By: Tashbih Sayyed
This is a tale of two tribes.
Most of the people in Meerwala Jatoi a farming village in district Muzaffargarh of Pakistan's province of Punjab belong to different tribes. One of these tribes is Mastoi tribe that owns much land and is very powerful. Gujar tribe is another that owns very little and is considered lowly. On June 22, 2002, three Mastoi men kidnapped Abdul Shakur, a tall boy 11 or 12 years of age. They took him to a sugar cane field. Then they took turns sodomizing him. "They asked me if I would tell my family," Abdul recalled. "When I said yes, they beat me up. Then they locked me up in a room."
The police were notified that Abdul was being held in the house of a young Mastoi, Abdul Khaliq.
Mastoi elders knew how to handle the police. They arranged for Abdul Khaliq's sister, Salma Naseem, to be found with the young boy, when police came looking for him. When the police arrived, they found Abdul Khaliq's sister in the same room with Abdul Shakur. The Mastoi alleged that the young boy who, according to the experts, was too young to meet the sexual lust of any opposite sex, was having an affair with the sister. Police took the boy away and lodged him in jail.
After having successfully hoodwinked the law, Mastoi elders proceeded to teach a lesson to the family of the young boy Abdul Shakoor. They convened the tribal council, or panchayat, and decided to avenge the honor of Salma Naseen. They knew that the society that is controlled by "religious" and tribal sense of honor, will agree with them that the police action was not enough. It could not restore their 'honor.'
In feudal and tribal societies, Panchayats (Tribal Councils) have operated for centuries, settling small disputes involving fights between families or over land. This is also a fact that Panchayats have historically been used by the wealthy and the powerful to perpetuate their social and political control over the poor. And in Abdul Shakoor's case, this cruel fact of tribal life was in play once again.
Traditionally, in cases, when a young man is found having an affair with another tribe's daughter, the young man is forced to marry the girl. And to satisfy the honor of the girl's tribe, one of the sisters of the young man is also forced to marry a man of the girl's tribe. Abdul Shakoor's tribe, Gujar favored the same means of resolving the dispute: that Abdul would marry Salma Naseem. And, to satisfy the honor of the Mastois, one of Abdul's five sisters would be given away in marriage to a Mastoi man.
But in this case, panchayat, under the influence of the rich and powerful Mastois called not for marriage but for punitive rape. Abdul Shakoor's sister, Mukhtaran Mai, who is divorced and teaches the holy book Koran to children, had to go to the cotton field where the panchayat was meeting and, begging for mercy, was dragged away with the council's blessing by one Mastoi Abdul Khaliq.
For an hour and a half, as other Mastoi people "danced in jubilation," Abdul Khaliq and three other men raped her. Then Mukhtaran Mai was forced, before perhaps 300 people, to walk home naked.
Crimes against humanity like the gang rapes, honor killings, murders of Christians, Hindus and Shias, etc. Are daily happenings in Muslim societies like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran. In fact, to the outsiders, these inhuman acts have come to represent Islam. Mullah's Green Wall of Silence, protecting and endorsing the barbarism, has traditionally and historically been so high that it has obscured the true face of Islam. Silence of those who claim to represent Islam, has made it impossible for the non-Muslims to distinguish between the sick Muslim sociology and the true Islamic theology.
Muslim scholar's Green Wall of Silence is a vital factor in the promotion of violence against women. In the shadow of this wall there is a social, cultural and economic process that is at work in constructing gender. In the darkness of this shadow, women are subjected systematically to various form of gender violence
Anyone raising a voice against the atrocities committed against women, is instantly branded either an infidel or an agent of an enemy of Islam. The tragedy is that Mullah is presenting the violations of women's rights as required by Islam. It is being preached from the mosques that the West and the Muslim agents of the West are talking of women's rights only to distort Islam. "One major point of conflict between Islam and the West discussed by Saudi Imams is the status of women, which is perceived as a matter of life and death for Muslim society. The Saudi preachers see the West's preoccupation with the status of women in Islamic countries as an attempt to undermine and topple Islamic society." (9)
In a sermon at the Al-Huweish mosque in Al-Taif, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Nimr said, "The enemies of Islam have decided to distance the Muslims from their religion. Therefore, they have made the woman the most important weapon in this destruction. Ostensibly, they are showing her mercy and defending her rights. Many among the Muslim women have been misled by this, because of their ignorance about their religion, which sees the woman as the man's partner and as possessing rights and obligations appropriate to her nature and character..."
Each and every word of Muslim preacher's sermons demonstrates his primitive state of mind. He comes out as a person who has no faith in God's scheme and civilized values. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Nimr says, "Permitting women to leave the home, so that they rub up against men in the marketplaces and talk with people other than their chaperones - with some even exposing parts of their bodies prohibited from exposure - are forbidden acts, a disgrace, and lead to destruction. The first crime perpetrated by the Israelites was letting their women loose when they were adorned, so that they would stir up Fitna [inner strife]. For this, Allah punished them with the plague" (10)
Wahabbi preachers consider modernity a downfall of humanity. Education to them is corruption and freedoms are perversions. Speaking at an Al-Riyadh mosque, Sheikh Fahd Bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Abyan said: "Some people have been influenced by the putrid ideas spread by the infidel West about the [Islamic principle of] man's custodianship over the woman. On the face of it, these ideas appear to protect the woman's rights. But in truth, their goal is to push the people into sinful liberty that has caused the downfall of [entire] societies. [In the West] this false liberty has engendered a society with crime as its hobby, adultery as its entertainment, and murder as its means of sublimating rage; a society in which the number of illegitimate children approaches and sometimes even surpasses the number of children from permitted unions… a society in which the woman does as she pleases even if she is married... a society in which underage girls know and do what married women know and do, and even more… These putrid ideas - no more than conceptual trash disseminated by the West - have begun to appear in the whorish journals and on the [Arab] satellite channels…"
Sheikh Saleh Fawzan Al-Fawzan discussed the situation of Western women in a sermon at the Al-Basateen` mosque in Al-Riyadh: "They travel unsupervised and live as strangers among strangers, with danger threatening from all sides. Thus, the enemies of Allah and of humanity have stripped the miserable woman of all the elements of a happy life and of all her social rights, so that she serves as a tool of corruption and destruction. You will be surprised to hear that in spite of these crimes, they claim that they are protecting the woman's freedom." (13)
The manner in which Muslim preachers have presented Islam's position on the rights of women, has resulted in a society that does not consider women anything more than a machine to produce children and a sex toy that has been provided by God to please men. This view has created a culture in which violence against women occupies a central place. Experts say, "Women in Muslim societies suffer from high rates of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence while their attackers largely go unpunished owing to rampant incompetence, corruption, and biases against women throughout the criminal justice system." (14)
Since the Wahabbi preachers of Sausi Arabia are the main source of this dark culture, Arab men are running amuck around the poor Muslim countries destroying the lives of women with impunity. Next week I will present Arab men's exploits in destroying the lives of hundreds of poor Muslim women.
To be continued...
