Women in Tribulation, Help Them

Women in Tribulation, Help Them

With

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

The peace for women is the peace for men and   the peace for men is the peace for the world. I am not advocating or giving room for women to come out to vie with men, nor am I subscribing the paganistic belief in the doctrine of ancient Greece and Rome that women are Venetians and deserve more than enough respect. Of course not me accepting the belief in the doctrine of original sin which subjects women to a certain hatred and torture.

It pains me to the core seeing women in suffering simply because I have great desire, love, passion and sympathy for them. These callings I have for them are not just for concupiscence or rather gratification of sexual lust. Nay, neither. It is as a result of understanding their situation and the urge to help them free from the social bondage.  

Women have to be respected and considered as life associates not as slaves or second-class human beings. Women at homes or schools and everywhere need special attention and consideration because of their natural body structure.

Empowerment of women educationally is the first step to grant women their freedom, right, chance and opportunity, and it’s the best weapon to fight them freedom from the grip of the macho, wicked and unconcerned society. In school the urge to help women makes me and will continue to make me appear a poodle, a candle burning itself to give light to others. Though the general perception in the course of male/female relationship especially in schools is assumed to be exploitative. Female students exploiting their male counterpart. Far from this, my belief is that I vow to take the pain upon myself to succour   women in any situation where I am able to do so because my indulgence is a contribution of fostering women education, the best way out of their predicament.  

Education as I described earlier as the first step of empowering women, is a means with which they can acquire skills not only to work in public and private organizations but can also apply their knowledge in their matrimonial life to breed a good posterity for future generation and to serve as a civil mediators in resolving conflict with the people around them.

Women shouldn’t necessarily seek knowledge with firm do-or-die determination to work in public offices. Women are naturally preserved to be delicate, precious, priceless and prestigious. The history of women in labour force began around 18^th -19^th centaury. In the heyday of industrial revolution where women were forced to come out by the economic strain, to work in the British factories in order to supplement the meager income of their husbands just to survive the dire social hardship and the pressure rooted by the compartmentalization  of social order based on material well-being. This is just the root cause. It is not something worth copying for it did not originate from a good civilization, intellectuality or educatedness, or stylistic way of adorable life. It was from hardship, deplorability, austerity and the ilk. It was from the regimented course of European life for a family to be able to exist – to survive  paying the tax,  living on their own under a situation that have no human face of humanitarian assistance from kith and kin which African cultural humanity, communality and togetherness warrant. In fact this is what led to a concept we now call individualism. A social setting where husband works for his only self, the wife for her own survival and the children sent off at tender age of eighteen to fend for themselves in the jungle of today’s capitalistic society. This is the fountain from which our people source their wrong civilization and assumed the practice as the prerogative of the civilized ones, the elites. 

I am not completely debunking the idea of women going to work because nowadays their work is giving rather contribution to the family and the society at large. All I am doing is decrying the people who hold the belief that it is civility or educatedness leaving women to come out for work; to rescue those people out of the darkness shrouding their shallow brain and to make them in the know of the source of their civilization.

Our life is naturally built to depend on the contribution of each sex. For even in Islam, women have their role to play. Referring back to the life history of our beloved prophet (SAW), we can see many examples where women went out, going to the battle ground to give humanitarian services, relief assistance and medical care to the male soldiers. Women have all the right to acquire education since Aisha (RA) the most loved wife of the prophet (SAW) set examples where she was noted to have reported more than four thousand prophetic traditions.

In our context, we need women in almost all spheres of life. We need female gynecologists to attend their fellow women hence to avert avoidable contact with male doctors. We need women lecturers to provide a sense of belonging and security to the female students against any unwanted elements on the campus. We need women bankers to accommodate the needs of women going to the bank for their business without necessarily engaging with unlawful males. We also need female journalists to present programmes to women audiences about the problem related to their womanistic concerns.

On the other hand, I have a pillary against those who oppose women education. I challenge them to produce even a proof from the heavenly scriptures supporting their course. Besides what pains me about the behaviour of these people is this, they are mostly those who disapprove of taking girls child to the hospitals for medication on the ground that the personnel in service are male staff, people from the opposite sex. To their ignomable belief it is rather preferable to let a birthing women die of bleeding to taking her to the hospital. I appeal to their ignorance, for God sakeness, who they expect to be the doctors when all the society is deriving their girl children away from becoming medical personnel when they are married them off along their way to the profession?

I stand to a position that such people who disallow women education are masking their pure intention of continuing to perpetrate crimes against women. Or such that they are those who are trying to escape their turn of harvesting the evil they planted, the sexual exploitation they committed to other people’ daughters. If not for these reasons why will they deny women right to education despite all these ample examples from the prophet and Sahaba down to the Salaf and to the brilliantly educated Nana Asma’u the daughter of Usman Dan Fodio and many others of our contemporary scholars? And if they are saying western education is bad, so I ask this: do they enroll their daughters in proper Islamic school to study the religion widely?, because all knowledge is the same. No, they only put them in a local Allo school where they wouldn’t be paying money. Anybody believing in denying women education should better investigate in the family of any scholar they trust, I am rest assured, by God, to make an uncompensatery swear; they would find none among their wives or daughters is illiterate.

Women are always at the receiving end, whether literate or illiterate, traditional or modern girl. By traditional I mean the one who is utterly ignorant both side (ba Arabi ba Boko). Her life is much more in jeopardy, suffering and predicament than any other woman. At the age of 18 she was already divorced with three children or the husband abandoned her to care for them. The children from all indication, like their mother would not get access to education, health care and economic right. Already before her marriage she was an excellent hawker in the street who witnessed several cases of sexual molestation. She will now end up toiling, serving as a maid in the homes of riches eking out her living. Her children would be sent away to serve as almajiris who will also later end their lives as mendicants, wondering and begging in the streets. If there is a girl among the children she would follow suit like her former mother, hawking groundnuts and kolanuts in the streets. The mother will never see them again until they complete big almajiris, cobblers, solo dancers and or notorious pick-pocketers around ‘Yan Kura-Bata axis.

A modern girl also faces the same tragedy but in different form. She is the one in the university. A striking lass may be forced or willingly succumb to the demand of her lecturer in exchange for better grade. It is still exploitative because of the unequal power dynamics. The girl will not work hard but she is sure that she could get all she wants by trading her body, her chastity, her beauty and her thigh in order to pass her course. Such girls even their admission in to the schools is invariably connected to sexual liaison not the meritocracy.    

In a crescendo voice I say: we have to respect women, to praise their effort and appreciate their commitment. We have to lead them in peace and love, like a farmer does to his herd not the boss does to his servant. Please and please and please, do not abuse, harass, violate, assail, assault, attack, annoy, bang, batter, beat, bother, bug, pester molest, torture, maltreat, hate, distress, pain, exploit, disturb, intimidate, whip, pounce, persecute, afflict, pinch, hit, hammer, strike, threaten, frighten, hurt, injure, harm, damage, scare, coerce, terrorize, bully, overawe, wound, impair, upset, daunt, discourage, dishearten, deter, overwhelm, put off, terrify, petrify, alarm, shock, horrify, panic, dread, thrush, punch, women!