duress” (zinàbi-al-jabr) under the new statutes.
While the use of force will exonerate the rape
victim from the charge of and penalty for zinà, the
same evidentiary standards are applied to the
offence, making it extremely difficult for a woman
to establish. Particular concern arises where women
alleging rape risk being charged with zinàwhen
they fail to establish the use of force against them
(Sidahmed 1999, 198, Quraishi 1997, 302). In
Nigeria, where starting in 1999 a number of north-
ern states have implemented Sharì≠a penal codes,
Amnesty International (2004) holds that “zinàas a
criminal offence for Muslims only negates the prin-
ciple of equality before the law.” Against the back-
ground of considerable international attention to
a number of zinàprosecutions against Nigerian
women, Amnesty (2004) found that “the applica-
tion of the death penalty for zinaoffences com-
bined with the gender-discriminating evidence rules
within the Shariapenal codes have meant that
women have disproportionately been sentenced to
death for zinain northern Nigeria since the intro-
duction of new ShariaPenal Codes.” In regard to
Pakistan, Quraishi observes that the particular
issue of rape and the misapplication of the Zina
Ordinance is a “primary topic in women’s human
rights discussions globally, and stirs up an expected
share of frustration, anger, defensiveness, and arro-
gance from all sides” (1997, 292).
In Muslim majority states that do not apply such
codifications of Islamic criminal law and do not
implement the ™addpenalties, extramarital sexual
relations may be criminalized under secular penal
codes that historically differentiated the establish-
ment of the offence and the length of the prison sen-
tence on grounds of gender. Thus, for example, a
husband might have to be openly involved with a
woman other than his wife or to have had extra-
marital relations in the marital home in order for an
offence of adultery to be proven against him, while
no such developments on a single act of adultery
would be specified for the wife. The crime of rape
generally excludes marital rape but attracts very
heavy penalties in case of prosecution and convic-
tion. In some states, scholars criticize the catego-
rization, in penal codes, of rape and sexual assault
under sections dealing with, for example, crimes
against public decency and morals (Jordan) or fam-
ily order (Turkey) rather than in the sections on
crimes against individuals. Abortion – which tends
to be allowed only on therapeutic grounds (Bowen
1997) – may also be included as an offence under
such sections. Mohsen finds infanticide to be
“closely related to the crime of abortion” and
reports that in Egypt, infanticide is “almost always400 law: criminal
a female crime,” is strongly under-reported, and
even where reported “is rarely prosecuted” – this
last because “many law enforcement officers view
such a crime as more the result of the woman’s igno-
rance than of malicious intent” (1990, 17–18).
In many states, criminal law shows direct influ-
ence from previous colonial powers in the way it
treats offences of particular relevance to women.
Thus, various Middle Eastern and North African
states have penal codes developed not only from the
Ottoman but also the French penal codes of the
nineteenth century; certain provisions of particular
significance to women, notably the suspension of
criminal proceedings against or punishment of the
abductor of a woman in the event that she marries
him, have parallels in the penal codes of some Latin
American states. The French as well as Ottoman
antecedents in criminal law are also illustrated in
the penal codes of certain Arab states regarding
“crimes of honor” (Abu Odeh 1996), to the effect
that there remains a partial defence in law in the
event that a man surprises his wife or one of his
close female relatives in an act of zinàand kills her
and/or her partner in the act; in Jordan, attempts to
amend an article in the penal code providing an
absolute defence in such circumstances have preoc-
cupied sections of civil society and the legislature in
recent years.
Increased attention to and research on crimes of
honor against women, and particularly “honor
killings,” has shown that the above-mentioned arti-
cles are rarely if ever invoked as a legal defence by
alleged perpetrators of honor killings; advocacy
campaigns aimed at their amendment or repeal,
and in some cases the opposition to such cam-
paigns, indicate that they remain nevertheless
highly symbolic. In the courts of various countries,
different legal provisions combine to provide sub-
stantial reductions in penalties for the perpetrators
of honor killings in circumstances that do not
involve allegedly catching anyone in the act of illicit
sexual liaison. Thus in some Arab states a partial
defence to murder may be based on arguments akin
to provocation – that is, that the perpetrator acted
in a “fit of fury” and in defence of his honor (Abu
Odeh 1996, Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2002a), while
further reductions follow a waiving of personal
rights in the prosecution by the victim’s family. In
Pakistan, although the statutes codifying Islamic
criminal law do not recognize the partial defence of
“grave and sudden provocation” previously avail-
able in criminal law, observers criticize implemen-
tation of the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance for
reduced protection of women against murder
(Amnesty International 1999). In Turkey, a partial