Women who wear perfume are "fornicators" says Muslim cleric

Muslim says "fornication" like it's a bad thing.

A woman should be in total submission to her husband.

Public prosecutors in Spain have dropped charges of "advocating gender violence" against a Muslim cleric who, on April 2013, preached a two-hour sermon in Spanish, entitled "The Queens of Islam."

During the sermon he made a number of pronouncements about the role of women in Spanish society, including: "Any woman who wears perfume and leaves the house and walks past men who can smell her perfume is a fornicator, and every glance she gets is a fornication."

Malik Ibn Benaisa, the cleric, had been charged with “advocating gender violence” because of his sermon, but those charges have been dropped. The district attorney for the case said “in relation to domestic violence, the law refers to concrete action in the form of threats, injuries, coercion or abuse, while the sexual or religious discrimination section of Article 510 of the Penal Code refers to encouraging discrimination, hatred or violence. This did not occur at the conference in question.”

Benaisa may not have advocated violence, but he certainly advocated discrimination.

“A woman cannot show her face or bare hands, she cannot wear high heeled shoes, she cannot wear blue jeans, she must wear a scarf to cover her chest, she cannot pluck her eyebrows and she cannot wear perfume because if she uses it she becomes a fornicator,” Benaisa said during his sermon. “A woman must keep her head down because a jealous husband can cause problems with other men. A woman should be in total submission to her husband. She has an obligation to wear the veil.”

The case involves Malik Ibn Benaisa, a Muslim imam based in Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa where Muslims constitute about 50% of the total population.

Benaisa also said that women should be banned from wearing blue jeans and high heels and from leaving the house unless their hands and face are completely covered.

The comments, which were aired on Spanish public television, enraged women's rights activists and triggered a nationwide debate over when religious speech becomes abusive and crosses the line into "sexual discrimination" and "gender violence."