More about Islam and women

While I am talking about the Imam Hilali uproar, fierce Islam critic Robert Spencer's Frontpage article about this is worth reading. While most people probably know of the difficulty that rape victims in strict Sharia law countries have in getting the rapist convicted (most rapes not occurring within sight of 4 male witnesses), the extent of the related problem of the complainant being at risk of going to jail for adultery surprised me:

What’s more, in traditional Islamic law rape cannot be established except by the testimony of four male witnesses who saw the act, as stipulated by Qur’an 24:4 and 24:13. Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Unscrupulous men can commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.^[i] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria recently have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.^[ii]