Women – eternal subject in Islam

This request is not made to the youngsters but people who have already attained the middle of their lives; to put it briefly, middle-aged people. They can surely remember the Shah Bano case and the subsequent debate that rocked the political and social arena in both 80s and 90s in India. This single event has been both significant and infamous for several reasons at the same instant. While on one hand it proves Muslim fanaticism can make administration and judiciary kowtow before it, it has changed the following political dominion to a large extent. But above all, the case proves that freedom or the dream to have it is a utopia for Muslim women and till they reside within the periphery of this ominous ruling, they would have to lead a subhuman life.

Perhaps the aforementioned section has astounded youngsters a great deal. They surely have started to think by now that these are applicable in wild societies on the whole. If you are one of these readers, you don’t have to travel any longer. All you have to do is to comprehend the strange fate of Mosammet Hena.

Who is Mosammet Hena? She was a simple 14-year-old girl who was whipped to death thanks to instructions of Islamic clerics in Bangladesh (in the first week of February, 2011). Reason? She was accused for purportedly having a dishonest relationship with a married man. What was the aftermath? Hena was instructed to be whipped by 100 lashes in a religious court at a village in the outer edge of Dhaka. But she gave way in the middle and by that time she was whipped 70 times in public along with a bamboo cane. She was rushed to the hospital, died a few hours later.

The 40-year-old man, Hena was having an affair, had to undergo 100 lashes too. But the man fled to break away from the sentence.

Even if this form of justice has led to a strong reaction among both commoners and judiciary in Bangladesh, people in charge of conducting such courts are audacious enough. All these prove that growling of administration and judiciary in an Islamic country against human rights violations is simply futile.

There is no position of women in the alleged sacrosanct tenets of Islam and the position of Muslim women in India is no different.