Why I’m offended by those Muslims who focus only on the ugly face of Islam
Muslim women praying (Photo: United States Forces -Iraq)
By Kinaya Hassane
Growing up as a Muslim in Northern Virginia has instilled a pride and loyalty to the religion in me that still burns bright despite the fact that I don’t practise regularly. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage campaigner for girls’ education, embodies the fight for equality I see Muslim women taking up. Malala, who has just left hospital in Britain after surviving a Taliban shooting, was made Time magazine “Woman of the Year”. She exemplifies the good face of modern Islam.
By contrast, Musa Furber’s recent article about Islam’s treatment of rape victims focuses only on ugly Islam. I was quite offended after reading it: Furber (a Sheikh, no less) paints a picture of an unfair, intolerant religion that gives no mercy to young, suffering victims. This myopic view of rape frustrated me. The injustice committed upon rape victims is not just an Islamic problem — in fact, the young rape victim in India who was his starting point was not a Muslim, nor were her attackers: it is a problem that appears across the board.
A perfect example of injustice in the cases of rape comes straight from home. In California, a woman was raped by a man who pretended to be her boyfriend. Because of a state law that gives unequal protections to women who are not married and were raped, the culprit had his conviction of three years in prison overturned. Just because this woman was not married and her rapist did not impersonate her husband, a criminal got to walk free.
More proof of injustice in American society towards rape victims lies in the statistics. 54 percent of sexual assaults go unreported and 97 percent of rapists walk free. These outrageous numbers probably stem from our culture’s habit of blaming the victim of rape.
Often, in Islam and beyond, girls are told to wear modest clothing in order to avoid harrassment from men. Girls who choose to behave promiscuously are shamed. However, almost no one is telling boys to treat women properly. In our day and age, males are often applauded for numerous sexual conquests. This disparity in society’s treatment of women and men encourages the hostile treatment of rape victims and discourages victims from actually coming forward and reporting rapes because of their fear of hostility.
Unfortunately but truthfully, the problem of victim-blaming and injustice isn’t a problem that exists in Islam alone. Furber’s ridiculous misrepresentation of my religion only skews the reader’s perspective on the issue of injustice towards rape victims. Worse, it encourages intolerance of Islam.
Article très intéressant!!!
I can’t not have a thought to what happened recently in India.
Thanks. Kamal
Souef Kamalidine
January 6, 2013 at 14:51
Kinaya, your article reads exactly like thousands and thousands of Muslim denials.
Muslims live in such denial, equally in denial just as much as the men are the women.
Muslim women such as you, Kinaya, cannot acknowledge that wherever Islam is practiced and has been practiced that women are treated like chained animals. Muslim women know that they receive the blame, the whole blame, for all incidents where they are mistreated or habitually abused.
What you call a “ridiculous misrepresentation of my religion” is IN FACT mirrored in millions of Muslim homes all over the world. The internet is awash in correspondences in forums and on individual websites of Muslim women crying out for freedom and justice while hoping to receive it from their fellow Muslims. But they do not.
Muhammad and his life and all of the ridiculous stories told by so and so to so and so who was a friend of a friend who once heard that Muhammad said or did are the basis of Muslim injustice to women.
Only in what are still “Western” countries do Muslims hold back in some cases from the full application of Sharia law because of the local civil law that promises some freedom for women of all faiths or no faith. But, Kinaya, you are dishonest in your “protest”.
Kinaya, you say you do “not practice regularly” your upbringing. As you so well know, this makes you worse than an infidel. You are in rebellion against Allah for the Quran strictly forbids a believer to come and go their own way. You are in apostasy and would be whipped at the least in most Muslim communities, except, apparently in Virginia. Thank the USA for the freedoms you have. If Sharia law is established in the USA instead of the US Constitution and civil laws then you, Kinaya, would be very, very unhappy indeed.
You are very out of touch then with what is really being taught and preached in the majority of mosques in Western countries. These mosques that forbid the infidel to enter.
In Christian churches it is precisely the sinner who is bid welcome.
Kinaya, your “opinions” have NOTHING to do with the major driving forces in Islam today.
TruthisTruth
January 16, 2013 at 13:30