According to a recent Melbourne Age report, the National Centre for Islamic Studies has slammed toleration of spousal rape, domestic violence and polygamy amongst some Melbourne Islamic leaders, according to the Melbourne Age. 

 The clerics were slammed for selective interpretation of sharia law, obstructing police investigation of domestic violence claims within their communities, and performing illegal polygamous marriages to rip off Australian social security benefits. The above concerns were voiced after extensive consultation with Victoria’s Board of Imams.

The report blamed poor English literacy skills, narrow life experience and ignorance of  Australian family and criminal law.  It was a shame that the news coverage didn’t include responses from reformist Muslims for their perspective on the attitudes of these imams.

Violence against women (or same-sex partners) should never be tolerated, period. And let’s not pretend that Muslim conservative religious leaders are the only ones who deny it exists, or facilitate its concealment. Back in the seventies and eighties, it was commonplace to stereotype every one of those dedicated, hard-working  women involved in the women’s refuge movement as “manhating lesbians.”

(Several things occur to me about the above. One, oh, so it isn’t woman-hating to batter your female spouse? Two, if I had to confront the ravages of straight male violence against women on a regular basis, I’d probably hate men somewhat as well. And three, yes, there are equivalent partner-battering scum in LGBT communities, and their behaviour is equally reprehensible and criminal, and I have zero tolerance for that).

These Muslim social conservatives aren’t the only ones who believe this. There are fundamentalist Christians who are just as bad. For example, sickeningly, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards circulated a petition to prevent the repeal of ‘conjugal rights’ back in 1982. Why? Ah, well, then National Attorney-General Jim McLay criminalised spousal rape back then. To put it bluntly, conjugal rights was a euphemism.

Violence against women should be fought wherever it occurs. And no religious leader, or conservative religious pressure groups, have any right to obstruct it.

Recommended:

Barney Zwartz: “Local Imams Accused” Melbourne Age: 21.11.08: www.theage.com.au/national/local-muslim-clerics-accused-20081120-6ctp.html?page=-1