May 01 , 2009
What Perpetuates Violence against Women?
It is vital for the victim to understand the escalating cycle of violence and how a slap or a push goes on to a broken bone and then even murder. It is just as important for society to understand why it is that women bear the brunt of the bad days of men.
It is sad that in Pakistan it is not just domestic violence that women have to deal with, it is societal violence inflicted by jirgas and the fanatical that they bleed under.
Like depression and drug abuse, domestic violence crosses the boundaries of race, religion, ethnicity, culture, education, profession and social status. There are genetic, situational and environmental factors with depression and drug abuse, making their treatment complex. The only redeeming feature about domestic violence is that, as of yet, except for certain psychiatric diseases that strongly contribute to it, there are no intrinsic or genetic factors that cause domestic violence per se.
It was just in February of 2009 that North American Muslims bore the shock and subsequent jibes after the beheading of Aasiya Zubair by her Bridges TV CEO husband Muzzammil Hassan.
Muzzammil Hassan, a Pakistani-American, was a magna cum laude graduate of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester and on his third marriage. The first had lasted 6 years, the second 4 months and the third about 6 years as well. Tragically it was Aasiya that had encouraged him to start a television channel devoted to improving the understanding of Muslims across North America. About a week prior to her murder he had been removed from the house and served with a divorce notice and an order of protection, indicating obvious physical threat. She was general manager of Bridges TV and was to graduate as an architect in two months.
Whether this was a crime of passion or whether there was an underlying serious mental illness is unknown. The fact remains that in the state of severe anger and emotion in which such a heinous act occurs, the perpetrator has an unusual degree of physical strength.
On the other end of the spectrum, domestic violence in households within Pakistan that are much less financially endowed is well documented. Pakistan carries the horrid distinction of being the country with the highest rate of acid burnings of women. Just this week a report of a woman’s nose-cutting for supposed wayward ways was reported.
Attitudes towards women are shaped from childhood on. In Pakistan a premium is placed on the birth of a son, too many daughters being considered a tremendous burden. Interestingly, God views the good deeds and sins of men and women in the same prism, to be dealt with on the Day of Judgment with identical rewards and punishments. But a flagrant double standard applies in our earthly Pakistani world. Boys can stay out till the wee hours of the morning, drink, date, indulge in the pleasures of the flesh sans marriage, and get the best education and a multitude of other privileges. But the daughter/sister gets the short end of the stick in attitude and treatment. No pun intended. Honor killings happen even in the UK and USA till today.
Hapless women are blamed and persecuted if they are unable to produce male children, as if it were totally in their power to go bippity-boppity-boo and produce a boy! And if and after they have had a male child, she treasures him and gives him all kinds of preferential treatment. And she sets up the societal cycle that prizes a son and victimizes her daughters and the rest of the women in society. For without doubt the mirror image situation is occurring in her neighbor’s home.
And so sonny-boy grows up entitled. And this Entitlement Syndrome varies from the farmer to the President only in the degree of luxury and material wealth. The mindset does not change.
This is not to say that the hapless mother alone is responsible for this societal cycle of abuse. A large part of this is economic. Pakistan’s literacy rate among women is roughly half of what it is among men. Even in the cities where literacy and economic empowerment of women is greater, financial dependence on men is deep-rooted, not just generationally in money, but generationally in the psyche. The education-economic shackles keep the Pakistani woman hostage to an abusive father, mother, brother and son. And worse - society at large.
The video showing a 17-year-old being flogged while her brother holds her down is purportedly fake. Not that flogging of women and worse does not occur. We are probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg as far as the violence against women is concerned. The economic disempowerment of women and illiteracy in the northern areas is much worse than the rest of Pakistan. The appalling Hudood Ordinance never got repealed and the entire onus as usual sits on the woman, all while politicians adjust their futures.
Pakistani women have distinguished themselves in every field. We have had a female Prime Minister, a female Speaker of the National Assembly and most distinctively a female State Bank Governor. And yet on a general level sexual harassment of women in the workplace is rampant and appalling. I remember the fragility of the male ego in the days of arranged marriage proposals in which a simple conversation resulted in adjectives of “the girl is too intelligent”, “too modern”, “too forward”, “too aggressive”.
In a society with Stone Age attitudes where women are viewed as receptacles solely for pleasure and procreation, the liberationist view of Islam is meaningless. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said that “the best of you is the one who is good to his wife”. But that is not the touted Hadith, other out of context and distorted references to the Qur’an and Hadith are given to justify violence.
At a concert in Karachi I sat next to a woman who inquired “which wadera’s wife are you”? I was stunned by the leading question. And I am saddened today at how it represents the mindset that negates the independent entity of a woman and with economic disempowerment perpetuates and condones violence against women, both at a domestic and national level.
(Mahjabeen Islam is a physician and freelance columnist. Email mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com)
