Muslim Women are living in a disturbingly painful and ever-present sense of insecurity. It is an insecurity of a kind that carries with it an everlasting humiliation, an inexpressible ugliness, a sham that ultimately ends up in self hate, in the loss of any pride and self-respect that woman has. How manywomen can go back home and repeat or describe to their family members the ugly passes that were made at them and the exact indecent and smutty remarks that were hurled at them? No! She cannot repeat or describe them. She lives with this poison; she feeds her own blood; it eats into the very vitals of all that could be beautiful and healthy. For centuries “Muslim” men have kept their women under house arrest. Today they are staggering out in realization of their fundamental human rights, a little uncertain may be but in complete surprise at their own latent personalities and ever widening horizon of new avenues for exploration. But unfortunately to our
Muslim men, a woman who moves out of her kitchen home for no purpose other than an evil one. Consequently, she has become the target of an organized, relentless and ruthless propaganda of a most obscene kind. Both on the individual and group level a only these self righteous moralists read carefully Surah 4, verse 24 of the Quran which considers an unproved charge against an innocent woman the worst of crimes, they would think twice before they opened their mouths or picked up their pens.
These things are relevance for all Muslims. But they are of particular importance to those who are actively devoted to the revival of Islam. I fervently wish that such people would put these ideas into effect; would stop at the point where the Shariah stops, and have the courage to proclaim and insist on what God has made binding on us, and that alone. This is essential in creating a strong wall around whatever of virtue and purity remains in our society. It is to be hoped that by so doing the workers for the cause of Islam will have created a real barrier, one strengthened by the word of God and His Prophet, against the sweeping, devastating storm which threatens Islam today. For, if matters are not clarified, and confusion is allowed to reign as it does today, if the good aspects are not separated from the bad, both in theory and by good example, the result of this confusion is bound to be this: the good elements will be mistaken for bad, and both will be swept away by the rising storm. This is not be in the least surprising. For there is neither a divine code which is being sincerely adhered to, nor is there any social system based on experience and clarity of outlook, and God has not appointed a gendarme to regulate the conflicting traffic of good and evil.
You see A Malaysian woman has been sentenced to caning for drinking beer, an offence according to Sharia law. Does that statement shock you? I suspect not. How about this one: she has now requested that Amnesty International stop asking the Malaysian authorities not to cane her, saying she is ready to face the penalty for her “offence”.
But the problem escalates. Once you recognise that Muslim women are, on average, as devout as Muslim men – and, in the case of the Malaysian model, will accept punishments meted out to them under Sharia law – is it then wrong to criticise them and their beliefs? This is one of the many flaws of multiculturalism. It’s OK, multiculturalists might have to concede, for a Malaysian model to be caned for drinking beer, as those are the religious laws which she has chosen to submit to; it’s a personal decision, leave her alone.
