On the 16th
of December 2012, Damini, a 23 year old Indian medical student fell victim to a
brutal assault and gang raped by six men on a bus in the Indian capital Delhi.
A fortnight after that she died from her injuries. Damini’s case sparked mass
protests across India against the Indian police and government’s negligence and
laidback attitude towards the protection of women from sexual violence.
Rape has taken
the shape of almost a cultural ritual, an everyday occurrence and the fastest
growing crime in India, the world’s largest democracy. Many sexual assaults go
unreported due to large numbers of women having lost faith in the system to
protect their dignity as a consequence of the scale of the problem, a culture
of impunity afforded to offenders by police, cases that drag on for years
through the courts, and abysmal conviction rates.
According to statistics,
a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, and 24,000 rape cases were reported
last year alone. “Hindustan times” reported in a survey that 78% of women in
Delhi had been sexually harassed in 2012 alone.[i]
Increasing
number of people as a result of this incident called for the death penalty as a
punishment for the rapists hoping that this would become a deterrent for future
would-be rapists. The government also
rushed to ban buses with tinted windows.
But would these
steps really bring an end to this heinous crime ? To understand this there is a
need to assess the reason why such a heinous crime has taken the shape of an
epidemic in the first place.
The root cause
lies in the increasing embrace of the western way of life in India. The West offers individual freedom as the
progressive basis of life. By individual freedom what’s meant is that an
individual is completely free in how he or she lives his or her life.
As a result of this, natural aspects within man are taken and put into
the public life such that it is propagated everywhere – the sexual
relationship. It is true that people have a procreation instinct from which we
get the feeling of wanting to have children, of motherhood of fatherhood and
also an aspect which is sexual.
Sex is promoted everywhere from billboards, movies, music, adverts –
everywhere. They have taken something which should be for the bedroom, for the
private life and promoted it in the whole society.
The nature of instincts is that reality agitates them – so if the image
and portrayal of sex is everywhere then it is bound to agitate the instincts of
men and women – what will this lead to?
In August 2002 the Observer Newspaper in UK, the heart of the Western
world published the findings of an Observer / ICM poll on sexual attitudes and
behaviour of Britons. A total of 1,027 people aged 16 and above were questioned
about their views of sex in the 21st Century. It found that more than half of
Britons have had a 'one night stand'
and that the average number of sexual partners in the UK stands at
10.
If we take a quick look at the West’s record we find that in their
societies the top five problems in the social and marital life are:
- Mistrust and
Adultery - 70% of American wives commit adultery within 5 years of
marriage.
- Divorce - one
in three end up in divorce.
- Rape - 167
women are raped every day in the
- Wife battery
- a battery incident occurs every 18 seconds in the
- Child
molestation and paedophilia - in
The situation in India is much similar, in a survey conducted by
OutlookIndia magazine in 2011,
·
52.3 % respondents of the survey considered one-night stands as
acceptable.
- 80 %
of respondents in Hyderabad considered casual sex as a great stress-buster
- 53.8 % of Delhiites lost count of the number of times they
paid for sex
- 23.8 % of Bangaloreans have had casual sex with someone of the
same gender [ii]
These are the fruits of freedom and these should not be considered
surprising but in fact are an inevitable occurrence since a solution proposed
by man’s limited mind will never be able to address the intricacies of human
life and its requirements.
Therefore, we need to refer to the Creator (subhanahu wa ta’aala), Who
is All-Aware of His (subhanahu wa ta’aala) creation and how it is that humanity
should regulate their lives.
The West views Women as sex objects. They value women by their looks –
making women obsessed about looking the right way and how men perceive them.
And this problem is not limited to the west, rather has been exported
wholesale to countries like India who is trying to catch up with the liberal
west.
The Bollywood
culture, along with other entertainment, advertising, and pornography
industries sanctioned by India’s secular liberal democratic system have
presented the woman as an object to play to the desires of men, sexualized
society, encouraged individuals to pursue their selfish carnal desires, and
promoted extra-marital relationships, nurturing a culture of promiscuity and
cheapening the relationships between men and women. All this has desensitized
the disgust that should be felt towards the violation of women’s dignity in the
minds of many men.
So the root problem
is not just that India does not have sufficiently strong punishments or that there
are too many buses with tinted windows, but it is a more deep rooted problem of
a society
-
that has lost its moral
compass,
-
that has encouraged
sexualisation of woman in films and advertising,
-
that has encouraged free mixing
as we saw on New Year’s eve and will see at Valentines
-
and instills concepts of
freedom and the unrestricted satisfaction of needs and instincts.
The Islamic
view towards woman
Islam does not
believe in the ideas of freedom, liberation, or equality of the woman, for it
does not leave the human being to decide how he or she should live her life
according to her own desires or allow mankind to legislate their own laws for
the society and create their own system from the ignorance, bias, greed, and limited
understanding that they have of each other’s needs. The system comes completely
from the Creator, covering all of life’s affairs: ruling, economic, judicial,
education and the social system dealing with the relationship and duties of men
and women within the society. As a verse in the Holy Qur’an states in a chapter
entitled Ahzab,
)وَمَا
كَانَ لِمُؤْمِنٍ وَلَا مُؤْمِنَةٍ إِذَا قَضَى اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ أَمْرًا أَنْ يَكُونَ
لَهُمُ الْخِيَرَةُ مِنْ أَمْرِهِمْ وَمَنْ يَعْصِ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ
ضَلَّ ضَلَالًا مُبِينًا(
“It is not
fitting for a believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah
and His Messenger, to have any option about their decision. If anyone disobeys
Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong path”. [TMQ Ahzab:36]
Within Islam,
the Muslim woman has contentment in her life, for the only expectations she has
to live up to are those of the Creator and not the continually changing or
unrealistic expectations of her husband, family, community or society. She is
not expected to be the superwoman who has a successful busy career but at the
same time has to fulfill the duties of being a wife and mother perfectly.
With regards to
the honour, respect, and security that a woman deserves, Islam establishes this
in two ways. Firstly, Islam rejects liberal freedoms and rather promotes taqwa
(God-consciousness) within society that nurtures a mentality of accountability
in the manner by which men view and treat women. It prohibits the sexualisation
of society as well as all forms of objectification and exploitation of women’s
bodies, such that the relationship between the sexes is never cheapened or the
woman devalued. It celebrates a comprehensive social system that regulates the
relationship between men and women, and includes a modest dress code, the
segregation of the genders, and prohibition of extramarital relationships – all
of which directs the fulfillment of the sexual desires to marriage alone,
protecting women and society.
Islam commands
that the man views the woman as an honour to be protected at all times and as a
trust that the Creator has placed in his hand, whether it is his mother,
daughter, wife, or any woman in society. He understands that his treatment
towards her can bring him either reward or punishment in the Hereafter. In a hadith
of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) he said, “The
world and all things in the world are precious but the most precious thing in
the world is a virtuous woman”.
In his last
sermon to the Muslims, he (saw) reminded them, “O People, it is true that you have certain rights, with regards to
your women but they also have rights over you. Remember that you have taken
them as your wives only under Allah’s trust and with His permission. If they
abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in
kindness. Do be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.”
Within a true
Islamic Society, the correct Islamic concepts will affect the men within the
society at large, who will view the woman as an honour regardless of whether
she has a career or not. This can be seen in an example at the time when there
was a true Islamic society. The leader or Khalifah at the time of this example
was Umar bin Al-Khattab (ra). A situation arose where a Jew was found
assassinated. Umar asked the people if they knew about the matter, whereupon a
muslim called Bak’r in Shad’dakh appeared before him and said, “I have killed
him”. Umar was astonished and asked him for the reason. The man explained that
a Muslim brother had gone on Jihad and consigned his family members to him to
look over in his absence. When he arrived at the house of the brother, he had
found the Jew inside reciting poetry slandering the reputation of the brother’s
wife by implying that he had spent the night with her in his absence. As a
result, he killed him to protect the honour of the woman who had been placed
under his protection. On hearing all the details, Umar exempted him from paying
any compensation to the family of the Jew.
The second
manner by which Islam protects the honour of the woman is by the presence of an
Islamic State or Khilafah. The Khilafah is the ruling system of Islam that
applies all of the commands of Islam that includes for example the prayer, the
fasting, the zakat (obligatory charity), the economic laws, the social system
that regulates the relationship of men and women within the society, and the
punishment system of Islam. It is this true Islamic State that existed for over
1300 years but has been absent over our lands today for almost 80 years. This
explains the increasing rape, domestic violence, shame, and humiliation that
the woman faces presently within the Muslim world. It is only through the
re-establishment of the Khilafah that will enable the propagation of the
correct viewpoint and mentality to the individuals within the society through
the education system and the media and have the authority to enforce the
appropriate punishments upon those who dishonour the woman.
Ustadh Abu Khaled Al Hejazi
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