Sex with the dead in Egypt

A U.K. newspaper, The Daily Mail, has reported that a law is in the works in Egypt that would legalize a man's having sex with his wife's corpse (although 'with' doesn't seem exactly the right word...) up until six hours after her death. According to the news report a Moroccan imam, who last year opined that marriage is an institution which extends beyond death, was somehow the impetus for this legislation. Apparently, he demonstrated his support for equal rights by stating unequivocally that women enjoyed the same right to sex with their dead husbands, which is less magnanimous than it sounds, once one thinks about it for a short moment.

But, I digress. There is no solid evidence at this point that the story is true, and defenders of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is poised to take control of Parliament and is fielding a presidential candidate, in violation of a promise made last year not to) say it is just a story cooked up by Mubarak supporters to make the Brotherhood look bad. Time will soon tell, no doubt.

But even if it is a hoax, Egyptian women aren't laughing. They know that the advancement of legal equality for women will be significantly less of a priority for the Brotherhood than it was under the hated Mubarak regime. Less ghoulish but more concerning in terms of the broader implications, are proposed laws (according to the Daily Mail piece and other accounts) that would lower the marriage age and repeal a ten-year old reform which made it less legally onerous and time-consuming for women to divorce. Whether these become law or not there is little reason to doubt that the Brotherhood, once in control, will not only halt women's advances but attempt to roll back gains already made. Democracy, overall, doesn't look nearly as imminent as it did back in the heady days of the Arab spring, but hey, one didn't need a telescope to see this coming.

Which leads to the question, did the Obama administration see it coming? One assumes these highly-educated and reportedly brilliant people considered what would happen in the aftermath of Mubarak's ouster before they promoted it, so perhaps this is the outcome they expected, but still think it will all turn out in the end. Or maybe they were naive enough to think it was going to work out right away; who knows? Perhaps they didn't have a clue, but feared they'd be on the wrong side of history if they kept quiet or propped up Mubarak, not that the latter would have been likely given Obama's views about the past use of American power. I am not saying he should have, either, because I don't know, but serious arguments for that can be made.

I have a friend whose opinion I respect, but we disagree fundamentally about Obama's foreign policy record. He thinks it's what he's done best. I think the President's inexperience shows glaringly, although the consequences may not fully bloom for a while. Persuasion wasn't utilized much in Libya where we had comparatively little national security interest; we were told the bombing and material/logistical support for the rebels (something one suspects Obama would have condemned were he still a senator and it was authorized by George Bush) was necessary for humanitarian reasons, yet upwards of 10,000 people have died at the hands of the Syrian regime and we've done nothing active to help them. Obama lent his voice and American support for regime change in Egypt, but kept silent when a million (or maybe it was two million) people took to the streets of Tehran seeking the ouster of a government which openly threatens us and inexorably marches toward the means to make good on the threat.

I don't claim to be a foreign policy expert, but much of this is incomprehensible to me. I have the uneasy feeling these are not foreign 'policies' at all, but simply reactions. Perhaps Obama has discovered what hubris kept him from seeing when all he had to do was criticize his predecessor. It's a lot more complicated than it looks.