The Egyptian parliament is at present reviewing a proposed modification to Article 242 of Penal Code No. 58 of 1937, stipulating harsher punishment for home abuse and violence. If accepted by the Home of Representatives, an abusive husband could face a jail sentence of as much as 5 years and a minimal of three years as a substitute of the present most one-year sentence.
The modification put ahead by Amal Salama, a member of parliament’s Media Committee, goals to curb the excessive divorce charges within the nation. In accordance with the Central Company for Public Mobilization and Statistics, a complete of 213,000 divorces have been registered in Egypt in 2020, with one divorce case taking place each two minutes. The earlier 12 months witnessed even larger divorce charges, with a complete of 226,000 registered circumstances.
The proposed revision has stirred controversy in Egypt and prompted assaults on Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb by girls’s rights advocates over remarks he made on Egyptian TV in 2019. This, after MBC Masr broadcast an excerpt from Tayeb’s TV look on a Ramadan present three years in the past.
Within the clip, Tayeb says it’s permissible for a husband to hit a disobedient partner “to protect the household.”
“The Quran advocates symbolic beatings as a method of disciplining a disobedient spouse, with out inflicting her hurt or damage,” notes the sheikh. He cautions that “the spanking isn’t with out limits. It’s permissible given that no bones are broken and no organs are harmed.”
Tayeb continues, “The husband ought to neither use his hand nor slap his partner on the face; he shouldn’t trigger bodily or psychological hurt to the lady. Slightly, what is supposed (by the Quranic verses) is a (mild) faucet on the spouse’s physique with a miswak or toothpick.” A miswak is a small teeth-cleaning twig that was used within the days of Prophet Muhammad.
The sheikh was clearly referring to a Quranic verse (Surat al Nisaa) that addresses disobedient or defiant wives: “However these wives from whom you concern vanity, first advise them; then, in the event that they persist, forsake them in mattress. And eventually, strike them. But when they obey you as soon as extra, search no means towards them. Certainly, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.”
Whereas Islam doesn’t promote or encourage violence or coercion towards girls, cultural practices within the patriarchal society sanction oppression and abuse of women to manage and subjugate them.
In accordance with the Nationwide Council for Ladies (NCW), the state physique involved with defending girls’s rights, 86% of wives in Egypt endure spousal abuse. In August, the NCW put the variety of “women at risk of domestic violence” at 8 million yearly. The statistic could also be even larger contemplating that it’s culturally unacceptable for battered wives to report incidents of home violence to the police.
Tayeb has come under fire in latest days over his 2019 feedback on home abuse. In a phone interview broadcast on MBC Masr Feb. 1, Islamic researcher and TV discuss present host Islam Behery lambasted Tayeb. “With all due respect to the sheikh, his opinion doesn’t concern us. Al-Azhar’s function as a non secular establishment is merely consultative in response to the structure, and Egypt is a civil state,” he stated.
Behery, who in 2016 was convicted on the cost of contempt of faith for suggesting that Muslims ought to solely be certain to the textual content of the Quran, continued: “He (the sheikh) is mistaken and his phrases are unconstitutional. There isn’t any such factor as beating your spouse given that you don’t trigger her hurt or damage. “
NCW secretary-general Maya Morsy informed MBC Masr that “husbands do not have the right to beat their spouses underneath any circumstance; we’ve got legal guidelines that criminalize such abuse.” She famous that the Prophet ought to be a task mannequin for Egyptian males as he by no means resorted to violence or abuse in coping with his wives.
“Though the [NCW] has not been consulted on the proposed modification to the legislation, I absolutely support tougher penalties to curb home abuse,” Morsy famous.
In accordance with an announcement released by NCW and printed on Morsy’s Fb web page Feb. 1, “There aren’t any views and counterviews as regards to humiliating or abusing girls; there isn’t any good religion in relation to husbands beating their spouses — gently or in any other case. There aren’t any legal guidelines permitting husbands to self-discipline their spouses. Hitting anybody is against the law punishable by legislation in Egypt. Sharia legislation too is towards such motion. If we’re speaking about an modification to the legislation criminalizing familial abuse, then we want harsher penalties and the legislation have to be enforced. If the battered spouse or complainant chooses to forsake her proper (by disengaging from the case), prison proceedings towards the offender should proceed regardless. Home violence is the first trigger for divorce, which is hovering in our society. As for the feedback by [Tayeb] as regards to husbands disciplining their wives by spanking them … if Egyptian males abuse their wives to self-discipline them, then the sheikh should bear responsibility for the implications. “
Fatemah Khafagy, a gender marketing consultant and former ombudswoman with NCW, warned that “violence has grow to be endemic” in society. “It’s not solely husbands who beat their wives, however dad and mom too beat their youngsters and lecturers beat their college students,” she informed Al-Monitor.
“We’d like a societal debate on the proposed modification to the legislation that features civil society organizations and girls’s rights teams as there are a number of technique of deterring home abuse apart from prosecution and detention,” she stated. Khafagy cited instructing youngsters tolerance at a younger age and getting rid of hate speech within the media as different choices.
Amal Salama, the deputy who proposed the invoice, stated she was pleasantly stunned by the overwhelming assist she obtained from male deputies for the instructed modification. “The primary to signal the draft legislation was a male member of parliament,” she informed Al-Monitor.
“Our purpose is to not imprison males; somewhat, we would like them to assume twice earlier than abusing their wives or resorting to violence,” Salama stated. “Practically half of all divorces are brought on by home abuse; our purpose is to scale back the variety of divorce cases.”
“Statistics on familial abuse offered by the [NCW] are alarming,” stated Salama. “We’re looking for to rid the society of this scourge.”
However Egypt’s conservatives remained unconvinced.
“If Al-Azhar isn’t a legislative physique, then most definitely you’re,” was one indignant tweet directed at Morsy. “If the phrases are to not your liking, you criticize the sheikh; that is God’s Sharia and the sheikh solely did his half, deciphering it.”
“What I do know and what we’ve got learnt is that beating one’s spouse and chastising her is what Allah tells us to do in his Holy E-book; these opposing that is opposing God not Sheikh Tayeb,” learn one other tweet.
In response to the uproar, “The Voice of Al-Azhar,” a publication owned and managed by Sunni Islam’s highest non secular authority, printed on its official Fb web page one other excerpt from Tayeb’s 2019 TV look, clarifying the sheikh’s position on domestic violence and arguing that his phrases had been taken out of context by some media. On this excerpt, the sheikh tells the viewers that “beating anybody is taken into account an insult to the individual and will traumatize and disgrace him/her till the day he/she dies.” He additionally says, “I hope to stay to see the day when beating an Arab Muslim is criminalized and the attacker is punished as a prison.”
Ahmed al-Sawy, editor-in-chief of the publication, defined that Al-Azhar had not been consulted on the draft legislation. He famous that “Al-Azhar isn’t a legislative physique and isn’t accountable for issuing legal guidelines.”
Dar al-Iftaa, the establishment accountable for issuing non secular edicts (fatwas), additionally chimed in: “[Real] males don’t beat girls.” The remark, printed by way of Dar al-Iftaa’s official Twitter account, was maybe meant to ease the tensions over home violence.
It additionally despatched a message that the non secular authority is on the identical web page because the legislative and government authorities. Whereas that will certainly be the case on the problem of home violence, there are different points on which the non secular authority is at loggerheads with the state, and the tensions could resurface at any time.
