A young elephant when tied with chains on his feet is unable to break it. As he grows stronger he develops the ability to set himself free but his slave mentality that has developed over the years shuns him to repose. This is exactly the dogma of the defeatist brains in our society who are blindly importing capitalists’ solutions without scrutiny.
A furor over the rights of women is simmering in Muslim lands. The angle of liberal discussion is that they find the solutions in Capitalist dictionary take it as the only truth and then vilify Islam by saying that this solution doesn’t exist in Islamic ideology. They erred in identifying that the problems rise due to certain factors which are addressed by every ideology in its own unique way. The correct approach is to assess these solutions, if they are vibrant with human nature, harmonize society and agree with reality or not.
Under the shade of colonialism these systems were also implemented in Muslim lands and promoted by funded NGOs but they failed in solving the issue. The torch bearers of secular civilization then blamed the Islamic concepts for subjugation of women though they were empowered and Islam wasn’t. Ignoring the fact that if their solutions were so triumph, they would have culminated to a magnificent social structure in West and a pioneer civilization for other nations not a rogue one.
By quoting few cultural practices like stealing the right of education from women, honor killings, forcing professional (e.g. doctors, teachers, etc.) out of their jobs, they threw the wrath on Islam and answered every intellectual challenge with the same propaganda. Though few Muslims adhered to these concepts that never represent Islam but are the product of decline and imperialism.
Obsessed with West’s material progress seculars neglected the quagmire of Western societies and failure of their systems. Without realizing that imitation without deep thinking is a delusion. A person who is wearing black sunglasses would depict the atmosphere to be pleasant though it is sunny in reality. Similarly, when they wore the spectacles of capitalism they proclaimed what they saw, neither had they pondered over the reality nor did they focus the issue with the incentive of finding correct solution.
They neglected the bitter realities faced by women in the West; sexual assaults, repression and exploitation of her femaleness by capitalists for earning money. When woman was used as a sex object, her body for selling products and her entity for satisfying lusts of others; they refrained from questioning because man is a social animal and he is free as a monkey in jungle is free for observing his lusts.
In the view of capitalism a person who is not making money and not adding wealth to society is a curse. So, the concept of “house wives” was viewed as a cancer for the secular society. Together with the concepts of equality between sexes and freedoms, woman has to mingle in society freely and for this she needs to be attractive and acceptable to the corporate culture and the opposite sex; so to compete with others in hunting jobs and boyfriends.
The woman was also used for gaining high ratings for media programs and gaining more customers for selling the goods of boss’s company. Now she needed cosmetics, fashionable clothes, car and every other thing which makes her appealing. So, in-order to “supply” them with their “demand” which was injected by system, new industries flourished. Resulting in money making machines for capitalist elite in terms of fashion, clothing and entertainment industries, etc.
In the glamorized world when a woman walks on the ramp, sells her dignity. Is it worth worrying for capitalist that the humanity is drowning to deepest of immorality? No, because fashion industry is the largest growing industry globally, earning around $900 billion annually[i]. London Fashion week earns £20m alone and fashion industry altogether added £37.2bn in 2009[ii]. The fashion industry accounts for 1.7% of UK GDP, twice as much as publishing, car manufacturing or the chemical industry.[iii]
The concepts of freedom and mercenary which form the crux of capitalists’ societies breed the masses who consider carrying family responsibilities a burden. They are nurtured in a society which equates life with satisfying desires and enjoyment and so the fissures in family relations are natural.
The babies are aborted before birth. Either the young ones don’t know their parents or it is woman “alone” who takes care of the child. Males change their partners regularly because they will otherwise be considered “old fashioned” just like you can’t live with one dress only. The demise of social stature of secularism is reflected by many examples. According to a news report thousands were raped in Irish reform schools and ruthlessly beaten for years. Around 30,000 children deemed to be thieves or from dysfunctional families mostly off spring of unmarried women[iv].
Telegraph reported that due to unemployment in Germany government lifted the ban on prostitution and announced that if women don’t take prostitution as “job”, government will stop their unemployment benefits[v]. Thus women were clung between taking care of her child and herself, doing household work and earning livelihood. This destroyed the family structure, a core of society. Lisa Belkin in a book entitled “Life’s Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom”, writes: “Not one of us seems to be able to give 100% of themselves to their job and 100% of themselves to their family and 100% of themselves to taking care of themselves.”
Also many reports have highlighted the issue of massive sex trafficking and prostitution have become a booming business after the US led invasion of Iraq, which had highest female literacy rate in Middle East before Persian Gulf War in 1991[vi] and the usage of rape as “war weapon” by US forces in Iraq[vii]. NY times reported that UN peacekeepers are regularly accused of sex scandals[viii].This is how the woman is enslaved under the corrupt system and these events show the pernicious nature of secularism.
According to the U.S Department of Justice every 2 minutes somewhere in America, a woman is raped which is 2880 rapes in a day[ix]. In spite that US Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA 1994), it remains a common practice. A survey conducted by U.S government in 2011 suggests that one in five women questioned said that they had been raped or had experienced a rape attempt, and one in four reported having been beaten by her partner.
The report elicits that the figures for sexual assault are significantly higher than last year[x]. Similarly, in 2008 alone 90,000 women were victims of rape in U.S and another 75,000 didn’t report[xi]. Thousands of children and women have claimed for sexual abuses by priests in Catholic Church[xii]. The impact of capitalism is such the most disciplined arena of society “military” was also affected by it. The Pentagon reported that nearly 3,000 cases of women assaulted sexually in Fiscal Year 2008, an increase of 9% from 2007 for women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increase was 25%[xiii].
In a nutshell the fruits of Western civilization are even bitter than what appears of them but not for those who have lost the sense of taste and causing severe distress but not to those who are anesthetic to pain.
The notion of equality between sexes is a benchmark for solving the relations between men and women. Tracing the roots of women oppression in medieval West reveals that this concept was a reactionary approach of women for their rights.
The Decretum Gratiani, which formed the basis of Church law for nearly eight hundred years between 1140 and 1917[xiv], assigned roles and duties on the basis that “sin came into the world through women”. Pope Innocent VIII’s endorsement of the book “The Hammer of the Witches”[xv] in 1484 asserts: “What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors”.
English Common Law, which developed from 12th century onwards, says that all property that a wife brings at the time of marriage is transferred to her husband. French married women suffered from restrictions on their legal capacity which were removed only in 1965[xvi]. Women lived in such a severe detrimental atmosphere where she had a status lower than slave. Therefore, she stood beside the Freedom Movement, and demanded equal rights as she was oppressed. Hence, the concept of “equality” is reactionary and not a realistic solution.
Like the Dark Age was specific to Europe but Muslims under Caliphate were making new feats in science. Similarly, woman in West was suppressed under the clergy but she was living in harmony under Caliphate and equality between sexes had never been a discussion in Muslim societies under Caliphate.
She had the right to vote, inheritance, love and respect from her family and husband, choice to choose partner for marriage, right for breaking the contract of marriage if she wanted, right to own property, right for education, political right for accounting Caliphs and a status that obliges her off springs to obey her, etc. She wasn’t declared evil or apathy for society but an independent individual with respect and rights.
The wife of Prophet, Hadrat Aisha r.a had an unmatched status that many males don’t have. She is “the mother of believers”[xvii] and had a strong political influence too. Muslim women have added a lot to the civilization of Islam. In 859, Fatima Al-Fihri founded the oldest academic degree-granting university existing today, the University of Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco[xviii]. Ibn Batuta writes that there is a “small city” in Bombay named Hoaz, and there were 13 separate schools for women. Women used to accompany Muslim armies as nurses.
For the same reason even today Islam is the largest growing religion among females as they find respect in it including Tony Blair’s sister in law Lauren Booth[xix]. In the past 10 years around 100,000 British people have converted to Islam, of whom three-quarter are women[xx].
The secular ideology didn’t understand that the inferiority or superiority of one sex over the other was not a real problem, and equating them like mathematical equation will never solve the issue because both sexes are designed by creator for their suitable attributes. The real issue was to organize the interaction between man and woman such that it fits their nature and guards the society from harm.
Islam didn’t sought solution with basis of equality and it didn’t consider one gender superior over the other because it wasn’t a problem. Rather it addressed them somewhere in capacities as “humans”, where they enjoyed similar status and elsewhere as “different sexes”. Former include trade, teaching, education, performing worships, gaining education, etc. And later include issues related to female sex, her role as a cornerstone in developing family units, inheritance, ruling, etc.
Though a woman gets lesser share in inheritance; she gets dower money from her husband, she has no responsibility for sustaining family and has the right to keep her property with herself. If woman is obliged to obey her husband, than son is obliged to obey her mother and fulfill her needs.
Women enjoys some privileges that man is exempted from like she’s entitled to three-fourth of sons love, while father is to one-fourth, husband has no right over her property but as a wife she shares husband’s property, absolution from fasting and salah during menstruation, etc. If the nations advocating equality between sexes are so justified in their cause than why there are separate sports teams for each gender?
So, man with his limited ability can’t frame a universal system. A perfect system requires superior intellect and a brain whose happiness and desires are independent of ours together he understands human nature to its supreme. In the midst of corrupt systems Islam fashioned the status of women in best way 1400 years ago, as all inclinations of humans are unchanged, this system is still applicable and can elevate the women to her true rank unlike an object of sexual gratification.
Islam addressed the sexual instinct and channelized it. Capitalism exploited the sexual instinct for making money and managed it with the view that sex is a need as food is. Though instincts are triggered by external factors and once instigated you don’t die but get frustrated which is contrary to food.
Thus, they mistakenly created myriad incentives for sex at every nook which regularly instigated masses; resulting in gang rapes, child abuses, sexual assaults, high rate of sexually transmitted diseases and adultery[xxi].
Americans spend $10 billion annually on adult industry, such that America’s biggest companies like General Motors, Marriot and Time Warner are investing in it[xxii]. The same way capitalism developed a gigantic food industry by turning luxurious food items into necessities through persuasive ads bombardment, it also created multibillion dollars industries by using sexual instinct of human and regularly instigating it with licentious commercials, fliers and ad-boards, etc. Thus, creating a need for porn industry to satisfy the instigated individuals. The Islamic system doesn’t revolve around stomach and desires. It ordered the women to wear veil in public and ceased the exposure of her private parts in public and choked the external factors responsible for overwhelming sexual urge.
So, it protected the society by curtailing the sexual instinct turning rampant and allowing spouses to enjoy the sexual disposition in private. This lead to elevation of society because both genders will fulfill their social responsibilities, satisfy their sexual urge with marriage and when the sexual appeal is less the more productivity will be harnessed in other fields. When a society moves forward with this direction it’s inevitable that high morals with remarkable characters are produced, which is evident from Islamic history. An article in BBC News online showed the dilemma of women working in West; many say they are “touched by both colleagues, contacts or competitors…and think objecting could be bad for business”[xxiii].
The rotten society precipitates the personalities and celebrities who are icon for masses at one hand and criminal, drug addicts and rapist on the other hand like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and James Brown[xxiv].
The way ahead is to discard the present system and replacing it with the Islamic system. It’s indeed a matter of time that from the ashes of collapsing system in East, the Caliphate will rise. Creating a model society for the women in West. Giving her the credentials that a successful woman isn’t the one who is slim, smart and attractive. A derelict model of governance, that has to break the shackles of colonialism and malicious system.
[Note: reference will be provided on request: Admin AwamiWeb]