Pax Europa at OSCE Meeting in Vienna – November 2009: “Gender Equality and The Threat From Religious Law”

By • on November 7, 2009

Counter-Jihad-Bloc-Feature

Buergerbewegung Pax Europa

In cooperation with and endorsed by

International Civil Liberties Alliance, Mission Europa, Wiener Akademikerbund

Intervention and Recommendation

Session 3

 “Gender Equality and The Threat From Religious Law”

One issue that has been left out until now, it seems to me, is violence against women that is backed by principles of the Muslim faith. I do not have to tell you about the honor killings in Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, among other countries; as well as forced marriages, in addition to the Koranic verse 4:34, which says – and I quote -:

You have rights over your wives and they have rights over you. You have the right that they should not defile your bed and that they should not behave with open unseemliness. If they do, God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to beat them but not with severity. If they refrain from these things, they have the right to their food and clothing with kindness. Lay injunctions on women kindly, for they are prisoners with you having no control of their own persons. (Guillaume’s translation, p. 651) (Ibn Ishaq)

Why are not discussing this issue here and at other occasions in a depth that does justice to this problem.

I therefore recommend that ODIHR urgently start a working group on violence against women in Islam in order to find out how to best approach this in the context of the OSCE human dimension.

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