Paper short abstract:

On April, 1 2014 the Lebanese Parliament passed the first Law on the problem of domestic violence. It was an amended version of a draft written by the local NGO KAFA [enough] aiming to fight violence against women.

Paper long abstract:

On April, 1 2014 the Lebanese Parliament passed the first Law on the problem of domestic violence. It was an amended version of a draft written by the local NGO KAFA [Enough] aiming to fight violence against women. However, the parliamentary debate lasted four years because many religious authorities (backed by their co-religious deputies) opposed it on religious grounds, contesting articles intending to punish marital rape, not considered a crime under other Lebanese laws and in contrast with the marital right of intercourse granted under Sunnite and Shiite laws.

The debate touched both political parties and State-religion legislative power relations. Indeed, many Islamic clerics saw the articles as an attempt to undermine their full authority on personal status laws the Lebanese Constitution grants them on family laws. Even if the final draft did not, at the end, include 'marital rape', it was nevertheless the first step towards both women's protection and offenders' punishment regardless of their religion, thus implicitly affirming the superiority of the state law over religious ones.

The aims of this paper are twofold. On the one hand, it aims to study clerics' opposition reasons and the way it was shared by their representative political leaders; on the other hand, it will investigate the initial stage of the practical application of the Law as the first sentence based upon it was enforced by a State Court just one year ago while religious authorities opposed it.