Reports | 25 05 2020
Prior to the "Syrian Revolution," three entities were the main recipients of curses and verbal abuses: God, religion, and women. These three entities remain the main targets of verbal abuse after the onset of the Revolution—in both word and deed.
Prior to the "Syrian Revolution," I used to love visiting family and relatives in the remotest corner of Syria. I was constantly surprised, each visit, with the public insults to God, religion, and women in a country where tongues have otherwise gone silent, and intellect marginalized; sometimes in continuous phrases, and many times on the lips of children and youths on the streets. This was a community in which there was no—as the popular Syrian saying goes—"mercy for us, O mother." This is a phrase that belies a society which assassinated both women and the all-merciful Lord, a society whose pride has run over women, compassion, God, and humanity.
A great many people will only be able to see the crisis in such a scene, if one shows them the flipside of this picture. Imagine someone insulting your grandfather's penis out on the street, publicly; or your uncle's testicles; then supplementing this insult with a curse to your religion and your Lord. What obsessive behaviour!
Most verbal abuse focuses its hurtful energies to a woman's body, specifcally her organs through which she gives life.
If we were to examine it a little closer, we find that the insult to God and female organs are organically intertwined; because insults to both express discontent with the flow of life, its beauty, tenderness, and mercy. And do not forget that words Rahman and Rahim [The Forgiver, the Merciful], which are part of every Basmalah [opening verse of Qur'an] are linguistically derived from the word Rahm [Womb, Uterus]. It is, therefore, no coincidence that a society which blasphemes God will verbally abuse women, insult, and humiliate a woman's womb and anything related thereto.
There is a correlation between life and survival, between God and women. Therefore, the slang phrase "here there is no 'mother, have mercy'" has profound implications on a motherless, merciless, society; an entire structure with no voices revering the Rahman. The problematic of faith in the Quran is not that of faith in the Creator of the universe as repeated in several verses, "And if you asked them, "Who created the heavens and the earth?" they would surely say, "Allah"" [Qur'an, 39:38]. It rather is that of the reverence for the Rahman, wherein lies the new value system, that is the central call. "And when it is said to them, "Prostrate to the Most Merciful," they say, "And what is the Most Merciful? Should we prostrate to that which you order us?" And it increases them in aversion" [Qur'an, 25:60]
Curiously, after the "Revolution" women continue to be the targets of insult and humiliation, whether by the Syrian regime or by those who rose against it, by overwhelming majorities in each party—religious or atheist alike. Whether murder and torture in cellars, stoning, public insults and defamation, or being the target for all kinds of linguistic and mortars and swords. Insults to women and children seem to be the only matter of agreement by all male systems, for which religions came as a pivotal challenge to the centrality of the heavily armed man in their value systems. Religions came with a quiet challenge manifesting itself in multiple images of a woman carrying a child. The image of Hagar and Ishmael alone in an empty and arid valley. Moses and his mother, who placed him in the basket securing him from an armed masculinity promising death to each newborn, and ostracization to every woman. Mary, carrying Jesus in her arms. And Mohammad, the orphan who was raised by his mother, cared for by his nurse, then wed to Khadija surpassing him in both age and riches.
Islam, in its masculine version discarded this image and re-introduced the image of the fighting man who kills children and women with his hand, and humiliates women with his words. Therefore, even if Islamist militants were to triumph, they will not accept the values of the Qur'an. They are today the first to trample its teachings under foot, these teachings which placed women at the forefront of priorities 1,400 years before there even existed an International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women. Not only that, but these teachings also clearly stipulated that anyone insulting women would be refused testimony—permanently. To use this day and age's terms, such a person will see his civil rights taken from him, and shall be considered a minor outside the bounds of maturity and adulthood. "And those who accuse chaste women," says the Qur'an—referring to any verbal abuse or offensive phrases against women; then proceeding to tell us of the punishment to be meted: "do not accept from them testimony ever after" [Qur'an, 24:4]. A strict, uncompromising, and irreversible language indeed.
Yet is it not strange that not only has this issue been marginalized in Islamic rhetoric or law; but that the insults and verbal abuse to women have even become a Muslim man's duty and his tool for reform?
This week we will celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. We cannot change the global crisis of violence against civilians in parts of the world—the majority of whom are women and children—without changing our language and mental perceptions. Therefore, the repeated image of the mother carrying or saving her child is a central image in the region's religions, in flagrant defiance of the momentum of the patriarchal society and its vaunted idols of arms and armies lurking to entrap life, and the small infant inside the basket; whereas the image of the woman and the child bear the meanings of the flow of life, and symbolize the possibility of its continuity.
That is why the Qur'an did not placate the insulting women, nor did it make it a marginal or deferred issue. It rather made it a priority for the reform of society, by making insults and verbal abuse to women a sin and a flagrant violation of the limits set for the maintenance of life and self-dignity; placing a clear punishment therefore and stipulating the withdrawal of nationality to anyone committing it. That is because no society which verbally violates women and in which voices are not subject to the Rahman Rahim shall be saved. That is where the change begins! When we alter our language and our mental perceptions, we begin to take a new journey. This is a serious and central issue. "Fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice, He will [then] amend for you your deeds" [Qur'an, 33:70—71].
* This article was published under the Association Agreement between Rozana and Huna Sawtak [Here is Your Voice].