Sexual Violence

"In 1993 the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights (replaced in 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council) declared systematic rape and military sexual slavery to be crimes against humanity punishable as violations of women’s human rights. In 1995 the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women specified that rape by armed groups during wartime is a war crime. The jurisdiction of the international tribunals established to prosecute crimes committed in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda both included rape, making these tribunals among the first international bodies to prosecute sexual violence as a war crime. In a landmark case in 1998, the Rwandan tribunal ruled that “rape and sexual violence constitute genocide.” The International Criminal Court, established in 1998, subsequently was granted jurisdiction over a range of women’s issues, including rape and forced pregnancy. In a resolution adopted in 2008 the UN Security Council affirmed that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.”"

"The baby is a gift, given by life itself. But to be a gift a thing must be freely given and freely received. A gift can also be rejected. A gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift, but a symptom of tyranny."

"Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;"

"Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen. Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution. Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy contravenes enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and protection of bodily autonomy, as well as the 14th Amendment’s defense of privacy and freedom. This Supreme Court demonstrates a selective and opportunistic interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black women’s bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction. The horrors inflicted on Black women during slavery, especially sexual violations and forced pregnancies, have been all but wiped from cultural and legal memory. Ultimately, this failure disserves all women."

"I am heartbroken that we may now be destined to learn the painful lessons of the time before Roe was made law of the land — a time when women risked losing their lives getting illegal abortions. A time when the government denied women control over their reproductive functions, forced them to move forward with pregnancies they didn’t want, and then abandoned them once their babies were born."

"Laws that prevent people from making their own decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion amount to forced pregnancy. Outright abortion bans aren’t the only way to force a pregnancy — even when Roe v. Wade was still technically intact, laws pushed abortion out of reach across the country. Long-term consequences include: * Long-lasting health consequences as well as life-threatening complications like eclampsia (which can lead to seizures or comas) and postpartum hemorrhage * Increased levels of poverty for people turned away from the abortion care they need and an inability to cover basic needs like food, housing, and transportation * Ongoing contact with and violence from an abusive partner Policies that force people to remain pregnant and give birth are unconscionable, cruel, and dangerous. Lives and futures are at stake."

"Extra judicial killings cannot be accepted in a country of law."

"The action taken by Hyderabad Police is praiseworthy. In Uttar Pradesh rape is happening every day, be it young girls or aged women, nobody is being spared."

"So the predators have become the prey! Now this is called true poetic justice!"

"It is not allowed thee to take (other) women henceforth, nor that thou shouldst change them for other wives even though their beauty pleased thee, save those whom thy right hand possesseth. And Allah is ever Watcher over all things."

"Who abstain from sex, And who guard their modesty, And who guard their private parts, Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess,—for (in their case) they are free from blame."

"And those who preserve their chastity. Save with their wives and those whom their right hands possess, for thus they are not blameworthy;"

"The object, in the purchase of a female slave, is cohabitation and generation of children."

"If Zoroastrian and idolatrous women are taken prisoner, they are coerced into Islam; if they embrace it, sexual relations with them are permissible and they can (also) be used as maidservants. If they do not embrace Islam, they are used as maidservants but not for sexual relations."

"O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee; and daughters of thy paternal uncles and aunts, and daughters of thy maternal uncles and aunts, who migrated (from Makka) with thee; and any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her;—this only for thee, and not for the Believers (at large); We know what We have appointed for them as to their wives and the captives whom their right hands possess;—in order that there should be no difficulty for thee. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."

"A man may gratify his passion with his female slave in whatever way he pleases. It is lawful for a man to perform the act of Azil (i.e. coitus interruptus) with his female slave without her consent, whereas he cannot lawfully do so by his wife unless with her permission. The reason of this is that the Prophet has forbidden the act of Azil with a free woman without her consent but has permitted it to a master in the case of his female slave."

"If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice."

"Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess: Thus hath Allah ordained (Prohibitions) against you: Except for these, all others are lawful, provided ye seek (them in marriage) with gifts from your property,—desiring chastity, not lust, seeing that ye derive benefit from them, give them their dowers (at least) as prescribed; but if, after a dower is prescribed, agree Mutually (to vary it), there is no blame on you, and Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.""

"Besides, carnal connexion is the right of a free woman for the gratifying of her passion, and the propagation of children (whence it is that a wife is at liberty to reject a husband who is an eunuch or impotent); whereas a slave possesses no such right.—A man, therefore, is not at liberty to injure the right of his wife, whereas a master is absolute with respect to his slave. If, also, a man should marry the female slave of another, he must not perform the act of Azil with her without the consent of her master."

"They (i.e., the Prophet’s companions) did not make sexual relations with Arab captives contingent on their conversion; rather they had sexual relations with them after one menstrual period. God allowed them to do this and did not make it conditional on conversion."

"The master could sell her or give her away as a gift. The concubine could not own property, because her master owned everything, although she could carry out a trade or business by herself. Levy described the concubine saying "She has no more right than other chattels".... Therefore, it can be said that the destiny of a captive woman depended on two points: a. if her tribe was able to pay the ransom b. if she was married to her captor. Sometimes neither of these events might occur and therefore the woman suffered and was humiliated because her captor or the one who bought her, had control of both her body and her life."

"Most Muslims today either are not aware, or do not like to emphasize, the theoretical presumptions embedded in the Islamic jurisprudence of marriage law because they are quite far from contemporary sensibilities. Established Islamic marriage contract law uses the contract of sale as its basic conceptual framework—a model which leads to some uncomfortable conclusions about what is being sold and the role of women’s agency in that sale."

"Islam made it lawful for a master to have a number of slave-women captured in wars and enjoined that he alone may have sexual relations with them ... Europe abhors this law but at the same gladly allows that most odious form of animalism according to which a man may have illicit relations with any girl coming across him on his way to gratify his animal passions."

"The Muhammadan religion appears to give almost unlimited license to concubinage, provided the woman be a slave and not a free Muslim woman."

"Established Islamic jurisprudence therefore often describes marriage as a type of sale, with the item being purchased being a wife’s sexual organs. There are qualitative differences between the rights of a wife and a female slave, of course, and the jurists do carefully lay these out, but nevertheless, the concept of male ownership of women’s sexual parts becomes an important part of the traditional juristic understanding of what makes sex licit in Islam."

"A man’s intercourse with a female slave might constitute zina only if she belongs to someone else."

"They agreed unanimously that an enslaved female’s consent was never required for a marriage contracted by her owner. Al Shafii (d. 820) is typical: “He may marry off his female slave without her permission whether she is a virgin or non-virgin.”"

"Given that the vast majority of contemporary Muslims reject slavery, many have chosen to ignore the issue. Rather than reiterate the classical religious permission for slavery and slave concubinage, even to oppose it, they seem to believe that a moderate or progressive agenda is better served by emphasizing the contemporary agreement that slavery, and especially concubinage, is forbidden as completely outside the bounds of Muslim sexual morality. Although a few authors deny the validity of slave concubinage outright, asserting that “those jurists of Islamic law who laid down the rule that a master may have [a] sexual relationship with his female slave without marriage are totally mistaken,” most simply ignore what prevailed as the consensus for over a millennium."

"There is nothing wrong in a man having sexual relations with his Zoroastrian slave-girl."

"When directly confronted, in a polemical context, with historical and textual permission for the sexual use of unfree women, Muslim authors sometimes respond defensively, seeking to protect Islam’s reputation. It may be argued, for instance, that Islamic “slavery” bore no resemblance to harsh American chattel slavery. In this view, the Qur’anic permission for men to have sex with “what their right hands possess” was merely a way of integrating war captives into society. Sometimes, it is added that the captives would be “integrated” into the Muslim community through becoming the property of a specific man who would be responsible for them and their offspring. Whatever merit these arguments have in the context of inter-communal polemics and apologetics, however, they are insufficient for internal Muslim reflection. In particular, the notion that women would be integrated into society by bearing offspring to their owners or captors does not apply to the case of the Bani Mustaliq: the rationale for the captors to practice withdrawal, according to other accounts, is that they did not want to impregnate the women lest they spoil their chances to ransom them."

"'Tis true, our law forbids to wed a Christian; But it forbids you not to ravish her. You have a conqueror's right upon your slave; And then the more despite you do a Christian, You serve the prophet more, who loathes that sect."

"It was unnecessary to invite infidels in the abode of war to embrace Islam before seizing their persons, because they were ‘something which is the property of no particular person and may by law become the property of a Mooslim. ... They are classed with inanimate things ... thus liable to be reduced to state of property, like things which were originally common by nature’. For a raider, this entailed that ‘such of the inhabitants, as have fallen into his hands, are at his absolute disposal, and may be lawfully reduced to slavery’ ."

"The pope has been up against an intransigent church bureaucracy. Vatican officials have proved unwilling to cooperate with the commission; nor has it been furnished with enough resources. But above all, there has been cultural resistance within the church over abuse. The clerical caste is one shaped by obedience and a deep fear of sullying the reputation of the church. The relationship of bishop and priest is a paternal one; if the priest errs, the bishop may focus on forgiveness of the miscreant rather than punishment of an abuser, while his greatest focus is on avoiding publicity. But the church is now reaping what it sowed: like long-festering sores, the suppressed scandals are erupting everywhere."

"Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels went through all the standard Nazi gestures. He pointed, shook his fist, stretched his thin lips in a grim grin. He hurled his fiery oratory against the Swastika-festooned walls of Berlin's Deutschland Hall, and 20,000 loyal Nazis egged him on. Through Goebbels, the Reich last week pointed, grinned, and shook its fist at the Roman Catholic Church. The little Minister of Propaganda had taken the job of replying to the latest Catholic attack on Hitlerism — by George Cardinal Mundelein, Archbishop of Chicago (reported in News-Week, May 29). But Goebbels went beyond that issue to a defiant defense of the arrests of thousands of German priests and monks for so-called immorality and perversion. The Vatican received the most violent tongue-lashing ever uttered by a Nazi official: "Mundelein ... in the course of a public speech in which he insulted the Fuehrer . . . and referred to me as the crooked German Minister of Propaganda, said that these trials were staged only to harm the persecuted Catholic Church ... I speak in the name of thousands of German parents who think with fear and disgust that their own innocent children might some time be morally and physically corrupted in this way by unscrupulous seducers . . . This sex plague must and will be ruthlessly extirpated.""

"There is a recent photo of Pope Francis doing the rounds on social media that shows him walking alone, without security people or a private secretary, across a Vatican courtyard. In the early days of his pontificate, it would have been seen as Francis breaking through the stuffy conventions of the Vatican: being his own man. Five years on, it is instead viewed as symbolic of Francis’s loneliness. Here is a man struggling to find allies or support from the Catholic faithful in his stalled efforts to reform the church and failing attempts to tackle the abuse crisis."

"There must be some leeway; the church operates across the world, including in totalitarian states where a fair criminal trial is unlikely for the accused. But some standards regarding inquiries and treatment of victims must surely be possible, as well as clear guidance on assessment of recruits to the priesthood. And the exit door for bishops needs to change. ... We Catholics deserve this. Especially the children the church failed to protect."

"The special interest of Muslims in sex slavery was universal and widespread."

"In this background, it would be an unremitting task both in volume and repetition to give all anecdotes, facts and figures of enslavement and concubinage of captive women in the central and provincial kingdoms and independent Muslim states found mentioned in the chronicles. This would only lead to repetition resulting in the book becoming bulky."

"Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them."

"“The object, in the purchase of a female slave, is cohabitation and generation of children.”"

"Islam made it lawful for a master to have a number of slave-women captured in wars and enjoined that he alone may have sexual relations with them ... Europe abhors this law but at the same gladly allows that most odious form of animalism according to which a man may have illicit relations with any girl coming across him on his way to gratify his animal passions.["

"Often the other side of the coin of intolerance is insecurity. Insecure people tend to be intolerant, and their intolerance unleashes forces that threaten the security of others. And where there is no security there can be no lasting peace. In its "Human Development Report" for last year the UNDP noted that human security "is not a concern with weapons -- it is a concern with human life and dignity." The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations. The people of my country want the two freedoms that spell security: freedom from want and freedom from fear. It is want that has driven so many of our young girls across our borders to a life of sexual slavery where they are subject to constant humiliation and ill-treatment. It is fear of persecution for their political beliefs that has made so many of our people feel that even in their own homes they cannot live in dignity and security."

"It was predicted that communal violence would increase a hundredfold if the BJP were allowed to come to power. In reality, the BJP term in power has been the most peaceful year since decades. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, Islamic killings of Hindus have markedly decreased. That terrorists killed twenty Hindus in Jammu (an incident that went strictly unreported in the Western media) on the eve of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s peace mission to Pakistan is first of all the responsibility of the killers themselves, even if not preventing this massacre was secondarily also a failure of the security forces. Note that most of the victims of the remaining communal violence were Hindus -- hardly the doing of the Hindu nationalist government. The Christian missionary lobby had aptly sensed the frustration of the India-watchers at seeing the “unexpected” success of the BJP in maintaining communal peace, hence its initiative to launch an international slander campaign alleging BJP atrocities against the Christians. More than ever, they could count on the foreign experts to amplify their propaganda. The world media consumer was told about the rape of four nuns and about the killing of a Christian girl and her little brother “by Hindu fundamentalists”; but not about the subsequent finding that the culprits had in fact been Christians. [..] In their desperation, the secularists tried to make the most of a few incidents in tribal areas with a history of Hindu-Christian friction. An eager international press guzzled down the stories, which passed into the received wisdom and the US Congressional Record. They have firmly remained there, even after allegations of a Hindutva hand in the matter (as in the Jhabua rape case, an inter-Christian crime) had been proven false in the court of law."

"In the worldwide perception of Hindu nationalism, the association with raping nuns and bombing churches has stuck."

"Once a certain calumny is spread, it remains effective till your dying day and beyond... Thus, the rape of four nuns in Jhabua kept figuring in 1999 Christian lists of "Hindu atrocities on Christians" even when a largely Christian gang of local tribals pleaded guilty... Yet the calumny continued to spread, even in supposedly neutral sources."

"These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh."

"In 1999, they tried to make the most of a spate of incidents between Christians and non-Christian tribals in which a few Christians got killed (mercifully far fewer than the periodic harvest of martyrs in Pakistan). They falsely blamed Hindu activists for some inter-Christian rape cases and for a series of bomb attacks against churches, which turned out to be the handiwork of a Pakistan-based Muslim group, Deendar Anjuman. Before ill-informed but consequential international audiences such as the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, they managed to uphold their original story, but in India the campaign to blame Hindu activists for everything had badly lost its credibility."

"Distortive or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism. There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation. No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindus. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish. And foreign correspondents used to trusting their Indian secularist sources have likewise developed a habit of swallowing and relaying highly distorted news stories. Usually, the creation of a false impression of the Indian communal situation is achieved without outright lies, relying rather on the silent treatment for inconvenient facts and a screaming overemphasis on convenient ones. (...) So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindus. Even if you are found out, most of the public will never hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences.(...) These days, noisy secularists lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in Jhabua, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh and more recently in the court verdict on the matter. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician's two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter, who came forward to clarify that she happened to be in the US at the time of the “facts”. Harsh Mander has already been condemned by the Press Council of India for spreading false rumours about alleged Hindu atrocities in his famous column Hindustan Hamara. Teesta Setalwad has reportedly pressured eyewitnesses to give the desired incriminating testimony against Hindus in the Gujarat riots."

""Nuns have been raped", according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which blamed "Hindu nationalism" in a report presented nearly a year after the Jhabua incident, when the truth was already well-known."

"A climate has been created in which every allegation against Hindu activists enjoys a priori credibility while every complaint of Hindu victims is shrugged off or even maligned as hate propaganda... A similar case is the rape of four nuns in Jhabua, also in 1998: in spite of Christian allegations, it turned out that Hindu militancy had nothing to do with the crime and that half of the gang of perpetrators were tribal Christians themselves, yet this "rape of nuns by Hindu fanatics" keeps reappearing in press stories about "Hindu atrocities on Christians"."