In Sharia court a woman’s testimony is worth half as much as that of a man. Says the Qur’an: “Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember” (2:282).
Islamic legal theorists have restricted the validity of a woman’s testimony even further by limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, “cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales” (“Umdat al-Salik, o24.8).
Otherwise only men can testify. And in cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required. Not just witnesses who can testify that an instance of fornication, adultery, or rape happened: these witnesses must have seen the act itself. This peculiar and destructive stipulation had its genesis in an incident in Muhammad’s life, when his wife, Aisha, was accused of infidelity. The accusation particularly distressed Muhammad, since Aisha was his favorite wife. But in this case as in many others, Allah came to the aid of his Prophet: he revealed Aisha’s innocence and instituted the stipulation of four witnesses for sexual sins: “Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah” (Qur’an 24:13).
Consequently, it is very difficult to convict men of what the Sharia considers to be sexual crimes (zina). As long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they will get off scot-free, because the woman’s testimony is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man, she may end up incriminating herself.
“Bangladeshi single mother caned over paternity row,” from AFP, May 26 (thanks to Religion of Peace):
DHAKA (AFP) “” A 22-year-old unmarried Bangladeshi woman who was caned 39 times for alleging a neighbour was the father of her son is fighting for her life in hospital, police said.
The case has shocked the impoverished Muslim-majority nation, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordering the woman to be shifted from her village home to the capital for proper medical treatment.
Local police chief Moshiur Rahman told AFP that the woman, from Comilla, 70 kilometres (43 miles) east of the capital Dhaka, had angered Islamic clerics when she told friends that a neighbour had fathered her six-year-old son.
They called her and the alleged father to appear before a makeshift Islamic court, but the man denied the paternity claim, Rahman said.
“He held a Koran in one hand and swore to the village clerics that he was not the father of the boy. The village court found him not guilty,” he said.“They also issued a fatwa that the woman should be caned 39 times for lying.”
The woman, seriously injured after the caning, was admitted to a local hospital but was later shifted to the country’s largest hospital in Dhaka on the orders of the Prime Minister, Rahman said.
Two of the clerics have been arrested for repression of women, he said, and DNA testing had been arranged to determine the father of the child.