Can't We Move Past the Hate?

Morocco appears ready and poised to appeal a provision of one of its most controversial laws in the penal code: Article 475. The law infamously dictates that rapists who attack minors may actually avoid a prison sentence (and any punishment at all, really) if they marry their victims.

If you can believe it--- the following laws (in the 21st century!) are still on the books:

1.  Article 308, Jordan:  This provision of Jordan’s penal code similarly allows rapists to avoid all penalty for their crimes if they marry the women and girls they violate.

2. "Illicit sex,” United Arab Emirates:  Not just a nasty phrase, “illicit sex” is actually a crime in the UAE. In one instance, Marte Deborah Dalelv, a Norwegian woman working in Dubai, reported rape only to find herself on the other end of the justice system: incarcerated for adultery.

3.  No written laws, Saudi Arabia: Under observation of Saudi Arabia’s sharia law, rape is punishable by death (although there is no prohibition against spousal rape, which has no legal definition). However, no written laws that specifically criminalize rape exist, making it very difficult to gain a uniform understanding of Saudi Arabia’s legal redress for victims of these heinous crimes.

4.  Rape as assault, Egypt: Although Egypt repealed Article 291 — its own version of a rape-marriage law — in 1999, the country has found itself increasingly confronting cases of sexual assault since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.  According to a United Nations study, 96.5 percent of Egyptian women have been subject to sexual harassment in the form of touching or worse.

5.  Article 132, Afghanistan:  This 2009 provision, signed into law by President Hamid Karzai, legalizes spousal rape by stating that a husband “has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night,” provided that the wife isn’t ill