Bookreview - Burned Alive

"I hate tyranny and oppression wherever practiced, more especially if practiced by my own Government, for then I am in a measure responsible" - M.P. Alfred Webb

 Before I say anything, I just want to clarify that gender relations in Islam does not perpetuate female bondage and suffering. This is not another article creating hatred and paranoia against Muslim men. Personally I do not give credence to any rhetoric that evenly remotely suggests that the Qur'an says that it is a part of faith to let someone abuse you. Islam does not condone submission to any abusive authority, whether male or female. However, I find it telling that the issue of obedience always arises in specific sects from back home, subtly reminding women of their duty to their husbands.

According to Burned Alive, every year, more than 6,000 women, who fail to obey their male counterparts, are murdered in the rural villages of West Bank, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, India and Pakistan. In Jordan, a man who has killed his wife/daughter/sister in a state of rage is entitled to the judge's clemency; the same law applies to a man in Palestine, who kills his wife simply because he suspects her of adultery. It is increasingly common in Pakistan and Afghanistan to mutilate or burn alive, girls who have "disgraced" their families.

I have often wondered why Muslims activities have never unpacked the complex reality of violence against women back home. Why is the only issue pressed and loudly proclaimed in our countries is that of human rights violations by Israel or conspiracies by United States. Is it because a crime is only when men die or when missiles are fired? Controlling, isolating and threatening women is in fact, a deep wound that routinely damns our countries. We decry the political situation in the Middle East yet ignore the domestic degradation of women. It is inconceivable for me how we find political violence more harrowing than domestic violence.

Our hearts pound against our rib cages and our neck hair feels like pins every time a headline rips through CNN or BBC about a political "crisis" in the region. Tragically, our blood doesn't thunder and bellow in the same way when Souad points out in this book that,  'a girl is called a charmuta, a prostitute if a man catches her eye or when she is married at the age of 14 or when her brothers go to school but she does not. When being born a girl is a curse, when a wife must first produce a son - at least one - and if she gives birth only to girls, she is mocked, even beaten. A day without beating is unusual. She is pulled by the hair, dragged, hands tied behind her back, legs bound and scarf over her mouth to muffle the sound of her screams. At most, only two or three girls are needed to help with the housework, to work on the land and tend the animals. The rest are suffocated to death in carpets and large blankets after birth.' When gasoline is poured over her body. When her nose and ears are carved out of her face. How can men who do such carnage in their homes complain that Israelis are annexing their land or the Americans are policing the world? Our conscious should roar against this hypocrisy.

The effluvium of terror is all around us. We only choose to see check points, sometimes disputed territories and streets as battlefields when our attention should really be in living rooms baptized in blood,  where mordant perfume of women's tears emanates. The hell-hounds who burnish women s  bodies black and blue and rapture their spirits, think they are performing some sort of religious service in resisting the Israeli/American occupations. If I didn't know any better, I would say they deserve every single punishment, war and sanction from the international arena for what they do to their women. How can these monsters hope for any mercy from Allah when they are themselves murderers? The previous nations were destroyed because they were unjust. Ibn Taymiyyah rahimaAllah deduced that a kaffir state will thrive and succeed if it is just, but Allah will never give victory to an unjust nation-state, even if its rulers/inhabitants claim to be Muslims. This is because Allah has forbidden injustice.

All Islamic texts are self-explanatory: the curse of Allah is on the dhalimoon. Allah hates the dhalimoon! The angels curse the person who points a weapon at a Muslim until he puts the weapon down. These men are not even Muslim if they are harming other believers with their words and hands. And if they think their odious behaviour with women is not dhulm then explain why the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) forbade a person from eating two days together at a time without taking permission from his companion? When eating an extra date is an heinous act of dhulm then clubbing a little girl with a shoe - belt or crowbar is certainly not piety!
Umar (r.a) used to weep in Medina, thinking that Allah will hold him to account if a baby goat died by the Euphrates river. Today, all over the Middle East women are slaughtered worst than cattle and there is no public expression of protest or indignation. Even if women are freed from Israeli occupation, who will free them from their husbands and fathers who stifle them at home.

One can argue that there are human rights organizations fighting for the protection of women in our countries. Yes, but these organizations are secular. Because Masjid Imaams and Scholars do not offer any solution, Muslim women have no choice but to turn to these groups. These groups offer them everything from money, surgery to immigration - in exchange for leaving Islam. Resistance among women to wear the hijab is not a coincidence. It is the result of years of abuse they have suffered by men who represent Islam. I ask all men, from Palestine to Pakistan: what is the point of your tahajjud, siyam, hifdh, sadaaqat and hajj if you inflict your own daughters and wives with rape, molestation, beatings and threat of divorce or homelessness everyday. The true measure of your masculinity is not how long your beard is or even how badly you want to go for jihad against the Israelis and Americans but how benevolently you treat your women. If we want Allah to change our political conditions, we should change our conditions at home with our women.

It is also possible that the political environment in these countries have made men violent and so they take out their frustrations at home. It is not easy being humiliated everyday at checkpoints or being fired from work because of your sect, the colour of your skin or nationality. Men can only take so much despotism. Still, I insist that the liberation of Palestine or any other Muslim country from non-Muslim invaders is not worth the persecution of women by their own families. We should not be deceived into believing that liberation of Palestine lies in the achievement of political power and strategic domination over the Middle East. No liberation is possible without the liberation of women. We cannot talk about freedom without talking about the freedom for all people, including Muslim women from family systems that perpetuate violence against them, marginalizes them and oppresses them.

Vive le Palestine, Vive le Femmes!