Ayat and Bisent and the girl in student housing

6 January 2022

19-year-old Ayat Al-Rifai passed away in “Damascus” after her husband and her husband’s mother beat and enslaved her for months. As for the Jordanian student in “Maan”, her classmates say that she passed away after the female student housing director refused to bring the ambulance for housing; and the housing director is said to be retired from the administration of a prison.

Besent in “Egypt” preferred to commit suicide when her mother abused her, following the spread of indecent images of her. The girl had sworn that the pictures were not real and that there was a young man who refused to be associated with him, so he decided to take revenge on her by fabricating those pictures and publishing them on the social media platforms.

In “Iraq”, a girl married the man who disfigured her face with a chemical substance! I don’t know how and why, but this is how some people simply folded this page!

We only knew all these stories in the past few days, and there are also many things that happen behind the walls and that we don’t know about. They undoubtedly remain individual cases and are not generalized, but also they should not be neglected or left out.

Why this societal bullying of women? And accusing anyone who rejects this or defends her right of being a “feminist”.

*Ayat and Bisent and the girl in student housing (Source: BBC)*

Preferring the male and underestimating the female

The Prophet Muhammad, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, taught us that women are the sisters of men, and that the best of us is the good one for his family. Our prophet was a practical role model in helping his family as he carried home purchases and helped with all household chores, even sewing his shoes and clothes. Although that, we live in a society where the man who helps his family is accused to have a “weak personality”; in addition, the parents encourage their teenage son to sleep on the sofa while his sisters are serving him.

Someone swore to me that he had reached the age of seventy and had not entered the kitchen, nor had he ever thought of helping his family in any of the household affairs. Where does all this tyranny come from, and why do some insist on linking it to religion, and religion is innocent of it?

A girl who demands her right or wants to distribute tasks equally within the house is considered a rebel and her head “should be smashed”.

Tyrant project if the opportunity presents itself

We protest the oppression of the regimes and the silence of the people, and many of us are mini models of tyranny in our homes, and have the capacity for injustice on a larger scale if given the opportunity.
How can we wait for a distinguished generation of mothers who are beaten in front of their children and treated violently by their husbands.. and we do not generalize!

I believe that every religiously committed person has a double responsibility to exonerate religion first from these brutal behaviors, which some of them falsely associate with it, and then to explain the character of our Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, in honoring women and being kind to their daughters, if we want a better generation capable of standing in the face of injustice and rejecting tyranny.

The change that we all seek cannot achieve its results if it is not based first on achieving standards of justice and respect for human dignity from within our homes and families- the first building block – in the desired reform.