why gang rape is prevalent today is the economic
conditions of most Muslim countries. Problems of
unemployment have made it difficult for men to
produce dowries and strict moral standards make it
impossible to be with a woman outside of mar-
riage. Therefore, rape is viewed as the only way for
a man to “know a woman” outside of marriage.
Gang rape has become a common trend for another
reason; it is used since the legal system has allowed
rapists to become witnesses in court to testify
against the rape victim. Often the testimony of
rapists includes the accusation that the woman was
a prostitute. This spin on Islamic law is an inter-
pretation of the Sharì≠a that holds that there must
be four male eyewitnesses to zinàas proof of the
crime. The jurists never intended the crime of zinà
to apply only to women and be used in this way,
but under modern interpretations, punishment is
reserved for women alone, many of whom sit in
Pakistani jails today.
In the 1990s, working and “Westernized”
women were profiled as “prostitutes” in Algeria by
Islamic militants belonging to a number of militias
including the GIA (Armed Islamic Group). Rape
and throat slashing were often the methods used to
punish these women. Women profiled as “prosti-
tutes” were often those who wore blue jeans,
smoked cigarettes, and were employed outside the
home. Not only were Westernized or professional
women targeted but also women who dared to go
out in public unchaperoned. One of the most dis-
turbing cases of rape in recent years is the 1992
gang rape of a young Egyptian woman in a
crowded bus station in Cairo. Despite the great
number of witnesses the case was dismissed for lack
of evidence. The Egyptian media commented that
the girl deserved to be raped since she should not
have been allowed to leave home unattended. As a
reaction to this case, a law was proposed by the
Egyptian National Assembly that blamed the fami-
lies of rape victims for allowing their daughters out
of the home. The law did not pass. The clearer iden-
tification of what constitutes rape should have
resulted in a fairer treatment of women under
Islamic legal systems. Two issues, however, have
hindered the prosecution of rape in several Muslim
countries in the recent past. First, the notion that
women are the torch bearers of public morality and
as such are in a great way responsible for breaches
of morality such as rape – the victim becomes the
perpetrator; second, conditional on the first, a gen-
dered interpretation of zinàlaw in which only
women are subject to punishment. This brand of
moral fundamentalism prevalent in the Islamic700 rape
world today contorts the law in support of a par-
ticularly perverse aspect of patriarchy.BibliographyPrimary Sources
Mu™ammad b. Ismà≠ìl al-Bukhàrì, Ía™ì™al-Bukhàrì,
Islamic University, Beirut 1985.
M. E. Düzda((ed.), Çeyhülislâm Ebussuud Efendi fet-
vaları ıçı(ında 16 asır Türk hayatı, Istanbul 1972.
U. Heyd, Studies in old Ottoman criminal law, ed. V. L.
Menage, New York 1973.
≠Alìb. AbìBakr al-Marghinànì, The Hedaya, or guide. A
commentary on the Mussulman laws, trans. C. Hamil-
ton, 4 vols., London 1791, 1870^2.Secondary Sources
C. Imber, Zina in Ottoman law, in Ö. L. Barkan et al.,
Contributions à l’histoire économique et sociale de
l’Empire ottoman, Leuven 1983, 59–91.
E. Semerdjian, Gender, violence and intent in Ottoman
law. A view of the imperial kanunnames and fatwas of
the sixteenth century, in A. E. Sonbol and J. O. Voll
(eds.), A history of her own. Deconstructing women in
Islamic societies, Syracuse University Press (forthcoming).
A. E. Sonbol, Law and gender violence in Ottoman and
modern Egypt, in A. E. Sonbol (ed.), Women, the fam-
ily, and divorce laws in Islamic history, Syracuse, N.Y.
1996, 277–89.
——, Rape and law in Ottoman and modern Egypt, in
M. C. Zilfi (ed.), Women in the Ottoman Empire.
Middle Eastern women in the early modern era, Leiden
1997, 214–32.Elyse SemerdjianThe Ottoman EmpireAs elsewhere in the premodern world, rape was a
common occurrence in the lands governed by the
Ottoman sultans. Because of the tenacious habit of
abduction, it was probably more common in rural
than in urban areas. Rape was clearly viewed as a
criminal offence by both the Islamic law (Sharì≠a)
enforced by the sultans and their own statutes
(kanun) (al-Marghinani 1791, al-Halabi 1891,
Düzdag 1983, Heyd 1973). As a legal problem,
rape was treated under the broad rubric of zinà,
illicit sexual relations; the usual term for rape in
Ottoman Turkish was cebran zinà, zinàby force. As
a social phenomenon, rape was intertwined with a
number of concerns, including personal honor, lin-
eage, property, and the sometimes difficult process
of making marriages. A noteworthy feature of rape
in the premodern Ottoman context is the willing-
ness of victims to speak out in demanding the pun-
ishment of rapists.
Who were the victims of rape and its perpetra-
tors? State documents tended to view those at risk
to be married women and boys, and the threat of