Aurat March and the Spread of Feminism in Pakistan

It’s that time of the year again when the feminist cringe-fest known as “Aurat March” rears its ugly satanic head in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And as you all know, Pakistan is among those Muslim countries where traditional Islamic values still reign strong, especially those relating to gender roles. That is precisely why this vile feminist protest is met with extreme resistance, both from the older generation and, increasingly so, also from the youth, whose hearts have begun yearning for an Islamic revival.

This article will cover an integral strand of the feminist narrative that is being pushed onto these young Muslims, i.e., the idea that nothing can be enforced on women and, stranger still, that this idea is somehow sound from the Islamic perspective. The two main examples that feminists—especially those in Pakistan or the general supporters of Aurat March—use in order to push this idea are the concepts of “marital rape” and “forced pregnancy.” In recent times, both of these concepts have also become the highlight of various Pakistani dramas. They are being used in fictional shows to display the “oppression” and “abuse” suffered by women at the hands of toxic wife-beaters, and these are just two among many feminist agendas found within these soaps and dramas that are unfortunately watched on a regular basis by countless Pakistani Muslim women. As such, it would be extremely naïve to assume that these agendas do not have any effect on Muslim women and therefore don’t really need to be dealt with.

Islam, contrary to what liberal feminist Muslims would have everyone believe, is a religion of rules and laws. It is a religion that imposes restrictions on both men and women. This means that neither Muslim men nor Muslim women have complete freedom to do whatever they please. They are all forced to submit to the divine rules that Allah has imposed upon them. For example, a Muslim husband is bound by Islamic law to protect and provide for his wives and children. This means that he has an obligation to do certain things, such as earn in order to provide for his family and maybe even risk his life to protect them from harm in cases where the need arises. If he doesn’t fulfil his legal obligations, then he is breaking the law, due to which he is sinful and possibly liable for punishment, either in this life or the next. Similarly, a Muslim woman is obligated by Islamic law to do certain things, such as obey her husband (in lawful things), adopt the laws of hijab, guard her chastity, etc., and if she doesn’t fulfill these tasks, then she too is breaking the law and is therefore also sinful and possibly liable for punishment, either in this life or the next.

Now, this is of course a very hard pill for Muslim feminists to swallow, since liberalism and feminism have conditioned them to believe that inconveniencing a woman, by making her do something that she doesn’t really want to do, is among the worst and most heinous crimes a person can commit. This is why the slogan of Aurat March is “Mera Jism Meri Marzi,” which translates to a particular feminist slogan that you’re all probably quite familiar with by now: “My Body, My Choice.” The notion of a woman having complete ownership and autonomy over her body and the desire to be free from all obligations and restrictions is perfectly encapsulated by this slogan. It alludes to the ultimate dream of feminism that was promoted by famous feminists like Shulamith Firestone, i.e., using medical technology to rid the female body of its child-bearing reproductive system, thereby freeing women from the timeless biological burden of going through pregnancies and bearing children.

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How “Compassionate Imams” Inject Feminist Narratives Into Islam

The worst part of it all is that these Muslim feminists have been fed the false narrative of Islam supposedly promoting this sort of freedom for women and their right to not be inconvenienced. This belief also implies that women are not obligated to obey their husbands, as obedience to someone logically entails that you do what they say, even if it’s something that you don’t necessarily want to do. Unfortunately, a lot of these beliefs stem from the da’wah of liberal feminist “imams” who themselves have been infected with Western ideologies and culture and are now injecting feminism into the Muslim ummah. Anything regarding Islam imposing restrictions on women is generally disliked by these Muslim feminists, such as the command to not intermingle with the opposite gender or to obey one’s husband. And so, in order to reconcile their belief in Islam with their feminist views, they try to come up with weak justifications to argue that Islam actually doesn’t enforce anything on Muslim women; and that they’re completely at liberty to choose however they want to live their lives. And, as you may have guessed, they get these arguments from the “compassionate imams.”

Such arguments may include things like the role of the husband and father being confined only to that of a provider, instead of someone who Allah has placed in charge as the head of the family and has granted authority over them. One thing you will notice about this feminist “Islam” is that no one throughout the 1400-years of Islamic history—be it the sahabah (may Allah be pleased with all of them), the salaf, the major classical scholars, or any legal authorities from the four Sunni schools of fiqh—held the same bizarre views about women and gender roles that these feminists claim is promoted by Islam after listening to their favourite feminist “shaykhah.” In fact, if you were to compare what these feminist “imams” have to say with what the true scholars of Islam have said, there would be a difference of night and day.

One of the obvious reasons for this phenomenon is that the feminist “imams” some of these young Muslims listen to never bother to share any of the Islamic texts, rulings, and evidence that clearly mentions the authority and rights of the husband over his wives.

Look at how clearly the husband’s rights over his wives are represented in this hadith:

It has been narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet ﷺ said: “It is not suitable for anyone to prostrate to anyone else. Had it been suitable for anyone to prostrate to anyone else, I would have commanded the woman to prostrate to her husband, because of the immensity of the rights that Allah has granted him over her.” (Sahih Ibn Hibban: 4162)

How often do you hear “compassionate imams” mentioning this hadith at their poorly segregated lectures? Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue if a feminist “shaykhah” went on stage and taught this hadith to young Muslim women? She’d be cancelled immediately.

Here’s another important hadith that these feminists hide and are too afraid to ever bring up:

It has been narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “If a woman prays her five [daily prayers], fasts her month (i.e., Ramadan), safeguards her private parts, and obeys her husband, it will be said to her, ‘Enter Jannah (Paradise) from whichever of the gates of Jannah you choose.’” (Sahih Ibn Hibban, 4163)

Our ultimate purpose in life is to worship and obey Allah. By doing so, we hope to attain the pleasure of Allah and be granted entry into jannah after we die. Muslims understand this quite well. So just imagine the positive impact that teaching this hadith to young Muslim women would have on their lives and their hereafter. Imagine how eager they would be to serve and obey their husbands if they knew that doing so would allow them to enter jannah from any of its gates that they wish. But no, “compassionate imams” will never bring up this hadith due to fearing backlash from their feminist fanbase because of how this hadith clearly places the husband in a position of authority over his wife.

RELATED: Muslim Feminism Destroys Marriage

How the “Marital Rape” and “Forced Pregnancy” Narratives Are Used to Avoid Responsibility in Marriage

Intimacy is a marital right. It’s not a favor. It’s not a treat. It’s not a bargaining chip.

One of the ways that many people are made to dread marriage today is through notions of things like “marital rape” and “forced pregnancy.” The entire point of the “marital rape” narrative is that no man should ever force, coerce, demand, pressure, pursue, or even seduce his wife into being intimate if she says she’s not in the mood. He must also always receive her consent before trying to engage in acts of intimacy. Essentially, this means that if the husband comes home after a hard day of work and wants to finally just have a chance to relax and unwind, he must first ask his wife’s permission before he can even think of being intimate with her. If she refuses, he must simply accept that there’s no way it’s happening. If he persists, if he tries to get her in the mood regardless, if he insists, etc., she can start screaming and hurling all kinds of insults and slanders at him, calling him an emotional abuser, marital rapist, and so on. The poor simp has to just go to sleep and wait for the day when his wife finally agrees to him touching her. Feminist Muslims don’t see anything wrong with this, because they believe that Islam doesn’t allow anything to be enforced onto or required of women.

But we must ask these feminists: What exactly does a wife bring to the table in a marriage? What are the roles and responsibilities that she must fulfil in order to uphold her end of the bargain? Or is it that she has precisely zero responsibilities whatsoever and is supposed to sit around and do nothing while her husband has to work hard all day long? Is this a fair and equal contract? Or is this a master-slave relationship where the husband is the slave who works all day, and the wife is the master who consumes the fruits of his labor without offering him anything in return?

Rather, Islam provides a clear balance from Allah, the creator, designer, and owner of mankind. The man has certain obligations, and the woman has certain obligations. The husband has to work and earn a living to provide for his family. He has to protect them and look after them. He has to strive to save his family from jahannam. The wife has to take care of the home and cook and clean. She has to be available to her husband for intimacy whenever he desires.

Of course, there are certain exceptions where sexual intercourse is forbidden, such as in Ramadan when they are fasting and when she is menstruating. Another exception is if the husband commands his wife to do something that is sinful, in which case she will not oblige. However, aside from a few exceptions such as these, the general rule is that the wife must be intimate with her husband when he asks. She is subordinate to him and should obey him in lawful things. Both the husband and the wife are slaves of Allah. Allah owns them, and they must obey Him. That is the way humans are meant to live.

And the same logic applies to this misconstrued feminist idea of “forced pregnancies.” The same question arises: if the woman is allowed to just scream “forced pregnancy” whenever her husband would like to have a child, what is her contribution in the marriage? Bearing children is one of the most well-understood duties that a woman accepts by entering into a marriage. If her husband wants to have a child, she must obey him, even if she doesn’t “feel like it.” It is a marital right. Furthermore, she has that very same right too!

Again, let’s imagine a scenario where a man who works all day and has been married for over a year asks his wife over and over again if they can start trying to have children. However, his wife believes that having a child will just get in the way of her ambitious career of becoming a rocket scientist doctor CEO, so she refuses to stop taking the aggressive contraceptive medications that she’s on. After all, she’s only at the tender age of thirty-five. Don’t you know that’s way too young to have kids? You want to force her to have kids and basically end her career so early? Tsk tsk, what a toxic misogynist you are. You must be an avid listener of one of those misogynists online.

Are these the equal rights between men and women that feminists advocate for? I would like to know exactly how this unfair system (which is a hundred times worse in the West by the way)—where she brings nothing whatsoever to the table in the marriage, can up and divorce her husband any time, taking half of his life’s work along with his children, while he is forced to pay exorbitant amounts in child support (that she will likely just spend on herself)—is the result of an ideology that supposedly advocates for equality between men and women. Instead, what we can see very clearly is that this is an ideology that is akin to worshipping women, where the most blasphemous act is obligating and forcing a woman to do something that she doesn’t feel like doing; where the father who forces his daughter to adopt the laws of hijab and doesn’t allow her to go to university (so she isn’t brainwashed into becoming a feminist murtaddah) is looked at as an extremist; where a husband who doesn’t permit his wife to speak to non-mahram men and tells her to be a happy and fulfilled housewife and mother instead of a depressed career-woman is seen as a toxic misogynist.

RELATED: Prohibition of Gender Mixing: A Protective Islamic Civilisational Barrier

How Feminists Misinterpret the Hadith on Seeking Knowledge

It’s worth mentioning a particular card that Muslim feminists like to play in order to try and fabricate another loophole for themselves to distort and deform Islam. It is the part I mentioned earlier about how a wife doesn’t have to obey her husband if he asks her to do something that is sinful. Feminists love using this to try and justify all manner of un-Islamic behaviors. For example, if a husband or a father prohibits his wife or daughter from attending university, she will claim that, in Islam, it is obligatory for her to seek knowledge. Thus she must go to a university, even if it means putting herself at risk of committing zina, being abused or raped, becoming involved in all sorts of vices and intoxicants, delaying marriage, losing her religiosity or religion altogether, becoming an even bigger rabid feminist, etc., and if the father, uncle, brother, son, or husband have any problems with that, then too bad. After all, she’s obeying Allah and no one can stop her, not even her father or husband!

Of course, it takes having a little more than two highly damaged brain cells to understand that the hadith in question is referring to necessary religious knowledge as opposed to secular knowledge at an institute rampant with free-mixing and all sorts of other haram elements whose only purpose is to churn out workers for the modern corporate system.

Exploring the Underlying Beliefs of Muslim Feminists

It’s strange that these feminists have such an aversion to Islam enforcing rules onto women, especially because they accept rules being enforced onto them by the secular system all the time. For example, feminists have no issue with the fact that women who work at offices are forced to show up on time, work all day, be devoutly obedient to their boss, etc. Why is it that it’s fine then but not when Islam imposes restrictions on them? One reason might be that these feminists have also been conditioned to perceive haya’ (modesty and shame) as oppressive. So, the more haya’ there is to be found in something, the more oppressive it appears to them. These include things like covering oneself up, staying at home, not free-mixing with non-mahrams, getting married at a young age, etc.

Of course, this isn’t the entire explanation since these feminists also despise rules on women that don’t involve observing haya’, such as bearing and raising children, something that is perceived as an extreme burden. For some reason, however, delaying marriage to work a corporate job while your prime years pass you by is not. How is that the true freedom that these feminists claim to advocate for? Another factor is that men have been made far too soft in the modern age, and their testosterone levels have been driven extremely low, to the point that they are unable to exercise any authority over women at all. These Muslim men have been reduced from being the qawwam (those given whole charge over their women) they once were to measly cowards who dare not oppose women, ever. The modern lifestyle, filled with countless comforts and luxuries, has certainly played a role in this.

Yet another factor is forced gender-mixing, i.e., environments where young men and women are gathered together in the same place, which inevitably leads to free-mixing between them. These young men then end up becoming attached to and very familiarized with women, to the point that they are completely desensitized. Men and women freely interacting becomes a normal part of the culture within this environment. Then, when they find out that Islam actually teaches the exact opposite, they are confronted with a serious dilemma, and oftentimes this dilemma is resolved by readily accepting the biased misguided views of feminist “imams,” that nothing wrong is taking place and that Islam treats men and women as equal in all aspects. What makes things worse is that the women these men are constantly mixing with are continuously injecting feminism into them, turning them into estrogen-filled simps who will accompany them to Aurat March and hold up stupid feminist posters aside them.

However, is there a deeper reason as to why, despite knowing what Islam actually teaches, these feminists choose to vehemently reject it? The answer is: yes.

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How Decades of Anti-Islam Propaganda Has Made Muslim Feminists Subservient to the Kuffar

We cannot neglect to mention the main cause of Muslim feminism, i.e., decades of anti-Islam propaganda funded by millions of dollars to demonize true Islamic teachings and label them and any organisations or groups that advocate for them as extremist, backwards, and oppressive. This, in tandem with propaganda aimed at glorifying and popularizing feminism and liberalism, has served to brainwash young Muslims through entertainment and pop culture media, mainstream media, modern education at schools and universities, social media, “compassionate imams,” movements like Aurat March, etc. And all of this averse conditioning of Muslims against the teachings of Islam has caused Muslim feminists to develop a desire to be like the disbelievers that they’ve been programmed into thinking are better and more enlightened, while also developing an unnatural repulsion towards traditional Muslims who still adhere to the true teachings of Islam.

This leads to Muslim feminists developing a strong psychological inferiority complex to the kuffar, as well as avoiding any Islamic teachings that have been associated with negative connotations and labels such as backwards, extremist, and oppressive, following or supporting which would mean becoming an outcast from the societal circle of the “superior enlightened civilized West.” Thus, these Muslim feminists have been conditioned into believing that, in order to be accepted by the modern civilized world of the kuffar, they must abandon their “savage uneducated barbarian heritage” and “step into the light.” And unfortunately, these Muslims keep falling for the obvious trap, readily abandoning wholesome long-held and well-preserved Islamic values just to appease non-Muslims, basically stating something along the lines of:

“Look at us. See, we’re not like those uneducated barbarians you keep attacking 24/7. We’re civilized and support everything that you support. We’re good little puppies, so please accept us!”

However, what they don’t seem to realize is that even this much will not be sufficient to satisfy the disbelievers, who will still harbor resentment in their hearts towards Muslims, even if they are hardcore liberals and feminists, at least not until they abandon Islam entirely and become apostates. And we can clearly see this in the West today, where Muslims are attacked viciously on all fronts, even if they accept liberalism and feminism. This is encapsulated perfectly in the following verse of the Qur’an:

Yet, never will the Jews or the Christians be pleased with you until you follow their way [of faith]. So say [to them]: Indeed, the [revealed] guidance of Allah is the [only] sure guidance. For if ever you were to follow their whims, [O Prophet] — after sure knowledge has come to you — then against Allah you would have neither patron nor supporter [to help you]. (Qur’an, 2:120)

The Muslim ummah needs to get rid of this parasitic disease that threatens to destroy us. We need to purge it completely from within our midst as a matter of great urgency.

P.S. If you want to identify how deeply a Muslim has been affected by feminism, just ask them if Islam allows women to be forced into doing anything. The level of rage that this question is met with should very well reveal the answer.

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