Abuse culture

There have been two cases of horrific domestic violence in the news recently. One case was in Sahiwal and occurred in a poor neighbourhood, and the other in a posh locality in Lahore, showing that status has little to do with the likelihood of abuse. Husbands might have complaints against their wives; but in both cases the means used to ‘punish’ this were not just disproportionate, but unacceptable. In Lahore, the wife’s head was shaved and in Sahiwal, the wife was chained up. Both went far beyond the beatings that are the usual depressing currency of domestic violence. In the Lahore case, the initial police reaction was brutal and disgusting. In Sahiwal, the local police did their job answering complaints from neighbours, but fell in with the husband’s allegations that the woman was of unsound mind and had attempted suicide. As husbands in their private lives, policemen are part of the society that allows domestic abuse to be carried out by husbands.

This is not a matter of a foreign or feminist agenda. The abuse of women is the signature crime of the disbelieving society which Islam reformed. If husbands think ill of their wives, they have been enjoined by religion to divorce them, and even then to treat them with kindness. The government and the police must see how they behave. Our leaders must seriously change how such crimes are to be prevented in future.

Muhammad Haider, Karachi