The Society We Live In

Well if you think this picture is just a normal burial of a Muslim corpse then think again. Notice the police wala peeping in. So they dug the grave of some terrorist huh? Not really. Here is the HT report on it.

Mira Road police on Thursday dig up the grave (above) of Mohammad Alingir (48), said to have been murdered by wife Parvin Sheikh (31) and her lover Shahdab Khan (32) Police have detained Sheikh and Khan and sent the body for a post-mortem, which revealed that Alingir had been strangled A doctor R. Pednekar is said to have helped Sheikh and Khan by issuing a medical certificate that claimed Alingir died of a heart attack. Police are now hunting for Dr Pednekar

So this is an ideal case of relationship going wrong but with blood involved. Everything is fair in love and war and Parvin Sheikh, along her lover, just proved this adage. I hope they would have seen Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna before this bloody drama and realised that relationship going wrong is so common these days and there is nothing wrong in ditching your spouse for the newly found love of your life.

I am sure everyone of us know how relationships can be messy especially with things like communication gap, capricious women and arrogant men. I am not going to talk about relationship problems out here but how they these foreign concepts have corrupted our society and Muslims have too become a party to it. I still remember a MTV show run by none other that Mrs. Mallika Arora Khan and the flirt Cyrus Broacha exhorting youth to get involved in affairs and revolt against the social norm of arranged marriages. There is nothing wrong in opposing orthodoxies of a social system. As an educated and responsible citizen we should try to break free and bring more open-mindedness. But has this served any purpose? Has our society become less prone to violence, crime against women, child molestation and various other evils which were present before? Or has this modern outlook has brought in new forms of crime and open new vistas to commit felony? This perceived conundrum could be debated at length without any conclusion.

Indian society was changing at a rapid pace and Muslims too were being slowly engulfed into it. The austere Islamic laws were being increasingly neglected to the background. Many even advocated change in the laws so as to legalize many prevalent customs and some even rejected the authority of Qura’an as being outdated. Muslim youth wanted to break free from the social norms which were pushed on to them on the basis of religion. Many things set in the Muslim society, which were not Islamic, and transgression could render anyone as infidel. I don’t understand this peculiar behaviour of people towards different aspects of Islam. Dating or perhaps drinking are considered unacceptable and a big sin whereas missing namaaz & roza are normal!! See its the society we live in that is dictating our dos and don’ts.

So on one hand we have the ultra-modern Muslim, who wants to break the rules and still be counted among the Muslims, and on the other we have the orthodox who wants to stick to the society imposed rules. This is the clash of civilization. All I propose as a solution is being religious. Islam doesn’t allow forced marriage but then how many stories have we heard where a bride or bridegroom refused when being asked their acceptance of marriage? Society doesn’t allows that to happen. A person is well within his/her right to refuse someone even if he/she is being forced upon a marriage. A man or a woman can recommend someone, they feel its worthy of tying the knot, to their parents. A woman is allowed to divorce her husband if she feels the urge to do so. And also concepts like pre-marital relationships and cohabitation are totally unacceptable in Islam. People are ignorant of these Islamic laws. Its because this society never taught them these. Education, be it mundane or religious, has always been neglected among Muslims for reasons beyond my imagination. Being confronted with a religious problem? dial the nearest Mullah for a fatwa. “Dial a fatwa”.

It’s the society we live which is the source of all evil. Social norms are regulated by popularity of a notion and not by dictates of Shariah. Now the situation is such that people have distorted the teachings of lslam for their personal gains. Had we been more religious in our outlook then the social problems would never have arisen. The problem lies in us looking outside religion to solve our problems.

So Mrs. (oops Miss) Parvin Sheikh and Mr. Shahdab Khan, its not your fault (assuming that you are guilty); you just acted according to your society taught rules and your lust. Its the damn society we live in!

Sharique (http://www.shaarique.com)