Castilian law punished Muslim men sleeping with Christian women but tolerated the reverse
Evidence
Sexual contamination is also a preoccupation of the Siete partidas. The Muslim or Jew who sleeps with a Christian virgin or widow must be stoned while his partner loses half her possessions; if she is married, both are to be put to death; if she is a prostitute, they are flogged together through the city. In all cases, the punishments for recidivists are more severe. But there is no explicit prohibition of sexual relations between a Christian man and a Muslim or Jewish woman; this seems to be tacitly tolerated. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 985
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article — asymmetric sexual policing runs through both, and to the broader pattern of laws protecting women of the dominant faith from out-group men.
- ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the immodesty article’s theme: sexual contact as the site where inter-group boundaries are policed asymmetrically.
- BMF: The asymmetry — out-group men punished for sleeping with in-group women, in-group men free to sleep with out-group women — evokes the social strictures in Things Fall Apart where men’s dominance and women as markers of group honor structure punishment.