By: Mufti Abdulla Moola
One of the great signs of the magnificence and grandeur of Allāh Ta’ālā is that He created us in pairs, male and female. In His infinite wisdom, Allāh Ta’ālā grants marriage partners to us and male and female offspring to whomever He wants. In Islam, society is encouraged to look at sons and daughters with the same level of joy, pray regularly for them, and rear them in righteousness.
And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.[1]
On the other side, many Hindus look down with disgust, shame, and ignominy upon the birth of a girl into the home. Hindu scriptures like the Vedas have thousands of verses praying for sons, but not a single one praying for the birth of a daughter.
Padma Purana VII.6.89 “The purpose of having a wife is to have sons. The purpose of having a son is to receive Pindas from him at the Sraddha ceremony. For this purpose only the wise take a wife.”
As a result of such texts, modern-day Hindu society is guilty of female infanticide that horrifies all sense of basic morality.
According to the statistics, nearly 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in the country over the past two decades. Of the 12 million girls born in India, one million do not see their first birthdays.
Furthermore, human trafficking has become common in various states of India where teenage girls are being sold for cheap money by poor families. The girls are treated as sex objects and more than half of such cases go unreported.[2]
Sadly, there have been numerous incidents of fetuses being found lying in farms, floating in rivers, wrapped up in jute bags, etc. India’s major social problem is the intentional killing of the girl child. The struggle for a girl child starts the day her existence is known in her mother’s womb. The fear and struggle to survive consumes most of the girl’s life even if she is allowed to live in this world.[3]
Does this sound any different from the pre-Islamic era of ignorance? It seems that Hindu society is steeped neck-deep in ignorance and the merciless pagan ways.
Rural and Urban Hindu
The age-old traditions, customs, and beliefs of Indian society are largely responsible for creating a negative mindset among the couples. More shocking is the fact that the sinful crime of female feticide is not only common in rural areas where social discrimination against women, lack of proper education, etc., can be considered as reasons behind carrying out such acts, but also the ultra-modern, so-called ‘educated’ people living in urban areas and metropolitan cities who are a step ahead in killing the girl child in the womb through medical means.
The truth behind this crime has been brought to light several times by the print and electronic media. But it has failed to melt the hearts and minds of those who remain unaffected by the consequences of the grave crime they are committing.[4]
Education has made hardly a difference. It seems that the education taught the Hindu how to commit infanticide in a ‘smarter’ way.
With the advent of technology, ultrasound techniques gained widespread use in India during the 1990s. It resulted in fetal sex determination and sex-selective abortion by medical professionals. Recently, incidences of female feticide were reported from the Beed district in Maharashtra where women used to come to a doctor’s clinic to get their female child aborted for Rs 2000. Just think for a moment about the doctor’s connivance in this illegal act. Doctors, whose aim is to save the lives of people, happily kill the fetus for a meager two thousand rupees! And more heart-wrenching is the fact that the aborted fetuses were very often fed to dogs.[5]
There seems to be no end in sight to this terrible state of affairs, especially when politicians and policemen aid this ghastly practice.
The above-mentioned case is not the only one of such heart-wrenching heinous crimes. There are thousands of such clinics where horrific activities are carried out on a daily basis and in some cases, in connivance with politicians and policemen.[6]
What floors me is the fact that Hindu women themselves pressurize other women into this evil. After carrying a female with great difficulty for months, then bearing the pangs of labor and delivery, a Hindu ‘mother’ is prepared to sacrifice her child in this merciless way! A mother is an embodiment of human mercy, and here because of Hindu beliefs and public pressure, she becomes an embodiment of cruelty.
May Allāh Ta’ālā keep us firm upon Islām and save us from the merciless Hindu ways. Āmīn