The last few days have seen much debate and deliberation regarding the recently passed Women’s Protection Bill in the Punjab Assembly. Unsurprisingly, most of this has come from men, predominantly the self-proclaimed bastions of Islam, individuals who strictly believe that it is only they who are entitled to make decisions for women they prefer to call ‘theirs’. They seem to be thoroughly convinced that they have somehow been divinely bestowed with the unerring ability to interpret the principles stipulated in the Quran. They take pride in covering every absurd opinion in the clad of Islam. When you see these very individuals on every news channel animatedly chanting about norms that ‘they’ feel are appropriate for women, smugly defining boundaries within which women are required to function as members of this society, you cannot help but loathe every single one of them for the principles they stand for, and the ideas they propagate.
These individuals are well aware of how most women have surrendered their well deserved right of self-determination to men or more appropriately the “earning hands of their households” and in doing so they have not only learnt to make peace with an extremely demeaned status, but have repeatedly taught similar notions to their daughters. Completely unsound views such as “it is the moral duty of every women to compromise after marriage because once married, women are supposed to subordinate their judgment and will to that of their husband’s” are propagated without giving any justification whatsoever for why such conduct should be established. Rather it is preached as if it is an undeniable rule of life which if ever questioned, will only hint towards one possibility – the girl is a rebel or not of sound ‘character’, which will then imminently become a source of dishonor for the family.
These men, knowing that they have very conveniently suppressed any possible voice of dissent from such women, continue in their endeavor to prove how everything that is not in conformity with their vested interests or outlook on life, is necessarily against Islam. This is precisely the basis on which these individuals have constantly made disparaging references to the Women’s Protection Bill.
Now let us look at the basic premise of the various arguments these individuals have propagated in the past few days.
The most common reason cited for opposition to the bill is the correlation between acting upon the bill and divorce rates in the country. It is believed that every time a woman files a complaint against her husband, this action will inevitably lead to the man using his inalienable right to divorce his wife. Because somehow that is the only course of action all men will be tempted to resort to if such a thing were to happen in any house. So instead of attempting to remedy such an abominable mindset of men, we would much rather spend our time belittling the bill and rights it gives to the oppressed masses.
Secondly, arguments against the Bill assume that women are some sort of insufferable, socially inept and unintelligent individuals who will use this right at every little opportunity to get their husbands ‘kicked out’ of the house. So far, every trivial matter or dispute that occurs within the household, a woman, cognizant of the implications of doing so, will give preference to reporting the matter to the police instead of resolving the issue on her own with the support of the family. What these individuals fail to understand is that women who will resort to using this right are those that have been at the receiving end of domestic violence for years and where the consent of the elderly has not been much affective and that is exactly why such violence has perpetuated. So instead of providing them with an exodus from their pitiable condition, we will repeatedly insinuate that the mere threat of a divorce justifies violence in any form because divorce is inherently bad while subjecting women to such inhumane treatment isn’t.
Another premise given is the idea that even if such a Bill is passed, it’s implementation will never be successful because the family system is too deeply entrenched in the fabric of our society to allow such drastic changes to be made to it. So our inability to acknowledge the existence of laws and enforce them justifies not creating them in the very first place. Therefore, let’s just not refer to rape, honor killings and other heinous crimes and cast a permanent shadow of silence on them because anything we say against it won’t ever translate into action. Because in every situation, the remote possibility of success must always mean silence on the issue.
And lastly, it fails to escape my notice that, when nothing else makes sense, these individuals start making references to how the Bill is an explicit example of western influence seeping into our culture and that the very nature and tone of the Bill is so satanic and ‘modern’ (a term that generally has negative connotations) that accepting it would only mean compromising on our faith. As if problems for women and the need to deal with them only exist in western societies. By proclaiming that we understand religion like no one else does, and by confining women to the four walls of their homes, we think we have not only rooted out every single problem in our family system, but have ensured ourselves certificates to heaven.
