More Feminist Perspectives on Afghanistan "Rape Law"

by: Heather

I noticed the “Afghanistan rape law” picking up a lot of press here in the U.S. Feminist blogs like Feministing are speaking out on it, and here at Phem, Teri covered it wonderfully in her April 8 post, below. On CNN.com, the law is publicized as a law that would legitimate the rape of a wife. But 437 words into the 895-word article, the piece digresses into a long history of the sensationalized burqa and personal story of the humiliation of wearing it; no similar personal stories associated with marital rape are given.

At Think Progress, the law is more specifically explains “‘As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night,’ Article 132 of the law says. ‘Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.’” In the transcript of a question directed to Obama, the president replies: “[W]e think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture, but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle.”

On Feministing, blogger “idiolect” impresses on us that marital rape is NOT only an Afghan problem, asking, “are we so smugly confident that our own country is "civilized" enough that marital rape is something shocking and foreign?” In fact, s/he writes, “Until 1976, marital rape was legal in every state in the United States. Although marital rape is now a crime in all 50 states in the U.S., some states still don't consider it as serious as other forms of rape.”

Another perspective comes from The Independent, an opinion that I find the most interesting. In the article, Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan-Canadian journalist and film-maker, shoots back against the way the media treats the story in a way similar to Feministing. The article describes the passage of legislature and government mandates are a distant idea to victims of domestic and sexual violence in Afghan homes isolated from the courtroom physically, culturally, and even economically. When asked for her opinion, Pazira points to Western hysteria about sharia and Islam rather than the language of the law itself. She explains:

Even in its conservative interpretation, Islam recognises women's rights to land ownership. It insists on the "consent" of both sexes when entering a marriage contract or sexual relations. What is branded as "sharia" for Shias in the legislature is basically giving Afghan men the right to control their wives, which is already practised widely.

While Hamid Karzai's government may call for the review of the law the attitude of Afghan men won't change with the re-wording of a legal document through external pressures, especially from the West.

I am intrigued by Pazira’s take, but I am not in total agreement. She states that “there hasn't been a single protest in the West about these crimes which are affecting the lives of women every day – not a single expression of support for these victims who, of course, don't make it into the headlines; because we are too busy looking for ‘local outrage’ in order to condemn the Afghan government.” This kind of rhetoric trivializes the efforts and empathy that come from humanitarians and feminists who genuinely want to make a difference. Again, even Pazira is dubious about the results Western pressure could have on the Afghan law-making process, anyway.

I think that the tone of “idiolect” and Pazira (Pazira asks Western feminists to “spare me the hysteria”) in their opinion pieces tells Western feminists, “Hold on—you are being self-righteous and ethnocentric. You aren’t fooling anybody! Find your own cross to take up!” Feminists like Teri are busy looking for ways of positive action, but others would rather harp on the negative rhetorical situation; especially CNN, who returns (again, like so many) to oversimplified visual representations of Afghan women that cry “barbarian.”

This is so interesting in terms of where we as feminists feel we can go with our voices. Who can we speak for? Who can/not speak for themselves? What kind of speech is acceptable? Welcomed? Off-limits? Whose voices are perceived as interchangeable (in Pazira's case, the voice of American media and American feminists)? Is Pazira standing in for all Afghan women? Does she lose any of her credibility as a spokesperson for Afghan women, as an expatriate?