“If she is not sick, and if she does not have another problem, it is the right of a man to ask for sex and she should make herself ready for it.” Thus Afghani Shiite cleric Mohammad Asif Mohseni, a principal drafter of a new law whose Article 132 effectively subjects Shiite women to forcible rape by their husbands–“It is essential for the woman to submit to the man’s sexual desire”–responding Saturday to the outrage of Western leaders (President Obama called the law “abhorrent”) and human rights groups. Mujtahid Mohseni did not understand why, as rural women are illiterate and unable to find work and it therefore falls to men to provide for their families, “[we can’t] at least give the right to a husband to demand sex from his wife after four nights.” But the law’s brutality doesn’t stop with sex. In addition to the notorious Article above, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) takes note of several other repressions of women:
“In Shariah law,” explained the cleric, “it states that a woman cannot go out without the permission of her husband.” Adds the AP: “He argued that the law is permissive because it allows a woman to go out for a medical emergency or other urgent reason without asking.” So, to end on a somewhat syllogistic note, in Mohseni-land, Sharia prohibits a woman from going out without her husband’s permission, unless she has a medical emergency or some other urgent reason; but in Mohseni-land, Sharia encourages a husband to rape his wife, thus producing a medical emergency; therefore, if a woman is raped by her husband, can she go out without his permission to seek medical care?
