If one sees a child through a parental eye, one sees naivety and unconditional love, but a child abuser would have a different approach towards the same innocence. This is why pedophilia is considered a chronic psychological imbalance.
We live in a society where we claim to have many norms, which have evolved over centuries and have been followed by generations. One of the traits that we instill in the minds of the children right from the birth is that you have to respect elders and your elders are always right, as if one’s age defines his level of maturity and intelligence.
Apparently we have a moral society but the ground realities may reject this idea. We may not ponder, even though we are judgmental to a level where we forget humanity and practice barbarianism.
When it comes to the future of our country, which is the children, we protest, make laws, discuss and then put it to rest for the upcoming generations, if they are able to survive the smutty trammels of abuse and sodomy.
This issue is not new. We have seen much discussion about this, but never seem to reach a logical conclusion. Sodomy and child abuse are two evil activities which cause mayhem in the lives of the little angels and destroy the coming generations due to the sporadic nature of it.
Perhaps this is the most evil crime that’s being committed at large across Pakistan and yet we are so negligent about it as if nobody gives a ‘frog’. And this cold attitude of the people towards the malice makes us all accomplices to this crime, which is devastating enough to shatter heavens and the Earth.
I will not mention the growing numbers of child abuse cases in Pakistan as it has been done in many articles. I would rather go after the cloak-and-dagger activities which are responsible for the existence of this deplorable act of child abuse.
Finally on March 11, 2016 we passed a bill which ironically dated back a few months as a bona fide act. Although the human society came into existence thousands and thousands of years ago and Pakistan around 68 years ago, but for the very first time in the history of Pakistan the naive leadership criminalized the acts of sexual assault on minors, child pornography and trafficking.
How appalling is it that we kept our generations lurking around the legislation which can prohibit child abuse and sodomy in the land of pure for many years.
Amidst this ‘gradual’ evolution many flowers have been thrashed and mortified which is beyond sanity.
On the contrary, instead of passing a resolution which is already in trouble with the law, the Europeans are introducing the toughest curbs against child abusers. However, the Asian countries, which are normally considered meek towards rights abuses, are also taking this single issue more seriously than ever before.
Recently Indonesia announced capital punishment for child abusers, while it has been said that the Chinese mutilate the genitals of such abusers through horrific torture as first warning and then go for castration and death penalty in case of multiple offences.
However, in Pakistan or Indian mindset, as a whole, a child is considered only a liability and a submissive creature worth taming to the core like an animal in a zoo.
The people of Pakistan are less educated and more emotional when it comes to religion. Therefore it has become the prime duty of seminaries to educate the people about the social evils which are causing a breach of the peace at large.
Every week Muslims in Pakistan listen cautiously to the address after Juma prayers. Where they are being inflicted with the ideas like West is our enemy, they are striking our religion and giving shelter to the enemies of Islam repellently. Through their emotional and charged speeches, they instigate blind love among the masses for their faith and utilize it for political agendas, such as violence against other sects and religions.
If a mullah calls upon them to kill a Christian and his pregnant wife on the false charges of blasphemy, they straight off take it on. If they (mullahs) call for sectarian violence, people obey and cause a state of anarchy in no time. Can these mullahs (sermonisers) not use this place and its surroundings to educate the people for not to indulge in such vicious crimes like sodomy, child abuse and other social evils?
The children are not only being abused in the streets, under construction building or in the houses, but also in the madrassas adjacent to the mosques. When I look at the mosques I feel pure and try to find peace in its premises. What just strikes me then is a vision of dying children, killed by some of the sick imams of the mosques.
In 2014 a private channel reported that a 12-year-old girl was raped and later killed by an imam of a local mosque in Sindh. In 2015 Asian Human Rights Commission reported that an eight-year-old girl in the Badin district got raped by the imam of the mosque and later a seven-year-old boy’s dead body was recovered from a local mosque situated in Green Town, Lahore. There are some of the cases, but many cases go unregistered and even remain unnoticed.
As a Muslim, I ask where I usually ask myself as to where I get my inspiration from. Meanwhile, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) recently proposed a ‘Women Protection Bill’ which is sorely not needed.
I enquire when they will seriously talk about child protection. Why do the CII pick on those issues which are already being accepted by the Pakistani society? Underage marriage and beating of wives, these demands are made by a bunch of politically motivated mullahs, not by the society itself.
If they truly are interested in the welfare of society then why don’t they give such fatwas according to which these men – who take pleasure in getting marriage with children and don’t even feel shame for impregnating a child and putting her life at risk – can marry those mature women who are still unmarried due to the unavailability of dowry?
Why don’t the CII and other religious institutes take action against the sodomy and child abuse which has been taking place in primacies of the mosques and across the country? Why can’t they feel the pain of a common man who has been robbed, wounded and abused right under their nose, while paying them a chunk of hard earned income as homage to these mouthpieces of God?
In streets of Peshawar openly, and even across Pakistan, boys between five and teenage are being abused, raped and later subjected to cruel death by pedophiles.
Moreover when Marvi Memon proposed changes in child marriage act of 1929, her suggestions were rejected by the National Assembly standing committee on religious affairs by declaring them ‘un-Islamic’.
As if such people fulfill all other commandments of the religion; they don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t mistreat their women, don’t abuse the children, don’t steal, and are not hypocrite enough to use religion as a tool to gain their politically motivated agendas. But they do call themselves Sadiq and Ameen.
Having said so, I appreciate the West that has held their priests accountable for such a heinous crime. They grant the same rights of liberty and sense of security to the women and children which are liable to men. But we ‘proud’ Muslim abuse the two physically weak categories in the name of Sharia.
It is reprehensible that we call West a place like hell where infidels dwell, but we never bother to muster courage to crush this immoral and sick mentality, which has been condemned and outlawed in the West, years ago.
If we long for making our politicians accountable for their deeds, then why not the clergy?
Here is a piece of advice for the parents. Please do not trust anybody who disguises himself as a pious man. These pedophiles don’t know the virtuousness of any sacred thought and place. If your child is out of sight he is vulnerable. Stay with your kids as their shadows. These abusers can be anyone. Don’t trust these people when manifest the half of the religion and keep half of it hidden from the sane world.