Afghan President Hamid Karzai has responded to international outrage over his recent signature on the Shi’ite Personal Status Law – which Barack Obama has called “abhorrent,” and is being viewed by some as tantamount to legalized rape.
“We understand the concerns of our allies in the international community. Those concerns may be out of an inappropriate or not so good translation of the law or a misinterpretation of this.”
According to Reuters, the law requires women to “fulfill the sexual desires of her husband,” and mandates that a wife must have sex with her husband at least once every four months.
While parts of the law make definite forward progress from the days of the Sunni Taliban government, it has been widely viewed by the international community as shameful policy with no place in a modern world.
Some have decried Karzai’s signing of the law as a political maneuver to pander to the Shi’ite population in the upcoming August 20 elections.
It’s difficult to comprehend how this law could be misinterpreted or mistranslated. I think this boils down to one of those “our culture is different” cop-outs. The idea is that somehow we, as westerners, can’t understand the complexities of a religiously-motivated law that denies women their freedom.
Far be it from me to declare that some people are “not ready for freedom,” but even democracy can facilitate tyranny when there are not sufficient constitutional protections of individual liberties. Our attempts to export democracy to the Muslim world will continue to fail unless we can first export our recognition of basic human rights.
Obama, in his condemnation of the Afghan law at the NATO summit in France, has said that “while improving conditions in Afghanistan is a commendable goal, people need to remember that the primary reason that U.S. troops are fighting there is to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.” I applaud much of the fresh thinking that Obama’s administration has brought to the Afghanistan-Pakistan problem, but this to me is too reminiscent of Secretary of State Clinton’s recent statements about human rights in China.
Perhaps our priorities have gotten a little out of line since the days when Americans declared, by the pen and the gun, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Maybe if we acted like those rights applied to everyone, not just us, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about terrorist attacks on the United States or financing endless military occupations in foreign countries.
Karzai is flat wrong on this one, and needs to be held to account by the global community. Even if it means losing his upcoming election, he has to step up as a Muslim leader in the 21st century and declare that Afghanistan will not allow such a barbaric law to go on the books.
2 Responses
Actually, the provision of the law stating that sex should be provided every 4 months, is a provision from Husband to Wife. A Man is legally required to have sex with his Wife (as stipulated), under this law, as well.
However, the Wife is… well…
“As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night,” Article 132 of the law says. “Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.”
So… as unbalanced as the law is, the is a small glimmer of hope (maybe) in the fact that it does enforce an obligation to Men.
Posted on April 6th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
and by “the is a small glimmer of hope”…
I meant “THERE is a….”
kthxbai
Posted on April 6th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
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