Oy vey, where to begin?
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Egypt anger over virginity faking
A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.Meanwhile, men are getting it on with impunity. Given the double standards and life changing penalties many women face for making the same mistakes as the guys, I'm not sure I'm all that concerned about this, at least so long as this doesn't result in the spread of venereal disease. It takes two to tango, too.
Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.[MORE]
It's not right for people to misrepresent their sexual past to prospective spouses, of course, but neither is having your life ruined for a mistake that is commonplace in your generation, which much of "modern" culture seems designed to encourage and which is undetectable among your male peers.
I also find it very saddening to see a prominent scholar could advocate such a ridiculously draconian measure for an action that does not cause people any physical harm. This would hardly be the only source of vice in Egyptian life.
However one feels about the ethics of this device, such a call makes a mockery of Islamic law. (And, accepting these bizarre premises for a moment for the sake of conversation, what about the fact that a girl can rupture her hymen through a variety of non-sexual activities? Should someone be killed for aiding such a girl in protecting her honor and marital prospects?)
What a damn dolt! Our Prophet ('alayhis salam) confined the hadd to specific rulings - none of which were "deception" or the likes. Fatawa like this make an individual realize the incapacity of some "Scholars" to grasp even the fundaments of the law!
This just shows the reality of our times!
Posted by: Abul Layth | October 04, 2009 at 04:16 PM
What you said!
This reminds me of an interesting North American "fatwa" that Khaled Abou El Fadel analyzed at length in one of his early books. If memory serves, it argued that padded bras were haram because, get this, it deceives men about women. So, by this reasoning, a man other than one's husband has the right know how busty a woman is. Obviously, these were morons, but the fact that it could even be taken seriously in any ostensibly "scholarly" circles says something about the challenges we face in "quality control" among the fuqaha in our confused era.
Posted by: svend | October 04, 2009 at 05:32 PM
There is one possible explanation, one which I do think plays a role in many such cases: Due to the immature attitudes some of us grow up with, otherwise sophisticated minds turn to mush when women's issues arise and especially ones that seem to challenge male prerogatives.
Posted by: svend | October 04, 2009 at 06:02 PM