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Victimization of a Gender: Where Geographical and Cultural Boundaries Do Not

Constrain Crimes Against Women

Mukhtara Mai of Meerawalla, a village in Pakistan was repeatedly gang raped and made

to walk naked through crowds of jeering villagers, when her brother was falsely accused of

having sexual relations with a woman of the Mastoi tribe. This heinous crime was committed at

the order of the village council in 2002 and became an internationally recognized case involving

both the Pakistani government and human rights activists who worked hard to bring justice to

Mukhtara Mai (Hussain, 2006). Unfortunately, rape and honor killings are not always confined

to rural Pakistan but are also unwelcome visitors in the lux drawing rooms of metropolises where

women’s rights are conveniently forgotten and distorted. This causes damage to the image of a

religion which is already tarnished and customized to fit the political and cultural agenda of the

defilers and further strengthens the world’s perception that Muslim women are victims of crime

because their religion condones such acts.

In another yet not so unusual case, is the tragic story of Samia Sarwar, “In Pakistan, in

April of 1999, Samia Sarwar was shot and killed in her attorney’s office as she was filing for

divorce from her abusive husband. The murder was perpetrated by her own parents, who felt that

she had tarnished their honor by seeking a divorce, even though they knew that her husband had

violently abused her throughout their marriage” (Hussain, 2006). A prime example of culture

abusing religion and deeming it appropriate for misguided parents to preserve their family’s

honor by killing their daughter who had no right to get out of a violent marriage. Often, Islam is

hijacked to “allow” monstrous crimes on women who dare to defy the male authority in her life.

Growing up in Pakistan, I was privy to experiences that both encouraged me to grow as a

person and simultaneously constrained me as a woman. These constraints revolved around the
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premise that rape, murder, black magic and powerful feudal families were above the country’s

legal system, so it was our (women’s) responsibility to protect ourselves by behaving as society

expected us to and Islam wanted us to. I knew women who could not leave the house without a

chaperone and under layers of “chador”1 and I saw women who smoked, drank alcohol and had

boyfriends. Whispers of rape, abortions and sudden marriages filtered down to us, the young

girls who had no business knowing about these things. Although some of us had freedom to

work, study and have male friends, there was a thin, fast fading line between what was culturally

acceptable and what was religiously acceptable, and for the most part one was confused for the

other.

Controversially, history and contemporary world are witness to the fact that throughout

the planet, women are victims of crimes and not just in the Muslim world. For centuries, women

have borne the burden of greed, jealousy, sexual desire and power wars. They are raped,

murdered, vilified, used and discarded on the whims of their husbands, fathers, brothers,

boyfriends and sadly even by women themselves who support these men. This violence against

women is in no way confined to the strangely misperceived, incense filled, belly dancing streets

of Muslim world, but a tragic case file in every police station of the world. Yet the wider

perception is that western women are provided liberty, security and safety by law and society

while the veiled woman is a helpless victim of Islam.

This perception can easily mislead one into thinking that Muslim women would blame

religion for crimes against them, but after reading Ghafournia’s paper on domestic violence

against Muslim women living in Australia, one finds that these victims found solace in religion

even if they were not particularly religious. “The debate around the role of religion and women’s

1
A long scarf that Muslim women wear to cover their heads and bodies.
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rights has been a long and controversial one, especially among those who see religion as

legitimizing patriarchal values and those who believe in the empowering potential of religion”

(Ghafournia, 2017). Nafiseh Ghafournia further writes, “Religious leaders can play powerful

roles in shaping expectations of acceptable family behavior and the proper response to

unacceptable behavior” (2017). These leaders play a major part in misinterpreting religion and

replacing it with cultural traditions and thoughts to justify crimes against women. For centuries

men have ruled and governed over the world and women are the side-kicks to offer

companionship, sex, children and maid service, but the women that Ghafournia discusses lay no

blame on Islam for what their husbands did to them and their acceptance of this abuse, rather

they blamed culture empowering the men to treat the women this way. “They believed that it was

mainly cultural values and expectations that delayed their responses to the abuse” (2017).

Western world can be forgiven into thinking that only Muslim women are victimized into

accepting this abuse, however, after reading Lesley McMillan and Deborah White’s paper which

talks about rape and how legal system deals with rape allegations and victims in UK, one comes

to realize that western women too are objectified to man’s cultural prerogative. The authors

write, “The cultural mistrust surrounding those who claim rape is firmly embedded. Even the

existence of forensic medical examinations and corroborative evidence collection from women’s

bodies by medical and scientific “experts” are a test of their veracity” (McMillan & White,

2015). It was shocking for me to read that in the West where crimes against women are

correlated with suppressed Muslim women, it itself was not as liberated and secure as it

pretended to be and doubted the rape victims who came looking for justice and help. Instead they

were blamed for crimes against them because they deserved it for drinking, partying and dressing
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to invoke “boys to be boys”. No religion is involved here but culture expects women to behave in

a certain way even with all the talk about liberated western woman.

Lila Abu-Lughod is correctly indignant about the West’s obsession with “veiled” Muslim

women needing to be saved. She questions their fixation on Afghan women’s freedom as

suppressed by the Taliban enforced veil, “Why knowing about the "culture" of the region, and

particularly its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the

history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history”

(Abu-Lughod, 2002). She has given numerous cases where foreign interventions are made to rid

the Muslim women of their covering as the thought is religious barbarity (read Islam) is

depriving them of their freedom to live and thrive like the women of the West. She uses the term,

"the tyranny of fashion’ to describe US women who are also forced to dress in a particular way

in order to be acceptable. So, what is the difference? In both cultures women are still victims of

abuse.

This is a vast topic and this essay is a brief yet, inadequate thought on my part to try and

put forth the idea that women are victims of crime and violence against women is not confined to

geographical or cultural or religious boundaries. In the developed western world, a lot of

propaganda is given to an image of a suppressed, helpless Muslim women. Yes, there are many

instances of such in the Muslim world but not because of religion but because century old

traditions still live on. This is true for both the worlds and instead of dealing with issues that

would reduce crimes against women, a lot of importance is laid on how they dress. If they dress

modestly – they are victims of religion and if they dress in revealing manner, then they are

asking to be raped. The hypocrisy of society and it cultural norms is a result of basic human

instinct to use women as objects rather than humans. It has always been there and will continue
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to be written about unless there is a conscious effort by society to replace the phrase “boys will

be boys” with “abuse in any form against any gender is unacceptable”.

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WORKS CITED

Abu-Lughod, L. (2002). Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections

on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American Anthropologist, 783-790.

Ghafournia, N. (2017). Muslim Women and Domestic Violence: Developing a Framework for

Social Work Practice. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought,

146-163.

Hussain, M. (2006). "Take My Riches, Give Me Justice": A Contextual Analysis of Pakistan's

Honor Crimes Legislation. Harvard Journal of Law and Gender.

McMillan, L., & White, D. (2015). "Silly Girls" and "Nice Young Lads": Vilification and

Vindication in the Perceptions of Medico-Legal Practitioners in Rape Cases. Feminist

Criminology, 279-298.