Salafists Demand Legalization of Sex-Slave Marriages

The topic of marriage is a touchy one, especially in regards to the potential institutionalization of same-sex marriage.How many of our civil libertarians will approve of the changes to marriage currently being pushed in Egypt by a group of Islamic radicals known as the Salafists?

Feminists often complain that marriage is an institution that renders women subservient to men; in fact, the more radical of them believe it’s tantamount to slavery. Shockingly, the Salafists not only agree with this diagnosis, but think it‘s shockingly unfair that Egypt won’t allow them to engage in marriages that are explicitly based around sexual slavery. The thing that might surprise many in the west is that these good muslims are demanding legalisation with a sense of urgency; which means it is and has been widely practised.  So here we are: back  in the times of Muhammad.

Related:

• Egyptian imam: “When I want a sex slave, I just go to … – Jihad Watch
• “I hope that Kuwait will enact the law for…sex slaves” - 
• Raymond Ibrahim: Egypt’s First “Sex-Slave” Marriage - 
• Raymond Ibrahim: Egypt’s First “Sex-Slave” Marriage - *

From a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

Egyptian Salafists are demanding the legalization of Islamic “sex-slave” marriages and are calling on Morsi to expel all Shi’ite Muslims and Bahai from Egypt. Prominent Muslim clerics are demanding the destruction of Egypt’s Great Pyramids.[…]

But it’s doubtful that Egyptian Islamists have any genuine interest in moderation or compromise. While the Brotherhood reportedly wants to institute a caliphate in Egypt, it can appear almost moderate when compared to the Salafists.

In March, Salafi leader Wagdy Ghoneim celebrated the death from kidney disease of Pope Shenouda III, the 88-year-old Coptic Christian leader. “We rejoice that he is destroyed. He has perished,” Ghoneim said. “May God have His revenge on him in the fire of hell – he and all who walk his path.”

Now, in the interests of fairness, we have to point out that the Salafists are the people who make the Muslim Brotherhood look good. Yes, such a group exists. Nevertheless, you have to wonder how long it will take before this group manages to stir up mobs against their ideological/religious opponents and start causing civil unrest in the name of allowing them to chain their “wives” up. It certainly would not surprise us, given some of the things we’ve heard from Egypt.

Raymond Ibrahim: Egypt’s First “Sex-Slave” Marriage

Over at Gatestone Institute (via RaymondIbrahim.com), I report on what has been dubbed as Egypt’s “first sex-slave marriage,” which, coincidentally, took place mere days after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi was made president

Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi began the program by airing a video-clip of a man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, “marrying” his “slave.” Before making the woman, who had a non-Egyptian accent, repeat the Koran’s Surat al-Ikhlas after him, instead of saying the customary “I marry myself to you,” the woman said “I enslave myself to you,” and kissed him in front of an applauding audience.Then, even though she was wearing a hijab, her owner-husband declared her forbidden from such trappings, commanding her to be stripped of them, so as “not to break Allah’s laws.” She took her veil and abaya off, revealing, certainly by Muslim standards, a promiscuous red dress (all the other women present were veiled). The man claps for her as the video-clip (which can be viewed here) ends.

The owner-husband, Abd al-Rauf Awn, then appeared on the show, identifying himself as an Islamic scholar and expert at Islamic jurisprudence who studied at Al Azhar. He gave several Islamic explanations to justify his “marriage,” from Islamic prophet Muhammad’s “sunna” or practice of “marrying” enslaved captive women, to Koran 4:3, which commands Muslim men to “Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four… or what your right hands possess.”

For all practical purposes, and to avoid euphemisms, “what your right hands possess”—also known in Arab as a melk al-yamin—is, according to Islamic doctrine and history, simply a sex-slave. Linguistic evidence further suggests that she is seen more as a possession than a human.

Even stripping the sex-slave of her hijab, the way Awn commanded his concubine-wife, has precedent. According to Islamic jurisprudence, whereas the free (Muslim) woman is mandated to be veiled behind a hijab, sex-slaves are mandated only to be covered from the navel to the knees—with everything else exposed. During the program Awn even explained how Caliph Omar, one of the first “righteous caliphs,” used to strip sex-slaves of their garments, whenever he saw them overly dressed in the marketplace…

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