Kuwaiti woman activist suggests non-Muslim sex-slavery

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Published time: June 08, 2011 12:37
Edited time: June 08, 2011 17:35

An activist from Kuwait has provoked public outrage after calling for the legalization of sex slavery. She suggested that non-Muslim women war captives be sold as concubines to keep men in their families, making them less likely to commit adultery.

Salwa Al-Mutairi, a former parliamentary candidate, said in an online TV show she hosts, that the sex slave market is the way to protect wealthy Kuwaiti men from being seduced and committing sin, Kuwait Times reports.

She gave the example of Haroun Al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph in Iraq, who ruled from 786 to 809 and was said to own hundreds or even thousands of girl slaves.

The activist added that Muslim clerics she had talked to in Mecca had said nothing against the idea. “There was no shame in it and it is not haram (forbidden) under Islamic Sharia law,” she claimed.

The supply would come from war zones where non-Muslim captives can be taken, she suggested.

For example, al-Mutairi said, there must be Russian women captured in Chechnya who could be sold in Kuwait. If not forced into sex, they would “just die of hunger over there”.

Kuwaiti politicians did not explain why she imagined that the Russian Chechen Republic, which has been successfully rebuilding after the two campaigns, would have many prisoners of any gender or nationality.

Al-Mutairi envisions a service offering girls for sex operating in the same way as recruiting agencies do now.

The suggestion drew fierce criticism from fellow Kuwaitis, disgusted by it and loathing the idea that foreigners may take al-Mutairi’s words as representing mainstream political ideas in the country.

One person tweeted to her: "you're a disgrace to women everywhere."

“Wonder how Salwa al-Mutairi would’ve felt if during occupation by Iraqi forces, she was sold as ‘war booty’ as she advocates…” another tweet said.

Al-Mutairi insisted: “I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all”.