What is more depressing than knowing you live in a land, where you will have to work day and night, go to extreme measures, scream at top of your lungs to get justice for yourself, and your loved one. Pakistan is slowly turning into an anarchic state, where the rule of law is losing its worth, and meaning. Eventually, people will have to take matters into their own hands to seek justice. Every day, we come across several stories of sexual violence, and mass murders but hardly we hear of stories where the delinquent was rightfully punished.
6 years old Zainab was raped and brutally murdered by Qari Imran. It was only when the incident received massive news coverage that the police, and government mobilised and made sure the culprit was caught. Same is the case with Dua Zehra. Dua’s parents were guided by their lawyer and were told to make the news public to get their daughter back home, safe and sound. Noor Mukadam’s murder became international news when her boy friend, Zaheer beheaded the girl after keeping her hostage at his home and tortuting her for several hours. These kinds of occurrences paint a sad picture of our society. The law enforcement agencies will only mobilise if the case receives massive reporting, and becomes a trend on social media platforms.
Even if the news makes it, and garners the attention of our people, they are quick to pass judgements and lambaste the character of the victim. Instead of calling the spade a spade, they try to defend the culprit, and warn women that they should behave by quoting the Quran, and emphasizing how it was the female’s fault to put herself in that situation in the first place.
In Dua Zehra’s case, there are several thousand posts, if not a million, where people are blaming the minor for running away from the house. Before it was established that she was kidnapped, most of the netizens held the view that she has brought disgrace to her family, and she deserves nothing but the worst.
Noor Mukadam’s case was no different. We lost her a year ago on July 20th. People were quick to judge her living style, and attacked her for how she chose to live her life. The sick mentality of our people is constantly justified through Quranic injunctions, where women are told to be obedient, and whatnot. But no one bothers to shed light on how the Quran gives freedom to people to live how they want, and how murder of one human is equivalent to the murder of entire humanity.
We, as a society, need to introspect ourselves. We need to change our judgmental habits (which is our favorite pastime as well), find new hobbies, and work on ourselves first. It is not our place to judge, and never will be. Even Allah has appointed the Final Day as the judgement day, and till then He has given us a blank canvas for living our life. Our duty is to find justice for the lost souls, like Noor.
It’s been a year since we lost Noor Mukadam, an ambitious girl. I never met her, but all the pictures I saw of her on the internet were enough to tell me how great of a human she must have been. Her innocence and purity shone through every photo, and video clip. Had she not left us, perhaps our paths would have crossed. I guess we will never know.
By Amna Sheikh
