Salwa al-Mutairi’s suggestions have provoked anger and disbelief
Salwa al Mutairi argued buying a sex-slave would protect decent, devout and ‘virile’ Kuwaiti men from adultery because buying an imported sex partner would be tantamount to marriage.
And she even had an idea of where to ‘purchase’ these sex-slaves – browsing through female prisoners of war in other countries.
The political activist and TV host even suggested that it would be a better life for women in warring countries as the might die of starvation.
Mutairi claimed: ‘There was no shame in it and it is not haram’ (forbidden) under Islamic Sharia law.’
She gave the example of Haroun al-Rashid, an 8th century Muslim leader who ruled over an area covered by modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria and was rumored to have 2,000 concubines.
Mutairi recommended that offices could be opened to run the sex trade in the same way that recruitment agencies provide housemaids.
She suggested shopping for prisoners of war so as to protect Kuwaiti men from being tempted to commit adultery or being seduced by other women’s beauty.
‘For example, in the Chechnyan war, surely there are female Russian captives,’ she said.
‘So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait. Better than to have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations.’
Her unbelievable argument for her plan was that ‘captives’ might ‘just die of hunger over there’.
She insisted, ‘I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all’.
In an attempt to consider the woman’s feelings in the arrangement, Mutari conceded that the enslaved women, however, should be at least 15.
Mutairi said free women must be married with a contract but with concubines ‘the man just buys her and that’s it. That’s enough to serve as marriage.’
Her remarks, made in a video posted on YouTube last month and carried by newspapers in the Gulf States in recent days, have sparked outrage in cyber-space from fellow Kuwaitis and others in the wider region.
‘Wonder how Salwa al Mutairi would’ve felt if during the occupation (of Kuwait) by Iraqi forces, she was sold as ‘war booty’ as she advocates for Chechen women,’ tweeted Mona Eltahawy.
Another tweeter, Shireen Qudosi, told Mutairi ‘you’re a disgrace to women everywhere’.
For Muna Khan, an editor at the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television station, the ‘icing on the cake’ of Mutairi’s ‘preposterous views’ was her assertion that her suggestions do not conflict with the tenets of Islam.
Mutairi said that during a recent visit to Mecca, she asked Saudi muftis – Muslim religious scholars – what the Islamic ruling was on owning sex slaves. They are said to have told her that it is not haram.
The ruling was confirmed by ‘specialized people of the faith’ in Kuwait, she claimed.
‘They said, that’s right, the only solution for a decent man who has the means, who is overpowered by desire and who does not want to commit fornication, is to acquire jawari.’ Jawari is the plural of the Arabic term jariya, meaning ‘concubine’ or ‘sex slave’.
One Saudi mufti supposedly told Mutairi: ‘The context must be that of a Muslim nation conquering a non-Muslim nation, so these jawari have to be prisoners of war.’
Concubines, she argued, would suit Muslim men who fear being ‘seduced or tempted into immoral behavior by the beauty of their female servants’.
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