Afghanistan's "Rape Law"

There is a lot of outrage everywhere in the West these days about the proposed new Shiite marriage law in Afghanistan. Canada, Germany, and New Zealand have all protested. The Toronto Star calls it “Afghanistan's 'rape' law”in headlines--the point being that it allegedly allows men to rape their wives. It also supposedly requires the husband's permission for a wife to work outside the home; though the details of this second provision are unclear from what is available in the news reports. The Huffington Post huffs and puffs: “to imagine that this injustice goes on in today's world is confounding.”

But all the outrage must seem rather odd to Muslims--given that it was a universal principle of common law in all English-speaking countries right up to 1991 that spousal rape was a logical impossibility. As recently as 1997, it was a recognized crime in only 17 countries. Okay, possibly we are right, and were wrong for the past five hundred or ten thousand years—but it does seem a bit hypocritical to so soundly condemn Shiites in Afghanistan for believing the same thing we all did up to twenty-five years ago. And it seems a bit anachronistic to refer to the law, as the Toronto Star does, as “Medieval.”

Though of course the Bible too, just like the Muslim sharia, recognizes a marital obligation to provide sex: see Corinthians 7:3-5. That would, of course, make Christians as guilty of “marital rape” as Muslims in this postmodern age.

More guilty, really. Neither the Bible nor the British common law allow the spouse to refuse sex for three nights running—the Afghan law would.

It is also, of course, wholly impossible to prove rape inside marriage, making it a bit awkward to enforce laws against it. Unenforceable laws do tend to bring the administration of the law into disrepute. Chillingly, though, a web source claims that, in Virginia at least, 88% of spousal rape cases result in conviction. This has to mean that a lot of men are being sent to prison solely on the testimony of their wives—suggesting a certain distinct lack of equal treatment before the law.

There seems to be much less concern over the part of the law that requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. I can't even find a clear statement on the Internet of what this actually entails, in the proposed legislation. The clearest reference I find says "The law also contains stipulations that women can pursue employment, education, or avail of doctor's services only with their husband's permission."

But this actually makes good sense: it is not a matter of discrimination against women, but of balancing rights and duties between the sexes. For it is also true that, in Muslim law, a man has an absolute obligation to support his wife financially. It does seem only fair, accordingly, that he has a say in what she does with her time, when it affects him directly. Indeed, sexual equality argues that we ought to have similar provisions in our own laws: why are women free to chose whether to work inside or outside the home, regardless of their husband's preferences, but men do not have the same freedom to choose? How many men might prefer to stay home every day, and let their wives worry about paying the bills? How many men would prefer, on divorce, to keep the kids and have their wives send them fat cheques every month?

Of course, there is something else about all this that must be puzzling the Afghans. The Westerners came in saying they were spreading democracy. Now they see a law duly passed by Aghanistan's elected parliament and signed into law by its elected president, but which they do not like—and they are demanding it be changed. It seems it is not really democracy that they want at all. You can't blame the Muslims if they throw up their hands and assume it is all just a plot against their traditional culture.

After all, it is.

To the typical Western leftist, they are simply “lesser breeds without the law.”