Crazy Diktats -When someone gets raped!

Making a mockery of Islam

Upholding the Mockery

The real Islamic stand on the issue!

If you thought that you have heard the worst from our self-assigned and unrepresentative clergy, then read the latest tragedy that happened to a Muslim women when she was raped by her own father in law and various rulings by Muslim clergy that followed. It would seem to an outsider that Muslim world is living in the laws comissioned and promulgated in some jungles of Mozambique. Even they might be better!

With fatwas like those depicted in the first two links...there is no need of any biased media to malign the image of already sullied and barbaric Shariah and Islamic laws. The fatwas started by a cleric ordering the women to marry her father in law (the rapist) and divorce her husband. Thankfully, that fatwa was done away with only to be followed with the one that requires her husband to divorce her and leave her on the streets with her five kids to fend for themselves. The latest one is supported by two Islamic bodies of India, AIMPLB and Dar Ul Uloom.

Regarding the edicts issued or supported by AIMPLB, the All India Muslim personal law board, I have known earlier misadventures by this body of India. Totally unrepresentative. God only knows, who gives them the right to decide and why are they glorified as official voice of a 150 million East Indian Muslims?

Their latest standing is that Imrana (the rape victim) is no more 'pure' for continuing conjugal rights with her husband and thus the marriage stands nullified.

What are the issues here? Let's see..

Quran states that: "And marry not women whom your fathers married, except what has already passed;(in the days of pre-islamic igonorance) indeed it was shameful and most hateful, and an evil way...// (forbidden to you are)- the wives of your sons who (spring) from your own loins, and two sisters in wedlock at the same time, except for what has already passed (in pre-islamic days); verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." (An-Nisa)"

Indian Dar ul uloom jurists argue here that because father in law has raped the wife of his son, hence according to Quran, she is now prohibited for the son. But Hey guys!!...since when a rape case came to be judged by this verse of the Quran?? This verse was about prohibited and legal spouses for marriage, never the rape. Or is there any other verse that I do not know of. I am certain that it's the only one that relates to marriage.

Thankfully, the rapist of a Father in law is now behind bars and under sharia..(if implemented) he should be given capital punishment in public so that anyone else desist doing so in the future.

Now, let's presume that the Daughter in law gets pregnant post rape. The child would then effectively be the brother of her husband. Does Islam allow abortion in such cases? Some argue that even if the conception is the result of extra-marital union or forced rape, abortion is not allowed, because the (innocent) baby to be, has the right to life, that can not be denied. The biological parents - both or either one - or else the society/state is responsible to take care of such "un-wanted" or illegal births.

So, what's the Islamic ruling on the issue of children borne out of wedlock/adultery etc?? No child carries the sin of his mother...or biological father, so I think, it would be haraam to abort/kill that child. Here lies the problem. Should the child be sent to the care of an orphanage? Can Imrana and her present husband rear the child as their own? That sounds pretty impossible! Tough questions here! But Islamonline says: the child borne out of rape or forced incest can be aborted without putting any of the blame on the mother.

I agree!! The mother of such a child, if seen through the full term, might not be ever able to go give due love, care and affection towards such a child borne out of violent conception.

All knowledgeable jurists opine that young Muslim men should hasten to marry women who have been raped or tormented off their dignity. Imrana has been tormented. who can better reduce or alleviate her sufferings than her husband? She should be allowed to be with her husband so as to reduce her suffering and console her, to compensate her for the loss of the most precious thing she possessed, her dignity.

Muslim public opinion in India too (if the reports are to be believed), is questioning the right of the religious seminary to adjudicate on a purely criminal offence. Deoband should have kept quiet on this issue as India is not an Islamic country. In fact, they have no right to issue a fatwa on a criminal offence and neither does a the AIMPLB. What is the logic behind giving a decision in which one party (Imrana) is penalised when none of the two self proclaimed Muslim mouthpieces have the power to punish the culprit?

The best part of it all, no one seems to be listening to another equally (if not more) (un)representative body and that is of the 'All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board' (AIMWPLB). Thankfully, they now plan to mobilise public opinion by enlisting the support of the ulemas for getting the decision reversed saying it had not been issued in the light of the Koran. ‘‘The decision has not been taken in the light of Koran; it has been doctored by some fundamentalists who were bent on implementing their agenda,’’ said Shaista Amber, president of the Board.

Why are we not seeing press releases or media interviews from the representatives of AIMWPLB as much as the AIMPLB is in the news? Who gave more legitimacy to the latter than the former?

Most important of all..it's not so much about Imrana or the issue at hand. Time and again unwanted controversies have been created and flagged. This time too it appears designed to get the Shariat laws changed. The dumb and illiterate Muslim representatives, unknowingly but reprehensibly have fallen prey to these designs almost everytime the need arose for them to show an iota of wisdom and vision.

If muslim personal laws are done away with, in India, then so be it. We have proved ourselves incapable of doing justice to their sanctity time and again. We better let go off something which we cannot maintain with due deligence. It's going to be better for the cause of Islam.

Let the law of the land give it's judgement.