Finally, a Lady with Balls!

As we are 'recovering' from the recent Philip Green vs. Maldivian culture clash, the nation is gripped with yet another controversy, once again religious in nature. This time the issue in focus is an article published in Minivan Daily written by MDP deputy secretary general Aishath Aaniya titled "Are women a social plague?". Some of the issues she wrote about deals with blind faith, excessive modesty obligations, gender inequalities, unwillingness to apply logic and even misinterpretation of holy scriptures and prophetic narrations. While I greatly admire Aaniya for her braveness in the face of our country's recently found religious conservatism, I was foolishly hoping that most people would at least give some thought to what she had said in the article.

After reading the comments posted under the article, I realized that I was wrong. Only a hand full of liberal minded personages praised her for her words of wisdom and act of bravery (for publishing something so bold), contrasted by the rest of the posts which were basically rants from amateur mullahs condemning her to the pits of Hell, calling her a blasphemer and finally passing judgment over her submission to God (To quote one of the comments "I doubt if at this point, you can be called a proper Muslim"). Its amusing the way these people think they are at liberty to criticize a sacred relationship between God and man by dubbing someone a heretic over an idea he merely expressed with good intentions.

However there was one particular post from an apparent doomsayer, which I found very provocative. It relates to Muhammad's narration of encountering tortured feminine souls on his visit to Hell, which took place on the night of the ascension. He described one particular woman hung from her hair with a boiling brain (due to the hellish heat) because she had refused to wear a veil during her life-time, along with various other grisly inexplicable methods of torture (which, ironically, you can only find in religion) for transgressions with varying degrees of gravity. If a mortal does anything like this, he would be called a "vengeful psychotic sadist with an insatiable taste for the macabre" (subsequent to being burned at the stake, once again, ironically) but since this narration supposedly comes from the prophet, we are led to believe it without contemplating its validity or logic or anything for that matter. Anyone who refuses to accept this or with the intellectual capacity to refute it is hastily called a blasphemer or worse. (For this reason I shall keep quiet on the commonly accepted nature of the divine). Blind faith prevails everywhere. My honest impression is that even some negative comments on that article seem to support Aaniya's cause for writing it.

Ultimately its not going to matter what we (meaning self-proclaimed liberals) think of this woman or her bold piece of writing in which she presents her arguments well, with seemingly flawless logic, fair reasoning and reverence of Islamic principles even though she was negating some of them. Most people who called her a blasphemer ignored these qualities of her writing and focused on superimposing their misguided religious dogmas acquired over years of ignorance. She is undoubtedly going to face repercussions, and if she is too proud to recant her arguments and publish an apology, she will almost surely get sacked regardless of what MDP thinks. The party would feel compelled to do so in an attempt to sanitize the organization and to maintain public trust. (One more reason to hate politics? I think so). Even if she does apologize in the course of the next few days I really can't help myself but to admire her for this single act of courage. After all, she has balls (in the metaphorical sense) that most of us can only dream of having.