By Maya Palit
A Malaysian MP has just hit an all-time low with his comments about women and rapists during a Parliament session. According to reports, the former Sharia judge Datuk Shabudin Yahaya was theorising about what could help to prevent a rape victim from having a “bleak future”. If you think that sounds charming enough, wait till you hear his game plan: that victims should marry their rapists, which would help them “turn over a new leaf” and solve “growing social problems” together.
It isn’t clear whether he had Heal the World type schemes in mind, but what is apparent is that Yahaya thinks the saddest thing in the world is to be husband-less, roughly translating to the idea that a former rapist should be given a shot as a potential life-partner, if only to take single women out of their misery: “The girl becomes safer when she is married rather than when she is left alone. Don’t assume they (rapists) remain bad people.”
The really sad bit is that these bizarre statements were made during a discussion about the Sexual Offences Against Children bill, a piece of legislation that was passed earlier in the week with a majority vote, and increases legal protection for child victims of harassment, pornography, grooming, and other forms of sexual abuse (although it did not ban child marriage). And Yahaha had astonishing views on this too, saying that girls who reach puberty at nine years are “physically and spiritually” ready for marriage — and that some 12-year-old girls have the bodies of 18-year-old women, which we should take into perspective when talking about whether it’s possible for them to get married to their rapists.
There was a significant amount of outrage five years ago when KG Balakrishnan, a Chief Justice in India, rambled on about respecting the autonomy of rape victims who choose to marry their rapists, and women’s rights activists at the time condemned the fact that such a stance appeared to imply that everything would be fine if a rape ended in a marriage. But of course, Yahaha’s remarks are at the other end of the spectrum, and he really needs to get his head (and his weird perception about the bodies of young girls) thoroughly checked.