Stop Being a Soft Woman - Know Your Worth | Powerful Speech by Dr. Omar Suleiman

 

Indian Muslim women don’t need male ‘saviours’ – Hindu or Muslim

 

Living under a Hindu nationalist regime for almost a decade, the traditional perception of men as protectors and women as preservers of cultural traditions is increasingly getting reinforced in shaping people’s identities in contemporary India – among both Hindus and Muslims.

The recurring calls for genocide, rising hate crimes and everyday humiliation of Muslims at the hands of Hindu nationalists pose an existential crisis for the entire Muslim community. A few men, however, are internalising this crisis as a personal failing on account of their traditional gender role as protectors of their community and are adopting exaggerated and superficial masculine traits as a defence mechanism.

The trolling of Fatima, a non-hijabi woman, was centred around her Muslim name and the validity of her faith. In the case of Nabiya, meanwhile, accounts with large followings on the internet circulated images of her showing her sitting with male non-Muslim friends – an act that, according to those targeting her, brought disrespect to the hijab.

The Muslim trolls ironically attacked her through the exact same stereotypical beliefs that the Hindu right-wing associates with Muslim women, according to which the hijab worn by her is not a representation of her faith but rather a symbol of her subjugation to the men of her community.

The nature of the trolling that these women were subjected to was based on the belief that liberal or feminist thought within Muslim women has influenced them to go against the men of the community, misuse their names or their religious symbols (in this case, the hijab) while jeopardising the honour of the Muslim community. A troubling culture of victim blaming is breeding, where the Islamophobic violence directed towards Muslims is being blamed on the weakest of all within the community.

Despite putting their safety at risk to speak against the rising Islamophobia in India, women like Fatima and Nabiya are being labelled by some as traitors to the community. This has nothing to do with genuine morality and everything to do with the display of policing. A display of male supremacy, cloaked in the age-old guise of traditional morality.

While the online attack on Nabiya and Fatima is vile and harsh, they are urban, relatively privileged women – a status that affords them at least some level of protection. Women who come from marginalised sections have little to no support, once they have become subjects of public humiliation. This in turn can lead to social ostracisation and even physical violence, all of which is bound to have a profound negative impact on their psychological wellbeing.

It is difficult to speak up against the implications of these attacks. There already exists in India and many other parts of the world an unfair, made-up narrative that frames all Muslim men as oppressive, violent and predatory. Being aware of how her own oppression will be weaponised against her community and will embolden a system that is constantly on the lookout for excuses to put stamps on these stereotypes, the Muslim woman is under pressure to submit silently to this new, rising threat.

This double silencing not only limits her capacity to protect herself against violence but also denies her any political agency, reducing her to either a spectator, a supporter or a battleground.

She is forced to choose from a pre-written binary – one where she can either be “saved” by the Hindu man or “protected” by the Muslim man.

Full article 

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Why this Muslim is pushing back against Andrew Tate

 

In late October, a video went viral on Twitter, showing former British kickboxer Andrew Tate learning how to pray like a Muslim from a friend and fellow MMA fighter, Tam Khan. Days later, Khan confirmed Tate’s conversion to Islam.

It was a blow to Muslim women like myself, and to parents and others in the community who had been breathing a sigh of relief since Tate was banned across every major social media platform in August. Our big fear: this might cement his popularity with some Muslim men. It is a worry that has only been amplified by Elon Musk’s decision to reinstate Tate’s Twitter account.

In one of Tate’s most notorious videos, he talks about how he would respond if a woman was to accuse him of cheating: “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b**** … slap, slap, grab, choke,” he says. Tate has previously said in a tweet that “if you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bear some responsibility”.

Comments like these have made Tate a central figure in digital red pill culture and its increasingly violent overtones. The term, “take the red pill”, is a pop culture reference taken from the 1999 sci-fi movie The Matrix; it means opening your eyes to the truth. What was actually a transgender allegory according to the film’s creator Lily Wachowski is now used to describe a digital movement of mainly white ultraconservative men who believe that they are victims of feminism and are mistreated by society.

What has been particularly worrying for many in the Muslim community in the West is that Tate has become a role model for some Muslim men, especially after expressing his admiration for Islam in this YouTube video. These men have taken to Twitter, in a corner of the social media platform that some in the community have nicknamed MT or Muslim Twitter, to align themselves with Tate and his views.

But many Muslims — both women and men — are also pushing back against this trend, warning of the risks involved if the poisonous material being peddled by the likes of Tate gains acceptance among broader sections of the community’s youth.


As secondary school teacher Nadeine Asbali wrote in the New Statesman in August, Tate’s content “has its hooks” into Muslim boys, some of whom share his content on social media. “Figures such as Tate even praise Muslims, inflicting their own patriarchal ideas onto a faith that is predicated on the very opposite,” she wrote.

Prominent Muslim intellectuals in the West — such as author Khaled Beydoun and Shabana Mir, professor at Chicago’s American Islamic College — have also publicly expressed worries about the rise of red pill culture among young Muslim men.

Others have been more direct in condemning the misogyny of men like Tate and in explaining how their words and actions contradict the teachings of Islam.

Bilal Ware, professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara, posted a series of Instagram posts criticising da’wah influencers who have been hosting Tate on their podcasts and in YouTube videos. “Giving platforms to unrepentant misogynists, whether converts or lifelong believers sends a clear message: abusers welcome.” He also took a stance against toxic masculinity by saying, “The Muslim ‘manosphere’ has become a preserve for emasculated, intimidated men to play tough by bullying women. This is not Islam.”

Joseph Lumbard, an associate professor of Quran studies at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, has been tweeting to challenge the suggestion that by converting to Islam, Tate’s reputation is fully rehabilitated — despite no denouncement of his violent misogyny. “Too many Muslim men are seeking to give him a pass, claiming ḥusn al-ẓann [having a good opinion] and that Islam wipes away all sins,” Lumbard tweeted on October 29. “These are indeed important Islamic principles that apply in the vast majority of cases, but not when they are employed to excuse violent misogyny, grifting, and all manner of fisq [wickedness] and fasād [corruption] that AT’s [Andrew Tate’s] social media platforms continue to promote.”


This pushback from within the community — and especially from teachers and scholars — is critical because Tate’s popularity represents a broader trend of red pill culture taking hold among some Muslim men.

In recent years, digital platforms like Twitter and Reddit have given rise to what the Muslim online community calls “mincels” – Muslim incels. They use Twitter and Redditt threads to troll Muslim women online, blaming single mothers for the ills of society, saying that a man has the right to beat his wife, and calling for the return of female concubinage and advocating a “no-strings-attached nikah”.

The irony is that many of those spreading red pill culture online belong to a white, ultra-far-right worldview that is often openly Islamophobic.

I am both wary and sceptical of Tate’s conversion, because I question what it was that attracted him to my faith. Consider his earlier video, where he reacted to Will Smith’s “red table talk” with his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith regarding her infidelity by saying that watching the clip had made him want to convert to Islam because in a Muslim country she would have been stoned to death. I suspect that it is white Islamophobic and Orientalist misperceptions of Islam as being a religion that permits violence towards women that are the basis for Tate’s conversion. “I am going to find myself a nice Islamic-a** wife, and build up a big pile of rocks in case she gets fresh,” Tate says at the end of the video.

I worry that Tate is taking advantage of his popularity among alt-right Muslim men to rehabilitate his image and rebrand himself.


We as a community have to acknowledge that we also hold part of the blame for Tate’s popularity among some of our male youth. Our madrassas, Saturday schools and households are often lacking when it comes to educating our Muslim youth on healthy relationships and on respecting girls and women from a young age.

We need more and more Muslim men to join us in pushing back on misogyny in all its forms — online, on campus, at home, on the streets, and in the masjid. 

Link

Why Muslim women are upset with Andrew Tate’s conversion

 

Many have asked why Muslim women are upset with Andrew Tate’s conversion. That is the wrong question. We should be overjoyed when anyone accepts Islam.

The issue is the celebration connected with definitive declarations such as, “The top G accepted Islam!” and, “He’ll bring real masculinity back into this Ummah!” The issue is some Muslim men viewing a man who *domestic violence shelters* described as “capable of radicalizing men and boys to commit harm offline,” as a paragon of manhood. The issue is the glorification of a personality – pre-Islam – associated with exploitation of women. The issue is expressing unfettered jubilation without nuancing, “inshAllah through Islam he can find the best form of reformation.” The issue is the celebration, without any acknowledgement of the ramifications that the celebration is of his messaging before.
The Prophetic Tradition of Honoring Women
The Prophet ﷺ took a generation of men and women who were from a culture which buried their own baby girls alive, to a generation of men who honored women, and women who saw honor in themselves.

This mentorship started from infancy, even in the most sacred space. The Prophet ﷺ used to pray while carrying his granddaughter Umāma, and when he prostrated he placed her down and when he got up he carried her. [Bukhari, Muslim] Ibn Hajar quotes the scholar Fakahani in explaining that the Prophet ﷺ  did so to show them in action how to honor girls. [Fathul Bari].
The comprehensive change of a generation is summarized by Omar’s raḍyAllāhu 'anhu (may Allāh be pleased with him) statement, “In the times of ignorance, we used to have no regard for women whatsoever. But when Islam came and Allah made mention of them, this caused us to realize that they have rights upon us…” [Bukhari]
Revelation transformed a culture of violence, ownership and objectification of women to one in which women and men were, as described by t

he Prophet ﷺ “partners” [Ahmad], and as the Quran describes, “allies” [Surat At-Tawbah: 9;71]
Islamic law and Islamic history have shown us the depth of care and critical participation of women, as established by the mentorship of the Prophet ﷺ :
1.Spiritual space: Aishah raḍyAllāhu 'anha (may Allāh be pleased with her) narrates about a Mother of the Believers that she was in i’tikaaf with the Prophet ﷺ “and she was bleeding in between her periods. She used to see the blood and she would perhaps put a dish under her for the blood.” (this was the bleeding of istihaadha, not menses, which take different rulings for prayer) [Bukhari]
If a Mother of the Believers would go to the masjid in istihaadha, and because of not having today’s hygienic resources would put a tray under her to protect the masjid from her blood, but would still pray in the masjid – then what does that say about a woman’s access and connection to the house of God?
2. Intimacy: While there is a depth and breadth of discussion on the issue from a legal perspective, Ibn Taymiyyah’s words speak to a recognition of women’s needs even in spaces wrongfully considered taboo: “Causing harm to the wife by not having intercourse is grounds for annulment in all cases, whether the husband did that intentionally or otherwise, and whether he was able to do it or not; it is like maintenance and even more important.” [Fatawa alKubra]
How often have women been made to feel like sex is only for men, that being sexual beings is only for men? And yet Omar himself changed law on how long men could serve in the army when he overheard just one woman complain she was sexually lonely without her husband. [Ibn Qudamah, alMughni]
3. Scholarship: Women scholars played a critical role in Islamic history. Aisha, the daughter of the great saw]companion Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, taught Imam Malik. Sayyid Nafisa, the great granddaughter of the Prophetﷺ himself, was the teacher of Imam alShafi. Karimah alMarwaziyyah, the greatest hadith scholar of her time, was the teacher of alKhatib alBaghdadi. Shaykha Fatima bint Muhammad alSamarqandi was a scholar who the famous Salahudin alAyoubi and his predecessor Noor alDin would seek fatawa from, seeking advice on state matters. These are simply a handful of thousands of women scholars in our history. [Sh Akram Nadwi’s AlMuhadithaat, Ibn Hajar’s alIsabah fi Tamiz alSahaba, Ibn Sa’ad’s al-Tabaqat, and alSakhawi’s alDaw’ al-Lami’]

A Dangerous Following & The Muslim Male Reaction
The Prophet ﷺ is associated with uplifting women. Contrast this with Andrew Tate, whose brand is associated with men who harm and objectify women. In fact, a sister who is working on publishing a study with a university sent me a message explaining, “I work in social services in England, I’ve come across several young men newly referred to the social services for violent behavioral challenges, and when interviewing and working with each of these young men in the last year we have identified at least 65% of them had consumed Tate’s material.” While she recognized this may be correlation rather than causation, she mentioned that the fact so many of them cited him by name is alarming.
Despite all this, before Tate even accepted Islam, some men micro-influencers were hosting him on podcasts and promoting him on their pages. They were platforming someone who was proud to have a webcam business of exploiting women for entertainment, who spoke and joked openly about committing violence against women and objectified women in some of the most derogatory ways. These micro-influencers who platformed him are not scholars. In fact, I have heard men scholars in the past denounce Tate and warn Muslim men from following him. Why were these men hosting him as an example of manhood before he even became Muslim, when these views are so blatantly far from Islam?
Dear Brothers: When you praise Tate as a “true man” who can bring that manhood into the Ummah with his conversion, you communicate to many women that you literally do not care about what happens to your sisters.
Can you see why Muslim women, especially women who are victims and survivors of domestic violence and those who work with women and children who are, could be terrified that Muslim men will adopt Tate’s pre-Islamic attitudes towards women? And even worse, now take Tate’s previous attitudes and deem them Islamic?
This week, sisters who have written publicly regarding feeling terrified about staying in this community because of many Muslim men’s loudly celebratory and un-nuanced reaction, have received death threats from Muslim men who follow Tate. These women were told they aren’t actually believers and they saw Muslim men on multiple live social media streams joking about raping them. Yes, they did report these accounts. But the fact that this has been the experience of so many women who have vocally expressed their concerns, is certainly in line with that same type of branding.
Conversion
We welcome conversion joyfully. And we should all recognize that rectification takes time, support, and mentorship. Conversion is an opportunity to perfect not only one’s beliefs, but also one’s character in following the pinnacle of character ﷺ
We should pray Andrew Tate will become the best of us and that we all become better. We should want him to have incredible support and mentorship to become his best self in front of Allah and in the footsteps of the Messenger (peace and blessings of God be upon him). But that process- as we all recognize- takes time. And the fact that we aren’t giving him time before he is immediately lauded as an example and hosted on so many platforms, is alarming and speaks to the real issue.
This is not an issue of conversion. The issue is commentary on the reaction of some men in our community, the silence of too many in the face of those men, and the willingness for them to not only not recognize how their reaction is so viscerally painful for women, but also how violent some of these same “brothers” are when they disagree with their sisters, and the double standards of these same men when it comes to women.

So celebrate conversion, yes, but also recognize the necessity for public accountability and responsibility to uphold the Prophet’s ﷺ mandate to men:
“…I enjoin you to be good to women.” [Bukhari] 

From Maryam Amir fb

Honor Killing from an Islamic Perspective

 

It’s a well-known fact that Islam maintains the protection of life and does not sanction any violation against it. In the Glorious Qur’an, Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93) `Abdullah ibn Mas`ud, may Allah be pleased with him, reported that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “The blood of a Muslim may not be legally spilt other than in one of three [instances]: the married person who commits adultery; a life for a life; and one who forsakes his religion and abandons the community.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

Sh.Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states: “There is no such concept in Islam that is called “honor killing”. Islam holds every soul in high esteem and does not allow any transgression upon it. It does not allow people to take the law in their own hands and administer justice, because doing so will be leading to chaos and lawlessness. Therefore, based on this, Islam does not permit such killings. First of all, in order to sanction killing, it must be through a binding verdict issued by an authoritative law court. Individuals themselves have no authority either to judge cases or pass judgments. 

Therefore, a Muslim should not sanction such killing because doing so will be leading to the rule of the law of the jungle. A civilized society cannot be run by such laws.” Shedding more light on it, Sheikh `Atiyyah Saqr, former head of Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, states: “Like all other religions, Islam strictly prohibits murder and killing without legal justification. Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93) The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments. 

It goes without saying that people are not entitled to take the law in their own hands, for it’s the responsibility of the Muslim State and its concerned bodies to maintain peace, security, etc., and to prevent chaos and disorder from creeping into the Muslim society.” Moreover, the eminent Muslim scholar, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hanooti, member of the North American Fiqh Council, adds: “In Islam, there is no place for unjustifiable killing. Even in case of capital punishment, only the government can apply the law through the judicial procedures. No one has the authority to execute the law other than the officers who are in charge. Honor killing could be a wrong cultural tradition. It is unjust and inhumane action. The murderer of that type deserves punishment.”

Read More on islamonline

Longevity of a marriage does not equal a successful marriage.

 

Can we stop comparing marriages of our parents and grand parents to our marriages? Feminism and liberalism is NOT  the issue, women have learnt to identify abuse, women are independent and women don't put up with gaslighting anymore. Women have also realised its harmful for children to grow in an abusive household and the idea of "kids need both their parents" is farce. Kids need happy, sane and healthy parents. 

Please stop labelling women as "impatient". And rather teach men to level up, treat women better, stop expecting women to be their second mothers. 

Longevity of a marriage does not equal a successful marriage. Some of the most broken children come from marriages that went on longer than they should have.
Where the women put up with abuse because she had no other option. 

The condescending and emotionally ignorant jibes from these boomers gotta stop like yesterday.
It's always better to be single and alone than to be in a relationship, to be abused, used and be alone.
Women realizing their self worth and not putting up with abuse is the reason most marriages aren't working. Teach men to be less abusive, better at communication and to lay out all expectations before marriage so women can make informed decisions.

If you want her to cook for entire family, if she will have to ask mother in law for her expenses, if she has to ask all members of the family before leaving home, if she has to hand over her salary to father in law, if she has to keep quiet when someone in your family hits her children, if she has to give up her job, if she has to share a bathroom with other family members and your brothers. If she has to handover her gold to her mother in law, if her marriage gold will be given away to your sister in her marriage.
Lay all these things out in the open. Instead of putting her through this after marriage.
Before someone says "not all men" - "enough men" to make this status. Also most men know nothing about their brothers or male friends or how they are behind closed doors with the women of their family. So before you stand up for your mate make sure you truly know him.
IMPORTANT - Yes I know happens to men too. But happens way more especially in desi communities to women. 

From Ideal Muslimah

"I don't need a man" culture

 

Most unmarried Muslim women aren't adopting "I don't need a man" culture, what we have learned and adopted is "I don't need a boy that needs to be raised" culture.
We are looking for men that can lead. Qawwam.
Many Muslim women are looking for strong men who can lead them, who can financially provide for them and their children and who truly fear and love Allah.
Few sisters have even shared that they will happily give up their day jobs if they find a man who can truly lead, protect and provide for them - financial security and emotional stability. Men who can communicate, who won't call it quits when going gets tough, men who believe in marital counselling, men who do justice, men who are teachable, men who move with rehma instead of being mini dictators and abusers at home. 

This idea that women are giving up marriage to earn money is false.
They haven't found a brother who is emotionally and financially intelligent to lead. Who isn't obsessed with feminist shaming, obsessed with gender issues, who isn't fragile to differences of opinions and at the very basic offers 5 daily Salaah.
Muslim women are just looking out for themselves in the meanwhile and pursuing their goals and independence. They have realised single life on deen is better than getting married to brothers who aren't what they are looking for.

Getting married is very easy, getting married to the right person who will understand you, who will bring you closer to Allah and who will be with you atleast 80% of the time is a challenge.
Getting married to the right person who won't abuse you, harm you emotionally and spiritually and drive you away from your deen and Allah Himself is very difficult.
Very few men/women out there, who are serious about their obligations and their fear of Allah with regards to their spouse. Others are just using each other for halal sex but their love, compassion and sincere good intentions for each other are dead.
Ofcourse before we talk about finding the right spouse it is also important to remember to learn and become the right spouse for someone else.

Expecting women to lower standards needs to stop. Please. 🙂
Don't expect obedience and respect when you cannot lead and protect.
🤲 May Allah renew love, taqwa, compassion and care in the hearts of married Muslim men and women for His sake and remove selfishness and self serving attitude from their hearts Ameen ya rabbi.

From Ideal Muslimah

Naira Ashraf's murder must be the last: Egyptian women's rights activists

 

The gruesome murder of an Egyptian university student in daylight must be the last straw in a toxic male-dominated society where violence against women is not fully criminalised, a number of high-profile women's rights advocates in Egypt have said.

Earlier this week, a university student stabbed his classmate, Naira Ashraf,  to death and then slit her throat in broad daylight outside Mansoura University, located northwest of the Egyptian capital of Cairo. The victim was in her early twenties.

The perpetrator confessed to the murder to authorities and said the reason was that Ashraf had repeatedly turned down his marriage proposal.

"It may seem a crime of passion on the surface. But it, actually, revealed societal endemic ills," prominent political sociologist Said Sadek told The New Arab.

"The incident spotlighted the violence and injustice women are subjected to in the absence of deterring laws or religious and social awareness that could confront regressive thoughts," said Sadek, who is also a feminist.

Seham Ali, lawyer and board member of the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance, agrees with Sadek.

"We witnessed some reactions to the murder that nobody could've ever imagined. This crime is the law straw, a warning that there must be a decisive action to protect women in the society," Ali told The New Arab.

"It is time for a law to be enacted to confront violence against women, socially and family-wise. There is no definite law on this purpose, only some articles within some laws," she added.

In the few days following the incident, a further debate erupted on social media regarding the victim not abiding by the Islamic hijab, whether she does not deserve God's mercy and whether those unveiled could meet the same fate for wearing ordinary or revealing outfits.

Mabrouk Attia, a preacher and professor of Islamic Sharia at Al-Azhar University, said in a video released on social media demanding women "to fully cover up" or else "meet the same fate" as the Mansoura University victim.


"The horrific incident highlighted the dreadfulness of the religious discourse of extremists and the masculine obsession of covering women up. So it's not OK to seek mercy for an unveiled woman, while at the same time, advocating for the culture of suppressing women in the name of religion," Sadek remarked about the preacher's comments.

A number of women's rights supporters as well as the National Council for Women were quick to condemn Attia's statements and filed official complaints before the prosecutor general, accusing him of several legal offences, among them were "inciting hate speech and violence against women."

"There is a citizen named Mabrouk Attia, who claims to be a sheikh, asking girls to wear 'tents' in order to preserve themselves. He justifies the murder of the Mansoura University girl that this is the nature of the Egyptian society," renowned lawyer Nehad Aboul-Komsan said in a video shared online addressing the prosecutor general and her followers.

"If women are required to protect themselves [as he said in the video], then there are no laws or a constitution," she said.

"We won't wear 'tents' or live in ones…I speak as a mother of two daughters and in my capacity as the head of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights," she added.

After being faced with widespread criticism, Attia, a common face on TV, appeared in another video and declared he will take an indefinite time off and may not even appear publicly ever again.

Azhar institution released a fatwa (religious edict) on Facebook in what seems to be a response to the ongoing debate in which it denounced any justification for killing women.

In the written fatwa, Azhar noted that "it is religiously prohibited to underestimate a woman, whether veiled or unveiled, and taking that as an excuse to assault her is a heinous crime."

"After this wake-up call, now what? Will laws be amended? Will those in charge consider threats ahead of women and work on the ailing male-dominated culture? Will TV channels quit hosting extremist Islamic preachers who talk about women for some time until fatwas against women are purged?" Sadek wondered.

Link

Murdered women: A history of ‘honour’ crimes

That sentence rang in my head throughout my career as a senior reporter at the Jordan Times and as an activist on this topic.

A few months later, I was assigned to cover court hearings on homicides in Jordan. Again, I came across dozens of stories of women who had been murdered by their male relatives for reasons related to so-called “family honour”. Some of these cases I investigated, including Kifaya’s.

To my surprise at that time, the majority of perpetrators would get away with little more than a slap on the wrist. Their sentences would range from three months to two years in prison.

But in Kifaya’s case, the court rejected the “rape excuse that was uttered by her brother and handed him a 15-year prison term for manslaughter”, as I wrote in my report for the Jordan Times. It was an unusually harsh sentence for its time.

But that sentence, like most of those relating to “honour” crimes, was later cut in half because the victim’s family dropped their legal claims against the defendant, who was, of course, also a family member. While sentencing has gradually become more severe over the years, it is still possible in Jordan for defendants to have their sentences cut in half if the victim’s family drops the charges.

My career has exposed me to another unjust consequence of women being threatened with harm or murder by their family members. In Jordan, dozens of women used to be locked up in prison, without charge, for indefinite periods in “administrative detention”. In other words, the state was imprisoning them to stop them from being killed or harmed. The logic, surely, should have been to imprison the person who threatened them. But that is not what happened.

I discovered that this practice also took place in Yemen, when I went there to visit a women’s prison for my work in the late 1990s. Thankfully, Jordan no longer locks women up for being at risk of an “honour” crime – they are now sent to a safe house known as “Dar Amneh” instead, but this cruel practice only came to an end in 2018.

My reporting and activism on this topic began with Kifaya’s story. And my resolve only grew with each new story I heard. I took it upon myself to become the voice of those women who were unable to tell their own stories and to examine and expose the root causes of these types of murders.

If a wife violates her duty, she shall be ‘devoured by dogs’
Violence against women has been documented throughout history. Most of the ancient civilisations – among them the Assyrian, Roman and Sumerian – had penal codes that condemned “women adulterers and their partners” while allowing men to publicly have mistresses with little or no punishment at all.

The late Dr Vivian Fox, a US university professor who specialised in family and women’s history, argued that Judeo-Christian religious ideas, Greek philosophy and the Common Law legal code have all influenced modern Western society’s views and treatment of women.

“All three traditions have, by and large, assumed patriarchy as natural – that is male domination stemming from the view of male superiority,” she wrote in the Journal of International Women’s Studies. “As part of the culture perpetuated by these ideologies, violence towards women was seen as a natural expression of male dominance.

“Ordained by the Gods, supported by the priests, implemented by the law, women came to accept and to psychologically internalise compliance as necessary. Violence towards women in all its forms has and still thrives in such an environment.”

Matthew A Goldstein, a historian who has studied honour killings in the Roman Empire, explains how at the root of such murders – and the concept of “honour” itself – was the desire of men to ensure the children their wives bore were their own. By placing the responsibility for this “honour” on the shoulders of women, those women could be more easily controlled and, therefore, men could be more certain of the progeny of their children. In essence, the simplest way to ensure that men produced offspring of their own lineage was the suppression and control of the sexuality of their female mates.


Anne Boleyn before her execution [Getty Images]
Fathers were in control of the life and death of their daughters. Once a woman married, her father’s authority over her was transferred to her husband. Adultery by women was considered a felony under Roman law – punishable by death – and the state prosecuted family members and others for not taking action against adulterous female relatives by confiscating their property, according to Goldstein.

The Romans were not the first to enshrine this concept of “honour” – as borne by women – in law. The Hammurabi Code, which was written in 1780 BC and made law by the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, who reigned in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from 1792 to 1750 BC, was also severe when it came to penalising women adulterers. Their punishment was to be tied up and thrown into the river to die. There was no punishment at all for male adulterers in this Code.

The Laws of Manu of ancient India were written around 200 BC. They stated: “Though destitute of virtue or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.” On the other hand: “If a wife, proud of the greatness of her relatives or [her own] excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many.”

In the 1st century AD, chastity, virginity, and the “good behaviour” of women were highly prized across Europe. According to Jacob Burckhardt’s book, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, for example, German adulteresses were flogged and buried alive.




“It was common throughout Europe for men to murder their wives because they suspected infidelity and to kill their daughters because they eloped. It was also common for brothers to kill their sisters because they refused to marry the man their family had chosen for them,” Burckhardt writes.

The situation remained the same in Europe during the Middle Ages.

In 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII and queen of England in the 1530s, was executed on charges including adultery, witchcraft, incest and conspiracy against the king. The charges against her were highly suspect. One admission of adultery from her music teacher, Marc Smeaton, was extracted under torture. It is widely accepted by historians today that all Anne was really guilty of was failing to produce a male heir – she gave birth to one daughter and suffered multiple miscarriages, at least one of a male foetus – and having a strong personality. Therefore, the charges against her were likely to have been concocted by the king or his aides as a way to get rid of a troublesome woman and make way for a more compliant consort – Jane Seymour, who was one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting – who might be able to produce a son.

The late Egyptian activist and feminist Nawal el-Saadawi pointed out in much of her research that murdering and burning women in the West for adultery was a common practice in the 14th century as well.

In the Dark Ages, “wise and smart women” were considered sorceresses by the Church in Europe and were killed, burned or locked in hospitals for the “mentally ill”, Saadawi explained. The real reason for these heinous acts, she argued, was that male priests were afraid of losing power. Women with knowledge of plants and other methods of treating the sick, offered an alternative to the priests’ use of “holy water and God’s powers”.

There were other reasons why a woman in Europe might find herself murdered by her relatives. In 1546 in Italy, Isabella Morra, the 25-year-old daughter of the baron of Favale, was murdered by her brothers. The reason: She had exchanged poetry with a Spanish nobleman, Don Diego Sandoval de Castro, the governor of Cosenza. Isabella had already been locked away in the family castle before this because her love of poetry was deemed unseemly for a woman.

In Europe, penal codes that punished women for adultery but excused it in men continued throughout the centuries. In France in the early 1800s, four jurists drafted the Napoleonic Code, which placed women under male guardianship, explained Georgina Dopico Black in her book, Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain.

The Napoleonic Code stipulated that wives had to obey their husbands, while husbands had the power to send them to solitary confinement for adultery and to divorce them – but not the other way round. If a man caught his wife in the act of adultery and killed her, he was excused by law, Black wrote.

The depiction of women as evil and immoral was also reflected in the world of the arts. In her book, The Second Sex, French philosopher, novelist, and essayist Simone de Beauvoir argued that popular European culture in the 1880s frequently portrayed women as sinners. De Beauvoir argued that plays and operas based on this theme often gave communities the right to punish evil women since their “misbehaviour is offensive to the entire community”.


The late Egyptian writer Nawal el-Saadawi during an interview with Reuters in Cairo on May 23, 2001 [Mona Sharaf/Reuters]
Meanwhile, Judy Mabro points out in her book, Veiled Half Truths: Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women, that in the Victorian era between 1837 and 1901, images of women in popular culture were frequently those of women who were “hysterical, mad and filled with mad diseases”.

Moving closer to our own time, in 1996, Jordanian scholar and feminist, Lama Abu Odeh tackled so-called “honour” killing. In particular, she addressed the issue of virginity, stating: “The hymen becomes the socio-physical sign that guarantees virginity and gives the woman a stamp of respectability and virtue.”

The writer during a 2020 protest in Amman following the killing of a Jordanian woman, Ahlam, allegedly by her father [Annie Sakkab/Al Jazeera]
Abu Odeh, who examined several court verdicts pertaining to “honour” crimes in Jordan, pointed out that a woman might suffer violence if she was spotted conversing with a man behind a fence or seen leaving the car of a man and that, in both instances, “the woman is seen as having jeopardised not her vaginal hymen, but her physical and social one. She moved with a body and in a space where she is not supposed to be”.

In 2002, former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, described the term “honour” as a “magic word that can be used to cloak the most heinous of crimes”.

Much later, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime conducted a global study on homicide that was gender-related to women and girls for the year 2017.

The report indicated that a total of 87,000 women were intentionally killed that year, including 50,000 who were killed by intimate partners or family members, meaning that 137 women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day.

Figures from the UN Population Fund from 2000 show that more than 5,000 women are killed annually for reasons related to “family honour”, although experts estimated the number to be much higher even back then.

In my own research, I found that many “honour” killings were not reported at all or were classified as suicide or accidents.

In Jordan, things started to take a positive turn in the late 2000s. It had been a long time coming.

In 1998, shortly after I had won the Reebok Human Rights Award for my activism and reporting on honour crimes, a Jordanian pharmacist approached me to suggest we form a group to tackle the problem at the grassroots level. I was excited by the idea. We emailed our friends and urged them to spread the word. The National Jordanian Committee to Eliminate So-called Crimes of Honor was founded the following year. We decided to hold our meetings in our houses. At the first one, 30 people turned up.

Within a few weeks, we had formed a core group of seven women and four men who would meet on a weekly basis to discuss the best means of raising awareness about the issue of “honour” killings and lobbying for the abolition of all laws that discriminate against women and afford the perpetrators of such crimes leniency.

We prepared a petition and collected 15,000 signatures. For the first time, Jordanians signed their names and gave their full contact details on a petition. In the past, people had always been reluctant to sign a petition for fear of being harassed by security agencies. The country had been under martial law from the 1950s to the 1980s, during which time political parties were banned and people were forbidden to distribute pamphlets or circulate petitions. Although these laws had ended in the late 1980s, people remained cautious for some time afterwards.

The writer speaking at a protest in downtown Amman in 2015 [Photo courtesy of Rana Husseini]
Our activities were also aimed at high school and university students because we hoped they would take up the cause. And they did.

It was clear that the public mood was in our favour. We used to take the petitions everywhere we went. We would encourage the (mostly male) waiting staff at restaurants and cafés we visited to sign, and most would after hearing our arguments. If we saw the chefs, we would also ask them to sign too. On one occasion, I saw a street cleaner and approached him with a pen. He grabbed it quickly and told me: “Of course I want to sign this petition. It is against our religion to kill a human being.”

On another occasion, we walked into a shop and identified ourselves. The shopkeeper replied, “I’ve been waiting for you,” and signed.

Of course, some people refused – either because the topic did not interest them or because they believed “honour” killings were justified.

We divided ourselves into teams and toured the governorates to talk to people from all walks of life. In general, we found most wanted to learn more and many signed.

Soon, the local dailies and other media outlets started reporting on our activities. With that came harassment from some conservative MPs and religious figures who accused us of being Western and Zionist agents whose ultimate goal was to destroy the morals of Jordanian families.

Columns and editorials were written attacking us. And one conservative member of the lower house of Parliament, Mahmoud Kharabsheh, told me in person: “Women adulterers cause a great threat to our society because they are the main reason that such acts [of adultery] happen. If men do not find women with whom to commit adultery, then they will become good on their own.”

The writer and fellow activist Sahar Aloul taking part in a demonstration against honour crimes in December 2016, in front of the Jordanian parliament [Photo courtesy of Rana Husseini]
He lobbied against us in the lower house and circulated a petition among his colleagues a few days before the reform of Article 340 – which allows reduced sentences for men who kill their wives or female members of their family for committing adultery – was due to be debated in November 1999. He criticised the government for allowing the debate, calling it an “invitation to obscenity”.

I was present in Parliament on the day Article 340 was debated. Kharabsheh was the first to speak. “This draft is one of the most dangerous legislation being reviewed by the House, because it is related to our women and society,” he told the assembly.




There were defenders of the proposal to abolish Article 340. Nash’at Hamarneh, a leftist from Madaba – a majority Christian town about an hour from the capital, Amman – argued that Jordanian society could not develop unless women were given their full rights. “This article has become a sword over the necks of our women. [Furthermore] we have never once heard of a man being killed in the name of honour,” he said, amidst vehement indignance from lawmakers.

At the end of the session, when it was time to vote, I took a peek from the balcony to see who might vote in favour of reforming the law. I was expecting a count of hands and for the names of the deputies and how they had voted to be called out. But, despite almost a dozen deputies speaking out against Article 340, one deputy asked: “Why are we wasting more time?”

The speaker asked who was against the proposed bill to reform the law. The majority of the deputies waved their hands and that was that. A decision had been taken and the bill had been rejected without even the pretence of a count of hands. Article 340 remains law to this day.

Jordanian tribal leaders attend a rally against honour killing outside parliament on February 14, 2000. Around 3,000 Jordanians gathered outside parliament to demand the cancellation of a law that gives lenient punishment to those who commit ‘honour’ crimes [File: Ali Jarekji/Reuters]
It was a blow, but during our activism, we also received signs of support from high-level officials, people who believed in the cause, and some columnists. The late Iyad Qatan, secretary-general of the Ministry of Information at the time, was a courageous man who helped us gain access to documents that facilitated our work. He also helped free some of our petition signature-collectors from police stations on a few occasions.

On another occasion, in February 2000, we organised a public march led by Prince Ali – the half brother of King Abdullah – and Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad to Parliament to demand an end to such crimes and the abolition of discriminatory laws, including Article 340.

Afterwards, Prince Ali posted on an internet chatroom: “Contrary to some opinions, the demonstrations were organised and carried out without any governmental or institutional help.


“In fact, the prime minister [Abdur-Raouf  Rawabdeh] stood against it. He contacted Jordan TV and the papers and asked them not to publicise the demonstration. When we moved to the government, the prime minister was supposed to meet us. However, he sneaked out before we arrived…

“In reality, forces both within the government and Parliament had never intended the bill [to amend Article 340] to pass in the first place… the reason behind it is not about the article itself but fear that the article will lead to reforms…reforms that would hold them accountable, loosen their grip on power, by allowing people to move creatively and freely in progressing our country.

Prince Ali, brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah, embraces Jordan’s Senate Speaker Zaid al-Refa’e outside parliament on February 14, 2000. Thousands of Jordanians gathered outside parliament to demand the abolition of Article 340 of Jordan’s Penal Code, which grants leniency to those who kill female relatives found or suspected of committing adultery.

“It is an old game where parliament and government oppose each other outwardly to give the image of democracy at the expense of the people and our progress, and meanwhile innocents are murdered and our country remains economically stagnant.”

More and more people started to speak out against these crimes and the unjust laws that allowed them to continue.

In the past, many Jordanian men would casually say they would kill their sisters if they did anything perceived to have damaged their family’s “honour”.

But for the past 10 years, I have found that men’s reactions to my lectures and to the topic, in general, have undergone a major shift. Many men have become much more interested in being part of the solution.

And there have been small changes along the way. In 2003, for example, a royal committee recommended changes to Article 98 of the Jordanian Penal Code that had been used as leeway for perpetrators of such murders by their lawyers. It stated: “Whoever commits a crime in a fit of fury which is the result of an unjustifiable and dangerous act committed by the victim, benefits from a mitigating excuse.”

The committee recommended that the principle be disallowed as an excuse for crimes against women unless a husband caught his wife in the act of adultery and it extended this right to women who caught their husbands in an act of adultery.

Lenient sentences against men accused of honour crimes have continued, of course. In 2014, for example, a court revoked the death sentence of a man convicted of shooting and killing his daughter, sentencing him to 10 years in prison instead. The daughter, who was in her late 20s, had left her marital home for several days, the court was told, and her father wanted to “cleanse the family’s honour”. His sentence was reduced after the family agreed to drop the charges against him.

But the changes that have taken place have filled me with hope. Still, the fight continues and demands dedication, commitment and patience.

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Unsung guardians of the 'true' tradition

 

Back in 1995, when The Times asserted Islam was to blame for the poor levels of education among women in the Muslim world, Mohammad Akram Nadwi began scouring ancient Arabic manuscripts for women's names. Looking specifically for female scholars, his hope was to find maybe 20 or 30 women. What he found was astounding. By Julia Ley

In 1995 Mohammad Akram Nadwi was conducting research at the Centre for Islamic Studies in Oxford. Annoyed by a blanket assertion made by The Times newspaper that the reason Muslim women were so poorly educated was down to Islam, he was moved to take action. He began scouring ancient Arabic manuscripts for women's names, looking specifically for female scholars.

Initially, he hoped to find maybe 20 or 30 women, he says, but: "I soon realised that a huge number of women had been active in the search for knowledge. Sometimes a single scholar would write, 'I studied with 70 women'. Another would pass on a hadith that had been transmitted by a total of 400 women."

Recording the life of the Prophet
After the Koran, the hadiths are the second most important source for very many Muslims. They are written records about the life of the Prophet Muhammad – things he is said to have said, or done. They are vitally important to Muslims because they translate the abstract message of the Koran into everyday specifics. During the early years of Islam, Muslim scholars concerned with establishing hadith authenticity handled their source material critically.

Nadwi began his research by scouring well-known and lesser-known hadith collections for women's names. He also delved into biographies and reports that scholars wrote about their teachers – male and female. What he found exceeded all his expectations.

sits in conversation at a table with various writings and books (photo: Al-Salam Institute)
Twenty years of dedication: Nadwi has gone to great lengths to rescue these female scholars from historical obscurity. Yet, he is not necessarily what you would call a liberal Muslim. Nor does he call himself a feminist. "But feminism and I do agree on one thing," Akram Nadwi concedes. "I do believe women have been oppressed and that we should work hard to defend their rights and give them the honour they deserve"
The article he set out to write turned into a book, the book into an encyclopaedia. In mid-January 2021, after more than 20 years, he finally completed his work. The biographies of more than 10,000 women are now contained in 43 volumes. The final tally even surprised even Islamic theologian Dina El Omari, who conducts research at the University of Munster in Germany. "I was aware that there were many, but that it turned out to be so many in the end was astonishing – indeed, it is what makes the whole project so exciting."

Nadwi also has a few exciting stories to tell. Take Umm al-Darda, for example, a prominent legal scholar in 7th century Damascus. As a young woman, she not only studied together with the men, but she also prayed with them in the men's area of the mosque – something that would be unthinkable in the vast majority of mosques today. Or Karima al-Marwaziyya, who lived in Mecca in the 11th century. Her copy of the most important hadith collection, the al-Buhari collection, is still considered definitive to this day.

Altogether, Nadwi estimates, about a quarter of all hadiths were handed down by women. What's more, they were apparently not only diligent, but also thorough. "When it comes to the Prophet's traditions, very, very many men have been accused of making up hadiths. Yet all the hadith scholars confirm that lying about one of the Prophet's hadiths is not something a woman has ever been accused of, which is amazing."

A foretaste of the final work: this book provides an English-language preface Nadwi's 40-volume biographical dictionary (in Arabic) of women scholars of the Prophet's hadiths. During the formative years of Islam learned women enjoyed high public standing and authority. For centuries, women travelled intensively for religious knowledge and routinely attended the most prestigious mosques and madrassas across the Islamic world. An overview chapter, with accompanying maps, traces the spread of centres of hadith learning for women, and their eventual decline
But if there were so many learned Muslim women and they were so conscientious – how come so few of them are remembered today? Akram Nadwi explains with an example:

"One of Islam's great scholars, Ibn al-Sam'ani, who lived in the 13th or 14th century, records that he wanted to study with a woman called Karima: 'I asked her brother many times to allow me to study with her. But her brother always found excuses.' You can see the problem here: if people had a son or a brother, they wanted them to be famous. If they had a sister, they wanted to keep her hidden."

Nadwi has gone to great lengths to rescue these female scholars from historical obscurity. Yet, he is not necessarily what you would call a liberal Muslim. Nadwi has worked with the European Fatwarat, which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor does he call himself a feminist.

"But feminism and I do agree on one thing," Akram Nadwi concedes. "I do believe that women have been oppressed and that we should work hard to defend their rights and give them the honour they deserve. What I don't like is that feminism aims to make men and women equal."

Nevertheless, his work remains important for Muslim women, since it provides them with convincing arguments when fighting for more say. After all, says Gonul Yerli, even today, some Muslim men still invoke "tradition" in an attempt to keep women out of positions of power.

As deputy director of the mosque in Penzberg, Yerli is one of the very few women at the head of an Islamic community in Germany. Some members of the Bavarian congregation initially had a problem accepting her position. "One of them said: 'You know, there is a hadith: when a woman heads an Islamic community, then the community is cursed, and she will never reach her peaceful goal'," Yerli recalls.

Dina El Omari is also acquainted with instances where men use religious arguments to manipulate women. "We have a tradition that is supposed to have been spoken by the Prophet: that is, if a man invites a woman into his bed and she refuses, then the angels will curse her all night. Of course, that's a very extreme example. But it does show how women are pressured – using religious arguments – to do things they don't actually want to do."

According to Gonul Yerli, there is another, very practical reason why such sayings are so widespread: they are much easier to understand than the Koran. "The language of the Koran is complex, and it doesn't offer an answer to every question. In fact, to be honest, it rarely does."

Questioning misogynistic traditions
Both Gonul Yerli and Dina El Omari try to counter the misogynistic hadiths in their work, their teaching and in pastoral care. El Omari explains, for example, that it is very uncertain whether Mohammed was in fact the originator of these sentiments. After all, none of them turn up in the oldest extant collections. "Which is quite striking. It really does make you pause for thought: these misogynistic traditions are in such stark contrast to the Prophet's biography that they simply don't fit in."

As long as women had a say, El Omari says, the misogynistic traditions were corrected. Aisha, for example, one of the Prophet's favourite wives, often argued with Abu Huraira, one of the Prophet's companions, after her husband's death.

Pioneering position: as deputy director of the mosque in Penzberg, Gonul Yerli is one of the very few women at the head of an Islamic community in Germany. Some members of the Bavarian congregation initially had a problem accepting her. "One of them said: 'You know, there is a hadith: when a woman heads an Islamic community, then the community is cursed," she recalls. Yet, according to Yerli, there is another, very practical reason why such sayings are so widespread: they are much easier to understand than the Koran. "The language of the Koran is complex, and it doesn't offer an answer to every question. In fact, to be honest, it rarely does"
Abu Hureira asserted, for example, that a man's ritual prayer would be invalidated if a woman walked past in his direction of prayer. "And that's when Aisha just put in her vote and said very clearly that the Prophet would never have said something like that," says Omari.

Aisha herself reports in various hadiths that the Prophet prayed in his room, even when she was lying in bed in front of him. It is examples like this that reveal how important it is that these ancient female scholars are finally noticed and recognised again.

Mohammad Akram Nadwi agrees. "If women are not represented, then no-one will represent them. Then false ideas about women will prevail and no-one will be able to defend them."

Murdered women: Adiba Parveen, the quietest girl in the valley

 

“People in the village would say Adiba was an example for us,” Sajina says. “They would refer to her when they would scold us, reminding us, ‘She is so shareef, so quiet and polite, she does not gossip or waste her time with idle chatter.’” When her friends were old enough to whisper about boys, she found it amusing. “Why would you waste time on them?” she asked.

When friends and family members talk about Adiba, there is a common refrain: she was a good girl, a well-behaved, responsible, polite girl. But she loved to sing – even when she did not know the lyrics, even when she deliberately changed them to make people laugh – and the only times this good, well-behaved girl seemed to do exactly as she pleased was when she was singing.

“She had this habit of standing outside her house and singing very loudly,” recalls Sajina. She knew her neighbours laughed at her. Sometimes, Sajina would join in. The girls would stand outside and sing at each other, scrambling lyrics and singing through their giggles, their voices spilling over into their neighbours’ homes. “Tu hai pagal, tu hai joker (you’re crazy, you’re a joker),” Adiba would shout to Sajina, a lyric from one of her favourite songs, from the Bollywood film Raja Hindustani.

There was another game the girls loved to play. Like most of the homes here, they did not get running water, and every day women walked to the Shimshal river to fetch water. When it was time to head there, one of the girls would stand outside her home and whistle a tune. “That’s how we would summon each other,” Sajina says. The neighbours learned their code: the sweet, clear signal followed by the girls’ chattering voices as they traipsed off.

The river is a five- or six-minute walk from Sajina and Adiba’s homes.

“That’s where they found her on that day,” Sajina says.

They found her by the riverbank, her legs in the water. She would have been washed away were she not pressed against some stones. For a moment, Bakhti Baig believed his sister lay there sleeping.

A crowd quickly gathered and whispered amongst themselves. It was all too common, they knew, for young men and women in the region to commit suicide. While they had not dealt with this in Shimshal, it was so prevalent in Ghizer, Gojal, Chitral, Baltistan or Gilgit, that in 2017 a government committee had been formed to investigate. There were a range of contributing factors: unemployment, mental health issues, domestic abuse, despair at the lack of economic opportunities. The villagers knew that in most instances, families did not bother to report the deaths and quietly buried the victim.

It took the police a few hours to arrive from Hunza. Bakhti Baig was bewildered, unsure of what to do next. The police told him the body needed to be taken to Gulmit, three hours’ drive away. Someone would have to stay with the body overnight until samples for a post-mortem could be collected in the morning and sent to Lahore for processing. There are no facilities to conduct a post-mortem in Gilgit-Baltistan.

By the time the samples collected at Adiba’s post-mortem made their way to Lahore, they were entirely unusable. There was no conclusive report on the cause of her death.

“Adiba was not the kind of person who would kill herself,” Rahat explains. “We want the tasalee, the gratification, of knowing this for sure.” The brothers filed a First Information Report (FIR) with the police, accusing Adiba’s father-in-law Sameem Shah, mother-in-law, husband, brother-in-law Fahim and sister-in-law of killing her and attempting to dispose of her body in the river. The suspects were arrested, but by mid-June, all except Sameem and Fahim were set free. On August 9, they were also released on bail. The accused all denied responsibility for Adiba’s death.

Adiba’s family refused to stay quiet. “I received a message from one of her brothers asking me to write about the case,” says Noor Muhammed, founder and editor of Pamir Times, an online news service covering Gilgit-Baltistan. Muhammed’s wife, Amina Bibi, is one of the administrators on a strictly private Facebook group for women from the region. She decided to reach out to the members and they organised protests against the Shahs’ release.

In August, people gathered in Shimshal, Gulmit, Islamabad and Karachi to call out, “Justice for Adiba”. “When I saw the number of women at the protest in Gulmit – young and old, their children with them – I began to weep,” Amina says. “I have grown up seeing women with bruises, blackened eyes, making excuses for how they got the injuries, being told, ‘Bardasht karo’ (you must bear it). But that day, the women didn’t want to be silent any more.”

Noor Muhammed says he was “pleasantly surprised” by the protests and the determination of Adiba’s family to get her story out. “We are a tribal culture – we live in close-knit communities and when you take a stand against someone in your community, you risk being cast out,” he explains. “This generation is no longer taking the vow of silence our elders did for the sake of the family or tribe’s honour and respect.”

By the end of August, the Shahs’ bail was cancelled. The victory has come at a cost for Adiba’s family. “I have spent Rs500,000 so far on legal fees and the expense of travelling for every hearing,” says Bakhti Baig. “We sold whatever we could. I am so tired, I don’t know how to go on.”

They persist as it is the only way they can make amends to Adiba. “I wish I could tell her, ‘This will not happen to another of our girls’,” Rahat says. “We want this case to be a lesson for people in Shimshal.”

Mehrunissa’s children saw the protests for their aunt Adiba. They do not understand what happened to her, but in the days after, they played a new game: they would march through the house mimicking the calls they had heard, chanting, “Justice for Auntie Adiba!” The case did not receive much media coverage outside Gilgit-Baltistan. “But at the protests, even strangers had Adiba’s name on their lips,” says Mehrunissa. “If it weren’t for them, who would know about her? Adiba was an ordinary girl. She died. That’s it. Why would they care?” 

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The truth about women in Islam | Shaykh Akram Nadwi

Bulli Bai: India’s Muslim women again listed on app for ‘auction’

 

On January 1, Quratulain Rehbar, a journalist from Indian-administered Kashmir, woke up to see herself listed for an “online auction”. Her photograph was sourced without her permission and uploaded on an app for “sale”.

She was not alone.

Photographs of more than 100 Muslim women, including prominent actress Shabana Azmi, wife of a sitting judge of Delhi High Court, multiple journalists, activists and politicians were displayed on the app for auction as “Bulli Bai” of the day.

Even Fatima Nafees, 65-year-old mother of disappeared student Najeeb Ahmed, and Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai were not spared by the perpetrators behind the app.

After last July’s “Sulli Deals“, in which nearly 80 Muslim women were put up “for sale”, “Bulli Bai” was the second such attempt in less than a year.

“Both ‘Bulli’ and ‘Sulli’ are derogatory words used for Muslim women in local slang. However, this time the Punjabi language was used in the ‘Bulli Bai’ interface along with English,” journalist Mohammad Zubair, who works for fact-checking website AltNews, told Al Jazeera.

Rehbar, who had previously reported on the “Sulli Deals” auction in July last year, told Al Jazeera she was shocked to see her photograph on the app.

“When I saw my photograph, my throat got heavy, I had goosebumps on my arms and I was numb. It was shocking and humiliating,” she said.

While there was no real sale involved, the online application – created on Microsoft-owned open software development site GitHub – was, according to Rehbar, intended “to degrade and humiliate vocal Muslim women”.

The app was taken down on Saturday, with victims saying the interface of the GitHub extension on “Bulli Bai” was strikingly similar to the one used by “Sulli Deals”.

By Saturday evening, dozens of other Muslim women began posting their shock and outrage on social media after seeing their photographs and details on the app.

Among them was Ismat Ara, a journalist in the capital, New Delhi.

Ara filed a complaint on Saturday with the Delhi Police against “unknown people” for harassing and insulting Muslim women on social media “using doctored pictures in unacceptable and lewd context”.

Based on her complaint, a first information report (FIR) was registered by Delhi Police’s Cyber Crime Unit on Sunday, invoking various sections of the Indian Penal Code that pertain to promoting enmity on grounds of religion, threatening national integration and sexual harassment of women.

Following another complaint by Sidrah, whose photo also appeared on the app, a police case was also registered in India’s financial capital Mumbai against various Twitter handles and the “Bulli Bai” app developers.

However, Ara said she is not hopeful regarding the police investigation, her fears stemming from the fact that the probe in “Sulli Deals” has seen no arrests made even after six months.

Fatima Zohra Khan, a lawyer based in Mumbai whose name figured in both “Sulli” and “Bulli Bai” deals, had also filed a complaint with Mumbai police last year.

“We got no response from Twitter, GitHub and Go-Daddy [web hosting company] despite Mumbai Police themselves requesting them to reveal data. These websites refuse to share information unless a court warrant is produced,” she told Al Jazeera.

Police officials in New Delhi and Mumbai did not respond to Al Jazeera’s queries on the latest “auction”.

“It is sad to see how these hate-mongers are licensed to target Muslim women without any fear. This is not the first time such an auction has taken place,” said Ara.

“The women who have been targeted are vocal women who raise issues of Muslims on social media. It is a clear conspiracy to shut these Muslim women because we challenge the Hindu right-wing online against their hate crimes,” she added.

During the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr last year, a YouTube channel named “Liberal Doge”, shared pictures of Pakistani women in a sexualised video, titled “Eid Special”. It was removed by the company after outrage.

Weeks after the incident, Muslim women were “auctioned” on Twitter under the “Sulli Deals”.

Several Indian parliamentarians have raised the matter with the government, including Priyanka Chaturvedi, based in the western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai.

After her tweet calling out India’s IT minister to take “stern action” against “misogynistic and communal targeting of women”, the minister said GitHub had blocked the user responsible for hosting the site and the “police authorities are coordinating further action”.

 “Police complaints were registered during the time of ‘Sulli deals’. However, no action was taken. That is the reason why these people feel emboldened,” Chaturvedi told Al Jazeera.

Rehbar said it was “particularly alarming” for Muslim women who are “fighting patriarchy and restrictions” on one hand and “facing such harassment” on the other.

“Often women are asked to remove their pictures from social media and hide. After such attempts to harass Muslim women, it will be difficult for many women to take a stand.”

Rana Ayyub, a Mumbai-based columnist with The Washington Post, told Al Jazeera people are “hailing targeted harassment of women without being identified by law”.

“Bulli Bai takes hate crimes in India to another dangerous level where Muslim women are being virtually violated and made a free-for-all for a bigoted mob,” she said.

“These auctions of women from the minority communities display the moral degradation of India and its constitutional values.”

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Which women belong in our society?

                                                                                                                 

 

Many thanks to Maryam Amir allhamdulilah a role model for us all.