On Sunday the 1st of January, a deputy
provincial governor in the Iranian capital said that homeless
women in Tehran who are drug-dependent and who also practice prostitution
should be encouraged to be sterilized. He stated that over 20 percent of them
have AIDS and they spread various diseases and that in addition to spreading
depravity, these women reproduce like hatching machines and as their children have
no guardians, they sell them. He commented, “There
is a project, a reality, an opinion, agreed on by many NGOs and the social
elite, that if a woman is sick, and is also a sex worker and has no place to
stay, she should be sterilized with her own approval, and not forcefully. The sterilization should be done through a project to convince homeless
women to prevent social harm”.
In recent years, there has been a growing
crisis in Tehran where street children are born and sold by homeless or poor
women living in and around the capital. Thousands of such children are put to
work as beggars or street vendors. The images of homeless
women sleeping in open graves outside Tehran has shocked Iranian society.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani promised during his 2013 presidential election
campaign to improve the status of women in Iran. He proposed the establishment
of a ‘Ministry of Women’ and argued that the government ought to “elevate the status of women in our minds,
in society, and ultimately in all arenas. I will establish a Ministry of Women
in order to recover the violated rights of women in this country.” He also
said in February 2016 at a national conference titled ‘Women, Moderation and
Development’, “We should believe in
women’s presence and capabilities and know that our country’s women can have
roles in science, knowledge, economy, politics, and arts just like men.”
The homeless women and children on the streets
of Tehran, show once again the empty promises of the rulers of the Muslim
world, including in Iran that deceptively claims to protect its women in
accordance to Islamic law. We ask: Which part of Islamic law sanctions a
government to abandon its women to a life of dire poverty such that they resort
to selling their bodies to feed themselves and their children, or sleep in open
graves? Which part of Islamic law accepts for children to beg on streets so
that they do not starve? And which part of Islamic law proposes that the
solution to such government negligence in looking after the needs of its people
is to sterilize the most vulnerable amongst it women? The Shariah Laws and true
Islamic governance abhors all of this and does not tolerate a single woman or
child to be homeless under its rule, or beg or violate their honour to survive!
This lying, treacherous Iranian regime as with regimes across the Muslim lands
only pursue their own selfish interests and the interests of the enemies of
Islam. They have no genuine concern for the welfare of their women or children.
It is irrelevant for them whether the women and children
of the Ummah live on the streets, consume drugs, sell their children, sell
their bodies, or die under the regime’s own bombs and bullets. It is utterly shameful
that these governments accept for so many of their women and children to live
in these miserable conditions, not taking one sound action to remove them from
this impoverished life. Such states do not have an iota of resemblance to true
Islamic rule. Iran’s claim to implement Islam is nothing but window-dressing
used to shore up public support for an oppressive regime! All that they are
concerned with is enacting non-Islamic laws and restrictions that compound the
misery and injustice that women are subjected to rather than dealing with their
real problems. The Ummah needs a true Islamic leadership and state which
will fight for the dignity of Muslim women and ensure that every single one
under its rule is housed and provided for as obliged by Islam. This state,
which is a guardian of the people, will only materialise under the Khilafah
(Caliphate) based upon
the method of the Prophethood!
﴿وَسَيَعْلَمُ الَّذِينَ
ظَلَمُوا أَيَّ مُنقَلَبٍ يَنقَلِبُونَ﴾
“And those who act unjustly shall know to what final place of turning they shall turn back.” [26:227]
Women’s Section
in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
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