Women and friends of women around the globe have been avidly following the news regarding a new Afghan law that grants Shi’ite men the right to demand intercourse from their wives, effectively legalizing marital rape. Today there are signs of hope for Shia women. President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (pictured above in imaginary festive-feminist attire,) announced today that ‘the law is now up for review and amendments will take place.’ Karzai did not elaborate on the particulars of the revisions (hence the tentative nature of the HUZZAH.) However, he stated that they would be in harmony with the Constitution of Afghanistan, which guarantees equal rights for Women. Of course considering that this law was ever passed in the first place, there is no telling how politicians may define terms such as ‘equal’, ‘rights’ and ‘women.’
In Karzai’s defense, he supposedly did not read the law before signing it. While its true that we have all been guilty of skipping a few chapters of A Tale of Two Cities in high school English class, In the future I hope that politicians consider it worth their time to throughly read through a law that turns thousands of people into property.
-Emma Onstott
information and original photo from CBC news
