Communalising a Rape: Meerut

Rape should be treated as a crime not only against women but society, only then will it be seen as more than a ‘zenana’ issue cloistered in a female-restricted enclave.

However, can we trust society if it uses such a crime to further create fissures? Take the example of what happened in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, on Sunday:

A 20-year-old BA student, a former part-time teacher at a madrasa in Meerut’s Sarawa village, has alleged that she was abducted from her residence, forcibly converted to Islam, and gangraped in another madrasa in Hapur. She has also alleged that she was held captive in a madrasa in Mustafa colony, Muzaffarnagar, for over three days, where she was again reportedly raped, abused and forced to eat fish. The woman claimed she managed to escape on August 3 and reached Meerut, after which she reported the matter to the police. The woman also claimed that she met other women at the madrasa in Muzaffarnagar, who were being held captive before being sent to Dubai.

What ought to be the most condemnable crime here? Rape. Is this how society will see it? Unlikely. It is a delicate matter not because of who the criminal is, but how the main crime is sidelined. The police registered a case of kidnapping, gangrape, outraging religious feelings of any class and criminal intimidation against the accused.

The Indian Express has referred to her as an “alleged victim”. Their reporter has met her father. Following the Muzaffarnagar riots where it was established that both the Samajwadi Party and the BJP were not beyond using any means to gain political mileage, any news coming from UP is seen as at least partly a political ploy. This is worrying because a victim would be doubted when it is the leadership that must be.

Also of concern is the demand that mainstream media has given it little attention. A crime is not rendered important enough unless it is on TV, it would seem. The media will have to shoulder the blame, for it has laid the foundation for prime-time bombast and letting demons hover over studios. Therefore, if it chooses to ignore a story of this nature it does draw attention. Unfortunately, while blaming the ‘secular media’, the accused targets are those the media is seen to protect. In this case, it would be deemed as kid-glove treatment for Muslims. That a community is berated for what some criminals do and is expected to speak out is itself an example of how rape and assault will be viewed. Muslim groups have not asked the media to go slow on the criminals who follow their faith; the media uses and abuses them just when it suits their agenda at a given time.

To return to the case, why is Hindustan Times that was the first to break the news using terms like “alleged forced conversion” and “as claimed” even in its follow-up report? Because some details have not been confirmed – she did not record her statement, she says she was wearing a veil so could not name the hospital where she was taken for surgery following bleeding, her medical tests are incomplete, she could not identify the rapists, and in a raid on a madrasa where she said others were confined the police did not find any girls.

It is impossible to jump the gun only to satiate the blood lust of a few, and I do believe that such issues get sensationalised, whoever is at the firing line.

What should be done in rape cases is for the victim to be provided with trauma care, and not be pushed into a communal cauldron. The cops were given the name of the madrasa, the cleric, and a few important details. It is their job to follow up. They have arrested three of the four persons.

Meanwhile, the Rapid Action Force has been called in. Would this have happened were it a rape case? It is to deal with the situation about the conversion angle. There was stone pelting. Some BJP leaders have issued threats. Is this not unusual? When it is a police case, who are they threatening and why? I would understand if they use pugnacious language against clerics, but the general threatening tone seems to suggest that they can thrive only in an atmosphere of strife. And what makes the party assume it is the spokesperson for Hindus? Is this its only plank to topple the state government and govern?

If there were a human trafficking racket, then would it escape the eyes of the authorities? Some clerics trying to convert people is very much possible, though. Let there be an inquiry and arrest them. Chances are this will be used as a ruse to shut down madrasas. If anything, the fact that this young woman taught Hindi and English at one at least proves that these are also general schools.

I would like to add that there are a few secularists who capitalise on religion as much as the fundamentalists. There is no need to state after every crime a Muslim commits things like, “This is against Islam.” It serves to feed those who wish to communalise crimes. They get away with the halo that comes with being seen to be non-partisan, but it is other kinds of partisanship that gets them this far.

With everybody trying to be better, the victim is the loser. In order of priority, her rapists should be first tried. The conversion and trafficking angle probe should continue, for according to the complaint it is not confined to her.

It would help if onlookers did not fall for every communal bait politicians throw their way.

--

Update:

Reports continue to bring in other aspects to the case. I would rather not comment because a young woman is involved. Read for yourself here.

--

© Farzana Versey

--
Image: The house of the girl's relatives in Meerut, Indian Express

Travel Advisory for Darul Uloom

"Go take a walk."

And before I am branded as not Muslim enough, if at all, then let me assure you I am closely acquainted with Muslims who practise their faith religiously.

I understand that by quoting the Darul Uloom Deoband I am furthering their cause, but if newspapers continue to publish their latest fatwa, as though it is the newest trend, we will have to speak up. The seminary purports to represent the faith and the Quran; it also ends its fatwas with “Allah knows best”. Therefore, I wonder why people ask them questions at all.


Here is the query on travel:

“Is a married woman permitted to travel to another country with her female sibling?”

The Darul Uloom reply:

“She cannot travel without a ‘mehram’. It’s mentioned in the Hadees that a woman should not travel for more than 48 miles except in the company of a ‘mehram’ relative.”

A 'mehram' is an immediate relative, with whom having sex would amount to incest, or the husband.

I would like to know whether implicit in the reply is that women travel for sex or that there is always the possibility of them being sexually exploited. The latter does pose a danger, but wasn’t it the Deoband that issued a fatwa on a raped woman who was asked to marry her father-in-law, the rapist? Where was she travelling to?

There are several aspects in religion that had validity at one point in time; it is important to seek the essence and not the superficals. And I am not sure about the verity of the Deoband pronouncements. In respect of removal of hair in private parts, for example, it talks about tweezers for women. Were there tweezers in the Prophet’s time? Or depilatory creams? Anyhow, all these were for reasons of hygiene and not because it interfered with people’s belief in god.

Now back to their travel advice. Quite a few of my relatives are religious and the women travel alone and are professionally qualified. Some also wear the hijaab and drive the fastest and take holidays without their male relatives.

The Deoband's extreme position will work against itself. A woman asking the query obviously wishes to or needs to travel. She may not know how far her destination exactly is in miles or kilometres. She might need to use transport and the driver need not be a woman. Then what? Okay, she will be in full hijaab and all that. Then? What if she takes a break every 48 miles and then resumes for another 48 – will that be halal?

In the same state of Uttar Pradesh some miles away from the Deoband in Lucknow women in Varanasi are running madrassas. They have had regular education and are inculcating these values in their students. They are showing the community, the country and the world that madrassas are not only about religious teachings. It is not to justify the existence of such madrassas or to whitewash a bad image, but to fight ignorance and empower themselves.

I should hope they travel far, beyond the 48 miles, because in their minds they have already traversed way ahead of the clerics.

Subjugating the Muslim Woman

Subjugating the Muslim Woman
by Farzana Versey
Countercurrents, May 12

What is worse – the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband’s decree that a woman’s earnings are illegal because according to the Sharia her working among males is wrong or the Allahabad high court ruling that a non-Muslim bride must convert to Islam to marry a Muslim?

In both instances Islam is used to denigrate the position of women.

In the case of the edict, I fail to understand how it is being referred to as a fatwa by the media. This word is being abused in the most blatant manner. What the clerics of the Deoband seminary say is their point of view and they are often responding to specific queries by individuals. Their pronouncements and the questions asked are not universal statements or a general matter of concern or confusion among the Muslim populace.

Here is the Deoband version:

“It is unlawful (under the Sharia law) for Muslim women to work in government/private sectors where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without a veil.”

As happens often, newspapers have collected stray comments, and all from the religious perspective. Historical examples are a good foundation and place to start an argument, but they need not be used to deal with contemporary lifestyles and attitudes.

Why have the clerics woken up now? If they are supposed to be of any consequence and wish to be taken seriously, then must they wait for someone to raise a point? Don’t they see that thousands of women work and earn and help their families?

Have they not seen women beggars at traffic signals asking for money, displaying maimed children? There are Muslim women among them, too. If groups of Muslims keep talking about the real issue of economic backwardness, it is related to social backwardness that is forced upon them by these mullahs.

It is a tragedy that even where political issues are concerned women have to bear the brunt. Do the mullahs recall how they brought their women out with the same frankness they are against to reiterate their anti-terror position? Do the mullahs realise that everytime there is some backlash and they feel their religion is threatened it is the women who have to start observing the dress code, whether or not they themselves do as a mark of respect to their identity?

While there is no doubt some merit in making references to the Prophet’s liberalism and his wife Ayesha’s participation in the war, these are seen as special cases. For, in a monotheistic faith where the Prophet is held in complete reverence no one wants to emulate him or anyone from that period. They only wish to use their limited understanding of certain sayings in the Quran and either twist them or use them without any concern for the changing mores and requirements.

How many such edicts have been passed against men?

To be fair, there have been voices within the religious fraternity that have objected to this edict. These voices will be very few and not really stand out. It is the women who need to make themselves heard, both with their actions and their words.

The Dar-ul-Uloom is based in India and while the country does have provisions for personal laws, there is the Indian Constitution. If this gives us freedom to practise religion, then it will also intervene in criminal cases and any form of cruelty.

It is for this reason that the Allahabad court judgement goes against the principles of choice provided in the Constitution. The ruling states that matrimony between a non-Muslim woman and a Muslim man will be considered void as it goes against the tenets of the Quran.

This sort of blanket judgement bringing in religion can have disastrous consequences later. Sunita Jaiswal had filed a FIR against Dilbar Habib Siddiqui alleging that he had abducted her daughter Khushboo; she contended that she did not convert to Islam to buffer her case.

The court verdicts states:

“In our above conclusion we are fortified by the fact that in the affidavit and application filed by Khusboo herself subsequent to her alleged contract marriage, she has described herself as Khushboo and not by any Islamic name. As Khushboo, she could not have contracted marriage according to Muslim customs. In those referred documents she has addressed herself as Khushboo Jaiswal daughter of Rajesh Jaiswal.”

Therefore, her marriage is void, says the judgement.

One assumes that she was not abducted because she made the subsequent application. Therefore, unless she was forced, one cannot use that against Dilbar. While many people choose to use religion-specific names, some don’t. Khushboo is an Urdu word and could be a Muslim name. There have been several cases of celebrity nikaahs performed where the couples belong to different religions and opt to retain the cultural rituals of both sides of the family. It may not have religious sanction, but some qazis do conduct such nikaahs.

What if the couple got married under the Special Marriages Act and had it registered? No conversion or name change is required. I should hope the girl is not pressurised as this could well be a ruse to prevent a cross-religious alliance.

If the judge believes she is abducted, he should handle the case at that level as a criminal offence. There is no need to bring in religion and humiliate the young woman. This is just an invitation to divide people and bring in the religious heads to intervene in a personal matter. Incidentally, there was no reference to a non-Muslim male marrying a Muslim woman. The patriarchal mindset even of a secular judiciary believes that only the woman has to convert.

At this rate, the Deoband edict could well reach some high court in the country and we might have an Indian judge pronouncing that Muslim women in the work-place goes against the Sharia and therefore will be kept out of any professional role.

The state and religion are two entities and it is the business of both to protect all its citizens and members. Women are not lesser human beings and if we are expected to perform our duties, we are also in a position to demand our rights. And our rights include non-interference of the state and religion in matters of our well-being.

* * * End of article * * *

Updated on May 13 around 6.30 PM IST:

The role of the state and religion had come to the fore with regard to such religious edicts when P.Chidambaram applauded some maulvis on their stand against terrorism.

Here is an extract from my earlier piece The Farce of Fatwas:

Have the Jamiat or the Darul-uloom ever come to the forefront and fought for the dispossessed within the community? What has been the role of religious organisations during times of riots and such crises? Do they work with traumatised victims as human beings and not merely god’s soldiers? Give us the instance of a single head of such an organisation who is leading such proactive movements. They merely pontificate and pronounce edicts. The opinion of a handful of maulvis cannot be elevated to a diktat.

- - -

Updated on May 14, 5.25 PM IST:

Why does the TOI insist on using pictures such as these when talking about Muslim women in Mumbai? How many women dressed in this manner do you see even in the mohallas? They did it in the initial report and this one is in today's paper where the topic of discussion is the Urdu press opposing the fatwa. So, in effect, TOI is following in the footsteps of the Deoband. Why am I not surprised?

Does the Pope understand Crime?

For the first time since the raging allegations against the sexual abuse scandal involving a priest, Pope Benedict has publicly stated:

“Now, under attack from the world which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognize what is wrong in our lives.”

It is a telling comment that he refers to the attack from the world. It is a masochistic way of looking at things. Had there been no attack, would there be no need for penance? This penance too is part of “obedience to God”. Has god been in any manner demeaned? Has god been tarnished? No. The Church is an institution, and like all religious institutions it has a set hierarchy, sub-sects and people in charge. They ought to be pulled up and be seen as criminals for committing crimes against others, as they would be in civil society.

One increasingly notices that ashrams, madrassas, convents and churches are being used by a few for abusive activities that go contrary to what they stand for and wish to portray. Due to the holy tag attached to them, it is difficult to discover the improprieties and to pull them up and try them as one would in regular cases.

The pontiff denounced Nazis and Communism and alluded in his speech that “subtle, or even less than subtle, aggressions against the Church show how this conformism can be a real dictatorship.”

Is he implying that the Church is not conformist? Religion conforms more than anything else, whether it is monotheistic faiths with one holy book, a god, angels or polytheistic faiths with several gods and their own little value systems. The believer has got to believe in these and conform to the rituals of that faith. How is any of this non-conformist?

He called upon the faithful to “open themselves to forgiveness, to prepare themselves for forgiveness, allow themselves to be transformed. The sorrow of penitence, that is of purification and transformation, that sorrow is grace. Because it is renewal, it is a work of divine mercy.”

In short, do what you want, but keep your options open to seek retribution, not in the real world for real reasons, but because you need divine mercy.

Those poor kids and the women who are being molested in places of worship do not count. Some seers have the audacity to use the ruse of ‘purification’ for such sexual rituals.

- - -

This is from the German satire magazine Titanic. This is its April issue cover on ‘The church today’:

News meeows - 15

Madrasa student cracks UPSC

At a time when eyebrows are being raised on the kind of education being imparted in madrasas across the country, a maulana from the Darul-Uloom-Deoband in Uttar Pradesh has passed the country’s most elite examination, the Civil Services exam, in his fourth attempt. Maulana Waseem-ur-Rehman, 31, is the first madrasa product who has cleared the civil services exams in the country. Moreover, for his interview, the maulana took training from the RSS-run institute Samkalp at Paharganj in New Delhi.

Oh wow, what would poor madrassa students do without the RSS? I tell you what – they make some neat weapons, learn to fly planes…UPSC exams are a piece of truffle. And what does this fellow do with it now? Where will he get employment? He already has a Bachelor’s degree in Unani medicine and surgery, so what was wrong with that? How many non-Muslims who attend religious schools need to prove that they can also do it in the civil services?

-- -

The BJP wins in Karnataka

The BJP’s triumphant chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa met Karnataka governor Rameshwar Thakur on Monday to stake his claim to form the government, stating, “We have the numbers’’. His said this after two independent MLAs attended the legislative party meeting earlier in the day. Late reports said three more independents had pledged their support to the BJP, taking the party well past the magic number of 113—over the halfway mark in the 224-member assembly.

Okay. I want to do something drastic, mainly because this is only the beginning. The first state in the South goes to the hardcore Hindutva party. Who is to blame? The Congress and the JD(S). Deve Gowda, who made sleeping on the job a part of his PMship, couldn’t sleep with the ‘enemy’. Now we are left with this sorry state, and Narendra Modi who was crowing before will be really happy. The saffronites have got the tech city in their pocket.

As always the media is talking about L.K.Advani as the PM in waiting. He has begun to smile a lot and now even resembles Dr. Manmohan Singh without the turban. Lord Ram save Bharat, and I mean not just your brother.

- - -

Omar Abdullah, National Conference Chief, has criticised pictures of President Pratibha Patil holding an AK-47 during her ongoing visit to Jammu and Kashmir

The former Union Minister has said he would have wanted to see her photographs with children in some far-flung hamlet rather than "brandishing" the "object that has caused so much death and destruction over the last 18 years."

"The photograph was of President Patil brandishing an AK-47 and smiling... Somehow the two things didn't seem to go together…They say a picture speaks a thousand words and I would have been thrilled to see a photograph of the President talking to kids, as a grandmother would, in some far flung hamlet about the promise of a better future…I know she's the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but the photograph reminded me of a rather forgettable Sylvester Stallone movie - `Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot'".

Dear, dear Omar…did you tell the little Kashmiris while Farooque was busy playing golf ‘Stop or my Pa will get a hole in one’? Take a look at the picture instead of trying to be this smart-ass son of a gun. Does it look like she is brandishing anything? If you want the locals to have grandmothers, then make sure the political parties and terrorist outfits and army guys behave. You want to see pictures of her in some hamlet, then take her on a tour, invite her to a waazwaan, and then watch her lounging in a shikara on the Dal Lake sipping kahwa. You want feel-good, you get feel-good. Nothing more. Life in Kashmir won’t change because the President behaves like a grandma. Would you say the same had the president been a man? How many of our old men act like grandpas or are expected to? What is this rishtedari business, anyway? Your dad was busy taking filmstars (the activist actress Shabana Azmi, no less) pillion riding on a motorcycle.

Trust me the children of Kashmir are not going around screaming, “Oye, humko bandook do, madamji waala”.