‘Wives can’t refuse sex’, imam tells Berlin mosque

From the German edition of The Local

A preacher at a mosque in Berlin’s southern Neukölln district has told worshippers that women should be confined to their homes and submit whenever their husbands demand sex. “A woman must turn her home into a flourishing garden for her husband, so that he does not flee from her like a leper or a lion,” Sheik Abdel Moez al-Eila told the congregation at the Al-Nur mosque.

The sermon was delivered on January 23rd, but has only just come under broad public scrutiny after a video of the address surfaced on Sunday. 

The imam went on to say that women should restrict themselves to taking care of their home, children and husband, and that only an overly ”lenient” husband would allow his wife to work – “a big problem in the society in which we live [in Germany]”.

But al-Eila’s most archaic comments come at the end of the sermon, when he says that “a woman is not allowed to refuse to sleep with her husband. She is not allowed to make excuses or use pretexts.”

The Al-Nur mosque has been the focus of investigations in recent years after a Danish preacher called for armed struggle against Israel and the killing of Jews. Berlin rapper Denis Cuspert was a regular worshipper at the mosque before becoming on of the most famous German ‘foreign fighters’ to join Isis in Syria.

The Al-Nur mosque could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.