AN AUSTRALIAN Islamic cleric has told his male followers it is permissable that they force their wives to have sex and hit them if they are disobedient.I just love that lecture title, "Keys to a Successful Marriage."
Melbourne's self-styled cleric Samir Abu Hamza said despite Australian rape laws it was impossible for a man to rape his wife even if she refused to have sex with him.
In a recorded lecture entitled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage'', delivered to his male worshippers but now broadcast on the internet and viewed by several thousand people, Hamza said Islamic law allowed men to hit their wives as a last resort but they were not to make them bleed or become bruised.
He said under Islamic law, as described in a Koranic verse, it was a man's right to demand sex from his wife whenever he felt like it.
"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, she must respond,'' Hamza told his male followers on the video sermon.
He then mocked Australia's criminal laws which required consent for sex to be lawful.
"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.
"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?'' Hamza asked.
Despite concerns about his preachings being raised by female members of the Islamic community, Hamza yesterday stood by his comments and blamed controversy caused by them on a hidden zionist agenda run by the media.
Questioned about his teachings, Hamza said a wife was allowed to be hit on the hand or leg, but "of course, not on the head''.
He said if a Muslim wife disobeyed her husband, such as continuing to go out when requested not to, she was able to be subjected to moderate physical punishment.
"It's like sometimes when a person smacks a child, it's like `shape up','' he said yesterday.
Do you think that women who talk about how empowering the hijab is will now defend Hamza?