Prostitution in Oman
Open-knowledge reference entry
Prostitution in Oman is illegal, but women from Eastern Europe, South Asia, North Africa, and China engage in prostitution in the country. Prostitution occurs in bars, hotels, nightclubs, brothels, massage parlors and health clubs.
Sex trafficking is a problem in Oman.
Legal situation
Historically, prostitution was connected to slavery in Oman. The Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution. However, since the principle of concubinage in Islam in Islamic Law allowed a man to have sexual intercourse with his female slave, prostitution in the Islamic world was commonly practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who was then allowed to have sex with her as her new owner; the client would then cancel his purchase and return the slave to her pimp on the pretext of discontent, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world.
Slavery in Oman was however abolished in 1970, after which this form of prostitution could no longer be practiced.
Only sex within a legalized marriage is permitted. Women's sex outside legal marriage is criminalised as zina (illegal sex, adultery, fornication). It is women, and not their clients, who are legally penalised for sex work which carries a jail sentence between three and five years.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prostitution in Oman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.