The Truth Behind Indian Muslim Women On Sale! And The Salacious Sulli Deals
Sulli
Deals: A Malicious App Abusing Indian Muslim Women and Putting them ‘up for
sale’
Main
Points
1. Sulli deals is not just a cyber crime against
Muslim women but also a sustained attack on them because of their apparent
muslimness
2. “Sulli” typically operates like cyber rapes to
domesticate and tame modern, educated and informed Muslim women
3. Abusive app are manufactured to viciously
sexualise Muslim women as objects of desire, to be ogled and worse, put on sale
4. Cyber crimes and VAW needs to be dealt with
iron clad laws and severe punitive actions
......................
By Amina
Hussain, New Age Islam
28
July 2021
Abominable,
derogatory and absolutely unacceptable systematic targeting of Muslim women in
the recent cyber crime of ‘sulli deals’ reeks of mysogynistic islamophobic
mindset that has been on ascendency for a while. If shameful and vile trolling
wasn’t enough, malicious apps are
manufactured to viciously sexualise Muslim women as objects of desire, to be
ogled and worse, put on sale. The anonymous group running ‘sulli deals’ especially
hacked pictures and other personal details of Muslim women and declared them to
be the available “deal of the day” much like flash sales attracting maximum
customers. Irresponsibly shared and
widely circulated on the social media platforms, these blissfully ignorant
Muslim women suddenly found themselves on sale as commodity with demeaning, and
undersigned sexual innuendos. Most significantly, Muslim women auctioned on the
predatory site are young and educated like journalists and working professionals
who dared to voice their criticism
against the government and thus deserve to be punished. Amnesty Troll Patrol project, 2017 revealed
in its report that one abusive tweet was sent in every 30 seconds and socially active women like politicians and journalist
are more likely to be attacked and trolled.
Muslim Women and the online gaze
Sulli,
a pejorative term used by masculine hindutva trolls for Muslim women as
“available cheap hoars” auctioned for pennies is a planned and strategic cyber
attack of shaming and silencing upward moving independent Musilm women who
speak their mind . “Sulli” typically
operates like cyber rapes to domesticate and tame modern, educated and informed
Muslim women. The growing visibility of Muslim women on social media platforms
poses a threat to the masculine hindutva ideology, sulli is thus a typical
modus operandi used to denigrate and coerce them into quiescence. One has to
just jog one’s memory of Tanishque advertisement not so long ago depicting Hindu woman
marrying into a Muslim household which was taken off precisely because of the
army of vile abusive trolls mobilised into violent attacks on Tanishque showrooms for promoting composite
culture. It’s not surprising that these spiteful trolls are brazenly played out
in real life through violent love jihad
campaign resulting in notorious
anti-conversion bill with more and more inter-religious couple seeking court
protection. The ‘sulli deals’ is not just any cyber crime against women; it’s a
sustained attack on Muslim women because of their apparent muslimness with the
sole objective of suppressing and degrading them into nonexistence. Undoubtedly
such reprehensible acts have psychological bearings, as on most of the
occasions women/victims are blamed for the online abuse meted out to them.
According to Amnesty report61% of women suffered from low self esteem and loss
of self confidence as a result of trolls, around 50 %experienced stress and
anxiety, around 41% felt threatened with their physical safety,as
high as 76 % of women restricted and limited their online opinions signifying
how online abuse as been successful in terrorising women into muted being.
However
strong women like Hana Khan, a commercial Pilot whose pitures were
uploaded on the debauched ‘sulli deals’ app registered an FIR and is reluctant
to give up the fight untill the culprits are cought.
The
eerie silence and belated condemnation of the ‘sulli deals’ is also suggestive
of the status of minority women in the country. As per the Amnesty report,
disadvantaged and minority women are more likely to be harassed and trolled
than others. The abject denigration of Muslim women as titillating sexual
entities indicates the wanton hindutva militant masculinity to insult and
humiliate Muslim men by its desire to exploit and control Muslim women’s
sexuality. Muslim women’s bodies (often covered) become a site of conquest and
supremacy. Factually large section of Muslim women does not wear burqa yet they
are stereotyped and portrayed in media with burqa as a necessary part of their
being. Read in that context, ‘sulli deals’ offers a voyeristic and eroticised
fantasy of disrobing Muslim women and pushing them out of their protected and
secure inner quarters (burqas) to the market as ‘common goods’, available to
all, subject to bidding. ‘Sulli deals’ seems to mimic the colonial oriental fantasy
of veiled Muslim women who remained remote and inaccessible to the colonial
masters which then resulted in propagating the myth of promiscuous and
lascivious Muslim men and their exotic harem where Muslim women were imagined as
sexual slaves. In replicating the neo colonial misadventures with
imperialistic entitlements to the Muslim women’s colonised bodies, ‘sulli
deals’ use of advance technology in the
virtual world supported by the communal and
divisive sentiments where women
are reduced to their body parts in a mock auction simulating virtual rapes, is
a predictable tragedy of a calamitous society and a looming dystopia.
The
daring anti CAA protest at Shaheen bagh, New Delhi, was spearheaded mainly by
Muslim women. This epic long sit in protest by Muslim women redefined women
activism despite burqa and hijab. While unrelenting, united and unafraid Muslim
women were breaking all stereotypes, one could hear snide remarks about Muslim men hiding behind
their women and told to wear bangles (chudis).
The feminisation of Muslim men in
order to challenge and mock their masculinity
was aimed at weakening of the women led protest. Pregnant student
activist Safoora Zargar was arrested under the draconian UAPA (Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act) at a time when the country was reeling under the
devastating effects of Covid-19 pandemic
and unprecedented sudden nationwide lockdown.
Safoora
vitriolic virtual onslaught began with #SafooraZargar trending on Twitter and a series of
slanderous tweets orchestrated to
assassinate her character and slut shame the young student activist by making
her morally repugnant. Labelled as “shaheen bagh ki sherni” in sexually
explicit tweets, her protest and activism was disparaged and Safoora was
lecherously dismembered just like the women on the ‘sulli deals’ app. Shaheen
bagh became her honeymoon without condom. The fact that she is married was
conveniently ignored and “biryani” in exchange of sex became the dominant
discourse emboldened by vivid vulgar graphics. Predictably, the unborn child
was ridiculed by casting aspersion on its legitimacy. Thus no efforts were
spared to quash and quell her spirit to fight.
Cyber VAW (Violence Against Women)
Undoubtedly
“sulli deals” attacks Muslim women in sexualised communal society yet it does
bring us to the larger concern of the rise in number and variety of cyber
violence against women. The perpetuation and proliferation of misogyny in the
age of omniscient internet has acquired epic proportions.
And in
the absence of any proper regulation and
laws, cyber VAW (Violence Against Women) operates in the most damaging manner.
The anonymity it offers (as in the case of unidentified ‘sulli deals’ app) to
the victims helps in violating the laws with impunity. The auto mode nature
cyber operations make cyber VAW effortless and the availability and
affordability of various technologies makes cyber VAW commonplace. Unlike other
VAW, cyber VAW by its nature gets reproduce and eternalised with the graphic
images and lewd remarks preserved indefinitely at a heavy psychological cost
and post traumatic stress disorder.
Cyber
VAW ranges from hacking and impersonating the account to take victim’s personal
information and images, online stalking and monitoring victim’s activities,
luring victims into traps, trolling, cyber bullying. Furthermore revenge porn
is a recent addition to these crime when an individual post intimate videos or
images of his/her partner online with the lone purpose of publically shaming
and destroying her life, and in most cases it is the female partner who has to
bear such virtual humiliation that has the potential to harm her life, often
resulting ostracisation from family and in extreme cases, suicides. With such
far reaching ramifications for women, cyber crimes and VAW needs to be dealt
with iron clad laws and severe punitive actions.
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Dr Amina Hussain is Assistant
Professor in Lucknow. She writes on gender issues more particularly working on
Muslim women. She has recently edited a volume on “The Dynamics of Gender: New
Approaches in Feminism” and is currently working on “Rethinking Muslim Women
and Feminism”.
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References:
https://decoders.amnesty.org/projects/troll-patrol/findings
https://twitter.com/Nabiya_03/status/1415362096657702913?s=20
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