Though seldom discussed, forced sex with one’s wife might (or, depending on the circumstances, might not) be an ethical infraction, and conceivably even a legal one like assault if physical violence is involved...This scenario is never, however, illicit in the jurists’ conceptual world. Nonconsensual sex—what contemporary Westerners would term rape—might be either a coercive subset of zina, with blame lifted from the coerced participant, or a at type of usurpation (ightisab ), a property crime that by definition cannot be committed by a husband or owner, who possesses an entitlement to, or ownership over, his wife’s or slave’s sexual capacity.
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Here the Shariah historically worked differently from modern laws on marital rape, which originated in the 1970s. But the effect is similar: protection. Within marriage, wrongs regarding sex were not conceived of as violations of consent. They were conceived of as harm inflicted on the wife. And in Islamic history wives could and did go to courts to complain and get judges to order husbands to desist and pay damages. So yes, non-consensual sex is wrong and forbidden in Islam. But the operating element to punish marital rape fell under the concept of harm, not non-consent
The silence of the Hanafis can be explained easily: a wife's sexual refusal is irrelevant if not accompanied by her deartre from the conjugal hime, because the hsband is permitted to have sex with her without her consent. Non-Hanafis do not penalize a husband for forcing sex on his wife, but neither do they explicitly authorize it in the way that al-Khassaf does. For all, marital rape is an oxymoron; rape (ightisab) is a property crime that by definition cannot be committed by a husband.
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The Shariah offered protection to both wives and slave-concubines, but it came not under the rubric of consent but that of harm. By definition, the crime of rape (i.e., forced zina) could not occur within a licit relationship. But transgressive harm could still be done by the man. Wives and concubines could complain to local judges if they were being abused or if his demands for sex were excessive (we will discuss the issue of concubinage and consent in the concluding chapter of this book). The Hanbali scholar Buhūtī (d. 1641) even says that if a master forced a slave woman unable to bear intercourse to have sex and injured her, she would be freed as a result... "According to the Quran, both marriage and ownership (in the case of the female slave and her male master) were relationships in which sex was licit (Quran 23:5-6). Within these relationships, consent for sexual relations was assumed or irrelevant. In marriage the relationship itself entailed ongoing consent for sex, and with a female slave it was not needed (assuming the slave girl was soley owned by one man and not married; in both cases she was off limits). Kecia Ali has observed that there is no evidence for any requirement for consent for sex from slave women in books of Islamic law from the eighth to the tenth centuries"
Hanafi texts extend the ruling on loss of support for physical absence to also uphold its converse:physical presence in the marital home suffices for support...A wife who remained in her husband's home but refused him sexually retained her claim to maintenance. Sexual refusal did not constitute nushuz, because it did not, in this view, make her sexually unavailable as long as she remained physically resent, he could have sexual access to her even aginst her will. Where the wife had legitimate grounds for sexual refusal, the situation was more complex. Abu Hanifa and his disciples disagreed as to what constituted legitimate grounds and, moreover, what the line was between enforceable rules and ethical guidelines. When a wife refused sex in order to claim an unpaid dower, Abu Hanifa supported her actions even after consummation. In this case, he held that "it is not lawful, and he sins [if he forces her]." According to Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani, who did not grant her the right to withhold herself for nonpayment of dower after consumation, the husband's forcing her "is lawful and he does not sin." A variant manuscript reads, "It is lawful and he sns," making a distinction between the legality and morality of the husband's actions...Still, while forcible intercourse might or might not be sinful if the wife had the moral high ground because of unpaid dower, if an unpaid dower was not at issue then the husband's right "to have sex with her against her will" went unquestioned. In this case, they agreed: "It is lawful, because she is a wrongdoer (zalima)." The wife's reproachable behavior justifies the husband's actions. Al-Khassaf, who reports these views, did not even raise the possibility that forced intercourse in these circumstances might be a sin.
Even if he marries off his own slave and no longer has lawful access to her, his having sex with her is a lesser transgression than zina¯. The jurists’ occasional affirmations that a married female slave whose owner nonetheless has sex with her is not to be punished is the closest any of these texts comes to considering the relevance of an enslaved woman’s consent. Notably, the issue emerges only because she is married to another man, a marriage for which jurists uniformly agree that her consent would have been unnecessary
A surprising assertion about consent also appears in a recent monograph by a scholar of Islamic legal history who declares in passing that the Quran forbids nonconsensual relationships between owners and their female slaves, claiming that “the master–slave relationship creates a status through which sexual relations may become licit, provided both parties consent.” She contends that “the sources” treat a master’s nonconsensual sex with his female slave as “tantamount to the crime of zina [illicit sex] and/or rape.” Though I believe in the strongest possible terms that meaningful consent is a prerequisite for ethical sexual relationships, I am at a loss to find this stance mirrored in the premodern Muslim legal tradition, which accepted and regulated slavery, including sex between male masters and their female slaves.
It only covers sexual assaults of women and does not recognise men as possible victims. It is concerned with the absence of consent either because force was used or because the consent was a result of fraud and falsehood. Prosecutors must also deal with the issue of the state of mind of the accused. If there is no mental fault, it is not regarded as rape. Honest belief in consent is enough to free the accused from criminal liability even if that belief might seem unreasonable.
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Perhaps the most horrifying thing about nonconsensual sex is that, in an instant, it erases you. Your own desires, your safety and well-being, your ownership of the body that may very well have been the only thing you ever felt sure you owned — all of it becomes irrelevant, even nonexistent. You don’t need to be a helpless, innocent child to be changed by that.
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