mandates the hundred lashes, and several ahadith, notably this one, in which Muhammad stones adulterers.
The report made 24 recommendations for change, including the need for more judges to be trained and more female police officers to be recruited.
Yeah, that'll change Sharia law, all right.
The report also urged Sudan to expand its definition of rape to include sexual assault with objects, including rifle barrels.It said courts should also give equal weight to the evidence of both men and women.
Islamic law disallows the victim's evidence in her own rape case. And the Qur'an values a woman's testimony in general as half that of a man (2:282). So the report is asking Sudan to discard the Sharia in this particular. I expect that the derivation of these laws will make Sudanese officials reluctant to heed this report and do away with them.
The complete inability of the Western world to mention the source of Arab behavior in Darfur -- the Arab supremacism that is at the heart of Islam, whereby the "best of people," those to whom the Qur'an was given, and "in their language," to Muhammad, himself an Arab, as were his Companions, and to understand the role of Islam in the behavior of the Sudanese government both in southern Sudan (where 1.8 million Christians and animists died as a result of deliberate policies of starvation, as well as mass-murder, by the Arabs of the north), and in Darfur (where 400,000 black African -- i.e., non-Arab--Muslims, died as a result of mass murder)is quite somethiing.
These "divest for Darfur" or "Rallies for Darfur" or "Let's Save Darfur" events, movements, campaigns, never ever mention what animates the murderers. Islam is never mentioned. But it is the texts of Islam that justified the killings of non-Muslims in the southern Sudan. And it is the attitudes of Islam -- that is the "attitude" by which Arabs are superior to non-Arabs, an "attitude" that explains the complete indifference to, or even secret support by the Arab League and all the Arabs (save for Kanan Makiya), to the Anfal campaign in which 182,000 Kurds were killed, and which explains the complete indifference as well to the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs in Algeria (and Morocco), against the Berbers, and their use of the Berber language, and attempt to preserve Berber customs and ways. Islamization is ordinarily accompanied by such cultural and linguistic imperialism -- an example of which can be found in the Arabic names, and the deep desire to be taken as having an Arabic lineage, by so many in Pakistan, where every third person appears to be a sayyid, or "descendant of the tribe of Muhammad."
Nicholas Kristof, who specializes in heart-on-his-sleeve reports, and who has gotten a lot of mileage, and a Pulitzer as well, out of his supposedly "superb" coverage -- it has been resolutely mediocre, substituting dimestore sentimentalism and cheap anguish for what would be helpful, that is an intelligent apprehension of events, no making sense of them (it's all a mystery to the likes of Nicholas Kristof, simply inexplicable, just one more damn case, apparently, of man's inhumanity to man) and, at best, mere reporting with no sense made of men and events -- of the mass murder in Darfur, has not ever understood the role of Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacism and, indeed, hasn't the faintest idea what Islam is all about.
It's hard to beat Tom Friedman for sheer self-assured vacuity, but with Nicholas Kristof in the race, especially in his reporting on the Sudan of which he is so proud, and for which he has been so lavishly rewarded, one would have to say that they are running neck and neck.
Islam needs overhauling....
I agree with you oh-so-wholeheartedly about those two fools, Kristof & Friedman, Hugh. Their obtuseness gets me every time I (accidently, foolishly) read one of their pieces.
Hugh, I just looked at one of Kristof's columns on the Sudanese genocide, and you're right: the terms "islam" or "moslem" or variants of them do not appear. However, I wonder if this is due to his original report, or to his editors -- it's in the NY Times, after all. Also, most newspapers have what I believe are called "style-books" for their writers, containing forbidden terms, and suggesting acceptable euphemisms. I know nothing about Kristof. Perhaps he really thinks this way. But perhaps his editors deserve more of the blame.
Kristof has no understanding of, and what's worse, has not exhibited a hint of wanting to learn about, Islam, even though the two kinds of massacres in the Sudan cannot be understood, much less explained to others, without that knowledge. And the continued viciousness of his comments on Israel, his evident want of sympathy for their plight and his un-examined acceptance of Arab propaganda, are both relevant and telling.
Very true, Hugh.
I do agree with ebonystone that the NYT has some complicity in this as well. (I'm sure you were just clarifying Kristof's willingness to contribute to the problem.)
Media's hatred and bias determine the 'writers' they employ, and the views exhibited in their works.
I'm just sick of all of them, frankly.
Very true, Hugh.
I do agree with ebonystone that the NYT has some complicity in this as well. (I'm sure you were just clarifying Kristof's willingness to contribute to the problem.)
Media's hatred and bias determine the 'writers' they employ, and the views exhibited in their works.
I'm just sick of all of them, frankly.
Very true, Hugh.
I do agree with ebonystone that the NYT has some complicity in this as well. (I'm sure you were just clarifying Kristof's willingness to contribute to the problem.)
Media's hatred and bias determine the 'writers' they employ, and the views exhibited in their works.
I'm just sick of all of them, frankly.
Probably means they need to include men who will not convert to Islam so that they can rape them too, like the Sodomite Muslims in Pakistan do.