Are We In The Right Direction?

Finally, the culprits of the kidnap and rape of the 13-year old girl have been arrested. According to the police, they were her close relatives. Previously, the dead body of a school girl wearing her uniform was found on Sea View beach last Thursday. According to the victim's postmortem report, she was raped and later strangled to death. The girl’s father said their only child was kidnapped from Azizabad two days ago. The case had been lodged at the Azizabad police station and the kidnappers had placed a call demanding Rs 1 million ransom for the release of the girl. 

Although such an incident is very tragic, but, it is neither the first one nor seems to be the last in the current circumstances of today`s society. Already several similar cases have taken place. In almost all the incidents, relatively small girls became the victims as they could not resist like elders. Now, the people are raising their voice over these shameful acts. But, unfortunately, once again there would be a complete silence over it and soon people would forget about it as they did about the previous crimes.

In November 2011, a series of consecutive and extremely shameful incidents took place in Karachi in which an evil minded man committed very vicious acts with dead bodies of females by taking them out from their Paposh Nagar graveyard. Later on, the Police arrested a man, who was reportedly involved in necrophilia, sexually abuse dead bodies of women in the graveyard. According to the police, the accused, a 28-year-old Riyaz, confessed that he had abused around four dozens bodies of women. (http://www.bbcnewsalert.com/sexually-abuse-of-bodies-of-women-in-the-paposh-nagar-karachi-watch-shahzeb-khanzada-3rd-november-2011)

The question is, could we ever think of receiving so shameful news especially in the Islamic Republic like Pakistan? To hear this shocking news, one of my females relative said to her husband, “When I die, please do not bury me in the graveyard outside, but inside our house”. Over her dreadful “will”, I asked myself, “Now, shall we bury our females in our homes in order to provide shelter to their dead bodies?”

As usual, after that news came in, people spoke on it; condemn it, and forgot it with the passage of time as if nothing had happened. As a result, once again, we are coming across the same incidents.

This is fact that it is the prime responsibility of the state to provide security to the common people. No matter it is the matter of monitoring the schools, colleges, parks, graveyards, shopping centers or the beaches, it purely lies on the state. How is it possible that a girl is abducted from school, raped and thrown to the beach miles away from the place she was kidnapped despite the heavy presence of the Police and the Rangers? 

However, the common people cannot consider themselves as free from this responsibility. Because in the scenario where the moral values are with the descending trend, especially the parents will have to take up more responsibilities on their shoulders in order to secure their daughters. Moreover, considering the arrested relatives of the 13-year old girl of Karachi, the parents will have to be more careful or cautious. Now, they are not supposed to trust even their relatives and/or neighbors as far as letting their kids, especially, daughters with them are concerned.

In addition to this, our society is morally going towards the death`s valley. The comment of a female sweeper in a TV program depicts the morality of the people. She said, “Although the people (men) are well-dressed, but their intentions are very dirty”.

Not only that, the latest news from Saudai Arabia has got much to reveal the level of morality of our people. According to the news, a Pakistani resident is facing charges of raping 30 sheep belonging to a citizen in Al Aflag. He was arrested following a complaint received by the police station from a citizen reporting the capturing of the accused offender in the sheep yard before midnight to conduct a sexual intercourse with the animals. (http://www.alriyadh.com/en/article/842106/pakistani-accused-of-raping-30-sheeps). The question is, what else can be expected from a Pakistani Muslim? Taking into account all these 0n-ground facts, it can easily be demanded to bring the perpetrators to the justice and give them the exemplary punishments so that no other person can even think of repeating it. However, in this way, we would be focusing only the results, but completely ignoring their root causes. 

There was a time about 40 to 50 years ago when there were less number of schools, colleges and madarsas and resulting in the less number of people getting education from there. Yet, morally, the society was pretty sound. However, with the passage of time, the number of educational institutions including the madarsas has tremendously increased, but the society is morally down. This proves that we have missed something important, i.e., the gist of education in us whether it was to be received from our homes or institutions. All of us must keep this in their minds that progress at the cost of moral values is a disaster for a society. A society without ethics and morality eventually faces the same evils that we are now-a-days. So, the people themselves have to decide how long they will keep making progress at the cost of the indispensable moral values and ethics.

Truly speaking, character building of our children and making them morally sound are the only way to nip the evil in the bud. This is what we have been lacking for decades. So, the need of the hour is resetting our directions so that our females can feel secured. Otherwise, there would be no stop sign to this, rather a deteriorating situation we are going to face. May God make all of us realize the severity of the prevailing situation and help us reset our directions……...Aameen!