Preaching good sex, Muslim-inspired Obedient Wives Club spreads in Asia
Indonesian Gina Puspita traded a career in aircraft engineering for a mission to preach Islam and help young women build happy marriages through good sex. The French-educated mother of three hosts religious programmes through the Obedient Wives Club which is based on the belief that a fulfilling sex life is the cure for “Western-style” social problems such as divorce and abuse.
“Wives must obey the husbands in all aspect of life, such as serving food and drinks, giving calm and support for the husband, as well as in sex relations,” Pusipita, who shares her spouse with three other women, told Reuters.
A Muslim group which espouses good sex as a foundation for healthy marriages and a strong society, the Obedient Wives Club is gaining converts in the world’s most populous Muslim country after setting up in Jordan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Founded by Global Ikhwan, a Malaysian firm involved in businesses ranging from laundromats to pharmacies, the club was initially intended to help the company’s female staff to be good wives as well as productive employees. Global Ikhwan’s officials have been linked to the now-defunct Malaysia-based Al-Arqam religious sect which was banned by the government in 1994. Before the Obedient Wives Club, Global Ikhwan had earlier established the Polygamy Club which encourages polygamy among Muslims.
The Obedient Wives Club is open to women of all faiths but says its teachings are based on the edicts of Islam which require wives to submit to their husbands and meet their needs. “When men cannot get satisfaction at home, they will seek it elsewhere,” said Nurul, an Obedient Wives Club spokesperson. “When your wife is cool towards you because your wife is busy and has no time to attend to you whereas you need it that day, what are you going to do?”
Read the full story by Olivia Rondonuwu and Razak Ahmad here.
.
Pity the pandering U.S. candidate
Politicians pandering for votes on conservative family values issues may want to think again.
A survey of 3,000 Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute found 42 percent said the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” both described them well, illustrating the complexity of the abortion issue in the minds of many.
“The terms ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ does not reflect the complexity of Americans’ views on abortion,” said Robert Jones, head of the institute.
Seven in 10 Americans say the term pro-choice describes them somewhat or very well, and nearly two-thirds say the term pro-life correctly describes them.
The survey also noted a “de-coupling” of views on the legality of abortion and of same-sex relationships among those born after 1980.
“Millennials (people aged 18 to 29 who came of age at the turn of the millennium) look about like their parents do on the legal right to an abortion. But on the issue of same-sex marriage they look significantly more supportive,” Jones said.
Overall, 56 percent of Americans support the legality of abortion – roughly the same level of support as in the past decade.
Malaysia’s Obedient Wives Club angers women’s rights groups
A Malaysian group urging wives to avoid marital problems by fulfilling their husbands’ sexual desires like prostitutes has angered politicians and women’s rights groups, the New Straits Times reported on Sunday. The Obedient Wives Club, which was set up by a group of Muslim women, said domestic violence, infidelity and prostitution stemmed from a lack of belief in God and a failure of women to satisfy their husbands.
The club’s president, Rohaya Mohamed, said it was open to women of all religions and would conduct seminars on how to be a good wife as well as offer marriage counseling. “A man married to a woman who is as good or better than a prostitute in bed has no reason to stray. Rather than allowing him to sin, a woman must do all she can to ensure his desires are met,” Rohaya told the newspaper.
Females outnumber males in Malaysian higher education institutions, comprising 65 percent of the intake at public universities last year, according to government data. But rights groups say women are still often victims of gender bias, and have protested what they considered the club’s demeaning portrayal of women as a cause of social problems.
“Abusive men often use women’s behavior as a sick justification, but in the end, their actions are their responsibility,” said Ratna Osman, acting executive director at rights group Sisters-in-Islam. “To hinge fidelity, domestic violence and the fulfillment of a husband’s responsibilities purely on a wife’s capacity to be obedient, stimulate sexual arousal … is not only demeaning to wives, but to husbands as well,” said Women, Family and Community Development Minister Shahrizat Jalil.
via Malaysia’s obedient wives anger rights groups | Reuters.
.
Vatican tells U.N. that critics of gays under attack
People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Roman Catholic Church deeply believed that human sexuality was a gift reserved for married heterosexual couples. But those who express these views are faced with “a disturbing trend,” he said.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.
“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.
.
It appears to me that the Vatican has put itself in a difficult positoon. If it insists that pedophiles are gay, and continues to discover pedophiles in the priesthood – qite a few of them, then it must be hiring gay priests. Maybe there is a test for gayness they can administer. However since there is no evidence whatsoever that pedophiles are gay, they might do better to take a look at their own organisation before blaming homosexuals who are no different in their range of behaviours than any other group – and the vatican ought to know that pedophilia is more about power and inability to relate to one’s peers sexually than it is about homo- or heterosexuality. As to abusive behaviour – well who better to recognise that than the vatican?
Top French court rejects gay marriage appeal
France’s ban on same-sex marriages was upheld by the country’s constitutional authority on Friday, in a ruling that relieves the government of any obligation to grant gays the wedding rights enjoyed by heterosexuals.
A handful of countries in Europe allow couples of the same sex to wed, and rights campaigners had hoped for a breakthrough in France, where two women living together had demanded the view of the Constitutional Council.
The Council said it found no conflict between the law as it stands and fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. It ruled that it was up to parliament, rather than the constitutional authorities, to decide whether the law should change.
The two women who appealed to the Council are raising four children together, three of them conceived through artificial insemination. They say they want to marry to be able to officially share parental authority, clarify inheritance rights and guarantee custody rights for all the children if one died.
Henri Guiano, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, said shortly before the verdict was made public that the matter was one for political leaders and not lawyers, signalling that nothing should change without in-depth political debate. “This is a question of society, of civilisation even,” said Guiano. “This is a matter that could maybe be broached during the presidential election campaign, by parliamentary debate, but not just for the law,” he said.
U.N. restores gay reference to violence measure
The United States has succeeded in getting the United Nations to restore a reference to killings due to sexual orientation that had been deleted from a resolution condemning unjustified executions.
Western delegations were disappointed last month when the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee approved an Arab and African proposal to cut the reference to slayings due to sexual orientation from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions.
The 192-nation General Assembly approved on Tuesday a U.S. amendment to the resolution that restored the reference to sexual orientation with 93 votes in favor, 55 against and 27 abstentions. The amended resolution was then adopted with 122 yes votes, one against and 62 abstentions.
After ensuring that violence against gays would be back in the resolution by voting in favor its own amendment, Washington sent an ambiguous signal about its support for the overall declaration by joining 61 other nations in abstaining. It was not immediately clear why Washington withheld its support. The only country that voted against the resolution was Saudi Arabia.
The main opposition to the U.S. amendment came from Muslim and African nations, which had led the push to delete the reference to sexual preference from the resolution last month.
The General Assembly passes resolutions condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions and other killings every two years. The 2008 declaration had included an explicit reference to killings committed because of the victims’ sexual preferences.
Condoms still banned for birth control: Vatican
Pope Benedict’s acknowledgement that using condoms may be justified to stop the spread of AIDS did not signify a change in the Catholic Church’s ban on their use as contraception, the Vatican said Tuesday.
In a statement, the Vatican’s doctrinal department said there had been “erroneous interpretations” of the pope’s words which had caused confusion concerning the Church’s views on sexual morality. In a book published last month entitled “Light of the World”, the pope used the example of a prostitute to say there were cases where using a condom to avoid transmitting HIV could be justified as a “first step” toward moralization, even though condoms were “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.”
Liberal Catholics welcomed the comments in the book but the conservative wing of the Church expressed concern and Tuesday’s statement appeared partly aimed at reassuring them.
The two-page statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (click here for full text in six languages) said the pope’s words on condoms had been “repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the meaning of his words.”
“The idea that anyone could deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his thought.”
Read the full report here. For more on a debate among theologians about Benedict’s comments, see Sandro Magister’s “Sexual Ethics. Six Professors Discuss the Ratzinger Case.”
Inquiry cites almost 2,000 Dutch Catholic sex abuse reports
Almost 2,000 people have declared themselves this year victims of sexual and physical abuse while they were minors in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands, an independent commission said on Thursday.
The investigation into abuses dating back to 1945 shows that the Netherlands ranks second worst behind Ireland for known cases in scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in Europe and the United States. The church-appointed commission’s findings were requested by the Dutch bishops’ conference after cases surfaced involving paedophile priests in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Germany and other countries.
“I am very respectful of the people who came forward because declaring yourself a victim is a big step,” said Wim Deetman, a Protestant former education minister and former mayor of The Hague who heads the commission, of the 1,975 reported cases.
Asked whether the report could lead to pressure for a shake-up in the church hierarchy, Deetman said: “It is too soon to say that. We will see that at the end of next year after discussions with a lot of people. But the bishops conference has asked us to look at managerial responsibilities.”
Deetman said the Church had waited too long to come up with a professional approach to complaints about abuse and urged it to set up an effective system of financial compensation for the victims, a special organisation to assist them and Church disciplinary action if needed.
Read the full story here and a factbox on sex abuse cases shaking the Catholic Church in Europe this year.
The full report (in Dutch) is in PDF here.
Saudi king, religious police, Islam and donkeys – via WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks has come up with an interesting insight into the way King Abdullah views his own kingdom’s religious police, the mutaween who enforce Islamic behaviour in public. A cable from the Riyadh embassy entitled IDEOLOGICAL AND OWNERSHIP TRENDS IN THE SAUDI MEDIA and dated 11 May 2009 mentions what appears to be a U.S. diplomat’s visit to a Saudi newspaper editor whose name is XXXed out. The Saudi says the king had visited the office and complained about how ignorant the religious police were about Islam and how they treated people like donkeys:
//Okaz// ¶18. (S) In a meeting with Jeddah CG and XXXXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXXXXX was blunt when asked about SAG efforts in countering extremist thinking. “King Abdallah was here,” he said, pointing around his well-appointed office XXXXXXXXXXXX in Jeddah. “He told us that conservative elements in Saudi society do not understand true Islam, and that people needed to be educated” on the subject. King Abdallah, he said, used a metaphor of a donkey to explain how the religious police use the wrong approach. “They take a stick and hit you with it, saying ‘Come donkey, it’s time to pray.’ How does that help people behave like good Muslims?” XXXXXXXXXXXX quoted the king as saying.
The same cable also comments on a new and more moderate tone in religious programming on some television channels:
¶15. (C) Saudi-produced religious programming on ART and Rotana also departs from past models. Rotana’s popular religious channel “Al Risala” features a hip, clean-shaven Saudi in western clothes offering practical religious advice in a calm and friendly manner. Jeddah-based Arab Radio and Television company (ART) (owned by Saleh al-Kamel and according to our contacts being edged aside by MBC and Rotana) recently featured an MTV-style music video clip on its “Iqraa” religious channel depicting a group of dissolute young Saudi men who give up their carousing and return to observance. They are then shown succeeding in sales presentations and other interactions at work, gaining the admiration of their colleagues and supervisors. The young men continue to dress in standard attire, remain clean-shaven and are fully integrated into normal, workaday Saudi society. The message of moderation in the religious realm could not be clearer.
The religious police don’t treat all Saudis like donkeys, however. In a cable on 18 November 2009 entitled UNDERGROUND PARTY SCENE IN JEDDAH: SAUDI YOUTH FROLIC UNDER “PRINCELY PROTECTION”, the Jeddah Consulate reported on an underground Halloween party where the “full range of worldly temptations and vices are available — alcohol, drugs, sex — but strictly behind closed doors.” It then noted:
U.S. appeals court hears key California gay marriage case
Three federal appellate judges considering whether to allow gay marriage in California hear arguments on Monday in a case many expect to land in the U.S. Supreme Court and set national policy. California voters, with a reputation for social liberalism, shocked the United States in 2008 when they narrowly approved the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage only months after the top state court opened the door to same-sex weddings.
More than 40 U.S. states have outlawed such unions, but the California challenge could shape the nation if the Supreme Court decides to review the appeals court decision. A lower court struck down the ban earlier this year, ruling that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right and that the defenders of the ban showed no justifiable reason for limiting the institution to opposite-sex couples.
The ruling is on hold, though, while under appeal.
The Prop 8 ban proponents say the lower court ignored common wisdom and history that limits marriage to a man and a woman in order to spur procreation. Gay marriage proponents successfully argued in the lower court that the definition of marriage has changed over time, for instance including polygamy in some societies. Same-sex marriages would not harm the institution, they contended.
Read the full story by Peter Henderson here. Here is also a factbox on laws on gay marriage in the United States.
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
It is not the teaching of Quran or Prophet Muhammad. This group is misleading people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Arqam ~I have wrote a report to JAKIM.