By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
27 April
2024
Regardless of what a woman will wear
Man has an incorrigible habit to stare
Dorothy Parker
A young Moroccan
woman was banned from travelling due to her appearance on a blind dating
show wearing a short skirt on a dating show. Many Moroccan women say they are
terrified of the fallout (Courtesy, NAI, April 24).
The
holier-than-thou custodians and crusaders of false and warped morality in Islam
will pounce upon this young woman for wearing a short skirt but would love to
ogle at a scantily-clad (even better, if she's sky-clad !) woman.
Why's Islam
so obsessed, nay paranoid, about what a woman should wear in public? It's her
choice whether she wants to wear a mini, micro skirt, a fig-leaf or even go au
naturel.
In Islam, a
woman's modesty or immodesty is directly linked to a man's lustfulness or his 'saintliness.'
Let me elaborate on it. If she's properly dressed (better, if fully veiled!),
men will have no carnal desires. But if she's improperly dressed, Satanic
desires will plague them (men)! To cut the matter short, a woman has to dress
up in a way that she doesn't arouse a man. Alas, the onus of safeguarding a
man's morality and modesty is always on her. If a man is so priapic and
sexually so fragile, he'll invariably ravage a woman even if she's wearing
decent clothes. Why should a woman be held responsible for a man's flings and
sexual capers?
Men are
generally lewd by nature. And if you don't approve of the word 'lewd', let me
say, seldom, if ever, men are indifferent to feminine charm and beauty.
Modesty, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholders.
Segregating
men and women and imposing all sorts of stultifying restrictions on women will
not allow a universal template for morality and modesty to emerge. Rapes in all
societies, communities, faiths, races and countries have seldom been linked to
women's (read victims) clothes.
Innumerable
women in India's hinterland are raped every day. Do village women roam around
wearing G-strings and thongs to attract and arouse the rapists? Was Nirbhaya,
Jyoti Singh Pandey, scantily-clad on the night of December 16, 2012 when she
was brutalized on a bus in Delhi?
All
religions were human constructs and men (gender specific men) laid down the
rules and regulations. Men attributed their inherent sexual waywardness to poor
women and called them Nark ka Dwaar, Dar-e-Dozakh or Door to hell. Let
women wear whatever they want to. Men must know how to control their salivating
tongues and other organs.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/onus-safeguarding-morality-woman/d/132209