Society

Part 1 here

She then goes on to Hadeeth, collection of sayings of Prophet Muhammed (Pease be upon him)

Even the Hadis –a collection of the words of Prophet Mohammed, his opinion on various subjects and also about his work, written by those close to him– talks extensively of the purdah for women. Women must cover their whole body before going out, they should not go before unknown men, they should not go to the mosque to read the namaaz, they should not go for any funeral.

Yes he (PBUH) did talk about purdah for women but he never forbade women to go to the mosque to offer prayers. Ms. Nasrin is ignorant of the fact the women going to mosque was banned after his death for reasons of safety (It was not advisable for women to go out early in the morning and late in the night at that time because of few social workers! ). Obviously as I have already pointed out that those commandments are for believing women, no one is forcing her to believe  in Islam! She has every right to dress the way she pleases.

She might be interested in reading these (1  2 and 3). By the way how many Muslim women observe hijab? Look around and you will know the answer. Women have voluntarily accepted hijab not just as a symbol of religious identity but also to protect themselves from various forms of evil. No one forced them to!

Other hadeeth and stories Ms. Nasrin concocted up have little truth in them. They are just her rant against the kind of fanaticism she witnessed in her childhood.  Sadly she has never seen the beauty of Islam. Bangladesh has nothing to boast about as far as religion is concerned. I lost my family members in the bengali-bihari riots in Dhaka so that doesn’t mean I am going to castigate the whole of Bangladesh or religion. The rioters were pathetic, did they spare Muslims? No! It was shear hatred towards Biharis that fueled those riots. Perhaps this hatred explains the sad plight of minorities in Bangladesh. She is prejudiced against Islam because of acts of few zealots who never represented Islam.

Let rants later on in the article has already been answered by Aqsa

Can I ask u to wake up now? What liberty is the “liberal” west offering to women? Prostitution being promoted in the name of commercial sex! Commoditization of the female body! Degradation of the entire structure of the family! Single mothers! Promiscuity being propagated in the name of liberalization! Well to criticize Islamic states or “fanatic” “extremist” “anarchic” “dictatorships” first look at what the much glorified west has done to the women!

Let’s consider the case of United States of America… the land of the free.
The land where promiscuity is at its peak….
The land where sodomy is at its peak…
The land where incest is considered nothing big…
The land where prostitution is a business, a way of life….
How safe and secured the women are there?
FYI, every 2 minutes a woman is raped there! (Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
What a secured place!
Approximately 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994)
http://www.psicopolis.com/statistiche/rape.htm
Yes those women who are found guilty of adultery are punished in Muslim lands but at the same times men get the same punishment. A rapist gets a death sentence… now before you yell, if proven! Then I must ask you acknowledge the fact that, it has to be proven in “any” court!
Coming to the status of women in islaam, islaam says…

9:71. the believers, men and women, are Auliyâ’ (helpers, supporters, friends, protectors) of one another….
2:226. and for women are rights over men similar to those of men over women.
The Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) said, “Women are the twin halves of men.”  Islaam is a way of life and gives a code of conduct to each and every member of a family. Islaam gives a lot of importance to a family and prescribes specific roles to everyone in the family big or small. Islaam ideally wants a woman to be a home maker. She can work and do business but without compromising her family. Our prophet’s wife was a businesswoman herself! It’s mandatory for a husband to take care of his wife and her financial needs but it’s not mandatory for a woman to share her wealth with her husband. It’s entirely the will of the wife… she may or may not assist her husband with her money.

I’m against the very notion that to prove her worth a woman need to do what her husband is doing. How many husbands compare themselves with their wife’s? Why should I compare myself with a man to prove my steel?

Feminism is the biggest abuse to the entire womanhood in the history of mankind. In the name of feminism women were made to shed their clothes which ultimately satisfy the male members of the society. Being an eye-candy is considered something respectful!
I’m asking you what my physical appearance has got to do with my intelligence. You said, fundamentalists force women to wear hijab and governments force them to remove hijab. So if a Muslim is forcing someone to wear hijab, hes an extremist…. What is the free government doing by forcing those women to remove hijab?
They are being liberal!
Who’s going to ensure that only suppressed women are wearing hijab? Continuing on hijab, islaam “prescribes” hijab and those who feel the need….WEAR IT WITH THEIR WILL!
Only one or two cases are hyped to such an extent. And how safely you ignore the crime rate in the west!
Sheer hypocrisy!

This is the first verse she quotes-

“Tell the faithful women that they must keep their gaze focused below/on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewellery on display. They must hide their breasts behind a purdah. They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children. They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed.” (Sura Al Noor 24:31)

The bold are Ms. Nasreen’s addition and distortion. Here is the actual verse

“And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O ye Believers! turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.”

I am surprised that a writer of her caliber (as Manas points out)  cannot differentiate between gaze focused below/on the ground  and lower their gaze and guard their modesty. Quran never talked about the women’s gaze fixed to the ground, all it talked about is that women should lower their gaze (a similar command to believing men, the hijab for men!! yes the hijab for men; the beard). She even replaced the word ‘believing’ with ‘faithful’. The command is for a believing woman, if she is not then who is forcing her to! Has she ever worn the veil? I wrote on the veil issue on IM ( What about Burqa, huh? )

This is the explanation from Tafsir Ibn Kathir-

And tell the believing women to lower their gaze) meaning, from that which Allah has forbidden them to look at, apart from their husbands. Some scholars said that it is permissible for women to look at non-Mahram men without desire (whereas its not permissible for men to look at women), as it was recorded in the Sahih that the Messenger of Allah was watching the Ethiopians playing with spears in the Masjid on the day of `Id, and `A’ishah the Mother of the believers was watching them from behind him and he was concealing her from them, until she got bored and went away.

Her distortion is nothing but indicative of her prejudice and her desperation to prove the Quran wrong. She deliberately changed the wording to make her argument strong.

Her second verse-

“Oh nabi, please tell your wives and daughters and faithful women to wear a covering dress on their bodies. That would be good. Then nobody can recognise them and harrass them. Allah is merciful and kind.” (Sura Al Hijaab 33: 59)

Here is the actual verse

O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

The thing with Quran is that many people interpret the commands in relation to the present day world. There were many verses which were revealed for the prevalent situation. Here is an explanation of the above verse

Here Allah tells His Messenger to command the believing women — especially his wives and daughters, because of their position of honor — to draw their Jilbabs over their bodies, so that they will be distinct in their appearance from the women of the Jahiliyyah and from slave women.

This can be interpreted that the above verse was meant for the protection of women who had accepted Islam and who were in constant danger of being molested by the infidels. Jahiliyyah, the period, refers to the nomads who lived in Mecca and Madina before Prophet Muhammed (SAW) brought the message of Islam.

To be continued…

While the government and NGOs are up with arm against dowry and atrocities against women, men have been ignored. This statistics prove that

Javeri says that of a total of 58,319 dowry cases registered in the country in 2004, as many as 10,491 (18 per cent) could not even be charge-sheeted as the grounds were frivolous. Of the 47,828 (82 per cent) charge-sheeted, only 5,739 (9.8 per cent) were convicted. In other words, 24,127 (41 per cent) were acquitted as they were innocent, needlessly harassed due to faulty investigation, false complaints and bad prosecution. The Centre for Social Research has indicated that 98 per cent of cases filed under IPC section 498A are false. [HT]

So the new funda seems to be exploitation of the law to implicate men! Fine I do understand that women deserve the special privileges, being a weaker sex and particularly in a patriarchal society like India, but are women always that weak? Aren’t there weaker men? Men who are emotionally,mentally, economically or even physically weak and inept at handling a family, their wives or their work. What about them? Wives do exploit husbands like these to perhaps not the same level of torture as a women is exposed to male chauvinist but still enough for it to be a crime against an individual.

Law can always be exploited for evil wants of anyone. Rich manipulate the law for their advantage. Politicians use the government machinery to get their job done. So why can’t women use ‘leninet’ and heavely ‘bisaed’ laws for their advantage. Afterall men are not the sole source of evil on this planet!

Often families exploit rich NRIs. We have always heard cases in which men trick young girls but the other possibility cannot be ignored. Here is one such case

I am well eductated NRI (Canada). Got back to India in 2002 and married to middle class girl. Due to some differences we got back to india in march 2004, I wanted to get her parents attention over some crazy behaviour of their girl. They are not willing to listen to me, they thought its all my fault and I just wanted to harrass them.I left India on march 2004. Since then I have not gone back to India.

They sent me notice to blackmail me to pay money to them in Canada. If not they will file 498a. I denied. They filed maintenance case in Ahmedabad,Gujarat matrimonical court. Meanwhile they try to make me to visit India. But all there effort fails, I know the face of legal system in India, so afraid to take any risk until my divoce is finalized. I hired a local lawyer who represents me in family court. Court pass order to pay Rs. 15000 per month to my wife. I never get this notice about maintenance order straight from court.[Blog]

Girl’s family was involved in the above case. Marriages where in both sides try to hide these ‘crazy behaviours’ are common. These ‘crazy behaviours’ become visible only after marriage. This is precisely the reason I am against blind arranged marriages, they don’t make sense to me. You are married off to someone you have just met for few hours, something like the movie Vivah, and then after marriage you realise that mentalities don’t match. You try to compromise. That fails. You file for divorce and something like the above happens or even worse. I have seen evil families, who for the sake of money, exploit the other on threats of social status; a divorce is considered a bad thing in our society and still seen as something really ‘bad’.

And then the age old rant ‘men fall easily…men are so emotional…its not the fault of women! we didn’t ask them to fight epic battles for us, it was their emotional weakness and ego that drove them’. Well its true to a very great extent. Men are emotionally not as strong as a women. So is it fair on the part of women to exploit this weakness? Why not! If men can exploit physical weakness of women then why not women? I really don’t know what’s the end to this discussion.

To end this all I want to say is that is the government can make a law for atrocities against women then something similar can be made to protect the rights of men.

Karamah has an excellent article on the zina, illegal intercourse, laws in Pakistan and how the the Islamic laws have been wrongly misinterpreted. The article brings out the difference between sexual contact with consent, zina, and rape which the law makers in Pakistan have failed to understand. I quote few paras to prove that point as to why 4 witnesses are required to prove zina.

It is pertinent to point out here that the evidentiary requirement for zina was initially intended to protect women from frivolous charges. This intention derives directly from Asbab al-Nuzul (reasons of revelation) relating to the Qur’anic verse that establishes the hadd of zina. We therefore believe that the requirement of four witnesses (with all its restrictions and specifications) is a merciful measure from God in order not only to avoid incriminating innocent people, but also to preserve the privacy of Muslims, which is one of the most valued principles in Islam (the concept of sitr). It is not accidental that the privacy principle is stated in the same chapter, a few verses later: “O ye who believe! Enter not houses other than your own, until ye have asked permission and saluted those in them: that is best for you, in order that ye may heed (what is seemly).� (24: 27)

We also believe that the requirement of male witnesses constitutes another protective measure that makes it more difficult to prove zina. After all, in Muslim societies women have more facility and liberty to enter houses and access each other’s private apartments than men usually have. From the rich jurisprudence related to the matter, one can easily conclude that Muslim jurists were very cautious not to convict an innocent person. They went so far as to state that it is better to let a guilty person get away with his/her crime than to punish an innocent person. For, even when a person escapes the worldly punishment, the right of God remains. He will ultimately decide whether to punish or forgive the sinful.

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