3 Islamic articles on: Islam and rape

Table of contents for the topic Islam and rape
  1. Islam and a husband’s rape of his wife
  2. Islam’s solution for a woman who lost her virginity due to rape
  3. Is homosexuality more evil than rape in the Quran? Not exactly

IslamQA: Islam and a husband’s rape of his wife

Asalam Walikum, why is it not considered rape if your spouse raped you? People have told me Islam does not consider that [rape]

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

There is no clear statement in the Quran or hadith on this question, so scholars have simply used their own personal and cultural opinions about it. Since they think a husband has a right to sexual intimacy with his wife, they do not think that the idea of rape applies in marriage.

But there is nothing to force us to accept their views. Personally I think forcing sexual intercourse on a woman is a disgusting and vile thing even if she is one’s wife. So my opinion is that sexual intimacy should only happen with the woman’s agreement and if she does not agree to it, then she should be left alone. If she always refuses sexual intimacy then the husband can seek divorce.

IslamQA: Islam’s solution for a woman who lost her virginity due to rape

If a girl is raped as a child and thereby loses her virginity, then that would make marriage difficult for her later if her future husband values virginity as very important. What is Islams view/solution for this?

I know of no technical Islamic solution for such a situation. There is, however, a spiritual or common sense solution that I am sure many women in such a position already know. A man who firmly believes in human dignity and who sees her as a person rather than an object, and who is willing to think the best of others, will accept her explanation and will not count it against her even if she has no proof she was raped. Of course, many “Muslim” cultures will consider marrying such a woman a questionable thing. This is a case where the most religious can be the most open-minded.

Cultural Muslims who know little about religion and spirituality will judge things according to their cultural traditions (which often value virginity very highly). Spiritual and devout Muslims will judge things according to their religion’s spiritual ideals. From a spiritual perspective, if such a woman’s present manners and reputation support her story, then her lack of virginity is going to be a complete non-issue.

She must share the fact of her lack of virginity with suitors before the marriage, but after she judges that the suitor is worth trusting. She can try to find out each suitor’s mindset and personality. If she discovers that a man is narrow-minded and judges things mostly by cultural tradition rather than spiritual ideals, that is a good indication that she should reject him without sharing her story. Sharing that story puts her in a very vulnerable position (if the man talks to others about it).

So it just depends on the particular man. After getting to know a suitor and speaking to him many times perhaps she will be able to judge whether he is worth trusting. If he seems open-minded and pious, then that indicates that he might be the type of person who will not mind her lack of virginity and who will be willing to accept her as she is.

IslamQA: Is homosexuality more evil than rape in the Quran? Not exactly

I just read your answer on homosexuality and Lot's people and I must say that I am really shocked that consensual homosexual act is worse than rape. I've always thought that rape is a great evil thing. I know a couple of lesbian girls and a gay guy and they are kind people and I interact with them normally (although I don't agree what they do is right and I think its a sin), but I would never in a life time interact with a rapist. It doesn't sink in that rape is less evil than homosexuality

The Quran does not explicitly tell us that homosexual sexual intercourse is “worse” than rape. When Prophet Lot offers his daughters to the rapists in the place of his guests, his attitude appears to be: “If you are going to be raping people, then do not do it in a homosexual way, because that is doubly evil.” He is also concerned with his honor before his guests (he says “do not embarrass me before my guests”). In the Middle East, one principle of hospitality is that one’s guest is placed above one’s family. So Prophet Lot has two reasons for offering his daughters: Raping them would not be doubly evil, unlike raping the men, and it would help him avoid breaking the all-important hospitality rule that requires him to protect his guests and put their interests above his family’s.

So those scenes about the People of Lot do not tell us that rape is worse than homosexuality. What they do tell us is that Lot himself thought that the rape of his male guests would be worse than the rape of the female members of his family. Both acts are rape, and both are evil. But the rape of his family would be what we can call normal evil, while the rape of his male guests would include two extra evils: the fact of it being homosexual rape, and the fact of it being done to his guests, which in his culture should be placed above his family.

In that previous answer (which I have now updated) I was suggesting the Prophet Lot was making a choice between homosexuality and rape in offering his daughters to the rapists, but in reading the verses again I have realized that his attitude is more nuanced than that.

Now, you might be asking why God destroyed Lot’s people for being homosexuals instead of destroying them for being rapists. This is not because homosexuality is worse than rape. It is because homosexuality was their lifestyle, while rape was something they committed on the unlucky visitor who came into their town without a tribe’s protection. This may have been extremely rare, so it was not worth destroying the whole town for, while their homosexual acts were an everyday thing for nearly all of the males in that society. The Quran says:

That is because your Lord would not destroy towns for an individual act of injustice while their inhabitants are unaware. (Verse 6:131)

Your Lord would never destroy towns for individual acts of injustice while their inhabitants are righteous. (Verse 11:117)

So according to the Quran’s logic, if rape is a rare crime in a society, God would not punish the whole society for it.

In that ancient tribal society, people would have been extremely careful about what towns they entered, since at the time there was no rule of law. It was only tribal alliances that protected people’s lives inside a city (as was also the case in Arabia during Prophet Muhammad’s time PBUH). So just because God destroyed Lot’s people for homosexuality does not mean that He wouldn’t have destroyed a different society for being rapists. It is just that the historical circumstances of that time (tribal societies) meant that rape was very rare since one couldn’t do it without facing severe repercussions from the raped person’s tribe, so there were no societies where rape was a lifestyle (even if they approved of rape, they couldn’t do it because everyone around them was protected by tribal alliances). So we do not have examples of societies that were destroyed by God for being rapists, not because God thought rape is less bad than homosexuality, but because circumstances made it impossible for a society to engage in daily raping of people.

Meanwhile, historical circumstances did make it possible for societies to engage in daily consensual homosexual intercourse, as was the case with Lot’s people, and so God did respond to that. But we have no examples of God punishing a rape-centered society because there were no such societies to begin with.

Rape and homosexuality are not directly comparable and the Quran does not compare them. Whether one is more evil than the other may completely depend on the circumstances and intentions behind them. So no, the Quran does not ask you to consider rape less evil than homosexuality.

Rape and homosexuality are different categories of crimes and it seems invalid to compare them. Asking whether rape is more evil than homosexual intercourse is probably similar to asking whether rape is more evil than Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit. Rape is a crime of lust and greed against a fellow human, homosexual intercourse is a premeditated crime against God (for those who believe in God and believe He forbids homosexual intercourse yet they engage in it) that may harm no human (similar to eating the forbidden fruit, or eating pork, or defacing a book of Quran, or defacing a mosque). As for those who do not believe in God or who truly believe in their hearts that God does not forbid homosexual relationships, God may be forgiving toward them, since He only holds us responsible for what our intellects and consciences know to be true. God is not unjust, so when someone says “All homosexuals are going to hell!” they are falsely speaking in God’s name. God deals with each human exactly according to that human’s knowledge, beliefs and abilities. A person who believes in God and His Scriptures yet engages in homosexual intercourse out of desire is going to get a very different treatment by God from someone who has never been convinced of the truth of any religion and who finds nothing wrong with homosexuality.

When someone speaks of God as if He is an unjust and petty micro-manager who is completely out of touch with the realities of human existence, this is entirely a reflection of the speaker’s ignorance and immaturity and has nothing to do with God Himself as we know Him through the Quran and His Prophet PBUH. I have read hundreds of books and the writer of the Quran is the only writer who is always more intelligent than me and whom I cannot catch in any errors or unjust thinking regardless of how many times I read the book.