Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Elder of ZiyonEgypt’s Muslim Brotherhood sharply criticized an anticipated U.N. document on combatting violence against women, saying on Wednesday that it was “deceitful,” clashed with Islamic principles and undermined family values.
The text or details of the document have not been published yet, but it may be issued at the end of a meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women this week in New York.
Negotiations have been bogged down in debate.
The Brotherhood, which has emerged as the most powerful political faction in Egypt since the 2011 uprising, say the draft under discussion advocates sexual freedoms for women and the right to abortion “under the guise of sexual and reproductive rights.”
In its strongly worded statement, the Brotherhood also decried the document’s defense of homosexual rights, which are not recognized in Islam, and the equating between children born in and out of wedlock.
Here is their statement, and here is what appears to be a decent translation (I made one change; this translation refers to the CEDAW but the original text does not seem to:)
In the name of God the MercifulI would love to see the draft document they are referring to and compare it with their interpretation.
Statement of the Muslim Brotherhood about The Commission on the Status of Women paper which violates all principles of the Islamic Sharia and the Islamic community
The Commission on the Status of Women holds a conference in the period from the 4th to the 15th of March 2013 to approve a document titled "Prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls", a deceptive headline that includes items that collide with the principles of Islam and its basic unanimous elements of Quran and Sunnah, destroy Islamic ethics, and seek to demolish the institution of the family, which the Egyptian constitution declared it as the building block of the society, and hence achieve the dismantling of the community, and end to the last step of the intellectual and cultural invasion, and eliminate the singularity that preserves elements of Islamic societies and its cohesion.
It is enough to give a closer reading at some articles to realize what is meant to us, and these items are:
1. Grant girls their complete sexual freedom, as well as the freedom to choose their sex and the freedom to choose their sex partners (i.e., choose to have a normal sexual relationship or atypical) with rising the age of marriage.
2. Provide contraception for adolescent girls and train them on how to use it with the legalization of abortion to abort undesirable pregnancy under the name of sexual and reproduction rights.
3. Grant equality between an adulterous woman and a wife, and equality between adultery children (outside of marriage children) and legitimate sons in all rights.
4. Granting homosexuals all their rights, protection and respect, and grant protection for women in prostitution.
5. Grant wives all the right to sue their husbands with charges of rape or harassment, and the competent authorities should grant same penalties similar to raping or harassing a stranger.
6. Equality in inheritance.
7. Replace guardianship with partnership, and fully share the roles within the family between men and women such as: spending, child care and home affairs.
8. Equal access to the marriage legislations such as: Stop polygamy, Iddah, mandate, and the dowry, and stop obligatory spending of man on the family, and to allow Muslim women to marry non-Muslims.
9. Withdraw the authority of divorce from husbands and authorize it to judiciary and share property after divorce.
10. Cancel the obligatory authorization of the husband in: travel, work or going out or use contraception.
These are the destructive means of the institution of the family and community that calls for the return for the early Jahiliyyah.
The Muslim Brotherhood call upon rulers of Islamic countries and Foreign Ministers and their representatives in the United Nations to reject this document, and also we invite this organization to live up to the level of the pure family relations prescribed by Islam.
Also Muslim Brotherhood calls Al-Azhar to act according to its leading role and to condemn this document and declare the position of Islam towards its articles, as it is the reference for Muslims.
As well we call other Islamic groups and associations to take a decisive stand against this document and its like.
We also call for women's organizations to adhere to their religion and the morals of their communities and the elements of our social life and not to be seduced by the deceptive, misleading and destructive calls for urbanization.
The Muslim Brotherhood
Cairo: 13 March 2013
