The Journey of Musa (AS) - A Recap

 

I Don't Love Her!

 
 

Umar ibnul Khattab [رضي الله عَنه] said to a man who was thinking of divorcing his wife:
“Why do you want to divorce her?” He said, “I do not love her.” ‘Umar رضي الله عنه said, “Must every house be built on love? What about loyalty and appreciation?”
He went on:

'You men! When we marry, we give a serious promise to her. A woman gives birth to children and goes through hard times during her pregnancy. Then she suckles the baby and takes care all nights about her children, when they get sick or need anything. She sacrifices her beauty and youth for being a mother.
How fair is if, when her husband leaves her, when she is grown up? If she would have never take care of her home and family, instead of taking care of her body and beauty, her husband would say: “What a bad mother she is.” 

Where is integrity and loyalty? 

Fear Allah regarding your behaviour towards your wives.'

[Al-Bayan wa at-Tabayeen, 2/101; Fara’id al – Kalam, p.113]

Abu Jandal, Abdullah, & Suhayl Ibn Amr (ra) : Switching Sides

 

Murdered women: A history of ‘honour’ crimes

On a hot summer day in late May 1994, I drove to an eastern suburb of Jordan’s capital, Amman, to investigate the reported murder of a 16-year-old schoolgirl by her own brother.

With limited information, questions roiled my mind as I drove up the hill towards the neighbourhood. Why had this girl’s life been cut short by her brother? What had her final thoughts been?

My questions would soon be partially answered by a man who was walking through the neighbourhood when I arrived. “Yes, I know why she was killed,” he answered calmly as if talking about the weather: “She was raped by one of her brothers and another sibling murdered her to cleanse his family’s honour.”

I asked him again if what he was saying was really true.

“Yes, it is true. That is why she was killed,” the man answered me, before ushering me to the house where the murder took place.

The same “justification” was used by the girl’s uncles when I sat with them to discuss the murder. Her name was Kifaya (“enough”) they told me. “She seduced her brother to sleep with her and she had to die for that,” they said.

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.

 Link

He Challenged a Muslim officer to a Public Debate - Lt. Col. Khallid Shabazz

 

More Sacred Than the Ka’bah | Eid Khutbah

Noor Mukadam's murder exposes toxic misogyny in Pakistan

 

Noor Mukadam, a 27-year-old woman and daughter of Pakistan's former ambassador to South Korea, was brutally killed in Islamabad on July 20. The alleged killer, Zahir Zamir Jaffer, was reportedly her acquaintance. According to police reports, he beheaded Mukadam after shooting her.

Violence against women is widespread in Pakistan, but the recent spate of women killings has shocked the South Asian nation.

On Sunday, a man burned his wife to death in the southern Sindh province, while another man shot dead his wife, his aunt and two underage daughters in Shikarpur city on the same day. A 30-year-old woman who was raped and stabbed on Saturday in Rawalpindi city succumbed to her injuries on Sunday.

On July 18, a woman was tortured to death by her husband in Sindh. Last month, a man killed two women, including his former wife, in the name of "honor" in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The recent cases have triggered a debate about the state's failure to protect women, the culture of impunity, and the reasons behind society's tendency to curtail women's independence and inflict pain on them.

Pakistan ranks as the sixth most dangerous country in the world for women, and is currently witnessing a rapid rise in cases of sexual crimes and domestic violence.

Rights activists blame a culture of impunity for the recent spike in violence against women.

"A man who stabbed a young female lawyer more than 12 times was recently released by the court. What message does it send to the perpetrators of violence against women?" Yasmin Lehri, a former lawmaker from Balochistan province, told DW.

Mukhtar Mai, a women's rights activist and a 2002 gang rape survivor, shares the same view: "Those who commit violence against women are not afraid of legal consequences," she told DW, adding that for most Pakistani men, beating a woman is not even a form of violence. Pakistani society is still entrenched in feudal and tribal customs, she says.

Other activists also blame society's patriarchal attitudes . "Women are taught to obey men, as they have a superior status in the family," said Mahnaz Rehman, a Lahore-based feminist, adding that when a woman demands her rights, she is often subjected to violence.

Shazia Khan, a Lahore-based activist, believes that in certain cases, men feel emboldened by religious teachings.

"Islamic clerics interpret religion in a way that it gives the impression that it allows men to beat women. They also support underage marriages and tell women to obey their husbands even if they are violent toward them," she said, adding that these clerics actually encourage men to commit violence against women.

Many rights activists in Pakistan blame Prime Minister Imran Khan's "victim blaming" for the rise in violence against women in the country.

Last month, the conservative premier faced backlash following his comments that appear to put the blame for sexual abuse on women.

"If a woman is wearing very few clothes, it will have an impact on the men, unless they are robots," Khan said during an interview for documentary-news series Axios, aired by US broadcaster HBO. He proceeded to say that this was "common sense."

Earlier this year, he made similar remarks during a question and answer briefing with the public, suggesting that the rise in sexual violence in Pakistan was due to the lack of "pardah," the practice of veiling, in the country.

"PM Khan and his ministers continue to make anti-women remarks that encourage misogyny, and in a way violence against women, in Pakistan," said activist Shazia Khan.

Former lawmaker Yasmin Lehri believes that Khan's government hasn't done anything to protect women. Instead, she said, the government sent a bill to stop torture against women to Islamic clerics, who have stalled it.

Just like PM Khan, the country's conservative sections, too, blame the "Western culture" for sexual and physical violence against women.

Samia Raheel Qazi, a former parliamentarian, says the recent incidents of violence involve people who have drifted away from Islamic teachings.

"In Noor Mukadam's case, the alleged perpetrator is a Westernized atheist," she told DW, adding that the weakening of the family system amid an onslaught of Western culture in the country is responsible for these crimes.

Lawmaker Kishwar Zehra agrees. "We need to revive our family values to stop these crimes."

Link

Omar Ibn Al Khattab (ra): His Leadership, His Legacy, His Death

Brutal killing spotlights violence against women in Pakistan

  Noor Mukadam’s last hours were terror-filled. Beaten repeatedly, the 27-year-old jumped from a window but was dragged back, beaten again and finally beheaded. A childhood friend has been charged with her killing.

The gruesome death last week in an upscale neighborhood of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, is the latest in a series of attacks on women in Pakistan, where rights activists say such gender-based assaults are on the rise as the country barrels toward greater religious extremism.

Mukadam was the daughter of a diplomat, and her status as a member of the country’s elite has shone a spotlight on the relentless and growing violence against women in Pakistan, said prominent rights activist Tahira Abdullah. But the majority of women who are victims of such violence are among the country’s poor and middle classes, and their deaths are often not reported or, when they are, often ignored.


“I could give you a list longer than my arm, only in one week” of attacks against women, said Abdullah. “The epidemic of sexual crimes and violence against women in Pakistan is a silent epidemic. No one sees it. No one is talking about it.”

Still, Pakistan’s Parliament this month failed to pass a bill that seeks to protect women from violence in the home, including attacks by a husband. Instead, it asked an Islamic ideology council to weigh in on the measure — the same council that previously said it was OK for a husband to beat his wife.

Data collected from domestic violence hotlines across the country showed a 200% increase in domestic violence between January and March last year, according to a Human Rights Watch report released earlier this year. The numbers were even worse after March, when COVID-19 lockdowns began, according to the report.

In 2020, Pakistan was near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s global gender index, coming in at 153 of 156 countries, ahead of only Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan, which held the last spot despite billions of dollars spent and 20 years of international attention on gender issues there.

Many of the attacks in Pakistan are so-called honor killings, where the perpetrator is a brother, father or other male relative. Each year, more than 1,000 women are killed in this way, many of them unreported, say human rights workers.

“The authorities have failed to establish adequate protection or accountability for abuses against women and girls, including so-called ‘honor killings’ and forced marriage,” according to the HRW report.

Rights groups have been sharply critical of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government, saying he panders to the religious right and excuses the perpetrators of attacks on women.


A former cricket star who has married three times, Khan once had a reputation as a womanizer but has now embraced a conservative Islam. He keeps close ties with a religious ceric who blamed COVID-19 on “the wrongdoing of women.” He once appeared to blame women for attacks by men saying, “if you raise temptation in society ... all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences in the society.”

His information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, says Khan’s statements have been taken out of context and denied violence against women is on the rise, without offering evidence. He said his government encourages women in politics and sports and in provinces where Khan’s party dominates human rights legislation has been strengthened.

“I think this perception is not really close to reality, that in Pakistan women are not safe or maybe that there’s a misogyny in practice in Pakistan,” Chaudhry said in an interview.

Yet last week, one of Khan’s Cabinet ministers, Ali Amin Gandapur, told a rally of thousands of mostly male supporters, that he would “slap and slap” a female opposition political leader.

Last September, a senior police officer blamed a woman who was ambushed and gang raped in front of her two children, saying she should not have been travelling at night and without a man.

Such remarks reflect an increase in ultraconservative and even extremist religious values in Pakistan, said Amir Rana of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies.

The country has seen an explosion of religious organizations and religious political parties, many with extreme beliefs, said Rana, whose organization tracks and documents extremism in Pakistan.

These organizations have tremendous reach in most cities and towns, where they provide services from education to health care, and thus have extensive ability to influence social values, said Rana.

The history of religious extremism in Pakistan is complicated, and Chaudhry, the information minister, argued that America shares responsibility for the role it played in the region in the 1980s. At that time, Pakistan’s military dictator aided by the U.S. used religious fervor to inspire Afghans to fight an invading Soviet Union. Many of those Afghans ended up in Pakistan as refugees.

“And very conveniently now, the U.S. media and U.S. authorities ... blame everything on Pakistan and have left the region,” he said.

But Abdullah, the rights activist, said Pakistan cannot shirk its own responsibility, noting that same dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul Haq, introduced Islamic laws that, among other things, reduced women’s rights to inheritance, limited the value of their testimony in court and made reporting a rape almost impossible by requiring four male witnesses.

In Mukadam’s assault, police have charged Zahir Jaffar, the son of a wealthy industrialist, with murder. Initial reports say she was killed after spurning his marriage proposal. It’s not clear whether Jaffar has a lawyer.

The brutality of the assault — the attacker used so-called brass knuckles — and the fear that his high social status means he could be freed, galvanized many in Pakistan to speak out. They have held protests and a candlelight vigil and launched a social media campaign #justicefornoor to preempt attempts to use influence and money to whisk the accused out of the country.

In one petition circulating online, the author demanded the country’s judicial system “hold perpetrators of violence responsible. We demand justice. We demand it swiftly. We demand it for Noor. We demand it for all women.”

Zarqa Khan, a student who attended a candlelight vigil for Mukadam, bemoaned how religion now pervades so much of life in Pakistan and how today she fears walking alone on the streets.

“I just didn’t feel safe outside anymore,” said Khan. “And that shouldn’t be the scenario.”

 

Link

The Virtues of La ilaha ilAllah Wahdahu La Shareeka Lahu