❊ Kafa is Delusional. The Lebanese State Neither Has the Will nor the Way to Get Into Lebanese Bedrooms

Kafa — a Lebanese pressure group which has done some remarkable work on many issues — has set its sight on fighting marital rape in Lebanon, an abhorable yet common practice in which a husband forces himself onto his wife.

The strategy Kafa is using is a combination of raising awareness through TV ads, social media and street action. They are focusing on naming and shaming MPs tasked with passing the law. They are asking voters not to vote for MPs who stand against it and they are appealing to our sense of fairness and justice. In short, they’re doing everything an effective pressure group can do.

But it won’t happen. The law, with an explicit reference to marital rape, won’t see the light anytime soon.

The reason is not that the cause is not just, or that Kafa is not doing a good advocacy job. The reason is that the Lebanese state is neither equipped to, nor has a history of getting between a man and his wife, let alone getting into their bedroom.

The Lebanese state has always “outsourced” the entire edifice of regulating domestic relationships to religious authorities. All matters related to civil status like marriage, divorce and custody are in the jurisdictions of religious men (I stress “men”) who use old scripture to settle disputes. This explains why matters like rape (and its cousin, marital rape) are awkward in Lebanon. It’s because they lie in the gray area between domestic law (where the religious guys are in charge) and the criminal law (where the parliament is in charge)

In that sense, Kafa is trying to “sneak in” the marital rape law from the window of criminal law, which the religious groups immediately saw as an assault on their domain. The entire system is fighting back against that “overreach” and the system will unfortunately win.

The only solution is to slay the dragon. We have to start with the creation of a civil personal status law in Lebanon. Only that can lay the foundations (legal, civic and institutional) and structure to debate and regulate matters like marital rape. Anything else is putting the carriage before the horse.

Also: Why now is the best time to push for civil marriage in Lebanon.