In Islam, there is no such concept of free will, especially with respect to women folk. They are treated as mere commodities in the hands of men. They are battered, molested, killed when they ask for freedom. To make the situation worse, women have given no say in their own marriage. Girls less than ten years are given away to men over fifty years!

Do you expect women in Islamic countries to breathe?

There are no such laws in Saudi Arabia that define the minimum age for marriage. Although a woman’s permission is legally required, but that’s a different story that some marriage officials do not think it’s necessary to ask them.

Running on the similar lines, recently a case has come up from Saudi Arabia where the court has discarded a divorce plea from eight-year-old girl married to 58-year-old man.

The girl’s mother filed a divorce plea on her behalf but the judge dismissed it saying that she (the mother) has no right to file such a case. And that the girl can only file the plea when she reaches puberty.

This is just a single case but the province is saturated with instances where young girls - who themselves don’t know the meaning of marriage - are actually being given away as wives to old men.

The so called educated men in Islamic nation are likely to nourish the disgusting practice of marrying off prepubescent girls. Fathers and guardians tend to sell their daughters into marriage just for few bucks, further abetting rape.

Instead of feeling guilty about it, poor families find this a profitable bargain, as they receive high bridal fees from the old groom; after all, religious hardliners acts as pillars to support the inhuman regime.

What a miserable life for these little girls. (Sigh)!

Image

It must be really difficult to live closed life in a free world. The children of religious minority groups can never really get integrated into western society. Their homes and their religious bindings often place them in a dilemma of choices. They rarely think of escaping from home and bindings. Their upbringing teaches them not to abandon family and family values at any cost. The family name, family honour, their own religion and society are of supreme importance. Defying parents and religious law is never tolerated. If some of them do dare, they end up getting punished.

Asserting one’s own religion, one’s own culture and value is important. But not giving freedom to step out to explore the world and live life on one’s own terms is a kind of oppression. Modern society will see more such attempts to crossover traditional barriers and boundaries to see the world beyond.

source: guardian

Iraq has been in the news ever since 2001. With the country being in the state of a perpetual war, women and children suffer the most, both, in social and economic aspects. Amidst such a climate, the atmosphere in Iraq is not very friendly, especially for women, who face threats not only from the militants and frenetic gangs who go looting Iraq, but also from their own family. The recent news of a murder of nineteen year old girl by her in-laws, just because she had an unknown number in her mobile phone, for the sake of honor, shows how blatant their idea about religion is. All the more, since Sharia law is incorporated in the constitution, the government is only able to sit and watch such crimes. This is true not only of Iraq, but many other middle-east countries.

We all have memories of Taliban. But many other Middle East countries face these kinds of problems. A reason for such incidents is degeneration of the country itself ravaged by wars and suffering from many social evils. There is an unending fear factor in these countries, for most of these countries never know what peace is, because of which they fear change and stick to old laws trying to implement it. Many women in these countries are denied education- Afghanistan is still reeling under pressure. Some of the sects of Islam even prescribe rules and conducts for women, which they have to compulsorily abide by like the dress codes; laws regarding marriage seem quite absurd and many such forbidden laws preventing social upliftment of women. Any women emancipation program is derogatory to these people, for they are fearful of their own society, religion and world around-that seems too progressive to Islamic fundamentalists.

And politics is so corrupt that there are hardly any leaders to curb the hard core fundamentalists and fanatics who make laws as they wish to keep women under control, denying them even basic freedom. The governments should first try to absolve tribal Islamic laws. It is such fundamentalists who are responsible for such honor killings and gang rape, for they try to make it legal. Some of the political governments are either in alliance with them or are silent, too bothered about their own household and their votes. Pakistan – where women are supposed to be free (though many of them suffer), does not find any women activists who have recourse to power to change the tide and though India does boast of Women Emancipation, it cannot deny that there are thousands of women who die everyday fighting for their lives.

Unless the fear factor is removed completely from the minds of both men and women, it is difficult that people in Iraq or elsewhere would stand up to guard their honor and dignity.

Source: The Independent

Image: BBC

Post Saddam Hussain’s hanging, things haven’t changed much and a new phenomenon is grappling Iraq, with a new trend emerging with the rise in the number of widows. One such widow is Suad Rzuki Aboud who lost her husband, three sons and a son-in-law when their family bakery was blown off by the Sunni militia. She says:

I was pleading for anyone to help. No one came.

One of the reasons attributed to this could be the never-to-end violence in the country which gives birth to many widows each day. The skyrocketing prices of the essential commodities coupled with the poverty in the country makes it difficult for the upbringing of the children by a single mother.

As if that wasn’t enough, the US–backed constitutional changes gives each religious sect to determine its own set of rules concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody. Maysoon Al-Damluji, a secular member of Iraq’s parliament is of the view that Article 41 of Iraq’s new constitution is ‘a recipe for disaster.’

The social stigma associated with such a woman in a ‘hardline’ society makes doubles her difficulties.

In the eyes of society, women always need a man to protect them and keep them straight. There is still some social stigma about a woman being on her own.

The dogma surrounding such widows has reached such new proportions that family members often fake the identity of their kin. One such unfortunate widow was Nuha Farai, who lost her husband 20 days after she tied the knots, whose in-laws, in an desperate attempt to inherit government pension, faked his status as single!

The aftermath of the bloodshed has left these widows with a very few choices with some even resorting to prostitution and others taking up begging on the streets of the city. It was only this week that the Sunni militants gunned down three such widows in a country where such professions are treated as immoral.

Source: USA Today

Source:ABC News

What would a woman get if she dares to hold a professional job? Abduction, rape and murder, yes this is what she would receive at least in Iraq!

Religious extremists in the southern Iraqi city of Basra are busy slaughtering the women folk who are going against their religious doctrines by stepping out of the four walls of their house just to earn their livelihood. In some parts of Baghdad, women were being prevented to go to the markets alone. Parents are frightened to send their daughters to school and university.

They are constantly being subjected to threats, intimidation and even murder. Perpetrators tend to justify their inhuman deeds of killing a woman by leaving a piece of paper on her or dress her in indecent clothes. Atmosphere is saturated with threat till an extent that the women folk dare not move out in the streets without proper dress code.

Grim figures suggest slaughtering of 42 women between July and September alone in the region this year. Abusers have created a kind of propaganda by painting graffiti on walls all across the streets.

Women have been receiving warning, while there are cases, when the gunmen themselves are coming to their houses and slaughtering them, in front of their own kids.

They are not in a position to spill out their outlook towards life, leave alone going out to work. They have been forced to breathe within a set paradigm of the chauvinistic ridden man made laws across Iraq by Islamist militants, both Sunni and Shia. They live in fear of their husbands, too, as women’s rights have been undermined by the country’s postwar constitution that has taken power from the family courts and given it to clerics.

Lack of security, law and order has curtailed all aspects of women’s life, for them constructing a safe haven is nothing than a mirage in the arid desert of the province...a wasteland that would never expect a shower of rain. At least this is what an impression I could get from the contemporary times.

Image

The strict Islamic laws restricting movement of women, takes preposterous dimension in Saudi Arabia where men and women are treated in a manner as if they are two different species. Shrouded in dark colored abayas or traditional Saudi attires for women covering the head and extending to the tow, Saudi women move about the street like living ghosts. Forbidden to move outside their girls’ only circle, interacting with a non-relative male is blasphemous in Saudi Arabia.

Even while interacting with male relatives, women do not have the liberty to talk even to their male first cousins without covering their faces. Marriages in the country are arranged by the male members of the family and the girl is allowed to see her fiancé only on the engagement day under the strict supervision of her family members. While women are not allowed to drive cars, they can move only in cars with tinted windows. They attend girls-only schools, colleges and university departments. There are woman-only gyms, boutiques, travel agencies and even shopping malls. Women can eat only in family sections of restaurants and cafeteria covered in their abayas.

Despite of strict social norms, rebellious behaviors are rising in the Saudi society where women fed up with centuries old restriction are trying in what ever little way it is possible to break away from social stranglehold. Not only are clandestine love affairs between young girls and boys proliferating but also it is also not difficult to come across lesbian relations in the Saudi society. Internet and mobile phones are aiding in relations that are considered taboo. Whether new technology could help in evolving more practicality in the Saudi Arabian society remains to be seen.

Via:IHT

It’s true that consanguineous marriage amongst Muslims is not a new phenomenon, however, when it comes to Muslims living in countries like England, it’s, indeed, shocking! It’s also true that customs prevailing in other communities are full of irrational ideologies but when it comes to Islam, customs and cruelty seem conspiring against women on a larger scale. The main reason for fast growing conflicts between modernity and radical Islam is that both stands head to head, especially when it comes to ideology. Supposing people brought up under the very shade of modernity, to cling to old trite traditions is quite ironic. Isn’t it? At a time when entire world is fast moving ahead, wrapping civilization in its fold, shrunk ideologies deny a woman the right to freedom, right to lead life in her own way, to choose her life partner and most ironically force her to marry her cousin or some other relative, whom she would have called brother or would have played with him. Isn’t it just a subterfuge to ravish her honor?

Here the main issue is not consanguineous marriage but brutality against women, against her honor, which is seething secretly on our world, one way or the other. For instance, the nightmarish treatment meted out to 15-year old Muslim, Turkish-German girl is there, who was rewarded with a vicious blow to the head that knocked her nearly unconscious to the floor. Her fault was just that she snapped out about herself, stating that she was too young to marry. Ironically, it was her father who gave her the deadly blow! It’s not surprising to know that just like England other developing countries also have similar tortuous pangs for Muslim women. For instance, an estimate proves that 30,000 women among Germany’s 3.2 million Muslim populations, of which 2.7 million are of Turkish origin, are subjected to forced marriages every year. In addition, thousands of Muslim women in Germany groan under brutal domestic violence. So, the question arises- Is the violence against Muslim women a global phenomenon.

Image

What can be called a travesty of judiciary, the Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council has actually sentenced a rape victim to receive 200 lashes and prison while the perpetrators of humanity’s most heinous crime were allowed to walk free.

The 19-year-old Shiite woman who was raped by six armed men was originally sentenced to receive 90 lashes for traveling in the car of an ‘unrelated male’ at the time of the rape. However after the woman had the temerity of not unquestioningly submitting herself to be tortured as punishment of being raped, the judges on Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council more than doubled her punishment for attempting to influence the judiciary through the media.

Her lawyer, human right activist Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, has been banned from carrying her case further. His license has been revoked and he has been called to appear before a disciplinary committee for challenging the judgment, which only punished the victim of the crime and not its perpetrators. The Sunni rapists were given a paltry sentence of one to five years of imprisonment.

This is the horrendous state of a country that keeps its women forcefully behind veils only to extenuate and encourage heinous crimes against them in the name of maintaining social discipline.

Image: Saudigazette

Source: Whyorganic

What the country is undergoing is a long-battle with a noble goal that if ever it will be pushed to the limits, it will eventually result to women empowerment. Dhaka may seemingly be bloody as riots begin to curtail any movement to give women equal rights as men, but the members of the radical Islamic Constitution Movement should not be violent about their actions to temper down the situation.

Since the Sharia Law is the prevailing custom in Bangladesh, women receiving only half as much as men will be unfair to those who want to breakfree to traditions. We are living in the 21st century and the old ways of women being treated as second-class citizens should be abolished. The reality of too much female oppression in the region are still being denied by the radical group and consider violence as a normal way of living in Dhaka.

The Bangladeshi women treading their way to gender equality will open doors to the progress of the country. It is only proper that the women in the region be respected and be given importance by its men. After all, the women in Dhaka are human beings who should be fairly treated and protected from abuses.

Via: euronews