"Sharia in New Jersey: Muslim husband rapes wife, judge sees no sexual assault because Islam forbids wives to refuse sex"

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch reports that a New Jersey judge ruled that a Muslim man could not be convicted of raping his wife - who had filed for divorce - because of the man's Muslim beliefs that his wife could never refuse his sexual advances.

Muhammad said: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning" (Bukhari 4.54.460).


He also said: "By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel's saddle" (Ibn Majah 1854).

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife -- not because he didn't do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: "This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited."

The Court of Appeals reversed this decision.

Of course, it is within the living memory of Americans that this kind of argument was rejected in American law.  The idea that a New Jersey judge would revive this principle out of multi-cultural sensitivity is outrageous.

Here is the Appellate decision via the Volokh Conspiracy.