Answer
Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- The suggestion that she should marry the rapist is akin to rewarding him for his grievous offence.
2- Therefore, forcing a girl to marry her rapist is not acceptable at all.
In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
Forcing a girl to marry her rapist is absolutely cruel and offensive. Islam is all about justice and dignity for both men and women. The man who has committed this horrendous crime needs to be punished.
The suggestion that she should marry the rapist is akin to rewarding him for his grievous offence.
It is sending a wrong message to people like as if you are saying, ‘if you are unable to find a woman to marry you, pluck anyone you like from the street and rape her, for she will be forced to marry you’.
Such a travesty of justice can never be attributed to the sacred law of Shari`ah. Shari`ah is all about justice.
Therefore, such a ruling is akin to inflicting a double punishment on the victim and rewarding the aggressor,. This is wholly absurd, unjust and repulsive to common sense, reason and divine law.
It is high time for Muslims to stand up against such blatant abuse of the Shari`ah. We ought to ostracize those who misuse the Sacred Law in this way as they are guilty of the worst form of blasphemy.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.