WUNRN
Control & Sexuality: The Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim
Contexts
Publication Author: WLUML - Women Living Under Muslim Laws
Date: December
2010
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Languages available: English
Control and Sexuality by Ziba
Mir-Hosseini and Vanja Hamzić examines zina laws in
some Muslim contexts and communities in order to explore connections between
the criminalisation of sexuality, gender-based violence and women’s rights
activism. The Violence is Not Our Culture Campaign and the Women Living Under
Muslim Laws network present this comparative study and feminist analysis of
zina laws as a contribution to the broader objective of ending violence in the
name of ‘culture’. Attached
is a sample chapter.
It is hoped that the publication
will help activists, policy-makers, researchers and other civil society actors
acquire a better understanding of how culture and/or religion are invoked to
justify laws that criminalise women’s sexuality and subject them to cruel,
inhuman and degrading forms of punishment.
“It is most timely that this publication should emerge
when issues of culture and human rights are being debated in many venues in the
international arena: within the United Nations; in national and transnational,
mainstream and alternative media outlets; and across social and political
movements. “Some cultural practices may be particularly detrimental to the
rights of women and girls. All harmful practices, regardless of provenance and
justification, must be eliminated. All human rights are universal, indivisible
and inter-related. It is my hope that by building upon the progressive,
equitable and just aspects of culture which are inherent to all, this book can
make a substantial contribution towards the promotion of rights, under law and
custom.” Farida Shaheed, UN Independent Expert on Cultural
Rights
About the
authors: Ziba Mir-Hosseini is an
independent consultant, researcher and writer on Middle Eastern issues, based
at the London Middle East Institute and the Centre for Middle Eastern and
Islamic Law, both at the
Copies can be purchased in the
WLUML webshop for £12.00