How Sharia Law Punishes Raped Women

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Here's another treatise of just how horrendous islam is in it's treatment of women, written by a muslim. While Mr. Mahmud's heart is in the right place, he's on a fools errand if he really believes that islam will ever change it's barbaric treatment of women.

FROM FRONTPAGEMAGAZINE.COM:

How Sharia Law Punishes Raped Women
By Hasan Mahmud

FrontPageMagazine.com | 11/17/2008

On October 30, 2008, the United Nations condemned the stoning to death of Aisha Duhulowa, a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped and then sentenced to death by a Sharia court for fornication (Zina). She was screaming and begging for mercy, but when some family members attempted to intervene, shots were fired by the Islamic militia and a baby was killed.

Local Sharia courts in Bangladesh regularly punish raped minor girls and women by flogging and beating them with shoes.[1] Similar cases of punishing raped women are Mina v. the State, Bibi v. the State and Bahadur v. the State.[2] Sharia courts in Pakistan have punished thousands of raped women by long term imprisonment.[3]
You might think that such horrific barbarity cannot be the real Sharia law; that it is a misapplication of the law by ignorant clergy. Sadly, neither is true.

There is a traceable dynamic in Sharia Law that is bound to lead to this barbarity. And unless we abandon these laws we will never be able to emerge from this barbarity. It was a blunder that Muslim jurists included rape in the Hudood section of Sharia Law that deals with murder, bodily harm, apostasy, drinking, defamation, theft, adultery and highway robbery. But anyone who tried to change these laws ended up banging their heads against the wall. Mawdudi, the founding father of modern Political Islam, claims that even if all the world’s Muslims together wanted to make the slightest change in these laws, they would not be allowed to do so.[4]

But change is necessary.

Another key element of these laws is that only eye-witnesses are acceptable and no circumstantial evidence can be accepted.[5] Rape is included in the Dyat (monetary compensation for bodily harm) section of Sharia Law because it is considered as "Bodily Harm” or “Robbing Property" (chastity). This classification led jurists to create these laws:

* A rapist is obliged to pay the victim the amount typically received as marriage payment to similar brides.[6]

* “If the rapist cannot be punished for any reason he will pay the victim the amount equal to bride-money.”[7]

As no other punishment is mentioned, the punishment of rape can be only financial compensation. But Jurists missed the point that rape is a crime of its own kind. It has a devastating psychological and social impact on raped women. They are shamed to death, socially outcast, unsuitable for marriage, bring shame on the family and in some countries become the victims of honor killing. Many raped women commit suicide in Muslim countries.
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