After its advent in the Arabian Peninsula, Islam endorsed the good character and noble manners of Arabs and set out to eliminate their despicable acts and behavior. It put an end to the worst crime committed by the Arabs in those days: The burying of girls alive. This horrendous crime against an innocent and peaceful group of society is astonishing. How can a man bury his daughter and cover her with earth? What justification had he for committing such a horrible crime?
God wanted to highlight the enormity of this horrible crime and so He said in the Holy Qur’an that people who did such things would be asked on the Day of Judgment: Why did you kill or bury your daughters alive? The buried girls would be allowed to tell their stories and express their sorrow and pain to the world.
But today, we have gone farther than burying our girls alive. The only difference is that we use other means and methods to kill them and the process continues. Killing does not simply mean the physical removal of a person. We can kill a person by slaughtering his hopes and ambitions or by oppressing him morally, or by closing all opportunities to them for a secure and decent life. Thus, people in many parts of the world still bury girls in one way or another.
Keeping our girls from knowledge and education is one of these new methods. Is it not burying their brains? What remains of a person when he or she is no longer able to think? Using our brain is especially important as the Holy Qur’an often urges its followers: “Do you think? Do you use your brain? Do you ponder?”
Preventing girls from selecting their spouses also falls in the same category. What happens now is that the family prevents a girl from selecting her husband and bargains on her behalf to get more money. Is this not oppression and humiliation?
Families impose on girls a married life with a man they do not like in order to gain social and material benefits from this “business” marriage. Is this not injustice and aggression?
God has ordered — and the Prophet, peace be upon him, has encouraged — us to be just and show mercy toward women. But we neglect these religious teachings when we force our women to do most of the housework and prevent them from receiving proper health care and mental care.
These are some of the methods we follow in burying our girls and women alive along with their ambitions. By bringing up a generation of mothers living in humiliation, oppression, deprivation and contempt, we reinforce disgrace, humiliation and weakness in our society. A oppressed woman can give birth only to oppressed children.
(Reem Al-Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.)
