Here’s another very interesting snippet from Jonathan A.C. Brown’s Slavery & Islam. It’s in a passage about the right of rulers,, under Islamic rule, to overrule a strict interpretation of the sharia under specific circumstances. In this instance, it’s the judges’ and the states’ attempt to prevent and punish domestic violence. The passage reads
‘Another was the practice in Marrakesh of judges assigning a social senior guarantor to a husband accused of beating his wife. Normally the couple would be placed under observation by a trusted neighbour or, if the husband were found guilty, he would owe his wife compensation and/;or the marriage would be dissolved. This additional requirement of the guarantor aimed at holding a further threat over the husband’s head: his fear of disgracing his patron if he reoffended.’ (pp.226).
Violence against women has been a major issue since the murder of Sarah Everard and the incel gunman in Cornwall who killed five people, including his own mother and a female toddler and her grandfather. Sadiq Khan has raised right-wing hackles by calling for lessons on misogyny and sexism to be taught in schools. One of the negative images of Islam is that it’s a very masculine, misogynist faith in which women are terrorised by male violence. The Asian funsters of Goodness Gracious Me took the mick out of that stereotype over a decade or so ago in a sketch which showed a very ordinary Muslim father standing in his garden stroking a belt while the voiceover talked about the threat of violence he presented to his daughter. It was obviously meant as a caricature of the stereotype. There are problems in Islam regarding women’s rights, as there are just about everywhere. But it is interesting that the Muslim jurists of that part of Morocco at least were determined to act against domestic violence.
Tags: 'Goodness Gracious Me', Domestic Violence, Islamophobia, Jonathan A.C. Brown, Marrakesh, Misogyny, Murder, racism, Sadiq Khan, Sarah Everard, Sexism, Shootings, Slavery & Islam, Women
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
March 23, 2022 at 1:56 pm |
What has the rape and murder by a police officer got to do with violence in Morocco. If your post is about violence in general then fine, but the headline doesn’t suggest so
March 23, 2022 at 4:36 pm |
Hi Gillyflower – I was just saying that misogyny and violence against women has been a particularly major issue since that murder and the violence in Cornwall, just as a kind of introduction to how Moroccan Muslims tackled domestic violence, another form of violence against women. Nothing deeper than that.