According to the news published on 17th October, 2015 by AFP, angry crowds gathered Saturday in New Delhi to accuse police of failing to act over the rape of a toddler, with outrage mounting after the gang-rape of a five-year-old girl in a separate attack. The two-and-a-half-year-old girl was abducted from a religious event in west Delhi by two men on Friday night and raped before being dumped in a park near her home. In a separate incident on the other side of the city, the five-year-old was lured to a neighbor’s house and raped by three men. An agitated crowd of more than 100 people gathered near the toddler’s home late Saturday afternoon attempting to block traffic and lambasting the police’s failure. A female relative of the toddler accused police for doing nothing to arrest the perpetrators and also said that very soon there will be days when parents stop giving birth of girl child fearing that they will be raped. The two attacks come as New Delhi grapples with a grim litany of sexual assaults against women — and in several recent cases, children — that have sparked outrage in India and abroad. Delhi Commission for Women chairwoman Swati Maliwal tweeted, “When will Delhi wake up? Till when will girls continue to be brutalized in Indian capital. Gangrape of 2.5 year n 5 year old. Shameful,” Maliwal told Indian television station NDTV that violence against women had assumed “epidemic proportions” in Delhi. Ranjana Kumari, head of Delhi-based Centre for Social Research said to AFP, “Delhi is not safe and secure for women and the situation is deteriorating,” India recorded 36,735 rape cases in 2014, with 2,096 of them in Delhi. Experts say those figures likely under-represent the true scale of the crimes.
Comment:
In the millennium century when prominent feminists, women rights organizations and secular politicians in the East and West are claiming that western values have liberated women from oppression, and secured and empowered them in society, women along with little girls are brutally abused in every corner of this world. In this capitalist world even toddlers and minor girls are not spared from sexual abuse. The shocking rape incidents of the toddler and minor girl in Delhi remind us how democratic values have failed to create a safe and dignified world for females. These incidents happened just a week after the horrific rape and torture of a four-year-old girl, who was slashed with a blade before being abandoned by a railway track in the nation’s capital city. A few months ago, another brutal rape of a 3-year-old girl in Delhi has also drawn public attention. In recent years, rape incidents have increased to an epidemic level in India, which claims itself as one of the largest democratic nations in the world. The problem is so severe that Delhi is now considered as one of the most unsafe cities for women and girls. Politicians, thinkers and female leaders of India are desperately looking for a solution. Indian filmmakers are creating films to raise public awareness. Strict laws have been introduced by the Indian government. But, nothing decreases the problem.
1400 hundred years ago in the pre-Islamic Arab peninsula, the birth of a girl was shameful to the pagan Arabs. They used to bury their girl children in fear that they would be dishonored by the society. Today, capitalist system has brought back the same mentality to the pagan Indians, where women are now afraid of giving birth of girls as they could be disgraced at any stage of their life. Unfortunately, the abuse of girls is not limited to India or the Indian subcontinent. Statistics of different organizations say the problem is more severe in the West. Women’s rights organizations, secular media and politicians worldwide are busy blaming Islam and Islamic laws for abusing women, yet they fail to discover that under secular democracy corrupt values like absolute personal freedom and absence of accountability have turned women and girls’ lives into a nightmare. In the name of women’s right and freedom, India portrays women as a cheap sexual commodity through movies, fashion and porn industries. Porn stars like Sunny Leone have become the role model of the non-Muslim Indian youth. Indian media constantly encourages women and young girls to wear revealing clothes to look smart and attractive. All this ever did was to create a degraded view towards the female gender in the wider society and thus result in increasing incidents of rape.
In 712 CE Indian subcontinent first came under the Islamic ruling during the time of Hajjaj Ibn Yousuf when he sent his Army General Muhammad bin Qasim to rescue some Muslim women and children from the captivity of cruel Hindu King Dahir Singh. Bin Qasim defeated the king, conquered Sindh and Panjab and liberated Hindu men and women from the oppressive ruling of Brahman kings. After that, from 9th century to mid-19th century Islam ruled India for more than 800 years. Within that long period of time through Shariah law Muslim rulers ensured a dignified and safe environment for women and girls of this region regardless of their race and religion. Mughal emperors had put a great effort to abolish oppressive Hindu laws towards women, especially the horrible practice of burning Hindu widows with the corpses of their husband, named “Satidaha Pratha”. The strongest attempts were made by the Emperor Aurangzeb in December 1663. He issued an “order that in all lands under Mughal control, never again should the officials allow a woman to be burnt.” This is how Islam protected life, honor, rights and dignity of Indian women for century after century. Today in the absence of Islamic ruling and Shariah law Indian women and girls are witnessing a new form of oppression, the oppression of liberal democratic secularism, which has turned them into a mere object for satisfying men’s sexual desire. Indian women and girls should know that secular democratic ruling will never ensure a dignified life for them, because its objective is to capitalize their femininity and beauty to ensure economic gain. They also need to know, until the re-establishment of a second Khilafah Rashidah, Indian girls will continuously be brutalized in India, as well as all over the world.
فَمَا يُكَذِّبُكَ بَعۡدُ بِٱلدِّين أَلَيۡسَ ٱللَّهُ بِأَحۡكَمِ ٱلۡحَـٰكِمِين
“So who henceforth will give the lie to thee about the judgment? Is not Allah the most conclusive of all judges?”
(Surah at-Tin: 7-8)
Fehmida Binte Wadud
minor correction: Hajjaj bin yusuf was the governor of iraq, not the khaleefa.