Saturday, November 22, 2008

Fareed attacks women again

Sheikh Fareed, notorious for his fiery anti-women rants before he switched to the more popular target of Gayoom, isn't wasting time. In his first "sermon" after being given a preaching permit by the new Ministry of Islamic Affairs, he told an almost exclusively male crowd of thousands at the weekend that more women than men would go to hell. This was, he said, because women were more likely to sin than men.

While Fareed quoted misogynistic and disputed hadiths to support his claims, hard evidence from this country paints a very different picture. A 2007 survey found out that 1 in 3 Maldivian women aged 15-49 years of age have experienced physical or sexual abuse, while 1 in 6 had been sexually abused when they were under 15 years of age. Perpetrators in an overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse and violence against women are men.

It's not clear what Fareed is trying to achieve with this attempt to rouse disrespect and contempt for women. But, given the increased violence that Maldivian women and children live with, Fareed is sending a very dangerous signal to the perpetrators and, society at large.

The underlying reasons for violence and sexual abuse of women are complicated, but social scientist say they relate to the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity, which depends on the sexual, physical and emotional degradation of women. In many cultures, becoming a man and learning to disdain women go hand in hand. Cultural patterns, thus, enable men to learn to instigate and justify the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of women.

Fareed and others like him, notably the 'scholars' of Adhalath Party, are the crudest examples of these patterns at play. Whenever the status of women have been raised in the Maldives in recent times these people have raised objections, usually in the name of 'Islam'. This is to frighten critics into silence. But these same people have ever uttered a word against the high prevalence of child sexual abuse in the Maldives, a fair share of it perpetrated by religious teachers and imams. Notably, not a single religious scholar raised their voice against the recent rape of a 14-year old girl by six men. Although the rapists confessed their crime they remain at large to this day, free to threaten and harass their victim and her family.

Fareed's sermon provides an implicit justification for these rapists, and feeds the disrespect and contempt of women necessary to maintain the cycle of violence against women and child sexual abuse in this country.

7 comments:

Simon said...

The fact that no one has bothered to bring this up shows how blindly we let these fanatics get away with saying anything.

Fareed quoted valid hadiths and yes they are misogynistic but not disputed. Apologists just want to pretty-up Islam to make it look tolerant.

Hussein Ihsan said...

Their veil of Islam hides the true child abusers, molesters and sexual sickos. These so called "wahhaabees" marry couple of women, and even do groupsex as I've heard. How thats allowed in Islam, I donno. They are the one's who will try and have sex with a 12 year old, saying that it has been bestowed upon them by the holy scriptures and the life of the prophet.

Anonymous said...

According to global figures more men commit theft, murder and rape than women. So I wonder what evidence based data makes Sheikh Fareed quote 'women were more likely to sin'. Secondly as far as I know in monotheistic religions who goes to heaven and hell is a judgement for God, not for human beings living on this earth.

Anonymous said...

Simon has written my sentiments exactly. I wonder what it is about these religious fundamentalists that makes them hate women so. I wonder if they were treated badly by their mothers while they were young, or is it just brainwashing that makes it difficult to see otherwise.

I just cannot understand their clinging blindly to something while there is evidence to contrary. I'm sure there would be good female role models in their families, who do NOT spread destruction to the whole human race!! But still they persist in generalising the whole female population of the world as evil sinful beings. Dont they realise they are insulting their own mothers, sisters, aunts and daugthers?

All this is just beyond my comprehension

Anonymous said...

Quran and prophet Muhammed S.A.W hadhith will lead us to the correct path. i belive that we need to learn islam first.
Narrated Ibn ‘Abbas: The Prophet said: “I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful.” It was asked, “Do they disbelieve in Allah?” (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, “They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, ‘I have never received any good from you.” Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 28
http://ageofjahiliyah.wordpress.com/2006/10/30/more-women-than-men-in-hell-answer-from-sunnipath/

dissidentmaldives said...

123k, it is telling that you only quote from Hadith and not the Quran.

The volumes and volumes of hadith books written some 200 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad contain many hadith that either contradict the Quran or don't make any sense at all. This is why the Quran clearly states that the Quran is the ONLY consistent source, since it's God's Word.

Of Hadith, the Quran says:

Among the people there are those who uphold baseless Hadith, and thus divert others from the path of God without knowledge, and take it in vain. These have incurred a shameful retribution. [31:6]

The Quran could well have been referring to misogynists like yourself, Fareed, and others who historically, and to this day, continue to quote from Hadith to justify their own hatred of women.

Khilath Rasheed - journalist and blogger from Maldives said...

Sick, isn't it, how sick people try to justify their sick needs by hiding behind the guise of religion so that no one will question their sick intentions.

If anyone is going to hell, it is the likes of these so-called "scholars" who twist and distort Hadith to suit their own base needs. These people need to be put in a mental asylum and rehabilitated by professional psychiatrists. Otherwise our society, especially our women, will always have to live in fear of such people and their sick intentions.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, how does anyone know these Hadith are 100 percent true since they were collected 200 years after the death of the Prophet. There was an interesting experiment carried out (that was mentioned on Edge.org I think) whereby a single story was told to a person and he/she was asked to tell the same story to another person and so on until the story reached a 10th person.

When they compared the results, the story told by the 10th person was significantly different and varied from the version told by the first person.

You can then imagine how twisted and distorted the Hadith will be after it is passed down by generations of people spanning 200 years! It's amazing how rational people cannot understand a simple thing like this and go on treating Hadith as if it's God words. That's why I agree with DissentMaldives that "the Quran is the ONLY consistent source, since it's God's Word."