Imrana, who finally saw justice done by the country's criminal law enforcement system, continues to face injustice from the clerics of her own community. The regressive fatwa that ordered Imrana to take her rapist father-in-law as her husband and consider her husband like her son illustrates gross violation of human rights and the iniquities of the shari'ah law that Muslims want to be enforced at all costs.

Let's recall the chronology. Imrana, inhabitant of a village near Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh, accused her 65-year-old father-in-law, Ali Mohammed, of raping her in absence of her rickshaw-puller husband in June 2005. Addressing her complaint, first, the local shari'ah panchayat, and then, the clerics of the most famous Islamic educational institution, Deoband, declared that she had become "haram" to her husband and that she should desert him and live with her father-in-law. This ruling against the mother of five children shocked the conscience of the entire nation, as it questioned the right of a woman to live with her husband. Even as a few liberal Muslims questioned the fatwa, the community by and large stood by the ulema and even dismissed Imrana's charge of rape.

In the context of the Muzaffarnagar Sessions Court's verdict upholding Imrana's charge of rape against her father-in-law, it is pertinent to note how several delegations from Muslim bodies, including the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, visited her village and claimed that all the charges were baseless and that the matter was the outcome of a property dispute. To honest liberals, these "findings" betrayed the iniquities under which Muslim women appear destined to suffer within the framework of the shari'ah law.

The court, however, has found Imrana's charge credible and true; its conclusion could have resulted only from such evidence that was credible. After all, the accused was well represented by his lawyers and, therefore, he cannot plead that he was not given a fair trial. It is, therefore, unfortunate that Muslim delegations had rejected Imrana's charge of rape last year. There is just one reason for such bias: The inherent prejudice among Muslims against women.

In Islamic countries where the shari'ah is enforced, the plight of rape victims has been highlighted by what has happened recently in Pakistan, where a victim Mukhtaran Mai, who was gang-raped, faces the threat of being legally killed. Even President Pervez Musharraf is unable to enforce an amendment in the law in deference to global public opinion, mainly because the orthodox parties who support him have opposed any such amendment.

In Iran, several cases where victims have been prosecuted have come up, as the afflicted women cannot produce male eyewitnesses of the rape, as required under Muslim law. In Saudi Arabia, where shari'ah prevails in totality, women are denied even the basic right of moving about unless they are accompanied by husband or other close relatives and are fully veiled.

The ghetto mentality and the fact that women themselves are caught in this anachronism is clear from a recent case in Britain where a Muslim teacher demanded her right to teach with her body draped from head to toe. "Entrapment" is the right word to discuss this tragic situation where women themselves do not want to be liberated from laws that suppress their individuality and freedom of choice.

Nobody is claiming that women do not suffer in other communities. They do, and terribly, in many cases. For most women in India and elsewhere, life is difficult. Many of them are murdered at the foetal stage. Nutritious diet and education are denied to them in families obsessed with their male heirs. Dowry deaths are common. Honour killings are plentiful and even panchayats ordering gang rape of hapless women who complain against wrongdoing is not rare in several communities.

The law, however, does not support this repression. On the contrary, women who have the courage to protest against such subjugation can ask for and be granted protection by the state. Only the other day, the law against domestic violence has come into force, and now, marital rape, too, is a cognisable offence in this country. A Minister in Kerala lost his job on the mere complaint of attempt to molest a lady passenger in a plane.

There is a wide political consensus in India and in most non-Muslim countries, cutting across ideological divides, in favour of such laws, especially those aimed at protecting women against discrimination and violence. The media generally highlights rape and the legal protection women victims get; this has resulted in severe convictions of culprits - Imrana's father-in-law being sentenced to life imprisonment is just one example.

But has the Muslim community bothered to consider what would have happened to Imrana, had the shari'ah laws prevailed? She would have been denied the right to choose whom to live with - in the Gudiya case, too, the woman was denied this right - and even prosecuted for filing a complaint of rape if she would have failed to produce any male witness. Such inequality is sanctioned and sanctified by the Islamic law. The door for women's assertion of individual rights and choices is open under secular laws; it is shut firmly against women under the shari'ah. Any attempt to question the religious law is regarded as a crime against Allah in countries like Pakistan and can lead to execution.

No wonder, Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of UN Development Fund for Women, recently told the UN Assembly that from Kabul to Darfur, women are not safe. "Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare defend women's rights in public decision making," the UN official said. In non-Muslim communities, where women are still underprivileged and ill-treated, there are strong winds of reform, which are conspicuous by their absence in Islamic countries because the religious law cannot be questioned.

One of the accusations Osama bin Laden made in his 2002 video presentation to the Americans was: "You are the nation who, rather than rule by the shari'ah of Allah in its constitution and laws, chose to invent your own laws as you will and desire." There may be differences with Osama bin Laden and his ideology, but most Islamic countries, including Pakistan, have made secular laws that are subject to being vetoed by clerics who interpret the shari'ah. The Imranas of the world have no hope under such dispensation. And one expects to see 'secularists' sell the idea of liberal democracy in Islamic countries as well.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, November, 03 2006