WUNRN
Control & Sexuality: The Revival
of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts
Direct Link to Full 258-Page Report:
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 the whole book, available for download
for free. Please do consider making a donation to WLUML.
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 School of Oriental and African Studies.
Vanja Hamzić is a doctoral candidate and visiting lecturer at the School
of Law, King’s College London.