Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed in this and all my blog entries are my own personal views and not representative of Ashoka, ADEW or any organisation with which I am affiliated.
My latest article, Egypt, War on Women: Forced Sex in the Name of Religion (Part 1/2) has been published today in the Fair Observer magazine. Please see the following link or read below. As ever, I welcome your comments and feedback.
http://www.fairobserver.com/article/war-women-forced-sex-name-religion-part-1
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Egypt, War on Women: Forced Sex in the Name of Religion (Part 1/2)
The phenomenon of sex jihad should be taken seriously and demands serious investigation.
Jihad in Islam is the call to fight and go to war and be ready to die for the victory of Islam against the enemy, who is defined as an infidel. The call for Jihad is seen as a higher and, by some Mullahs (Muftis), a spiritual value. To die for your religion is seen as an honor and is defined as martyrdom whereby the martyr is guaranteed heaven and all its privileges, including not being seen as dead but as alive in the kingdom of God and thriving in Paradise.
The concept of dying and sacrificing your life for God is more common in most of the major religions than one might think. However, the problem lies in who is defined as an infidel, by whom, and the reasons behind it. If two Muslim groups go to war against each other, each defining the other as an infidel, we face a dilemma: how can both be right?
The dead from both camps could be considered martyrs. I raise this issue to show that l believe that the concept of Jihad and the definition of the infidel has been abused by warlords across history in all religions, where innocent brainwashed followers have been taken for a ride.
Recently, following the Arab uprisings, Jihad has taken another serious and shocking deviation, allegedly started by a Saudi sheikh urging Sunni Muslim women in Iraq to enter Jihad in support of those at war against the Shiites. It spread like wildfire when the civil war erupted in Syria; but this idea of the Jihad of women has been defined as being gravely and fundamentally different from that of men.
When 16 Tunisian women were shipped to Syria they discovered it was for the purpose of sex slavery. Reports state that they were forced to have intercourse with the members of the Free Syrian Army, the group of religious mujahidin men known to the West as “the rebels.”
Jihad al Nikah: Sex Jihad
According to the fatwa, “Jihad al Nikah” – literally Jihad of Intercourse – fighters against the regime who are either single men or married but without access to their wives can create oral contracts (marriages) with virgins, divorced or widowed women for a short period, for the sole purpose of sexual intercourse.
This period might not exceed an hour, in some cases, and is immediately followed by divorce so that other fighters (from the mujahidin) can have the opportunity of intercourse with the same woman. As such, any one of those 16 Tunisian women could have had intercourse up to 10 times per day. The objective – according to the fatwa – is to encourage the fighters and provide them with their religious and natural right to have intercourse, improving their morale and making them better fighters.
This Jihad al Nikah does not follow Islamic Sharia law, as it denies the women the customary and obligatory three-month wait between marriages lest she is pregnant, denies her the right of choice, denies her the public announcement which gives oral marriages legitimacy within society, and, of course, denies her any legal rights as the marriage is not registered.
It also contradicts the real objective of marriage in Islam and all the Abrahamic religions, which is procreation, meaning the creation of a family.
Whether this fatwa was really issued from a reliable or official source or not, it quickly spread on social media outlets and reports came back from Syria and the two main Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Rabaa Adewaya and Nahda Square in Egypt that it was being welcomed and promoted.
One Facebook page with the name Veiled sisters against secular and unveiled women stated that “a woman can’t fight like a man and her contribution is thus limited to Jihad al Nikah.” Therefore, the directive is that women must help and perform Jihad by serving the needs of the male fighters. They added “this agreement follows the rules of Sharia” and that no more details could be added on the page.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Jihad al-Nikah
A security source in the Egyptian police revealed that two young women who were Muslim Brotherhood members/supporters and who were among those demonstrating in the Rabaa sit-in had filed reports at the Madinat Nasr police station that they had both been raped under the pretense of Jihad al Nikah, stating that they had been forced into having sex and had not given their consent. Both were previously unmarried, aged 26 and 29, and their police report numbers are 1735 and 1736 for the year 2013.
Several weeks later a new Facebook group called Ikhwan (MB) without violence reported that that there had been 76 cases of forced sex in the name of Jihad al Nikah in Rabaa and Nahda, stating that they had monitored and documented all 76 cases in both areas.
This was reported by Hanaa Mohamed, the head of the women’s unit at the new emerging (defecting) group MB without violence, in her live interview on al Arabiya with Mohamed Warawi in his program “Egyptian Incident.”
In another interview on the Egyptian channel Sada al Balad, Ms Hanaa Mohammed confirmed the same story. She stated that Mohamed Badie, the Morshid (Spiritual leader) of the Muslim Brotherhood, had issued a fatwa to the Rabaa and Nahda pro-Morsi Muslim Brotherhood members of the two sit-ins to allow Jihad al Nikah. He allegedly stated that they were in a period of Jihad, which thus allowed them to establish Nikah contracts during the sit-ins.
Hanaa Mohammed stated that this Jihad was not only linked to young Syrian female refugees in Egypt being used as sex slaves, but that it also applied to female members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed finally confirmed that these contracts were not registered, that they specified a duration and time for each contract, and that the Jihad intercourse took place in the tents of the sit-ins.
Stories were also reported that several apartments around the sit-ins were rented by the hour, for 20 Egyptian pounds an hour, to allow for this Jihad. Women were repeatedly used by several men and stories indicate that it was usually without their consent, especially with younger Syrian refugees.
