The plight of a Muslim woman in Bihar
The male dominated society has turned Hijab into a suffocating Burqa and finally into a Saudi-Talebani out-fit that makes them a moving enigma. Fatwas are issued to back Burqas which willy-nilly a helpleass woman has to don.
ISLAM AS a religion has always given a much higher status to women. According to Hadees of Prophet (PBUH), our heaven lies under the feet of out mothers. However, Muslims, as followers of Islam, have reduced the status of women to a pathetic state from where they are slowly struggling to extricate themselves. These so-called scholars are ignorant of history, philosophy, contemporary politics, socio-cultural problems and everyday realities of the common man. These vigilantees keep their mind and eyes shut to the pathos of an ordinary Muslim and want to brutally implement an out-dated and irrelevant interpretation of Islam that suits to their fancy. Not long ago, it was not very different in other societies also.
In Athens, Athenian women were always minors, subject to some male - to their father, to their brother, or to some of their male kin. Her consent in marriage was not generally thought to be necessary and "she was obliged to submit to the wishes of her parents, and receive from them her husband and her lord, even though he were stranger to her."
A Roman wife was described by an historian as: "a babe, a minor, a ward, a person incapable of doing or acting anything according to her own individual taste, a person continually under the tutelage and guardianship of her husband."
In the Encyclopedia Britannica, we find a summary of the legal status of women in the Roman civilization:
In Roman Law a woman was even in historic times completely dependent. If married she and her property passed into the power of her husband . . . the wife was the purchased property of her husband, and like a slave acquired only for his benefit. A woman could not exercise any civil or public office . could not be a witness, surety, tutor, or curator; she could not adopt or be adopted, or make will or contract. Among the Scandinavian races women were under perpetual tutelage, whether married or unmarried. As late as the Code of Christian V, at the end of the 17th Century, it was enacted that if a woman married without the consent of her tutor he might have, if he wished, administration and usufruct of her goods during her life.
According to the English Common Law:
...all real property which a wife held at the time of a marriage became a possession of her husband. He was entitled to the rent from the land and to any profit which might be made from operating the estate during the joint life of the spouses. As time passed, the English courts devised means to forbid a husband's transferring real property without the consent of his wife, but he still retained the right to manage it and to receive the money which it produced. As to a wife's personal property, the husband's power was complete. He had the right to spend it as he saw fit.
In Indian society we had Sati pratha and all those practices that hardly enhanced the status of women.
No matter what the enemies of Islam say, I believe even today a Muslim women feel more protected despite the permission of 4 marriages to man. I have hardly met only two or three Muslims in my life who have been keeping more than one wife in their life at the same time. So, are the followers of other faiths openly or clandestinely.
Apart from Fatwas I was pleased to find the near absence of KHAP PANCHAYATS among Muslim Society. Alas, I was living in the ivory towers or fools paradise. Read the following news from the Bihar the Muslims often refer as Bihar Shareef (the noble Bihar)
A 35-year-old woman was allegedly stripped and whipped after she defied the diktats of a kangaroo court in Bihar's Katihar district to remarry her second husband. The illegal court at the Gwaltoli-Kalyannagar village summoned the woman on July 8 and directed her to to remarry her second husband from whom she had divorced earlier, the superintendent of police, P. Kanan said on Tuesday, quoting the FIR lodged by her. Kanan said the woman's first husband died four years after the marriage and after some time she married a man named Mohammad Islam of the same village and the couple had a son. But, the marriage did not work and the couple divorced. Subsequently, when her five year-old son was down with fever, she had to call her divorced husband as she was living in penury, the SP said. After the son recovered Islam left. He said that Islam and his brother Samsuddin later connived in summoning the kangaroo court which was headed by a former mukhiya, Akalu.
The kangaroo court first asked her to pay money equivalent to that required for construction of a house, besides wheat and rice to the former mukhiya. As she refused she was dragged to a mango grove on the outskirts of the village stripped and whipped. The SP said the woman lodged an FIR on July 11 after which Akalu and Samsuddin were arrested. She alleged that a former mukhiya of the panchayat, Akalu, ordered the woman to be stripped and beaten up, he said.
Let us see when the latest Fatwa from Deoband makes a smooth landing in this regard.
In Athens, Athenian women were always minors, subject to some male - to their father, to their brother, or to some of their male kin. Her consent in marriage was not generally thought to be necessary and "she was obliged to submit to the wishes of her parents, and receive from them her husband and her lord, even though he were stranger to her."
A Roman wife was described by an historian as: "a babe, a minor, a ward, a person incapable of doing or acting anything according to her own individual taste, a person continually under the tutelage and guardianship of her husband."
In the Encyclopedia Britannica, we find a summary of the legal status of women in the Roman civilization:
In Roman Law a woman was even in historic times completely dependent. If married she and her property passed into the power of her husband . . . the wife was the purchased property of her husband, and like a slave acquired only for his benefit. A woman could not exercise any civil or public office . could not be a witness, surety, tutor, or curator; she could not adopt or be adopted, or make will or contract. Among the Scandinavian races women were under perpetual tutelage, whether married or unmarried. As late as the Code of Christian V, at the end of the 17th Century, it was enacted that if a woman married without the consent of her tutor he might have, if he wished, administration and usufruct of her goods during her life.
According to the English Common Law:
...all real property which a wife held at the time of a marriage became a possession of her husband. He was entitled to the rent from the land and to any profit which might be made from operating the estate during the joint life of the spouses. As time passed, the English courts devised means to forbid a husband's transferring real property without the consent of his wife, but he still retained the right to manage it and to receive the money which it produced. As to a wife's personal property, the husband's power was complete. He had the right to spend it as he saw fit.
In Indian society we had Sati pratha and all those practices that hardly enhanced the status of women.
No matter what the enemies of Islam say, I believe even today a Muslim women feel more protected despite the permission of 4 marriages to man. I have hardly met only two or three Muslims in my life who have been keeping more than one wife in their life at the same time. So, are the followers of other faiths openly or clandestinely.
Apart from Fatwas I was pleased to find the near absence of KHAP PANCHAYATS among Muslim Society. Alas, I was living in the ivory towers or fools paradise. Read the following news from the Bihar the Muslims often refer as Bihar Shareef (the noble Bihar)
A 35-year-old woman was allegedly stripped and whipped after she defied the diktats of a kangaroo court in Bihar's Katihar district to remarry her second husband. The illegal court at the Gwaltoli-Kalyannagar village summoned the woman on July 8 and directed her to to remarry her second husband from whom she had divorced earlier, the superintendent of police, P. Kanan said on Tuesday, quoting the FIR lodged by her. Kanan said the woman's first husband died four years after the marriage and after some time she married a man named Mohammad Islam of the same village and the couple had a son. But, the marriage did not work and the couple divorced. Subsequently, when her five year-old son was down with fever, she had to call her divorced husband as she was living in penury, the SP said. After the son recovered Islam left. He said that Islam and his brother Samsuddin later connived in summoning the kangaroo court which was headed by a former mukhiya, Akalu.
The kangaroo court first asked her to pay money equivalent to that required for construction of a house, besides wheat and rice to the former mukhiya. As she refused she was dragged to a mango grove on the outskirts of the village stripped and whipped. The SP said the woman lodged an FIR on July 11 after which Akalu and Samsuddin were arrested. She alleged that a former mukhiya of the panchayat, Akalu, ordered the woman to be stripped and beaten up, he said.
Let us see when the latest Fatwa from Deoband makes a smooth landing in this regard.
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