By Shahidur Rashid Talukdar,
Here is the paradox. In one hand, we have ladies leading our countries and on the other hand, we are not even letting others see the face of the earth. Based on the declining sex ratio, a recent study has predicted that by 2020 India will experience twenty percent more males than females! This is the worst possible discrimination that we can inflict on women. We are denying them their right to be born!From times immemorial, women have been at the receiving end of both joy as well as misery. In mythology, we idolize them and in our temples, some of us, worship them. At home, we love and respect them as mothers and sisters. In our youth, we dream about them. We admire them for their beauty and grace. The list goes on. However, the reality says, despite all these nicest feelings from our side, women are still oppressed! Our collective love, respect, and admiration fail to give them a place in the society they truly deserve! Is not it ironic? Individually, all of us seem to be or at least, pose to be, nice guys: quite benevolent to our female counterparts. Where is the mismatch, then?
Well, however, we pose ourselves but the truth is that the society has, by and large, been patriarchal. Over history of time, across the geography of the world, as I am not sure about the rest of the universe, policies have favored male supremacy. Encompassing all the frameworks of religious, social, and political spheres, we have devised policies that give us a greater pleasure, better position, more power, higher degree of freedom, and better share of opportunities. The consequences of our policies now we can see in our vicinity. I am not endeavoring to go for analysis of communities or scriptures, as it is none of my objective here to describe who did what, which religion suppressed women more and which gave them more rights.
Women in Islam
However, recently there has been considerable debates about ‘can Islam liberate women or not’, but the outcome, as usual, is blurred. Though the scriptures give a certain degree of rights, the practice of the followers i.e. the Muslims are significantly different from the scriptures. Although some of the greatest crimes against women such as female infanticide are less prevalent in Muslim societies, honor killings fill the gap. In practice, Muslims follow their scriptures fairly selectively. And above all, there has been little effort to look into the implied meaning of the scriptures rather than the literal. So ultimately, it becomes another phase of the same old story.
