Author: Shahina Siddiqui

The news of the brutal murder of Sitara Achakzai, a female member-of Kandahar's Provincial Council, comes on the heel of the excruciating video of a young girl in Swat ( Pakistan) being flogged by men in a public square for refusing to marry a man of her family’s choice. There are other news of lashings, floggings, maiming and murder of Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men from Saudi Arabia to Bangladesh, from Jordon to Pakistan, from Iran to Indonesia, from Iraq to Afghanistan and from Egypt to Morocco and I as a Muslim woman can only cringe and cry out to the Creator for mercy and justice. Why are my sisters being subjected to this brutality?

The era in which female babies were buried alive in Arabia is called the age of ignorance (jahiliya) - Islam came to abolish this, so it pains me to ask why have we returned to it? Can we blame this on war, poverty or foreign occupation? . Can we really and truly look into the eyes of these women these tortured souls and provide excuses for our inhumanity?

What is most disturbing is that these criminal behaviors are being cloaked in religious terms and there seems to be no credible voice challenging this gross violation of Islamic law and so these criminals continue to go unpunished and un-repented. The continued silence of our scholars around the world is deafening and perplexing. The history of Islam attests to the fact that when injustice started to infest Muslim societies it was the scholars, the keepers of wisdom, the guardians and trustees of shariah that came out in droves to condemn, recapture and reform societies. Many were killed, imprisoned and exiled, but they persevered and brought about the cleansing that was necessary for social justice to prevail. Where are these reformers today? We know there are brave souls that have spoken up like the imam who brought justice to Mukthar Mai - a victim of gang rape or the hundreds who marched on streets of Pakistan against the flogging in Swat. However these will remain isolated events unless they can get leadership from people of knowledge.

Through their silence our scholars have abandoned their duty to speak up against injustice. Most Muslims and especially women are ill informed or have very rudimentary knowledge of their faith and can easily fall prey to spiritual parasites. These parasites need to be fumigated and our scholars alone can clean up this mess by challenging these warped understandings and interpretations. They must call these spiritual oppressors to public debates and defeat them in public forum. By exposing these ignorant and criminal elements our learned scholars both men and women will be able to release the hold these oppressors have on the innocent populace.

Our sisters must know that they are entitled to the same human rights as men and that men do not own them nor can they treat them with disrespect. They must know that there are people of knowledge that will stand with them against these injustices. There is nothing more empowering, then to know that you are in the right and that your oppressors are ignorant and despised by Allah.

“And for women are rights over men similar to those of men over women” (Qu'ran 2:228)

Through history, the decline of Muslim societies is closely connected to the decline of the rights, status and security of women, When our mothers are mistreated and we rationalize it, we give rise to a generation of traumatized children . When our sisters are unsafe at the hands of their brothers and the law looks the other way, we give rise to a warped pathology of gender apartheid. When our women are abused by their husbands and no one speaks up, we foster resentment against the faith community. The Quran instructs us in chapter 9 verse 71“ And as for the believers, both men and women, they are helping friends of each other, they enjoin the doing of what is good and just and forbid what is evil and unjust…” If there was ever a time for such a group of men and women to rise and swarm Muslim societies, it is now.

Perhaps some may consider me naïve to think that the sheer power of knowledge and the spoken and written word can turn the tide on this brazen attack on our sisters, and keep us from drowning in their blood and their tears.

I however rely only on the Creator for this inspiration for the first word revealed in the Quran was “Iqra” ( Read) . And this word changed the world, brought a society steeped in darkness of ignorance into light of knowledge. This word changed a society that dehumanized women to cherish women as Mohshinas ( fortress of goodness). "O humankind be careful of your duty to your lord. Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate.. Be careful of your duty to Allah in whom you claim your mutual rights (Qura’an 4:1)

Surely the cries of these sisters should drown out any concerns we may have of the Islam haters that if we speak up they will vilify Islam. These hate mongers from within and without are but a distraction - don’t let them get in the way of what we need to do and that is to rid our societies, communities, and nations of the cancer of misogyny- the most hated form of discrimination in Islam.