An expose and a cover-up
Two recent events occurring in places as far spaced out as Beirut (Lebanon) and Behrampore (West Bengal) provide us with glimpse into veiled paradoxes. Both pertain to Islam’s medieval mistreatment of woman in contemporary times, but that is not really what should astonish us the most. The astonishing part is really to learn who is exposing it and who is trying to cover it up.
The first is a bomb-shell book “The Girls of Riyadh” written by women in her twenties Rajaa al-Sanie in Beirut (Lebanon). The book in Arabic, waiting translation in English, has already captured the attention of the international media, besides being banned with in Saudi Arabia. ‘It is about gay teen-agers, predatory lesbians, women drinking alcohol at weddings, husbands with unsavoury sexual demands’ as a Reuters report describes it, the book provides a shocking insight into the closeted world of Saudi women. In Saudi Arabia, which is governed by Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, women must be fully covered by with burqa and accompanied by male relative in public. Mixing of unmarried men is forbidden and women are banned from driving.
It might be premature to put Al-Sanie in the league of Irshad Manji, Shirin Ebadi, Taslima Nasreen and Asra Q. Nomani, contemporary Muslim women who have questioned the principles and practices of Islam in a critical manner. But it indicates a feminist ferment inside the wrapped up Islamic society. Recently aspiring musician Wafah Dafur, Osama bin Laden’s niece living in the U.S, who had taken upon her mother’s surname after 9/11 attacks, was in news for appearing on the cover page of GQ magazine scantily clad.
Islam abhors freedom, whether in lifestyle, or in arts, but most in thoughts and philosophy. The quest of spiritual liberation (Moksha) as in Hinduism or societal freedom as in the West is alien to Islam which only emphasises stern discipline and unquestioning obedience. Thus Islam holds its adherents in a perpetual siege, which one can transgress only at his or her peril. Islam’s theology is unitarian and behaviour is totalitarian. Any freedom of thought allowed to its followers can undermine the compactness of Islam that has kept it a force to reckon with for seven hundred years. Women should preferably be kept illiterate, because if women were educated (as universal experience shows) they would prefer small family and transmit liberal and questioning attitude to her children. This would lead to decline in mobilising capacity of Islam.
Being human is not just to be humane, but also sharing human follies and weaknesses that Al-Sanie exposes in her book.
The problem is not with the Muslims who are human beings like me, you and everybody else. Their yearning for freedom is natural and instinctive. Being human is not just to be humane, but also sharing human follies and weaknesses that Al-Sanie exposes in her book. The problem is with those precepts of Islam that keep Muslims in a suffocating atmosphere and the Ulema that enforce them. They reduce a normal human being to a one-dimensional religious organism, at odds with rest of the world.
Rests of the world seem to have made a huge concession to Islam’s peculiar life-style. ‘O, they are Muslims’ we often, ‘they do it because in their religion’. ‘It’ can stand for opposition to Uniform Civil Code, tendering public Namaz on streets and railway station, polygamy and divorces at will, refusal to adopt family planning, refusal to administer polio drops, refusal to come out of Madrasa system.
Young Al-Saini has shown the boldness to expose the face of a veiled society. It’s erotic, not romantic, but bold nonetheless. This can be considered as a report- a progress report in a Wahabbi Islamic state. But another incident that happened in Murshidabad, the Muslim-majority district of Marxist West Bengal, should pass as regress report. It is a pity that people who vaunts themselves as ‘Progressive’ (Leftists) were a party to it. Recently, a woman near Behrampore was given the punishment of hundred canning in public by a Majlis or Sharia Panchayat. Doli Bibi, mother of three, from Gakundi village of Rajdharpara in Behrampore, went on a trip to Rajasthan with her Hindu neighbour Suraj Haldar and his family. This was seen as an ‘illicit behaviour’ on which Maulavis issued fatwa.
“RSP leader Sasthipada Mondal presided over the meeting while Congress-backed Independent MLA of Hariharpara, Niyamat Sheikh, pronounced the “verdict” of caning. And the BDO, Behrampore, Nimai Chandra Haldar, “congratulated the judge for delivering the exemplary punishment” (Ideology no longer bar to cane a woman in Murshidabad- The Statesman, January 24, 2006).
It was the time of 1998 Football World Cup. The soccer-craze rose to feverish pitch in West Bengal. The Muslim boys simply left their home in dead of night and walked over to Hindu-majority hamlet across the fields to watch the action on television. Here, those Muslim boys were progressive, but CPI(M) was regressive.
Udayan Namboodiri’s book “Bengal’s Night Without End”, an account of Marxist misrule, has three chapters that informs about the rumblings of Islam in West Bengal. In informs how CPI (M)-controlled panchayat in Panskura block of undivided Medinipur (Midnapore) district had joined the Mullahs who had alleged watching television as haraam- Un-Islamic. It was the time of 1998 Football World Cup. The soccer-craze rose to feverish pitch in West Bengal. The Muslim boys simply left their home in dead of night and walked over to Hindu-majority hamlet across the fields to watch the action on television. Here, those Muslim boys were progressive, but CPI (M) was regressive.
When Buddhadev Bhatta-charya in 2002 expressed great concern over IB report on proliferation of illegal madrasas on Indo-Bangla and Indo-Nepal border, the Party put a foot on his mouth. The Supreme Court, last August, has issued notices to Union Government and several state governments on definite reports on proliferation of Dar-ul-Qaza or Sharia Courts in different parts of India. It is pity that godless communists should be the one to encourage it.
The Mitrokhin Archives-II informs that while the Communist Party in the USSR officially condemned as a relic of the feudal era, which had no place in, a society of ‘advanced socialism’ and therefore ‘doomed to disappear’, the greater part of Muslim life remained outside the purview of Centre’s ability to control. ‘Disputes were settled in Islamic courts and Soviet law ignored. In reality, though Centre refused to admit it, most KGB officers in Chechnya-Ingushetiya has since acknowledged, except when pressured by the Centre, the local KGB usually accepted the traditional system of justice administered by the Chechens themselves rather than insisting on enforcement of Soviet law...” (p.377). Let communists be forewarned about Soviet fate, in ways more than one.
The writer, a Rajya Sabha Member and Convener of BJP’s think tank can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
The first is a bomb-shell book “The Girls of Riyadh” written by women in her twenties Rajaa al-Sanie in Beirut (Lebanon). The book in Arabic, waiting translation in English, has already captured the attention of the international media, besides being banned with in Saudi Arabia. ‘It is about gay teen-agers, predatory lesbians, women drinking alcohol at weddings, husbands with unsavoury sexual demands’ as a Reuters report describes it, the book provides a shocking insight into the closeted world of Saudi women. In Saudi Arabia, which is governed by Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, women must be fully covered by with burqa and accompanied by male relative in public. Mixing of unmarried men is forbidden and women are banned from driving.
It might be premature to put Al-Sanie in the league of Irshad Manji, Shirin Ebadi, Taslima Nasreen and Asra Q. Nomani, contemporary Muslim women who have questioned the principles and practices of Islam in a critical manner. But it indicates a feminist ferment inside the wrapped up Islamic society. Recently aspiring musician Wafah Dafur, Osama bin Laden’s niece living in the U.S, who had taken upon her mother’s surname after 9/11 attacks, was in news for appearing on the cover page of GQ magazine scantily clad.
Islam abhors freedom, whether in lifestyle, or in arts, but most in thoughts and philosophy. The quest of spiritual liberation (Moksha) as in Hinduism or societal freedom as in the West is alien to Islam which only emphasises stern discipline and unquestioning obedience. Thus Islam holds its adherents in a perpetual siege, which one can transgress only at his or her peril. Islam’s theology is unitarian and behaviour is totalitarian. Any freedom of thought allowed to its followers can undermine the compactness of Islam that has kept it a force to reckon with for seven hundred years. Women should preferably be kept illiterate, because if women were educated (as universal experience shows) they would prefer small family and transmit liberal and questioning attitude to her children. This would lead to decline in mobilising capacity of Islam.
Being human is not just to be humane, but also sharing human follies and weaknesses that Al-Sanie exposes in her book.
The problem is not with the Muslims who are human beings like me, you and everybody else. Their yearning for freedom is natural and instinctive. Being human is not just to be humane, but also sharing human follies and weaknesses that Al-Sanie exposes in her book. The problem is with those precepts of Islam that keep Muslims in a suffocating atmosphere and the Ulema that enforce them. They reduce a normal human being to a one-dimensional religious organism, at odds with rest of the world.
Rests of the world seem to have made a huge concession to Islam’s peculiar life-style. ‘O, they are Muslims’ we often, ‘they do it because in their religion’. ‘It’ can stand for opposition to Uniform Civil Code, tendering public Namaz on streets and railway station, polygamy and divorces at will, refusal to adopt family planning, refusal to administer polio drops, refusal to come out of Madrasa system.
Young Al-Saini has shown the boldness to expose the face of a veiled society. It’s erotic, not romantic, but bold nonetheless. This can be considered as a report- a progress report in a Wahabbi Islamic state. But another incident that happened in Murshidabad, the Muslim-majority district of Marxist West Bengal, should pass as regress report. It is a pity that people who vaunts themselves as ‘Progressive’ (Leftists) were a party to it. Recently, a woman near Behrampore was given the punishment of hundred canning in public by a Majlis or Sharia Panchayat. Doli Bibi, mother of three, from Gakundi village of Rajdharpara in Behrampore, went on a trip to Rajasthan with her Hindu neighbour Suraj Haldar and his family. This was seen as an ‘illicit behaviour’ on which Maulavis issued fatwa.
“RSP leader Sasthipada Mondal presided over the meeting while Congress-backed Independent MLA of Hariharpara, Niyamat Sheikh, pronounced the “verdict” of caning. And the BDO, Behrampore, Nimai Chandra Haldar, “congratulated the judge for delivering the exemplary punishment” (Ideology no longer bar to cane a woman in Murshidabad- The Statesman, January 24, 2006).
It was the time of 1998 Football World Cup. The soccer-craze rose to feverish pitch in West Bengal. The Muslim boys simply left their home in dead of night and walked over to Hindu-majority hamlet across the fields to watch the action on television. Here, those Muslim boys were progressive, but CPI(M) was regressive.
Udayan Namboodiri’s book “Bengal’s Night Without End”, an account of Marxist misrule, has three chapters that informs about the rumblings of Islam in West Bengal. In informs how CPI (M)-controlled panchayat in Panskura block of undivided Medinipur (Midnapore) district had joined the Mullahs who had alleged watching television as haraam- Un-Islamic. It was the time of 1998 Football World Cup. The soccer-craze rose to feverish pitch in West Bengal. The Muslim boys simply left their home in dead of night and walked over to Hindu-majority hamlet across the fields to watch the action on television. Here, those Muslim boys were progressive, but CPI (M) was regressive.
When Buddhadev Bhatta-charya in 2002 expressed great concern over IB report on proliferation of illegal madrasas on Indo-Bangla and Indo-Nepal border, the Party put a foot on his mouth. The Supreme Court, last August, has issued notices to Union Government and several state governments on definite reports on proliferation of Dar-ul-Qaza or Sharia Courts in different parts of India. It is pity that godless communists should be the one to encourage it.
The Mitrokhin Archives-II informs that while the Communist Party in the USSR officially condemned as a relic of the feudal era, which had no place in, a society of ‘advanced socialism’ and therefore ‘doomed to disappear’, the greater part of Muslim life remained outside the purview of Centre’s ability to control. ‘Disputes were settled in Islamic courts and Soviet law ignored. In reality, though Centre refused to admit it, most KGB officers in Chechnya-Ingushetiya has since acknowledged, except when pressured by the Centre, the local KGB usually accepted the traditional system of justice administered by the Chechens themselves rather than insisting on enforcement of Soviet law...” (p.377). Let communists be forewarned about Soviet fate, in ways more than one.
The writer, a Rajya Sabha Member and Convener of BJP’s think tank can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
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