No Women on Bikes, Please!
By Ramzay Hayat
March 10, 2012
No rocket science
needed to realise that the only way to save the bodies and souls of our
brothers and sisters is to segregate the sexes completely — a feat so
gloriously achieved, howsoever briefly, by our brother Taliban during their
golden rule in Afghanistan
The orange-clad biker
flew by me, like a solar flare, as I turned right on to the lower Mall.
Refusing to believe what I appeared to have seen, shortly when I encountered
the same biker tanking up at the petrol pump next to the Government College hostel,
my fears were confirmed — it was a girl solo-riding a motorcycle. She was
turning heads just doing her thing — not in Rome, Rio or any other hotbed of
sin but right here in our holy city by the Ravi, where even simple pleasures
like kite flying are banned. ‘Girls gone wild’, a la Lahore? Surely, no biker
babes are to be tolerated in the Islamic Republic which — forget the original
secular vision of Jinnah — today stands reincarnated in the image of Ziaul Haq?
The westernised
liberals cloud the issue by hiding behind slogans such as women’s emancipation
and empowerment but the rightly guided amongst us have always known that,
ultimately, all sin arises out of the immodest appearance and naughty behaviour
of women and the unchecked interaction between the sexes. What is also true,
though less appreciated, is that no modern invention has more facilitated the
physical mingling of the sexes than the motorised vehicle. I recall reading an
anthropological study in the 1980s that concluded that the sexual revolution in
the US owed more to the phenomenon of the rapid spread of the automobile than
the invention of that other culprit cited often in this regard — the pill. A
car is a public transport system and a motel room rolled into one, revealed the
anthropologists.
We Pakistanis may not
yet fully appreciate the moral hazards posed when women and vehicles come
together, but thank God our more pedigreed moral mentors do. One of the things
the custodians of our high-walled bastion of Islam, Saudi Arabia, have successfully
managed to do so far, despite enormous pressure from the Judeo-Christian
conspirators to relent, is to keep women away from the steering wheel. Recently
a report by the enlightened Kamal Subhi put before the Saudi Shura warns that
lifting of the existing ban on female driving will threaten the country’s
tradition of women maintaining their virginity until their wedding. Letting
women drive will lead to greater mixing of genders, which in turn will promote
fornication and adultery — so he argues. Makes perfect perverted sense to us
Pakistanis.
Leave the oil-car-rich
Kingdom aside momentarily and look at Pakistan where the poor man’s limousine,
the motorcycle, is king. Despite being used to these sinful scenes, as with
several vices prevalent in our society, is there a sight more provocative than
females pressing flesh against their male companions while being squeezed
together on a tiny motorcycle seat as they roam the streets in front of ogling
eyes?
Although the focus of
Islamic reforms in Pakistan has rightly been on controlling the female body and
person –e.g. the ‘Mard-e-Momin’ General Ziaul Haq’s Zina (adultery) Ordinance —
our society remains in need of urgent further and drastic reform. Like charity,
chastity must begin at home and, therefore, there is no better place to start
setting the morals of society straight than banning the womenfolk from riding
motorcycles altogether, including riding pillion with men of their own
families.
When it comes to women
sharing a bike ride with men, there are only two possibilities — either the men
riding with these women are their mehram or are na-mehram. A woman’s mehrams
include the husband of the woman and other male relations whom the woman cannot
marry -- her father, brother(s), or son(s). Na-mehrams constitute the rest of
the adult male population of the planet and a woman may legally consummate a
marriage with any of them.
While the sight of
almost any woman on a bike is enough to send the libidos of our men into a frenzy,
the biggest offenders are romantically-inclined couples, married or otherwise.
Is it not against the injunctions of Islam to have men and women touching
bodies in public, even if they are married, and especially if they are not? Of
course it is. And if something is against the teachings of Islam as interpreted
by our Ulema, then it is automatically in violation of the constitution. For
this we have to thank that pious fundamentalist Mr Bhutto, whose desire to have
a unanimously agreed constitution in 1973 led to the inclusion of all sorts of
Islamic provisions in the supreme document of Pakistan.
Under the
circumstances, is there a good reason then why the guardians of our morals --
the protectors of our constitution -- have failed to take any steps to curb
this un-Islamic, un-constitutional and immoral activity taking place on our
streets? Letting women ride motorbikes, solo or otherwise, must be declared
un-Islamic and banned immediately.
It would not be so
bad, perhaps, if the women just sat there in their own part of the little patch
of plastic that passes for a motorcycle seat, as somehow as soon as they climb
on a bike they get the urge to talk. With wind in their faces and sounds of
traffic in their ears, naturally the women have to climb all over their men
companions to talk. And while they do so, they have to hold on to their
companions to steady themselves. I could not even begin to describe the scenes
one is forced to see as these romantically-driven and precariously perched
women try their death-defying balancing act, grabbing and groping with no holds
barred or shunned.
To many, this proposed
ban on women riding bikes would be unfair to those whose close kin transport
them from one place to the other. Unfair probably, but it is for their own
good. Muslim scholars say that even siblings of opposite sex should avoid
spending time together by themselves lest Iblees lead them astray, for the evil
one is always the third entity present when a man and woman are alone together.
If it would be inappropriate for siblings to be alone, how can they be
permitted to ride a bike together where their bodies will necessarily come in
contact as per Newton’s laws of motion?
Also to be considered
is the men’s right not to be tempted to sin. Let’s face it: a woman riding
pillion clutching a male companion, her clothes flailing in the wind, often
revealing more than she might have bargained for, is a sight to behold for the
sexually frustrated hordes that constitute the bulk of commuters. We have a
duty to protect the morals of our sex-starved citizens by removing the objects
of their prurient desires from the bikes and streets of our country. Besides,
do you realise what a traffic hazard these pillion riding women have become?
“Watch my rear, not hers”, is a popular bumper sticker now.
I may be cursed here
for focusing too much on women and not enough on men — the usual liberal talk
of “let’s not penalise the victim”. Sure, it takes two to tango, but we also
know that men are utterly helpless before the charms of women. One look from,
or at, a woman is enough to dissolve the resolve of the mightiest among men,
especially if they happen to be Pakistani.
No rocket science
needed to realise that the only way to save the bodies and souls of our
brothers and sisters is to segregate the sexes completely — a feat so
gloriously achieved, howsoever briefly, by our brother Taliban during their
golden rule in Afghanistan. If we cannot have floggings for the sinners in
stadiums yet — though we might still get there seeing how many right-wing
Jamaatias have jumped on the ‘Khan wagon’ — at least we can take a small step
in the right direction by banning women from riding motorcycles. Obscurantists
R Us, after all.
The writer can be
reached at ramzayhayat@gmail.com
Source: The Daily Times
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