Every time I visit the Landover Baptist Church website (or their similarly snarky WhiteHouse.org site), I am overcome by envy for their cutting humor. The LBC proposal to amend the Constitution to conform to "BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES REGARDING MARRIAGE" is a delightful parody of Christianist demands (h/t: Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist), and I recommend that everyone read it to see what we're up against when arguing with the "traditional marriage" con men.
Bravo!
This is interesting...
I was reading the law from a female point of view, and interpreted it that, a woman couldn't just willy nilly accuse a man of raping her after being caught in an adulterous situation with that man, just to save 'face', or free her from punishment.
The 4 witnesses was like a stop gap measure to prevent frivilous lawsuits if a guy "went too far".
Here's the part I was reading that led me to think that:
Exemption no. 2 clearly states that if someone approaches the legal authorities with a rape complaint, she cannot be punished in case she is unable to present 4 witnesses. No court of law can be in its right mind to award such a punishment. The other possibility could be that the woman is awarded punishment for committing adultery with free will. And if the court of law takes such a decision it may not be because the woman was unable to present four witnesses but because the court arrived at this decision after giving due consideration to all the available evidence. Obviously if a woman accuses a man of raping her but subsequent evidence proves that she committed adultery with her free will and her accusation proves to be false then punishing her will not be against the spirit of justice.
I came to the same conclusion...the system of Islamic "justice" is so draconian that they would rather release many (all?) guilty rapists than convict one man in error. Countless victimized women are thus forced to suffer in silence...
Kidding aside, after reading from the two links you provided, I believe that the '4 witnesses' rule was intended to prevent people from slandering one another.
The punishment for adultery is so severe, that to suggest that someone has partaken requires 4 witnesses to said act, before it is considered a viable complaint.
The absurd appearance of the law has obviously been misconstrued.
Now, back to the 'kidding' part...the "crying out" begins to sound that much more ridiculous to me...
I haven't done much research into it, but here's a snippet from Wikipedia:
More details on Hudood are here, and an Islamic rebuttal is here.
Take it all with as large a grain of salt as you feel is necessary...
My mind keeps wanting to default back to the "...if a tree falls in the forest..." question.
4 witnesses? Really?
It probably only counts as a cry if it's overheard by a man; otherwise, it didn't happen. (Kind of like the Islamic law that requires four male witnesses to a rape...)
As per amendment 39, if a woman cries out, and isn't heard, does she, indeed, cry out?