Sound Vision: Addressing Domestic Violence
January 8, 2008
In light of all the terrible news over the past week or so involving killings over “honor”, hijab, caste, greed and insanity, SoundVision’s latest email update devoted to domestic violence seems particularly appropriate.
Also, here is a link to ISNA’s Women’s Shelter page.
Assalamu Alaikum:
Jana Shearer of Tyler, Texas; Monika Rani, Rajesh Kumar and Vansh Kumar of Oak Forest, Ilinois [sic], Sarah and Amina Said of Dallas, Texas and Aqsa Pervez of Toronto, Canada.
These are the names of five girls, boys and women allegedly killed by a boyfriend or their fathers for reasons that are still under investigation. In the case of Shearer, her boyfriend Christopher McCuin did not only murder her earlier today, but he boiled her body parts as well. According to an Associated Press report on the grisly incident, McCuin was known to authorities for assaulting his estranged wife, his girlfriend and his sister. In the Oak Park case a father not only killed his pregnant daughter but her husband and grandson as well.
In the case of Aqsa Pervez, her father allegedly murdered her due to her refusal to wear Hijab. For the Said sisters, it was because both were said to have boyfriends.
These cases involve Christians, Muslims, Hindus, White Americans, Indians, and Egyptians.
Although some media reports attribute religion, culture, and the Indian caste system for these murders, all of us know nothing can justify this violence. While growing up in my native Pakistan, a Muslim country, we, children, on the street, knew which man beat up his wife and we used to avoid extending our greetings to him. In the open culture where neighbors knew everything, it was not very common news. However, as we grew up, we learned that not enough was done institutionally to help their home.
Alhamdu lillah, that is changing, here and abroad.
But more work and more institutions are needed, especially for Muslims. We are hearing from Muslim social service workers that domestic violence is increasing. We are also hearing that divorces are going up. Muslim mental health in part might be responsible for these symptoms. While this is an age old problem, some recent variables I suspect are responsible for the mental health issues: wages of Muslim men are down by ten percent since 9/11 according to a Columbia University study; 76% of young Arab-Americans surveyed by Zogby International report have been personally discriminated against and about 50% of all Arab-Americans surveyed by a Yale study had clinical signs of depression. These statistics do not justify violence but they are a call for anti-domestic violence activists to also pay attention to the mental health issues in our community.
Today’s update seeks to address the scourge of family violence from an Islamic perspective, which emphasizes that marriage is an act of love and mercy, that children, especially daughters, are to be cherished and that life is sacred.
Salam/Peace
Abdul Malik Mujahid*** AN IMAM’S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH THE CRISIS
http://SoundVision.com/Info/socialservice/violenceimamwest.asp*** DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HURTS MUSLIMS TOO
http://SoundVision.com/Info/socialservice/stopdomesticviolence.asp*** MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
http://SoundVision.com/Info/domesticviolence/myths.asp*** SOUNDVISION’S PAGE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
http://SoundVision.com/info/domesticviolence/
Entry Filed under: Domestic Abuse, Honor Killing. .
4 Comments Add your own
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
1.
Rahel | January 15, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Thanks for providing these links. The only thing missing from them I think are statistics on domestic violence as it relates, I.E., happens, to men. Not that I’m minimizing violence against women for two seconds, I wouldn’t dare do such a thing. But it happens to men too, and that’s something that seems to get very little coverage.
2.
proggiemuslima | January 15, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Rahel, I agree!
Many people find the idea of women beating up on men amusing, but the reality isn’t amusing at all. The police blotter in any city proves that women hit, punch, burn, poison and run over husbands and/or boyfriends with depressing frequency. And it’s not always “self-defense.”
Women are becoming more willing to report domestic violence to the authorities; many men are still too embarrassed to do so.
3.
Dana | January 16, 2008 at 9:39 am
My only complaint vis-a-vis reporting violence against men is that women who discuss domestic violence against women are expected to give equal time to men who are abused. I wouldn’t have a problem with it if men had had the same courtesy and consideration of doing something about violence against women without women having to get angry and become activists on the issue. There is a larger societal problem where men expect grown women not related to them (except sometimes through marriage) to be their surrogate mothers and we see that in social activism as well. Men need to soften up a bit towards one another and start addressing this problem from the point of view of taking care of men who are abused, setting up shelters for them, starting counseling for them, and *not making fun of them*. Anyone laughing at a male abuse survivor makes it painful for him, but other men are a man’s peer group, even above and beyond his marriage sometimes (especially for non-Muslim Westerners), and for them to reject him because a woman hit him is the worst rejection of all, sometimes.
4.
proggiemuslima | January 18, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I don’t think the issue should be framed in terms of “affirmative action” for male victims of abuse. Acknowledging that domestic abuse of males does exist is the first step to helping the victims. It would be great if other males set up shelters, counseling, etc. But it is very hard for men to admit there even IS a problem. I don’t see this changing any time soon.