The Daily Mail and other sources are reporting that Egypt's Parliament, dominated by Islamists, is considering a law that will allow husbands to have sex with their dead wives for up to six hours after their death.
The proposed law will also reduce the minimum age for marriage to 14 and will rescind women's rights to get education and employment.
Dr Mervat al-Talawi, the head of Egypt's National Council for Women, decried the proposed legislation in a letter to the Speaker of the Egyptian People’s Assembly, Dr. Saad al-Katatni, according to Amro Abdul Samea, reporting in the newspaper al Ahram.
This is apparently not a new issue. In 2011, a Moroccan cleric, Zamzami Abdul Barie, said that, because marriage remains valid even after death, a husband may have sex with his dead wife, and a woman may have sex with her dead husband.
TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty, commenting on the draft Farewell Intercourse law, said:
This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni?
'This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?
Over at
Free Republic, we have comments such as this one on the subject:
To: SeekAndFind
Uh oh, since we are such a nice PC nation, in order not to offend them we should ask Zero to update the UCMJ and necrophilia for the military. Given how many muslims are in there and must follow this undignified precept now. Otherwise, it would be unconstitutional and discriminatorial (sarc off)
3 posted on Thu Apr 26 19:14:44 2012 by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
Update: Egyptian sources are denying the accuracy of the story.
Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor writes:
There's of course one problem: The chances of any such piece of legislation being considered by the Egyptian parliament for a vote is zero. And the chance of it ever passing is less than that. In fact, color me highly skeptical that anyone is even trying to advance a piece of legislation like this through Egypt's parliament. I'm willing to be proven wrong. It's possible that there's one or two lawmakers completely out of step with the rest of parliament. Maybe.