Word: chattel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...husband is impotent. Women must dress modestly, and their inheritance is limited to a fraction of that of men. In defense of these sexist inequities, scholars of the Shari'a note that Islamic law was advanced for its time. Before Muhammad, women in Arabia were mere chattel. The Koran emphatically asserts a husband's duty to support his wife (or wives), who are allowed to keep their dowries and to own property-rights that did not emerge until much later in Western countries...
...principles of Islam are very advanced," says Mrs. Shambayati. In the 7th century, Islamic practice established that women should not be chattel and gave them the rights to reject marriage proposals and to own property-radical ideas at the time. Yet, says Mrs. Shambayati, "although Islam gave women life 1,400 years ago,the right only to breath is not enough today...
...convinced of the defendant's guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt," the reform in the rape law itself is long overdue. Marriage vows do not entail the right to sexually assault one's partner. Criminal codes that support such a notion clearly suggest the idea of "mate as chattel" rather than the American ideal of equal protection under...
...useful, though not extenuating, to point out that Americans did not invent slavery. Their form of chattel slavery, however, was uniquely ugly. Still, slavery has a long, dishonorable history. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia kept slaves before 2000 B.C., and the Code of Hammurabi laid down rules governing the practice. In eight years, Caesar sent back some 500,000 slaves from Gaul to work mines, plantations and public projects; some, of course, became gladiators. The Domesday Book recorded 25,000 slaves in England. Races from the Mayans to the Muslims to, notably, black Africans have kept slaves for many centuries...
...opens with a detailed presentation and analysis of the role of rape in history. "Only when all accounts of rape are collected and correlated does the true underside of women's history emerge," she writes. In almost every society, women have been regarded as male-owned chattel. Because they have been thus dehumanized their violation has historically been seen, not as an attack on a person, but rather, as the defilement of another man's goods. Brownmiller writes...