Society

I found this article on rediff..where else

A mother of four has been driven out of her village in Murshidabad district by a Muslim panchayat after being allegedly raped by a local man three months ago.

The panchayat ruled that her marriage stood annulled in the wake of the incident and that she could neither live with her husband nor enter the predominantly Muslim village, which is about 200 km from Kolkata.

The village council ruled that the couple should pay Rs 50,000 if they wished to stay together, a condition which the victim’s husband, a daily wage labourer, failed to meet.

The victim, who was raped on July 25 in Katabagan village, filed a case at the police station in Behrampur on Friday following the intervention of Superintendent of Police Rahul Srivasatava.

The local police had earlier refused to register a case.

In her complaint, the woman accused Mansoor Ali, a local thug, of raping her in front of her four children.

“I want to keep my wife as it is not her fault, but people are not allowing me to keep her. Who will look after our four children?” her husband added.

His family was opposing his wife’s stay in the house after the incident and the matter was taken up by the panchayat of the village.

Also, her stepmother prevented her from entering her father’s house.

The panchayat also imposed a fine of Rs 18,000 on the rapist. He did not pay the fine.

First I wonder why it is being called a Muslim panchayat? Are they governed by the laws of Shariah? The judgement, if true, is inane and any sane mind will reject it.

Anti-feminism is reflected by the ruling which is so inherent in Indian villages. They represent the ideal patriarchal society were women are mere objects of exploitation. Recently in a village in MP women were asked to plough the village fields topless so as to facilitate the acceptance of prayers for rain! Its not about Islam or Hinduism but its about being illiterate and backward. The wings of modernity is still to touch these villages. Blind following of doctrines is something which is so set in their society and any attempt to deviate from this leads to the label of infidel. No doubt education has reached these villages but a change in mentality takes time. Education should bridge the gap between superstitious beliefs and being logical. Logic is something that comes after many years of education and not all member of society adhere to that. A huge majority still have the herd mentality, blindly following what is being presented to them and never contemplating on reason being their practices.

I cannot comment much as I have never experienced village life.

Regarding the Imrana case and as Polite Indian feels that it was a flaw of Islamic laws, i have this (These are the words of Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan)
In this particular case, we had two problems. One: the media deliberately distorted the verdict of a village council (panchayat) as “Shariat Panchayat” which was a lie and caused a lot of uproar and problems here because that verdict ordered the alleged victim to marry her father-in-law: a patently wrong and insulting advice.
The other problem was with the Hanafi fiqh which surfaced because of this incident. In some of their old books it is said that even zina (rape) is like marraige and it invalidates the marriage of a son whose wife is “raped” by his own father. This interpretation is peculiar to the Hanafi fiqh where a crime (haram) is considered enough to invilidate a solid contract like marriage while in the Quran the words used are “la tankihoo ma nakaha aabaokum” where “nakaha” can mean only marriage and not a crime like rape whose perpetrator has to be punished if the crime is proved. This problem with the Hanafi fiqh will not go away as our mutis and scholars are very rigid. But at the same time people from their own ranks have called for ijtihad in such matter where no clear text from the Quran or Hadith supports such a view.
Ulama of other masalik have spoken out against this opinion.  

 The media here is not sympathetic to Muslims and uses such rare incidents to demand abolition of that tiny bit of Shariat (personal laws) which is still operative in India.
It is preposterous to say that Imrana’s option is to marry the rapist. No scholar or mufti has said it. This was the opinion of illiterate village elders who were headed by a Hindu headman!
In any case, the rape even if it has taken place does not repudiate the marriage except in the opinion of the Hanafi school. Imrana is perfectly free and able to follow Ahle Hadith or any other school which does not consider that rape by a father-in-law invalidates his dauther-in-law’s marriage. It is common here that in cases of “triple talaq” Hanafis follow the Ahle-Hadith who do not consider it “triple” if talaq was said in one sitting.

This is the diary entry of Peter Voisey. Well what was over? Here is the answer

Peter Voisey snatched the girl from the ground-floor bathroom of her home in Willington Quay, North Tyneside

After grabbing the girl from her bath, he put his hand over her mouth and told her that if she made a noise she would not see her family again.

He repeated the threat as he carried out the attacks.

He drove her around the area, repeatedly sexually abused her, then abandoned her naked and screaming in a snow-covered alleyway last December

BBC

Ah, people like these should be hanged by their nail. Death alone cannot be a punishment. It has to be something more prolonged and continuous so that he feels the pain all his life!!

An year ago I had tryst with reality. Those memories were refreshed when I saw Angrez yesterday. Its a movie based in Hyderabad and the differences that prevail between the old city and hi-tech city. In other words it’s about

vs

Old city represented by orthodox Muslim families and the hi-tech city represented by modern and liberal families. I got these pictures from HT. There are many noteworthy features about those pictures. They not only represent different dressing but they also reveal the economic backwardness of Muslims; the boy in the first image has a kite but the girl in the other picture has a doll! Lack of modernity is represented by no background music the first picture. Another striking feature of the first picture is the position of women, notice how they have been pushed to the background whereas the blonde with an umbrella is leading in the second picture; an indication how patriarchal system is prevalent among Muslims. The family in the second picture has a uniformed butler but no such luxury for the family in the first Picture. Notice also the number of children in the first pic as compared to the second one. Thank God they didn’t show more than one woman in the first pic! Another interesting pic can be found here (I have nothing to comment on that )

Well to be frank I have observed this difference in every city I have been; Muslim majority areas are backward as compared to others, they usually have narrow dirty and filthy streets with people in traditional dresses. People there are generally jobless and so small groups of flirts and perverts is a common sight, they flaunt and generally dream about lavish living and how they wanna break free from the orthodoxies. Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Amir Khan are role their role models. They try to follow them in their dressing sense with whatever they have at their disposal but most sadly they cannot visualize the burqa clad women to be their sexy heroines. Their whole lives revolve around a virtual world they have carved out for them and in their language they are Kool! Then there are married men who find it hard to control their fetish desires (read it again if you don’t understand..that fetish word is the key) and often end up making a cricket team! They then marry off their daughters to some sheikh in gulf or anyone with a job abroad. This is what I wrote here

Fathers, old orthodox and often bigots, coerce their daughters to get married to such people and then often end up in ruining the lives of innocents. Not just among Muslims but this practice is common in Punjab and other parts of North India. Mostly these marriages are for money. Fathers marry off their daughters in hope for a brighter future and lavish living, a freedom from abject poverty that most of these families are subjected to. Then there are dalals who direct the whole fictitious marriage, well marriage just for the name sake; a marriage with photo or online marriage or even telephonic! And of course there are greedy Mullahs who can make way for any possibility. The end result, the innocent virgin being raped by her, father like, husband. I can’t even imagine how she feels when she is confronted with an elderly man ready to let loose his sexual lust on her. Well in most cases the man has to be a shameless scoundrel whose morality has been traded for libido. These viagra powered men try to defy age and also malign the sacred ritual of marriage. They shatter the dreams of those innocent and benign young girls, marriages like these will continue to haunt them even if they are rescued.

Fathers like these have no place in modern society. Before hanging Mohammed Afzal the court should hang these morons! The biggest burden this world carries…Old orthodox men!!

Anyway Angrez was about this difference sans my rant against old orthodox men . The movie is a comedy. Its about how a NRI runs into few old city guys and the subsequent chase and the associated comedy. A must watch if you wanna learn Hyderabadi Urdu. But I cannot reproduce any of it because I so so bad at learning languages; I have spent all my life among Bengalis but still cannot speak a sentence properly and same is the case with Tamil. The movie is about Charminar and its also about Banjara hills.

Before visiting Hyderabad I had this notion that its a metropolitan but when my mother asked me about it I said its just a big Patna nothing more. There was chaos all around. Traffic was scary and I nearly missed my bus due to it. People had no regard for the traffic light. As far as food is concerned, well that famous hyderabadi biryani was a disappointment and so was the haleem. Few so called ‘city dwellers’ were hostile to the fact that I was encroaching their territory (well in various ways). Anyway I have nothing more to comment on that..I am just too prejudiced against them (perhaps you wanna read this and this and then you will understand why it was a tryst with reality for me).Well in short it wasn’t a pleasant trip for me but I am sure I will like that place on my next visit .

Kya bolta tumhe miyaN..maza aayega..lekin hallu hallu

I love this piece of news.

A Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) student of Thane was arrested on Thursday for creating a classmate’s profile and uploading her picture with offensive messages on an online community site without her permission.

Abhishek, 19, a BMS student, first denied committing any such crime but soon confessed. “I don’t understand what happened to me. I just did it,� said Abhishek, who knew Sushama as her classmate in junior college.

And the police did bring in their technological skills into use.

Police Inspector Shekhar Tore of TCC who investigated the matter said, “The orkut server is located in Sweden and therefore it was difficult for us to get information about the person who created the profile. We traced the fake yahoo email ID created on Sushma’s name and then got information about its log-in details. The IP address details of this yahoo account led to Sumer Castle apartment in Thane’s Kolbad area and another cyber café nearby.

I wonder that trifle things like a profile on Orkut can send someone to jail. I am usually amazed by the importance of Internet in people’s lives these days. I remember someone threatened my friend Yusuf and he lodged with the police in Texas and to my surprise police took that seriously. He was assured of protection from online casino