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Islam and Women

31.08.2007 13:11:06

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Dr. Younus Shaikh

B

Islam and Women

Dr. Younus Shaikh

Dr. Younus Shaikh, Pakistani Rationalist and founder President of the Rationalist

organization of Pakistan, "The Enlightenment", who was once sentenced to death for

blasphemy in Pakistan, writes on Islam and Women.

I

efore the advent of Islam, the pagan Arab women
generally enjoyed a respectable status in society; many
of them including Khadija - the first wife of the

prophet of Islam, had the right to engage in business and
choose or dismiss their husbands in a matrilineal fashion;
they took part in most activities of war and peace including
public worship. In female oriented Arab

paganism,

goddesses had special status; in Mecca, the female goddess
Al-Uzza, in Taif the goddess Al-Lat and in Medina the
goddess Manat were the most popular deities, and their
statues were most revered while the statue of the stern
Allah was almost neglected.

Arab pagan poetry was mostly concerned with the beauty and grace of their women, and the
glory of their tribal values in peace and war. And it was only in one predator tribe of Mecca that
the evil custom of burying alive of the daughters prevailed. It was highly unusual for a man of
pre-Islamic Arab society to have more than one wife in his house; and it is quite certain that
polygamy was introduced and encouraged by the prophet after the revelation of Islam. Women
were to produce as many Muslims as possible. This ultimately resulted in the degradation in the
status of the married woman in the Islamic society. Whereas the pre-Islamic Arab custom
allowed many looser forms of marriage on the matrilineal and matri-local tradition that gave the
woman freedom and liberty as full human being, however the artificial rules of Islamic nikah
reduced marriage to mere sexual and social slavery.

The prophet of Islam, before prophethood, opposed the burying alive of the newborn daughters;
he was eager to work for a woman and gladly married a divorced woman. The early Islam
continued with most of the pre-Islam tribal traditions; there were no hijabs or veils for women of
Madina; and at a later date only the nine wives of prophets were restricted in their social
intercourse as their home was constantly full of visitors. However the prophet's women sex-
slaves were not restricted in any such manners.

Indeed, the semi-transparent half-face- veil (hijab) was actually a very old custom originating in
the Assyrian times, a status symbol and a mark of social distinction for the free women. The pre-
Islamic pagan Arab woman of the cities often wore the fashionable semi-transparent half-face
veil but the tribal women never did.

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Islam and Women

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Later, Islam added measures for "the preservation of modesty for women" -like casting down
their eyes in public, concealing their breasts and jewellery and the likes. However, these
restrictions were later extended by the followers of the prophet far beyond his original intentions
as expressed in Koran, and remained more or less a permanent fixture of Muslim life thereafter.

Later on, however, the insecurity of early Islam gradually added to the exclusion of women, and
100 years later, by the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Haroon ur Rashid, women became merely
sexual toys and breeding machines; and as married women they were merely maid servants- mere
man's social appendages. Moreover, as female sex-slaves, women were freely bought and sold in
open markets of all Islamic countries, and loaned, rented or bestowed as gifts to friends. The
prophet himself bestowed women sex-slaves to his favourites. There was no limit to the number
of slaves one could own; one of the companions of prophet Hazrat Zubair Ibn ul Arvan, for
example, had 1000 men-slaves and 1000 women sex-slaves. Islam took the woman as the land
tilled by the man where he spilled his seeds.

The prophet himself took part or guided nearly 100 wars or raids or attacks for plunder. After
him, his followers continued the offence. The fierce Islamic tribal Bedouins with centuries long
experience of ruthless and cruel tribal warfare proved to be the worthwhile shock troops of Islam.
After Iraq, Syria fell to the Islamic Empire in 634 CE. Despite surrenders, great massacres took
place at many places; thousands of men were slaughtered and women and children sold into
slavery; monasteries were ransacked, monks and villagers were slain and nuns were raped. After
the conquest of Egypt, many of its towns were put to sword and their entire population wiped out.
Great massacres also occurred in Cyprus and North Africa. The Roman province of Iraq, the
Syrian province of Iran, and the conquered Iran brought hundreds of thousands of men-slaves,
women sex-slaves, and the vast fertile lands of these once mighty and civilized countries where
the women had been held in high respect e.g. the Manichaecian Iraq, the Pharonic Egypt and
North African Civilizations.

As in Egypt and Iran, wherever the conquering Islamic Bedouins armies went, they destroyed the
local civilization's cultures, imposed their Islamic tribal medievalism recklessly murdering men
and degrading women to perpetual sexual slavery. In short, the Islamic tribal Bedouins and
barbarians did the same to the surrounding higher civilizations what the Roman barbarians did to
the highly civilized ancient Greeks. Meanwhile the Islamic Bedouins continued to raid and
abduct the European women for Islamic slave markets during all these Islamic centuries. The
conquest of Syria forced the conversion of thousands of Christian priests to Islam, who changed
their religion but not their profession: they became the stern anti-feminine Islamic mullahs and
not only continued their religious magic and rituals but also continued the essentially Christian
medievalism under Islam.

In short, as a result of these conquests, destructions and imposition of Islamic tribal
medievalism, societies under the Islamic Empire went further than any other in their total
exclusion of women from political power and social influence. Islamic legislation went far
beyond anything the prophet had originally dreamed of in his tribal religiosity in cheating women
of their rightful place in society and in matters of inheritance. Where originally the Koran gave
women the right of inheritance, the Islamic mullah invented the legalized institution of Waqf-
the religious foundation, to exclude the daughters and their descendents from inheritance.
Though the Koran does give the right of inheritance to women, she continued to be a minor;
usually uneducated needing a guardian in father, husband or the son. Indeed, the status of women
in Islam is theoretically exalted but utterly deplorable in practice.

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"I

Multiplying number of harems (residing place for the female sex-slaves), finally institutionalised
under Caliph Al-Walid II, emphasized the inevitable degradation of womanhood under Islam.
Haroon ur Rashid, the Islamic Caliph (ruler) had 2000 female sex-slaves, Caliph Mutwakkal had
4000 female sex-slaves; and every mullah, official or soldier of Islamic state had some men-
slaves and women sex-slaves belonging to the conquered civilization nations. Not being allowed
to learn, experience or think for herself, it is no wonder that there are hardly very few
outstanding women in 1600 years of Islamic history, and those who by chance or by the force of
the ancient pre-Islamic customs came into light or in the corridors of power were sooner or later
eliminated on the orders of some pious and religious Islamic mullah.. Indeed, Islam's violent
anti-feminism have been as nefarious as Christianity's burning of hundreds of thousands
European women as witches in 15th, 16th and 17th century. The female hating instruments of the
Islamic Empire, the mullahs and the Caliphs, continued to promote degradation of women under
the formal and sordid Islamic legal code of Shariah, the final seal on the complete subjection of
the female element.. The modern history of Islam is merely the continuation of the Islamic tribal
medievalism, only the technology , phraseology and the façade is modern.

II

ndian sub-continent suffered the humiliation and destruction under Islam, as did Africa.
The Islamic General Mohammad Bin Qasim decimated great Buddhist and Hindu
civilizations. Acting on the orders of a representative of the Islamic Caliph, Governor

Hijaj Bin Yousaf (who was a deadly enemy of the Hazrat Ali and Hazrat Hussein's family-some
of whom have taken refuge under the Buddhist monarch Raja Dahir in Sindh), Mohammad Bin
Qasim conquered the kingdom in 712 CE. His Islamic plunderers and looters demolished
temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces and killed thousands. It took his Islamic army
three days to slaughter the inhabitants of Debal, their women and children were taken into
slavery. Later on he pardoned many prisoners and tried to establish a just rule of law which
enraged the very Islamic and murderous Governor Hijaj Bin Yousaf; therefore Qasim again
reverted to the Islamic barbarity and massacred between 6-16 thousands in Brahiminabad, their
women and children were sent to Arab Islamic slave markets.

This was the beginning of the destruction of the classical ancient Indian civilization, and start of
the medieval age of Islamic darkness in India. The 11th century witnessed another Islamic
murderer and plunderer, Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi an agent of Islamic Caliph, who utterly
ruined the great Indian civilization and looted and plundered most of its wealth. Fifty thousand
Hindus were massacred in just one of his attacks at Somnath; he invaded India more than 17
times. Thousands of Hindu men and women were sent to the Islamic Afghani slave markets. The
highly cultured and civilized daughters of the noble Hindu families were sold to the illiterate, un-
cultured and barbaric Afghanis for equivalent of just one Frank (Pound/Dollar) each. After every
Afghani Muslim had four wives each, there were lots of surplus women left; to that the evil
Islamic mullahs responded with an ingenious translation of Koranic verses proving that Allah
allowed each Muslim to marry 18 women at a time along with an unlimited number of women as
concubines. Soon the new military instruments of the Islamic Caliph, the Turks and the Moguls
followed, decimated captured Delhi and turned whole of India into a grand open-air slave camp.
Sultan Firoze Shah Tughlaq- an Islamic Turk ruler had 100,000 men-slaves and thousands of
female sex-slaves in his harem; the pious Islamic Mongol (Mogul) Emperor Shahjehan had
15,000 female sex-slaves and concubines for his personal harem. Indeed, the Islamic Turk
invaders and rulers did the same in India as they did in Armenia-the whole races of peoples were
exterminated. (However, credit must be given here to the agnostic and secular-minded, humanist

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Mogul Emperor Akbar the Great who refused the title of "the King of Muslims" and preferred to
be called "the shadow of God"- for his God, he declared (in accordance with the mind and
language of his age), is the beneficial deity and protector of all-Hindus, Muslims and other races
of humans and creatures alike. He gave up his faith in Islam and tried his genius in creating a
pluralistic religion comprising traditions of all the prevalent religions and ideologies of India. He
even invited the Christian Jesuits priests from Goa to his ideology-discussion-palace but could
not swallow their childish Jesus-son-of-God myth).

The medieval Islamic Empire of the Turkish Osmania Caliphate disappeared after Axis defeat in
the World War I and with the rise of the Turkish secular hero Mustafa Kemal Pasha. However, it
soon metamorphosed into the modern Saudi Islamic spiritual Empire. It is noteworthy that while
the very Christian Holy Roman British Empire of the West required standing armies to control
the bodies of men in all its colonies, the theocratic Saudi Islamic spiritual Empire of the East
depended on the standing army of clerics-Mullahs and Imams-stationed in mosques to control the
minds of men-the social, cultural spiritual and psychological control. It is true that Islam
dismantled the old Arab tribal loyalties and some of its taboos and traditions; however it created
a new tribe in the name of Islam with prophet himself as its chieftain and his family and tribe-
Hashmis and Quresh acquiring an elevated and sacred status- a replacement of old medieval tribe
with a new theocratic tribe. However, it essentially continued many of the ancient pagan rituals
of worship as well as many of its old taboos and traditions. The tribal blood loyalties were
replaced with the new tribal religious loyalties. At intellectual level Islam is merely the
continuation of the medieval Jahiliya (Ignorance) in the holy garb of Islam- the Islamic Jahilia
(the Islamic Medieval Ignorance). Modern Islam is, indeed, merely a continuation of that
medieval tribal ignorance and mental backwardness.

Since the advent of the Saudi oil, petrodollars started to support the Islamic extremist
movements all over the world and continue to do so. The Saudi petrodollars have created
thousands of Islamic centres for social and political control and propaganda- the mosques-all
over the world; 1000 mosques were built in the USA only in just last few years. Islamic
brainwashing and political propaganda continues in these mosques and madrassas-the religious
schools, as well as through the Islamic newspapers, magazines, radios and televisions. All kind
of extremist Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism emanates and flows from the " Kernel of
Evil- the Epicentre of the ugly Islamism-the Saudis". For Allah of the Saudis makes submission
to Islam obligatory for all humans. Those who refuse their submission to Allah or differ from the
Saudi version of Islam are called the Satan's party, and must be eliminated by Saudis or their
paid and brainwashed zombies-the Muslims- called the Allah's party. Saudi Arabia is in fact the
worst example of Islamic medievalism, and mental, social backwardness. Slavery was legal in
Saudi until 1960s when it was officially abolished on the personal request of the non-Muslim US
President J F Kennedy! However, it continues in new names: the foreign female domestic
servants-the private property of the Islamic Bedouin barbarians. Saudi petrodollars continue to
support the extremist and fundamentalist mullahs, and continue to lure the Islamic states into the
barbarity of the Islamic medieval Shariah laws, and the Saudis continue to spread Islamic mullah
terrorism and Islamic theocratic totalitarianism all over the world."

Iran basically an Islamic spiritual colony, is the godfather of the Shiite Islamic terrorism,( Saudi
Sunnis are an Islamic sect like the Christian Catholics while Shiites are like the Protestant
Christians). This Allah's government in Iran is the most evil religious state today. Torture,
murder and Islamic absolutism- an Islamic version of Hitler's Nazism, Stalin's Communism and
Mussolini's Fascism combined. There were 5,195 political and religious executions only in 1983
alone! Few years ago a bill was presented in Iranian Parliament asking that in according with the
tradition of Islamic prophet, marriage should be allowed with 9 years old girl child! Human

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rights are definitely not allowed to exist in the Islamic Iran, where according to the English
language Radio Iran, the Holy Spirit of imam Khomeni hovers over Iran all the times. Women
have been hanged on suspicion of sexual crimes. Even proved virgins have been sent to gallows,
however, they are hanged only after being raped, as Iranian Islam does not allow hanging of
virgins. Iran had used its oil money in the interest of Islamic revolutions all over the world, and
continues to do so.

Algeria, known for its Islamic civil war continues with its Islamic horrors. Islamic absolutism
and totalitarianism is imposed with guns and slaughters in the interest of religion of Islam. Men
are usually killed for their religio-political crimes while women are killed just for the crime of
being a woman in an Islamic country. Thousands were islamically raped and more than 500 were
killed only in 1993. Women have been killed for not wearing hijab (veil) or refusing to do so
when imposed, for refusing to engage in Iranian-style temporary marriage, for being married to
foreign men, and for working and living alone. The victims have been as young as 9 years and as
old as 69 years. Women are often raped and tortured before being slaughtered. Thousands find
themselves imprisoned in Islamic camps for no legitimate reasons. It is worth mentioning that
women had a respectable status in society before the conquest of Algeria by Islam.

Egyptians, heir to the great Pharonic and Alexandrian civilizations continue to suffer the chronic
evil of Islam. Known for the miseries of hijab and female genital mutilation, Egypt is also a
centre of child prostitution for the wealthy Saudi Islamic Bedouins. In Egypt, four out of five
women are forced to wear some kind of hijab. Female genital mutilation is very common; up to
73% in Cairo and 95% in rural areas. In 1995 a shaikh (religious dignity) of Al-Azhar University
Cairo issued a fatwa (the religious decree or bill), which reportedly announced the procedure pf
Female Genital Mutilation as "laudable practice that does honour to women"; and stating that it
was, a religious duty as important as praying to Allah.

Sudan had a long history of Islamic conquest and repression. Islamic totalitarianism and
barbarity continues to this day. Recently, Sudan was brutalized by the Saudi-backed
Gen.Numeri's Islamic fascism. In 1992 a religious decree-fatwa-was issued that gave justification
to the military onslaught against the non-Muslims. Islamic barbarism and genocide continues in
Darfur to this day.

Indonesian Islamic army mass-murdered 200,000 East Timurian non-Muslims before East Timur
got its independent. The country is known for its extreme religiosity, corruption, ethno-religious
problems and Islamic extremism.

Pakistan, an experimental laboratory of Islam, had turned into a horror. Notwithstanding the
hundreds of thousands of rapes, abductions and murders under the watchful eyes of the very
Christian administration of the Holy Roman British Empire at the time of religious division of
the Indian sub-continent in 1947 by the Christian British Empire, when half a million people
were forced to migrate, Pakistan has never made any certain move towards civilization. Pakistan
is a centre of Islamic fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism. Pakistan's very Islamic army
invaded her province of East Pakistan in 1971, killing hundreds of thousands of Bengali Muslims
and non-Muslims and raping half a million women ranging 9-69 years in age, in its attempt to
create a half breed Pak-Bengal race which would be loyal to Islam and Pakistan. In 1974 Pakistan
army invaded its province of Baluchistan resulting in similar calamities. In 1980 Islamist General
Zia ul Haq introduced further islamization under the Saudi pressure for introduction of the
medieval and tribal Islamic Shariah.. Along with the compulsory public prayers, there were
brutal Islamic laws for the very natural sexual acts and for the presumed blasphemy: the
repressive Hudood Ordinance and the infamous Blasphemy laws. Thousands of innocent women

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continue to suffer under these and other Islamic fascist laws for mere allegations. Raped women
had been sent to gallows for the crime of being raped. (Islamic Shariah is the only system of law,
which punishes the victims: Fatemollah). Pakistani state has proved to be a willing and sinister
instrument of the evil Islamic mullah fascism and terrorism. Pakistan created the hated Afghan
Taliban and many other such organizations in Afghanistan. Similar organizations continue to
flourish in Pakistan and try to create a totalitarian and fascist Islamic state. Despite all tall claims
of fight against Islamic terrorism, the evil continues to flourish. Pakistan is undoubtedly a major
source of supply for the Iraqi terrorism. Illicit drug trade continues with the blessings of the
Islamic mullahs and the ISI (the Islamic Military Intelligence). There are Islamic prostitution
centres in every Islamic city of the Islamic Pakistan where abducted and non-Muslim women are
forced to suffer. The secular, liberal and rationalist intellectuals continue to suffer in Pakistan
like the victims of the infamous Christian inquisition of medieval Europe. While the Christian
churches burnt the heretics, Islamic mullahs get them indicted for Blasphemy.

Eternal vigilance is the price of civilization.

III

hile fundamentalism, superstition, ignorance, lack of human rights, female genital
mutilations, forced seclusion of women within their houses and in their hijabs; religious
extremism, fundamentalism, suicide-bombing and Islamic terrorism continue to be the

hallmarks of the Muslim states and societies under the influence of the Saudi Islamic Spiritual
Empire of the petro-dollars or Iranian Shiite area of influence under its Shiite oil-money; it is
high time for the civilized world to wake-up from the stupor of multi-culturism and blind
tolerance of the organized intolerance; for the disease is spilling herein already. Many of the acts
of the Islamic states and societies, organizations and individuals are barbaric and medieval; the
beheading of the innocent hostages, death penalties and murders for religious reasons; chopping
of hands and feet; stoning to death of women for getting raped or on accusation of natural sexual
intercourse; honor-killing on mere suspicion, suicide-bombings and acts of terrorism; these are
indicative of a deep-seated disease. Murder on the name of a merciful Allah is mere hypocrisy.

The rise of Saudi-sponsored extremist Islam is a danger to civilization everywhere. All extremist
Muslims are potential terrorists and Allah's soldiers. There should be no tolerance for this
religiously organized intolerance against liberalism, human rights and women's equal status and
other manifestations of our civilization. Muslims in civilized and democratic societies should be
required to take the oath of loyalty to the state and democracy. Political right to vote to those
whose political loyalties are located in some far off desert is not only harmful but also suicidal
for the state as well as for the very ideology and system of democracy. Political right to vote for
those who wish to destroy the very system of democracy? Think again, Ladies and gentlemen.

There is no place for optimism for a liberal Islam. Nearly all Islamic states and states have failed
to appreciate the basic human rights of their people, their women and their minorities. Saudis and
Emirates are the worst offenders; and are the financial godfathers of fundamentalism, extremism
and Islamic backwardness everywhere.. Nearly every Islamic country is dangerous not only for
itself but for the world as a whole. Pakistan, for example, after supplying Iran and with Korea
with nuke-secrets continues to offer the dangerous technology; Vietnam and Brazil are the new
customers. The nuke-terrorist Dr. Abdul Qadir Kahn is safe, well protected and facilitated by the
State of Pakistan, with full impunity, of course.

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You civilized people! Yesterday you refused to acknowledge the dangers inherent in the rise of
the Christian Nazi and Communist ideologies. Yesterday you supported Islamic Taliban even
when they trampled rights of their women under their feet. Your refusal to confront militant
Islam today may cost us more dearly than our individual lives-our cherished achievement -our
civilization. Beliefs have consequences-the centrality of Islam to mental, social, intellectual and
cultural backwardness; organized offences against women and minorities; fundamentalism,
extremism and modern terrorism are impossible to deny. "Religions of peace and tolerance" are
mere empty words.

Islam is an organized crime against humanity!

(concluded)