Egyptian MPs deny "farewell sex" law - but admit 14-year old bride draft law

Last week I quoted an Al Arabiya article that the new Islamist Egyptian parliament was considering a law to allow sex within six hours after a wife dies, as well as a law to allow 14 year old girls to get married.

Al Arabiya was only half-right:

Members of the Egyptian parliament responded to the uproar caused by Egyptian and Arab media reports about a new law that would allow a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours after her death and denied existence of any such draft.

“This is indecent and nonsense. The whole issue is unacceptable. It is even unacceptable to give any statement to media about this issue,” Islamist MP Mamdouh Ismail told Al Arabiya.

The news about passing the so-called ‘Farewell Intercourse’ law by the country’s Islamist-dominated parliament was first reported by Egyptian state-run al-Ahram newspaper and Egyptian ON TV on Tuesday. It was picked up and analyzed by Al Arabiya English a day later, following which international media picked up the story.

The People’s Assembly Secretary General, Samy Mahran, denied to Al Arabiya the existence of such draft law. “I have never heard of anything in this regard,” he said.

Egyptian MP Hisham Ahmed Hanafi told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat on Saturday that “such reports are completely false and aim mainly to deform the image of the Egyptian parliament.”

Egyptian Islamist MP Ashraf Agour of the Construction and Development Party also denied the reports and said that “the issue has never been discussed in the parliament,” according to Asharq al-Awsat.

However, MP Amin Eskandar of al-Karama Party said that “the general atmosphere in the Egyptian parliament is vulnerable to such kinds of rumors.” He did confirm the presence of a draft law for early marriage that would permit girls to get married at the age of 14 instead of 18.

While the "farewell intercourse" law of course got the headlines as it was picked up by the mainstream media the day after, the draft law for allowing 14-year old girls to get married is objectively far more sickening.

After all, the victims of that law are still alive, and it is essentially state-sponsored rape. Too many teenage Muslim girls get pressured into marrying much older men and if this law is passed they have no legal protection against being forced to marry against their will.

Let's hope that the immorality of that draft law does not get lost in the glare of the false reports of the necrophilia law. The lives of thousands of girls depends on it.