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After international criticism, Afghanistan “tones down” marriage law that legalized rape

Jul 10, 2009 2:01 am By Marisol Seibold

While the law is still highly problematic (can you imagine your state legislating a wife’s duties?), this case goes to show that where Islamic law or its influence is said to be “moderated,” it is because of one of two things: A competing ideology (e.g., Turkish secularism or Indonesia’s Pancasila) gets in the way of Sharia, or international scrutiny causes sufficient embarrassment to result in backpedaling.

An update on this story. “Afghanistan tones down contentious marriage law,” by Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, July 9:

KABUL — Afghanistan’s government has revised a law that stirred an international outcry because it essentially legalized marital rape, officials said Thursday. The new version no longer requires a woman submit to sex with her husband, only that she do certain housework.

The changes, which parliament is expected to approve, likely reflect a calculation by President Hamid Karzai that his reputation as a reformer is more important than support from conservative Shiites who favored the original bill.

Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said the revisions show that Karzai has followed through on a pledge made in April to expunge the offensive parts of the marriage law, which applies only to minority Shiite Muslims.

Women’s rights activists welcomed the new draft, but many said the government had not done enough and that little will change in day-to-day life.

The United Nations has also been asleep at the wheel.

“We need a change in customs, and this is just on paper. What is being practiced every day, in Kabul even, is worse than the laws,” said Shukria Barakzai, a lawmaker and vocal women’s rights advocate.Karzai signed the original law in March but quickly suspended enforcement after governments around the world condemned the legislation. Critics saw it as a return to Taliban-style oppression of women by a government that was supposed to be promoting democracy and human rights. President Barack Obama labeled the original version “abhorrent.”

Even within this conservative Muslim society, a host of academics and politicians signed a petition condemning the law, and women took to the streets of Kabul in protest.

Karzai said that he had not read the law before signing it and that his Cabinet advisers had signed off on a version that did not include articles requiring a woman to ask her husband’s permission to leave the house. But those articles ended up in the draft he signed, as was a provision ordering wives to offer sex with their spouses at least every four days unless they were ill.

After the firestorm of criticism, Karzai ordered a Justice Ministry review, which took three months.

Two of the most controversial articles have been drastically changed, according to documents supplied by the ministry. An article that previously required a wife to submit to regular sex now requires her only to perform whatever household chores the couple agreed to when they married. The revised version makes no attempt to regulate sexual relations between husband and wife.

A section that required a wife to ask her husband’s permission to leave the house has also been deleted. In its place, an article states that a woman is the “owner of her property and can use her property without the permission of her husband.”…

The latter provision does nothing to contradict the former; rather, it is an attempt to tack on something that could counteract all the bad press about the law thus far. Of course, for many impoverished Afghan women given in arranged marriages at appallingly young ages (following the example of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha), the consideration of personal property is rather moot when one has no means of acquiring it.

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