Afghanistan's Shiite Personal Status Law Quietly Takes Effect: Starving Wives Is Permitted

Shitte women support the new laws allowing husbands to starve them for lack of sexual accessThe NYTimes headline reads: Afghan Husbands Win Right to Starve Wives. This is true. Via the NYTimes: Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

Bowing to unprecedented protests by hundreds of women on the streets of Kabul and widespread international pressure, the Afghan government promised to review the new law imposing severe restrictions on women in Shiite Muslim families.

The new law went quietly into effect last week, weeks before the Afghanistan elections. Doing an excellent job of flushing out this story, the NYTimes also posted two videos.

In the first, Shiite Muslim women express unhappiness over the international interference in their affairs. Shitte Muslim women endorse the new laws.

Afghan Cleric Defends Controversial Afghanistan Law

In the second video, Sunni women, representing about 80 percent of the Muslims in Afghanistan are protesting the law, fearing that the new restrictions will impact their rights in a proposed new family law for the Sunni majority.

World: Women Protest in Kabul