Egyptian Presidential Candidate Muhammad Mursi on Women's Rights: In Egypt We Don’t Have Child Abuse, Separated Couples, Cohabitation, or Sex with Beatings

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian presidential candidate Muhammad Mursi, which aired on the Al-Jazeera network on June 5, 2012.

Muhammad Mursi: Not a single woman in Egypt – young or old, from a rural area or from the city, Muslim or Christian – has to write down who the baby’s father is when she gives birth at hospital. This doesn’t exist here. Abroad, they have that. They are free. A woman is even free to not write the father’s name at all in the birth certificate. We don’t have that. Our society is very stable.

We don’t have the notion of child abuse. No woman beats her child in Egypt. That concept does not exist here.

Marital relations here adhere to social norms, even more than legal or religious norms: Husband, wife, family, and stability. In other countries it’s not like that.

We don’t have the notion of separated [couples], or the notion of “living together” out of wedlock.

There are tens of thousands of cases filed at police stations, in many countries that purport to give women their rights – cases of sex involving beatings. In Egypt, we don’t have that. It’s forbidden to Muslims as well as Christians.

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