Outrage

On Saturday last, i noticed the Malay newspapers reporting that our national muftis (clerics?) were deeply upset by Suhakam's recent move to classify unconsentual sex between a husband and a wife as rape.

Reading this report was very disappointing; it seems that the religiously enlightened individuals of our society cannot be trusted to be able to distinguish between a simple matter of right and wrong. The questions they failed to answer correctly was: can a husband rape his wife? Does a wife have the right to deny her husband sex?

I recall hadiths of the Prophet saying that a wife who denies her husband sex when he wants is doing a really bad thing. And while i don't question the validity or the wisdom behind those hadiths, what i do have concerns about is how such a hadith can be used by men to sexually dominate (and even abuse) their wives. And that's simply wrong -- in the extreme, this objectifies women as tools of sexual gratification for men. I refuse to believe that the Prophet, after all the work he has done to protect women, would have meant for his hadith to be used in that manner.

A wife should be able to say "No" to her husband, given proper, non-malicious reasons. If her husband ignores this, then it is rape. And rapists should be punished.

UPDATE: Discovered later that ol' Suresh blogged about this issue too.