Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Women For Sale

Women For Sale
By Hwaa Irfan
Writer, counselor, editor - Egypt
Despite the fact that Islam has challenged Judeo - Christian beliefs that pit women as second - class citizens, both inside the home and within the society-at-large, prostitution has withstood the test of time. It continues to bear witness to man's inability to raise his sense of will to higher levels whereby he can consider himself master, rather than slave, to urges that oppose any sense of reason.

"And let those who do not find the means to marry, keep chaste until Allah makes them free from want out of His Grace. And (as for) those who ask for a writing from among those whom your right hands possess, give them the writing if you know any good in them, and give them of the wealth of Allah which He has given you; and do not compel your slave girls to prostitution, when they desire to keep chaste, in order to seek the frail good of this world's life; and whoever compels them, then surely after their compulsion Allah is Forgiving, Merciful," (Surat al Nur 24:33).
(Photo) A woman who claims she was raped by three members of the Iraqi police force talks to members of the press in Baghdad. (Photo :AP/Asaad Mouhsin)
Regardless of the advances in women's rights, women in Western and Westernized societies are still subjected to and forced to see themselves as commodities to be bought and sold. Magazines, television, and popular forms of music and fashion feed subconscious images of what the "ideal woman" should be.

Former teacher, Jeanne Sillaam, places the burden of the problem at the feet of dysfunctional families, where the mothers rarely enjoy comparable status to that of the fathers. It is only when we explore the growing frustrations and malevolent behavior of the young, that we get an insight into the effects of certain modern life styles.
French social worker, Saadi Sahali, outlined the negative perception of women when she referred to the phenomenon of gang rape. "On the estates girls are often regarded as things you possess...The boys' behavior is governed by an ethos of virility and violence. For them, gang rapes are a game. They live in a permanent state of transgression without realizing it," she said (Chambon, p.30). These boys, who obviously are not masters of their own wills, have been allowed free-reign and represent the shadowy side of the modern Western male. "Often a boy is allowed to get away with anything..."(Chambon, p.30).
(Photo) Nazanin Fatehiis a rape-victim who has been sentenced to death by hanging by the savage Islamic authorities occupying Iran. 18 year old Nazanin Fatehi, a former rape victim, and her 16 year old niece were attacked by three rapists in a suburb of Tehran in March 2005. During the attack Nazanin defended herself and her niece by stabbing the rapists with a knife she had began carrying with her ever since her first rape-attack. One of the rapists later died of his wounds. Now Nazanin is sentenced to hanging unless international pressure leads to the terrorist Islamic Republic canceling their inhumane sentence.
According to psychology professor Marie-Claude Fourment, of Villetaneuse University (France), emotional dissatisfaction and deprivation are at the heart of gang rape. Professor Fourment analyzed the results of a study done by teachers in Parisian suburbs involving 200 pupils. "What struck me was the absence of feelings and affectionate relationships," she said. This understanding is reinforced by psycho - sociologist Joelle Bordet, concurred saying, "Gang rapes are symptomatic of the dominant positions of boys on the estates, and at the same time they reflect their feeling of impotence vis-à-vis the rest of society" (Chambon p.30). Without a strong sense of identity and direction, this sense of "impotence" is bound to spread, if it hasn't already, in even greater forms.
Renowned psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung said, "Our denominational religions with their archaic rites and conceptions - justified enough in themselves - express a view of the world which caused no great difficulties in the Middle Ages but has become strange and unintelligible to the man of today. Despite this conflict with the modern scientific outlook, a deep instinct bids him hang on to ideas which, if taken literally, leave out of account all the mental developments of the last 500 years" (Jung p.72).
(Photo) Mukhtar Mai, the woman who, in June 2002, was ordered by a Muslim village court to be gang-raped for a crime that was not of her own doing. The reasons for the fatwa came from the fact that her 12-year old brother had been seen walking with a girl near their home, in the remote village of Meerwala Jatoi in Punjab province, Pakistan. Her brother was walking with a girl from the influential Mastoi tribe, and thus had broken local custom and had offended the girl's "honour".
To achieve the suitable redemption of the other girl's "honour", the court ordered that Mukhtar Mai should be gang-raped. Four volunteers enacted this "punishment" and once the ordeal was over, she was then displayed naked to onlookers, who numbered in their hundreds.
Unknown to much of the world, an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 women, per year, are shipped from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to Western Europe and North America. Their destinations are the brothels and nightclubs that operate in those countries. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), these women are often taken and sold against their will, initially lured by the prospect of a decent job (Purvis & Stojaspal, p.18). Upon arrival, their travel documents and identification papers are confiscated. Stripped of self-worth what do their futures hold?
Once confined to a few Southeast Asian countries, falling borders and the growing gap between the rich and the poor have aggravated this practice and left a trail of destroyed families, corruption and profiteering by organized crime groups, in their wake. Time Magazine investigators exposed the underworld of abuse and cruelty where "sold women" are forced to sleep in cellars, on s or tables and survive on fast foods (Purvis & Stojaspal, p.19). In an attempt to address the problem of these women, ABC Nepal runs shelters and a training center for girls rescued from prostitution or abuse. There are 5,000 Nepalese girls, aged 10 - 20, being smuggled out of the country and forced into prostitution every year.
Durga Ghmine of ABC Nepal said: "When they are brought back, many of them are depressed and sick. Some of them have AIDS...Often their families don't want them back and no one will marry them... We try to build new lives with dignity and self-respect, and we give them another way to be self-sufficient" (Constable p.33).

Seventy-six year old Helen Taylor-Thompson pioneered the Starfish Initiative, launched at the House of Lords in London last month. It was a response to a 1994 report from the human rights group Jubilee Action, which showed that one million children worldwide are lured and forced into prostitution every year and that as many as ten million are currently thought to be trapped in the world of forced sex.
Taylor-Thompson sees prostitution as a form of slavery and wants to see it come to an end via electronic education. The aim of the Starfish project is to deliver three million containers to Malawi, Nagpur and Assam in India. Each container will include a secured computer with six monitors. In place of a mouse, there will be a starfish. Each point of the starfish gives a different option. There are no written commands on the screen, just voice commands through a video conducted in the local language (Southam, p.24).


The "container schools" will be run by community leaders, through which, the girls will learn about water, childcare, nutrition and disease control as well as literacy skills.

We have been given many revelations and many chances to "clean-up our act." Islam is the final religion and therefore, our last real chance. Its high level of responsibilities encourages humanity to raise itself above unhealthy emotions and underdeveloped instincts. Once we succeed in that challenge, then and only then, will humanity be strong enough to implement equity for all.
Islam gave us dignity than when Prophet Mohammad (SAW) said, "None would respect women except the magnanimous ones, and none would insult them except the ignoble ones" (Amini p. 123).

"And what reason have you that you should not fight in the way of Allah and of the weak among the men and the women and the children, (of) those who say: Our Lord! Take us out of this town, whose people are oppressors, and make for us from Thee a guardian and give us from Thee a helper. Those who believe fight in the way of the Satan: surely the strategy of the Satan is weak (Surat al Nisa' 4:74-76).

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Sources:
Amini, Hujjatul-Islam. "Principles of Marriage Family Ethics" Tehran: Islami Propogation Organization, 1988.
Chambon, Frederic. Le Monde: "Vicious Battle of the Sexes Rages In The Suburbs" Guardian Weekly 3 May - 9 May '01 164:20.
Constable, Pamela. "Nepali Girls Offered A Way Station To Dignity." Guardian Weekly 3 May -9 May '01 164:19.
Jung, Carl G. "The Undiscovered Self." London. Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1996.
Purvis, Andrew & Stojaspal, Jan. "Women For Sale: Human Slavery" 157:7.
Southam, Hazel "Starfish That Connects the Slums." Guardian Weekly 10 May - 16 May 2001, 164:20.

{ Views expressed by writer and are their own property }
Muhammed Shariq Khan Lucknow, INDIA
m.shariq_khan@yahoo.ca k.shariq@rediffmail.com k.shariq@hotmail.com
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