adultery
Image via RNS/Reuters/Khuram Parvez
Masih recently filed for divorce from a husband she said “frequently beats me up” and a mother-in-law who she said burned her leg with coal.
But under the country’s laws, she must produce a witness who would testify to committing adultery with her husband. As a result, she’s now reluctantly planning to renounce her faith.
Image via RNS/Reuters/David Becker
A recent Washington Post profile of Karen Pence mentioned that her husband, Vice President Mike Pence, never eats alone with another woman or goes without her to events where alcohol is being served.
Twitter erupted with outrage and ridicule.
But the Indiana Republican’s practice is not unusual in many conservative Christian circles. As Emma Green pointed out in The Atlantic, it likely stems from something called “the Billy Graham Rule,” named for the 98-year-old international evangelist. Nor is it that much different in intention from the practices of conservative Jews and Muslims.
Image via Konstanttin/Shutterstock
The Ashley Madison hack — the public release of emails of wannabe adulterers — has now ensnared a theologian with a famous name in some Christian circles.
Robert Craig Sproul Jr., best known by his first initials, stepped up Aug. 31 to face his sorrow — and teach a lesson in God’s grace in the process.
Farzana Parveen, 25, was beaten to death on May 27 near the high court in Lahore, Pakistan. Creative Commons photo by Omer Wazir
As a crowd watched outside a courthouse, the family of a pregnant Pakistani woman beat her to death Tuesday because she married the man she loved instead of her cousin.
Lahore police charged her father, Mohammad Azeem, with murder, and the others were being sought. Azeem told police he helped kill his daughter because she had shamed the family.
“I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it,” police investigator Rana Mujahid quoted him as saying.
Parveen was attacked as she and her husband, Mohammad Iqbal, arrived at the gates of the Lahore High Court. They went there to dispute charges brought by her father that Iqbal had kidnapped Parveen, who had been engaged to her cousin for several years.
Meriam Yahya Ibrahim Ishag, a Sudanese Christian woman, was sentenced to be flogged for adultery and to be hanged to death for apostasy because she married a Christian man. Ibrahim, 27, is eight months pregnant and currently in detention with her 20-month-old son, according to Fredrick Nzwili of Religion News Service.
United States' National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden released this statement in response to the sentancing.
We strongly condemn this sentence and urge the Government of Sudan to meet its obligations under international human rights law. We call on the Government of Sudan to respect Ms. Ishag’s right to freedom of religion, a universal human right enshrined in Sudan’s own 2005 Constitution as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Since 1999, Sudan has been designated as a Country of Particular Concern for its ongoing, egregious, and systematic violations of religious freedom. We continue to urge Sudan to fulfill its constitutional promise of religious freedom, and to respect the fundamental freedoms and universal human rights of all its people.
Women standing outside the All Saints Cathedral in Sudan. Religion News Service photo by Fredrick Nzwili.
Sudanese Christians have condemned the sentencing of a Christian woman to death by hanging after she married a Christian man.
Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, refused to recant her Christian faith as ordered by the court.
A doctor who is eight months pregnant and currently in detention with her 20-month-old son, Ibrahim was charged with adultery last year. Recently, the court added an apostasy charge when she declared her Christian faith in court.
“This is very disturbing,” said Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok of Khartoum.
Islamic religious police in Indonesia plan to publicly flog a 25-year-old widow and a married man for adultery after vigilantes gang-raped her as punishment for having extramarital sex, according to media reports.
The woman and her paramour, a 40-year-old father of five, were surprised late Wednesday by seven men and a 13-year-old boy who barged into her home in Aceh, which is the only province to enforce the system of Islamic law known as Shariah, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Tuesday, citing The Jakarta Globe.
The group tied up and beat the man, repeatedly raped the woman and poured raw sewage over them before taking the couple to the local Shariah police.
CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus (L) and Marine Corps Gen. John Allen in 2011. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
First, we had CIA Director David Petraeus being held over the fire for a possible affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Then General John Allen, the top-ranking U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, drawn into the drama as allegations of indiscretions of his own with Jill Kelly (the credibility and severity of which remains to be determined), who also is linked to Ms. Broadwell and the related Petraeus drama. Then there’s rumor of FBI agents sending shirtless pictures of themselves to women and … anyway, you get the idea.
As if all of that wasn’t weird enough, now there’s the matter of Kevin Clash, inventor of and voice for Sesame Street’s Elmo, being accused by a young man of having an illicit relationship while the accuser was underage. The man has since recanted his claim, but not before Clash admitted to a consensual encounter with the accuser when he was of legal age, if just barely.
Why do they do it?
The question of moral character and how it plays into public life has tended to be fairly low level conversation in our country. It’s subjects of discussion are usually those who we aren’t planning on voting for.
This is why it’s hard to trust what most commentators, religious leaders or politicians are saying right now. Things said in this moment might have more to do with which party or candidate they are planning on voting for than serious thinking about moral character and public life.