Plan B Forum

A senior Muslim cleric has been condemned by police and other Muslim leaders for claiming that there is no such thing as rape within marriage.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, sparked outrage when he said he believed that men who rape their wives should not be prosecuted because 'sex is part of marriage'.

He further claimed, during an interview with the blog The Samosa, that many married women who made accusations of rape were lying. His comments have caused fury among senior police officers, who already face great difficulties in getting women to report rape - a crime that all too often goes under-reported.

In the interview, Sheikh Sayeed said: 'Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage.

'Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity... Because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage. 'Of course, if it happened without her desire, that is no good, that is not desirable.'

Sheikh Sayeed also said that women who claim to have been raped by their husbands should not immediately go to the police, saying: 'Not in the beginning, unless we establish that it really happened. 'Because in most of the cases, wives... have been advised by their solicitors that one of the four reasons for which a wife can get a divorce is rape, so they are encouraged to say things like this.'

British law was changed to make rape within marriage illegal in 1991.

The senior cleric further claimed, during an interview with the blog The Samosa, that many married women who made accusations of rape were lying. When asked how Muslim men who are found to have raped their wives should be punished, he replied: 'He may be disciplined, and he may be made to ask forgiveness. That should be enough.'

Dave Whatton, Chief Constable of Cheshire and spokesman on rape for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: 'We know that the majority of rapes do not take place through strangers attacking women late at night but between acquaintances and within marriages and partnerships. 'It is a fundamental principle that sharia law should not replace the laws of the UK.

'Putting out views that rape can be dealt with in another way fundamentally undermines everything we are trying to do.'
Inayat Bunglawala, the chairman of Muslims4UK, supported the police position and said: 'Sheikh Sayeed's comments are woefully misguided and entirely inappropriate.

'Rape – whether within marriage or outside it – is an abominable act and is clearly against the law."



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z12TDTSpmX

British law was changed to make rape within marriage illegal in 1991.

Until 1976, marital rape was legal in every state in the United States. Although marital rape is now a crime in all 50 states in the U.S., some states still don't consider it as serious as other forms of rape. The only states that have laws that make no distinction between marital rape and stranger rape are Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. These states have no marital rape exemptions.

Andrew D wrote:
If that is a rational way of doing justice, I need to move to another planet.

Or maybe I am just visiting ....

Andrew D wrote:If we actually took the presumption of innocence seriously, the result of that, no matter the sex(es) of the accuser and the accused, would always be acquittal.

Instead, we throw our collective hands up in the air and leave it to the jury to decide who is the best storyteller. If that is a rational way of doing justice, I need to move to another planet.

Is there a reason why a sexually promiscous woman is more likely to lie when she cries rape

Scooter wrote:The message we would be sending, then, is that rapists can rape with impunity so long as they don't leave behind any physical evidence, or at least that which cannot be explained away.

Scooter wrote:Except that the he saids and the she saids are not necessarily equally plausible. Someone accused of rape would have an obvious reason to be lying about whether the sexual intercourse that occurred was rape. If there is a reasonable explanation proffered as to why the complainant could be lying, then sure, the jury should acquit. But if he/she has no conceivable reason to lie, and he/she is not crazy or some sort of attention hound, then why would he/she put herself through that ordeal?

Scooter wrote:So how would revealing her sexual history hurt her in that case?