The savage gang-rape of a five year old girl in Lahore this September whose body was then dumped outside a hospital, horrified Pakistan and the world. This brutal attack was then followed within a week by two more appalling rapes that hit the headlines – that of a young girl in Faisalabad and a college girl in Toba Tek Singh. In recent years, rapes of children and women in Pakistan has dominated its national media and brought to public attention the high and rising incidence of such attacks within the country, with perpetrators originating from different sectors of the society. According to the Islamabad-based non-governmental organisation Sahil, there were 3,861 cases of child sexual abuse in 2012, a 17% increase on the previous year. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 113 incidents of child rape just this year alone in Lahore. However, the scale of this problem is much greater than indicated by such figures. Experts have described gross under-reporting due to the stigma associated with these sexual assaults, threats of further violence, and the callous and indifferent treatment by police of victims of this crime. This is alongside women and families having lost faith in their system to effectively deliver them justice due to prolonged legal processes, police and judicial corruption resulting in the release of perpetrators, and abysmal conviction rates for rapists.
National rage to these incidents was targeted not only at the culprits of such heinous crimes with a public outcry for harsher punishments but also at the police, politicians, and a system that have utterly failed to deal with this problem effectively. And rightly so, for the sense of public indignation towards these appalling attacks is exacerbated by the presence of a political establishment that is not only clueless as to how to prevent or solve this crime but whose lackadaisical and apathetic attitude towards safeguarding the wellbeing of children and women is in itself shameless and criminal.
Pakistan of course is by no means alone in suffering from such high levels of sexual violence. Neighbouring India was rocked last December by the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23 year old medical student on a bus in Delhi. This was followed by a spate of high-profile rapes which also brought world attention to the epidemic level of sexual attacks in the world’s largest secular democracy. Such attacks have soared in the country in recent years and are now its fastest growing crime. According to Al-Jazeera, a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India and the Times of India reported that rape has increased by a staggering 792% in the country over the past 40 years. Public outrage at these heinous attacks was again targeted at the police and politicians for their negligence and lack of gravity and priority towards addressing this problem. In the UK, headlines regarding the sexual abuse of children and young girls by high-profile entertainment personalities, and in paedophile grooming rings in various cities across the country have also dominated the media over the past year. The child protection organisation, the NSPCC reports that almost a quarter of young adults in the UK have experienced sexual abuse in childhood, while according to UK Department of Health figures, a woman is raped or sexually assaulted every 10 minutes in the country. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 1 in 5 women have experienced rape or attempted rape. All this demonstrates that sexual attacks are widespread and rampant across many secular liberal states.
Such states have responded to national outcries over these disgusting crimes by simply issuing a handful of new policies and laws including tougher sentences for assailants. Such knee-jerk policies and laws is the oft-repeated lazy response of governments to quell public anger against the complacency or ineptness of their authorities in addressing these problems. It overlooks the fact that numerous legislation including harsh sentences towards rape have been implemented in various states – east and west – but have not even dented the scale of such attacks.
What is not so easy but yet imperative to effectively address this problem is to ask some soul-searching questions about the liberal and capitalist values and system that dominate states and societies in the world today, including in Pakistan. Rape epidemics and lax police attitudes and government apathy towards these crimes are a direct result of the routine and systematic sexualisation of societies and degrading of women driven by liberal values such as personal or sexual freedoms and encouraged by the capitalist system for the sake of profit. This has created an environment that has devalued the status of women in the eyes of many men; nurtured a corrupt mindset that leads to enacting such sickening crimes; and has desensitized and diminished the gravity of such attacks in the eyes of those involved in law enforcement, the judiciary and governing causing them to deal with it in a light manner – all of which fuels rapes and other sexual assaults on children and women.
Liberal freedoms encourage individuals to pursue their individualistic whims and desires and engage in any relationship they wish to satisfy their sexual instinct in whatever way they view as pleasurable. Such liberal values are embodied and promoted by the advertising, fashion, pornography, music, TV, and film industries, especially the Bollywood and Hollywood culture that is celebrated and prevalent in Pakistan and other capitalist liberal states. Such industries and culture relentlessly bombard and suffocate societies with obscene and sexually provocative images and ideas, especially of women that create an environment where the sexual instinct of individuals is constantly aroused. The consistent portrayal of the woman as an object, commodity, and show piece to play to men’s desires, systematically devalues their status within society. The drama, film and pornography industries even present scenes of men directly violating women, de-sensitising viewers to such shameless violence. This is alongside normalising, indeed glamourising extramarital relationships, nurturing a culture of promiscuity and cheapening the relationship between men and women.
It is only inevitable within such a dangerous environment that many men will seek to fulfill their desires in any manner they see fit, even if that means abusing children, girls or women, if they feel that they can get away with it. In addition, it has diminished the revulsion towards the violation of the dignity of children and women – not only in the minds of perpetrators but also amongst many who are charged with the responsibility of enforcing the law and protecting the public, leading to the indifferent, callous, lackadaisical, or light-weight approach to dealing with these attacks. Hence such industries should not be viewed as harmless entertainment. Their systematic sexualisation of society and degradation of women has serious negative ramifications upon the view and safety of children and women within a state. And all this is sponsored by the corrupt capitalist system with its insatiable thirst for profit which encourages businesses to increase sales at any cost, even if it means demeaning women and exacerbating sexual crimes.
So where does the solution lie? To sincerely address this problem requires for us to reject the liberal, capitalist values and system. It obliges us to embrace values and a system that does not allow the status of women to be compromised in any way; that does not put money over morals; and that prevents the sexualisation of society by regulating and directing the sexual instinct towards that which is of benefit and not of harm to society. We do not have to look far for this, for it is embodied in the Islamic way of life and system that emanates from the very belief that the Muslims of Pakistan hold dear to their heart – ISLAM.
Islam describes the value of the dignity of women as more precious than all the treasures in life, placing its protection on the same level as protecting Islam itself. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said regarding women,
إنما النساء شقائق الرجال ما أكرمهن إلا كريم وما أهانهن إلا لئيم
“Women are the twin Halves of men. None but a noble man treats women in an honorable manner, and none but an ignorant treats women disgracefully.”
Indeed, in his صلى الله عليه وسلم’s final sermon he said,
«اتقوا الله في النساء»
“Fear Allah regarding the woman”,
describing her as a trust in the hands of men, and demonstrating this trust by banishing a whole tribe – Banu Qaynuqa – from Madinah for defiling the dignity of one Muslim woman. However, Islam does not only appreciate the great value and heavy responsibility ascribed to safeguarding the status and wellbeing of women and children. It offers a clear strategy to protect its citizens from sexual crimes through a host of values and laws that complement rather than contradict each other in achieving this outcome for society.
Firstly, Islam rejects liberal personal and sexual freedoms and rather promotes God-consciousness within society that nurtures a mentality of accountability in the manner by which men view and treat women and children. It therefore prohibits the sexualisation of society, preventing the sexual instinct from wreaking havoc on communities, as well as prohibiting all forms of objectification and exploitation of women, such that the relationship between the sexes is never cheapened or the woman devalued.
Secondly, it contains a comprehensive set of social laws that regulate the relationship between men and women. This includes a modest dress code, the segregation of the genders, and prohibition of extramarital relationships – all of which directs the fulfillment of the sexual desires to marriage alone. Thus the sexual instinct is not suppressed but nor is it let loose. Rather it is channeled in a manner that brings good to societies.
And thirdly, Islam prescribes harsh punishments for any form of sexual assaults, including the death-penalty in particular cases. In addition it obliges an efficient judicial system to deal with crimes swiftly.
All this minimises sexual attacks on women and children and creates a society where they do not live in fear but in security, allowing them to study, travel, and work free from abuse. However, this can only come to life comprehensively under the Islamic system of ruling that implements all the laws of Islam upon a state and that makes the protection of the dignity of its women and children a key pillar of state policy, rather than an empty election slogan. This includes using its education system and media to promote the high status of women within society rather than as objects that serve the desires of men.
In conclusion, to believe that rapes against women and children can be solved by awareness campaigns, better training of police, or legislating harsher sentences while simultaneously implementing a value system that systematically devalues their status and undermines their safety is reckless, confused governance. Until the ideas that fuel such crimes within our society as well as a regime that enables them to flourish are uprooted from Pakistan and replaced with an alternative value system that embodies a credible approach to safeguarding the dignity of its citizens, sadly such heart-wrenching sexual attacks will continue to dominate our headlines.
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir