Kevin Rudd condemns Muslim cleric for ‘beat your wife’ advice - Times Online
Anne Barrowclough in Sydney
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called on a Muslim cleric to apologise for comments in which he condoned marital rape and advised men to ’shape up’ their wives by beating them.
In a lecture on marriage, Samir Abu Hamza told his male audience that they were allowed to force their wives into sex and hit them if they were disobedient, as long as they didn’t draw blood.
Mr Hamza, a self styled cleric with no formal training in Islam also ridiculed the law that prohibits rape within marriage.
“Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?” he asked.
His comments were made during a lecture in Sydney in 2003 but emerged today after they appeared in a video posted on the internet. In his lecture, entitled “The Keys to a Successful Marriage”, Mr Samir argued that Islamic law allowed men to use force to punish a disobedient wife, as long as they did not cause bruising or bleeding.
He added that if a husband demanded sex, his wife must respond immediately, even if she was in the middle of chores.
“If the husband was to ask her for a sexual relationship and she is preparing the bread on the stove she must leave it and come and respond to her husband,” he says in the sermon.
“In this country if the husband wants to sleep with his wife and she does not want to and she hasn’t got a sickness or whatever, there is nothing wrong with her she just does not feel like it, and he ends up sleeping with her by force . . . it is known to be as rape,” he adds. “Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?”
Telling his listeners that Islam allows them to hit their wives, he says: “After you have advised them for a long, long time, then you smack them, you beat them and - please brothers, calm down - the beating that the Muhammad showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth.
“You are not allowed to bruise them; you are not allowed to make them bleed. You don’t go and grab a broomstick and say that is what Allah has said.”
He adds: “This is just to shape them up, shape up women - that is about it.”
Mr Rudd condemned Mr Hamza’s comments today, saying violence against women was permissible “under no circumstances.”
“Australia will not tolerate these sort of remarks,” the Prime Minister told reporters. “They don’t belong in modern Australia, and he should stand up, repudiate them, and apologize.”
His call for an apology was echoed by Muslim leaders in Australia, who expressed their concern that impressionable young male Moslems would watch Mr Hamza’s video and be influenced by it.
Sherene Hassan, the vice president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, told The Times; “I am surprised he has not already appologised. He should repudiate those comments. The ICV unequivocally denounces violence against women and the moslems I have spoken to are mortified by what he has said.”
However, she said that research showed some imams in Australia shared Mr Hamza’s views. “That is the message some imams are giving in their sermons,” she said, adding that the council was holding workshops aimed at changing those views. “What is of most concern now is how many young male Moslems are watching that video and are learning from it?” she said.
Tasneem Chopra, the chairperson of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria said she was disappointed but not surprised by the comments. “Violence within our community is an issue, ” she said. “Most imams here believe that violence is not acceptable but it’s not always a narrative that comes through in their sermons. We are now engaging in dialogue with community leaders to dismantle the issue. It is a mindset that we have to change.”
Mr Hamza, who works with troubled Moslem youths at the Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia in Melbourne, could not be contacted for comment on his lecture. But he told the Herald Sun newspaper that he stood by his comments.
He said if a Muslim wife disobeyed her husband, she could be subjected to moderate physical punishment.
Mr Hamza also reiterated his belief that women should submit to sex when husbands required it and added that both women and men should be able to demand and receive sex.
There are only around 400,000 Muslims living in Australia, making up just 2 percent of the population, but tensions between them and the wider Australian community have occasionally exploded into violence.
In 2005 what started as an argument over bikini clad girls between Moslem and local youths in Cronulla, an ocean suburb in Sydney escalated into days of riots. In 2006 Australia’s former mufti, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, created a furore which split the Islamic community when he compared women who do not wear head scarves to “uncovered meat” and said immodestly dressed women invited rape.
However Riaz Hassan, professor of sociology at Flinders Univesity in Adelaide and the author of the book ‘Inside Moslem Minds’ was optimistic that Mr Hamza’s comments would not ignite tensions within the community.
“My view is that the community at large is too intelligent to take these comments as anything other than a regrettable statement,” he told The Times.
Tensions between the communities were more to do with social divisions than religious differences, he said. While there was a higher proportion of university graduates among the Moslem community than the wider Australian population, unemployment among Muslims stood at 26%, twice the national average.
“As long as those differences in equality remain we will have tension,” he said. “but I don’t believe that religion itself is a source of tension.”
Kevin Rudd condemns Muslim cleric for ‘beat your wife’ advice - Times Online