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“Mein tumhara shohar hoon, maarnay ka haq hai mera!”
“Islam mai biwi ke ooper haath uthanay ki ijazat hai.”
How many times do we come across such statements? Well, I’ve heard about such statements several times, mostly from people around me, my friends, relatives, and colleagues. One such instance happened with my maid herself. I clearly remember how when I was young and my maid used to live on the empty plot next to ours; I used to listen to her cries every night.
Her husband would scream ferociously while I listened from the window of my room. I also remember the bruises on my maid’s face. I could feel what she must have felt just by looking at them. When her husband used to be confronted by one of the elders of my family, he would straight forwardly say that it was his right as her husband to treat her however he liked.
I also vividly remember this one time when my sister, my cousin, and I, were up late, we heard crazy beating, screaming, crying voices from one of our neighbor’s house. We didn’t know how to react. The scream of that woman could tell us what was happening with her in there. We, not knowing what to do, called up the police station and asked them to take an immediate action against this.
They did come for help, except they couldn’t figure out which house exactly the noise was coming from, so they decided to give up. When we called to ask them why they left, they said, “mian biwi ka mamla hai, unkay ghar ka mamla hai, chorain aap loge”. That day, I realized how much trouble we all are in, mainly because of our thinking. After all, it’s our thinking that makes us act the way we do.
These are just a few incidents that I’ve encountered around me. There are much more that happens every day around us, and sadly, this doesn’t only happen with the uneducated sect of our society, but very well educated people believe that it’s their RIGHT to hit their wives. As for those who use religion to justify these acts of violence, yes, it is no doubt mentioned in the Quran that a very light beating of your spouse is allowed in case she’s wronged you (verse 34 of Surah an-Nisa, abbreviated as 4:34), but not at all in the way that’s practiced by our society. As it is, there are millions of other things mentioned in the Holy Quran, what else do we practice so religiously?
According to research, the men in our society use this as a way to boost up their egos and prove their dominance. But what they don’t realize is, that this has a very negative and adverse effect on their married life, and most importantly, their children. Children lose all their confidence when they see such instability in their households. After all, who likes their parents fighting, and that too, physically?
These are the children that then go into depression, and also get involved in drugs and start using other inappropriate means for getting rid of their depression. They also get distracted, can’t concentrate on their studies, hence performing poorly in exams, and end up getting drawn away from their studies. Now, this might either lead them to learn from their parent’s mistakes and becoming exemplary parents in the future. Or, they might end up not wanting to get married at all, or worse, they could do exactly the same thing that had happened in front of them as kids because they don’t see anything wrong in it.
The factors linked with domestic violence in Pakistan are the low-economic status of women, lack of awareness about women rights and education, false beliefs, imbalanced empowerment issues of males and females, male dominant social structure and lack of support from the government. This can be solved by holding different types of social marketing campaigns creating awareness in women as to what their rights are religiously, and otherwise. Proper religious and Islamic knowledge needs to be instilled in the minds of people regarding this whole issue.
Also, the government needs to be strict in enforcing laws related to domestic violence and there should be a firm and adamant punishment in regard to it. In my opinion, the dramas that are shown on our TV channels also have a huge part to play. Most of them show a dominant male beating his wife, whereas, the wife is shown to be extremely very submissive, and they only show her crying and not taking a stand. If rather than showing so much violence, they start showing love and respect between the two, people would take a good example from it and might also get influenced. Hence, our dramas and shows really should focus on showing positivity rather than negativity all the time.
Another very important factor in men behaving this way is their anger control issues. We tend to ignore the fact that help is needed from both sides. The abuser needs to go for psychological counseling and should have anger management therapy, while the victim needs counseling to recover her sense of self and individuality, to make her more liberated and self-assured.
Again, to create awareness, not only should all the victims and abusers be educated in this regard, but everyone needs education and a lot of learning about this very important issue being faced by our country, ruining our present, and our future. And for this purpose, we all need to be the mediums of education and learning all around us, for if we won’t, who will?
