(An article in the perspective of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women)
According to the father of Political Science, Aristotle, A state is a “Union of families and villages”. A woman is the architect of a society & her task in the subsistence of families – as a sister, a daughter, a wife and most momentous of all, as a mother can never be dilapidated. Raising up the children in a better manner & making them useful citizens of a country is one of her leading responsibilities and certainly, the phenomenon is not uncomplicated enough to comprehend, so as to inscribe. This day, women form half of the mankind, but still, sadism against women continues in different ways. – It continues through honour killings and genital mutilation as well as domestic violence & sexual assault.
Islam forbids injustice – Injustice against women, against people & against nations. Muslim women have a special responsibility to distinguish between Islamic teachings and social taboos, spun by the traditions of patriarchal society. Moreover, this is an inkling that Muslim women are shorn of rights – That really is wrong. The girl child’s vulnerability subsists – not because of religion, but because of social prejudice. The rights, Islam gave to women have too often been denied and that is a fact that women are denied rights, all over the world, whether it’s a developing country or a developed one.
Islam treats women as beings in their own right, not as a chattel. A woman has the right to take over, divorce, receive alimony and child custody. The Prophet (PBUH) placed an end to the practice of female infanticide in pre-Islamic Arabia. The practice of killing the girl child has been denounced in the Holy Quran as:-
When news is brought to one of them, of the birth of a female child, his face darkens & he’s filled with inward grief, what shame does he hide himself from his people, because of the bad news, he had.
Shall he retain it on sufferance and contempt, or bury it in the dust.
Ah! What an evil choice, they decide on!
The words still sound true & how many women still grow up with emotional scars and burdens, due to being “Retained” in their families on “Sufferance & Contempt”.
Women have been victims of a culture of exclusion, poverty, deprivation and discrimination. In Pakistan too, even after 60 years of self-determination, brutality against women prolongs _ probably, supported by the dictators, who neither apprehend the peoples’ power or the rights, this religion has granted to women. Pakistani women suffered miserably, under the name of the “religious laws” introduced by Zia ul Haq, considering the real place of women to live behind the walls of their houses! Women, who were viciously trampled with lashes in the courts, characterized the General’s Islamization, for in his words, "Men are in charge of women because Allah has made one superior to the other... good women are obedient." What the pre-eminence, when God handed over his own unique attribute of creation (giving birth) to a woman, not a man. Did he- the so- religious scholar disregard that in the world hereafter, a person won’t be called by his father’s name, but by his mother’s name. Women need to be given options to toil for the wellbeing of the civilization. The detractors need to remain alive to the fact that the first convert to Islam was a WORKING WOMAN – Hazrat Khadija.
As history turns its chapter, we see women, working in every field – Today; women have earned names as pilots, professors, scientists, journalists and politicians! The greatest example’s found in our own motherland _ Mohtarmah Benazir Bhutto, twice elected as the Prime Minister of Pakistan – The first ever Muslim Woman to hold this position & today, we see Pakistan Peoples Party, electing the first ever Muslim woman, as the speaker of Parliament, Dr. Fehmeeda Mirza. We need to put an end to this prejudice & Shaheed Benazir Bhutto deserves special credit for the Empowerment of women in Pakistan. As the Prime Minister of Pakistan, she took numerous steps to facilitate women folk to compete with men, creating Women Bank, guaranteeing small business loans to women entrepreneurs and appointing women as judges in the higher judiciary of the country. She used her office to quash centuries of discrimination against women. The Government, she led instituted a program of hiring women police officers to investigate crimes of domestic violence against the women of Pakistan and condemned those, who’d been raped. Her Government lifted the ban on women taking part in sporting events. One hundred thousand women were trained to reduce Pakistan’s population on growth levels and its newborn mortality levels. – For if the girl child is to be valued, if the wife is to say No to domestic violence, then we owe a particular commitment to creating jobs for women.
The century of ours needs to realize the very importance of women as the building blocks of a nation and to terminate the astringent credence in our societies, which regards bearing children to be the sheer rationale of her life. In the words of Martin Luther King,” A mother's place is inside her home, but she should also make certain, she gets outside that home enough to help worth while crusades and actively mould the country her children will live in. She therefore holds a key position and her role in shaping the fate of the nation must be recognized and respected.” Moreover, we do necessitate recognizing the verity :- “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand, that rules the world”.
Though, confrontation comes from many sectors, but we must be unwavering enough to eliminating every kind of bigotry against women and in moving forward to fulfilling our dream of a Pakistan, where women contribute to their full potential.
Regards,
Saria Benazir.
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