“Women’s rights: Privelige or Birthright?”

“Women’s rights: Privelige or Birthright?”

In today’s fast-paced world, norms are very different from what they used to be 1400 years ago. The laws, the fashions, and even people’s tastes have changed entirely. With the rapid advances in technology, the world has evolved into something far more fast, modern, and different, yet we cannot seem to purify our beliefs from the dirt of the ideologies that existed around 1400 years ago. We cannot seem to abandon those practices; spiritually, they are ingrained in our souls. We have come from burying daughters alive and treating women like cattle and livestock to keeping them alive but physically and mentally torturing them, sometimes with excuses spoken boldly and brazenly.

People who follow such trends still exist. These so-called people and men who consider themselves dignified and respected act as if they possess all the dignity and respect in the world. Even though they are no different from the men of the era of arrogance, just dressed up and with faux words, in some cases that is not true. Some people act so brazenly, and unfortunately, there is no one to hold them accountable, not in Pakistan.

The arrival of Islam was not only a dawn for all humanity but especially for women as well. Islam gave women rights—what they deserve to have—as mothers, as daughters, as wives, as sisters, and in general, just as women. Islam gave them rights that every normal human being deserves to have, not because they are a man, a woman, or even transgender, but because they are human. It is the common birthright that all humans are born with. Islam gave women great rights: it placed a man’s heaven under his mother’s feet, opened the gates to paradise for a father, and gave widows the right to be acknowledged as real humans, with rights to property and remarriage, and to make decisions according to their will. Islam taught the importance of daughters who were once buried alive and considered symbols of shame, but Islam made people aware of the blessings a daughter brings.

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Yet even with all the rights Islamically given to women, they are still oppressed—not by external forces, but often within their own homes, sometimes by parents, sometimes by society, and sometimes by expectations. Even outside the home, the situation is no different. When a woman steps out of her house in Pakistan, people gawk—not always with bad intentions, but because it is seen as unusual for a woman to be working, running errands, or merely driving. A girl grows up hearing, “Isne to apne ghar ki hojana hai,” or “Woh to beti hai… tum to beti ho.” From being told she cannot do something as a child just because of her gender, to being pressured to make decisions about marriage, and getting criticized for simply existing—she is constantly judged because it is not considered right for a woman to decide for herself.

And who gets to decide that? The government? The men? Or the so-called scholars, whose preaching starts from a woman’s clothes and ends at four marriages? Even if some girls have supportive parents, most are still not allowed to go out alone. Why? Because it is not safe. Each day we hear about an upcoming rape case. No matter how strong the parent is, such incidents terrify every family. Even mentioning something like that is taboo, as if women themselves are responsible for what happens. It does not stop there. Many times, when you watch the news, you see reports about some girl being shot and killed because she went against her family—or because she married someone her family did not approve of. That single decision becomes the final statement for those women, and yet people claim that being a woman is easy or that women do not deserve equal rights because they are weaker.

These men tend to forget that they originate from these so-called “weak” women. These “weak” women not only held them in their wombs for nine months but also went through excruciating pain to give birth to them and raise them to where they are now. If men could give birth, the population of this world would not be as great as it is today. Yet they call women weak? A normal woman goes through twelve to eighteen hours of unbearable pain during childbirth, and if not through a normal delivery, layers of her skin are cut open just to bring a child into this world—only for those children to grow up and undermine even their own mothers.

We live in a masochistic world where women’s rights are seen as a privilege and not a birthright. Women’s rights are not a privilege or luxury; they are a basic need that every woman deserves. They should be granted, and no one—no man, no human—has the right to take that away when God Himself has granted it.