A Raped Daughter-in-Law, Mullahs and Muslims in South Asia Taj Hashmi

A Raped Daughter-in-Law, Mullahs and Muslims in South Asia

Taj Hashmi

Research Associate, York University, Canada

Published on July 11, 2005

A Muslim father-in-law is alleged to have raped his young daughter-in-law, early June this year, in a village in Muzaffar Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India. Since then we are getting contradictory versions about the sickening story. What is, however, incontrovertible is that a cleric of the Deoband Madrassa, the most influential Islamic seminary in South Asia, has issued a fatwa (religious decree) proclaiming that the rape victim cannot live together with her husband, as per the Shariah law, she has been turned into her husbandï¿½s ï¿½motherï¿½.

What is even more loathsome is that the Deoband mullah even flouted the traditional Shariah law by remaining silent about the incestuous rape by the father-in-law. He has prescribed no punishment for the rapist. The most disgusting is the role of the average Muslims in South Asia and elsewhere. They have not come forward in large numbers protesting this cruel fatwa, which violates both the Islamic and secular codes of conduct everywhere.

This is not for the first time and unfortunately, not for the last time either, that a woman has fallen victim to the barbaric Shariah law in another part of the world. Although it is heartening that various Sunni and Shiite ulama (theologians) and laymen, human rights groups, feminists and members of the civil society across the world have come forward condemning this inhuman edict, there is little commotion in the Muslim World in general and the Muslim intelligentsia in particular as one noticed in the wake of the desecration of the Holy Quran by some American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay prison camp in the recent past.

It is really very sad that whenever someone writes against Islam or utters something ï¿½blasphemousï¿½ against Islam and its Prophet, the Muslim community is stirred up like an all devouring tsunami or volcano, but it hardly takes any notice of systematic, organized and sporadic violations of human rights and human dignity by the self-proclaimed custodians of Islam anywhere in the world. While mullahs in general glorify the anti-Islamic ï¿½Islamicï¿½ regimes and despots, Muslims in general are at best apathetically indifferent to all obscurantist ideas and practices promoted in the name of their religion.

Since dissidents take the risk of getting branded as Murtads or apostates (liable to execution as per the obscurantist Shariah), the Muslim World has very few dissidents and freethinkers to question and challenge the backward looking, semi-literate mullahs. Since mullahs have powerful protectors in the ruling elite and other vested interest groups who profit by subjugating/depriving women, minorities and other underdogs, they get away with whatever they say and do in the name of Islam.

However, there is a thin silver lining in the horizon. Although most ulama are silent about the obnoxiously misogynous fatwa, while other blind adherents of the cleric are crying hoarse asserting that the incident of rape is a cooked up story, manufactured by the media, several Muslim scholars, human rights activists and feminist groups have openly condemned the fatwa, both within and outside India.

Whether the rape has actually taken place or not is immaterial now. What is significant here is yet another public exposure of the bankruptcy of the Shariah-bound, fatwa wielding mullah. This fatwa has given a golden opportunity to the progressive Muslims to corner and overtake those Muslims who find no faults with the Shariah, which is devoid of the spirituality of the Quran and violates human rights and dignity.

This repulsive fatwa is not that different from an edict by the late Sheikh Jadd al-Haq of Al-Azhar, the most famous Egyptian seminary. This Sheikh publicly defended (in an interview with the BBC in 1997) the cruel, un-Islamic, Afro-Arabian tradition of female genital mutilation as ï¿½Islamicï¿½ and as an "antidote" to HIV infection.

Now, thanks to the Deoband and Al-Azhar fatwas, one is fully convinced that most mullahs, representing both the ï¿½greatï¿½ and ï¿½littleï¿½ traditions of Islam, are bunch of inconsiderate people, having little or no respect for human rights, peace and justice for all. It is high time to convey the message to the unaware Muslims that neither the Shariah nor its custodians are divine, holy or infallible.

It is high time to pinpoint the thin and sometimes non-existent, demarcating line between the ï¿½greatï¿½ and ï¿½littleï¿½ traditions of Islam. The former, scripture based formal rituals and beliefs, has always compromised with the grassroots based, traditional, syncretistic, informal traditions, beliefs and practices everywhere in the Muslim World. So what goes in the name of ï¿½pure Islamï¿½ is actually an amalgam of Arabian, Persian, Indian, North African (Berber), pre-Islamic, Biblical and tribal traditions/superstitions and the scripture based ï¿½greatï¿½ traditions of Islam.

This is the precise reason why we find pre-Islamic Byzantine (Greek) harem and Sassanid (Persian) veil, along with hundreds of non-Islamic (un-Islamic as well) customs, beliefs and rituals incorporated into Islam as integral parts of the faith. Misogyny and patriarchy, which are common legacies of almost all the civilizations, are very much integral parts of Islamic and other traditions. The obnoxious Deoband fatwa is reflective of the preponderance of the inherent misogyny, found in every culture.

Mullahs in Pakistan and Bangladesh have penalized thousands of raped women during the last fifty-odd years. The ignorant mullahs simply fail to distinguish between adultery/fornication and rape by their insistence on having four ï¿½eye-witnessesï¿½ (necessary for proving adultery and fornication) as evidence of rape. However, they hardly refrain from punishing the victims for ï¿½committingï¿½ the sin.

Whether we impute this laxity or stupidity of the mullah to their incomplete access to the spirit of Islam or to their dependence on corrupt, vested interest groups or to patriarchy and male chauvinism (as all mullahs are men), we must not allow this highhandedness any longer. Enough is enough. Since several Shiite and radical Sunni ulama have condemned the Deoband cleric for his imbecility and preferring Shariah law to the Quran, this is the time to weaken the base of obscurantism and intolerance nourished by the mullah.

Since Islam does not allow any formal clergy, the Muslims can live without incompetent ulama, who have little to no access to modern knowledge in any discipline ï¿½ liberal arts or social sciences, let alone the natural sciences. It is an anathema to consider ignorant clerics as ulama or scholars. And if it is stupidity to rely on them for interpreting and protecting Islam, it is sheer madness to entrust them with power, judicial or executive.