The West is Saving Face with #MosqueMeToo

Pilgrims at the Ka'abah

The twilight of 2017 saw unprecedented reports by notable western female personalities on sexual abuse. A great number of women (hundreds) from different works of life have fingered males who took advantage of their vulnerabilities at certain points in their lives. Notable mentions are Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose McGowan and Uma Thurman.  So enormous was the trend that a number of groups; both physical and virtual were created to defend the women involved. The most popular of these groups was the revived ‘#MeToo’.  #MeToo was created by
Tarana Burke in 2006 to empower women through empathy but in October 2017, Alyssa Milano encouraged using the phrase to expose the extent of sexual harassment and assault by people who have experienced it themselves. 

Among the men who have been accused are Hollywood Behemoth Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, Ethan Kath and former U.S. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of Michigan State University with Larry Nassar getting a life jail term. 

Islam has been dubbed as the world’s fastest growing religion. In the West however, majority of reverts are women.  On 5th January 2011, published an article which showed that in 2010 an estimated 5,200 men and women have adopted Islam including 1,400 in London. Nearly two-thirds were women, more than 70 per cent were white and the average age at conversion was 27.

Sexual abuse of women in the West is believe to be a major factor pushing Western women to Islam since Islam out rightly forbids and prescribes punishments for immoral conducts. As more Western women voice out their ordeals, more Western women could flock to Islam. 

On February 6 2018, the Sunday Times published the article ‘Female pilgrims speak out about sexual harassment at the haj’ and on February 9, the BBC published on the same topic titling it ‘100 Women: Muslim women rally round #MosqueMeToo’. A host of other media outfits known to be critical of Islam also fancied the topic and published articles with different titles and from different angles. The atheist posing as a Muslim, Mona Eltahawy, is behind the formation of #MosqueMeToo.

The story here is that Muslim women get touched by men and unknown persons during tawaf. To understand this properly, we must get acquainted with what tawaf is all about.

What is Tawaf?

Tawaf is a rite during hajj where pilgrims go round the Ka’abah seven times making supplications. During the Hajj and Umrah, Muslims are to go around the Ka’abah seven times, in a counterclockwise direction. For men, it is a custom to make the first three orbits with pace followed by four times more closely at a pace of choice. Muslims are to kiss or touch the Ka’abah if possible, but the difficulty of this due to the large crowds makes it acceptable to simply point or hold up a hand towards the Black Stone attached to the Ka’abah on each orbit.

At the end of the circling, Muslims go to the Station of Ibrahim to perform a two rak'at nafl. The circling is believed to demonstrate the unity of the believers in the worship of the One God, as they move in harmony together around the Ka’abah, while supplicating to ALLAH.

Muslims are urged to perform ṭawaf at least twice; once as part of the Hajj and one more as their final activity before leaving Makka.

During tawaf, the bodies of people rub against others; women rub on men, men rub on women, men rub on men and women rub on women. A woman who alleges that a man’s body rubbed against hers must have also rubbed against a man at one point or the other.

The aim of all of these claims by westerners obviously is to create the notion that Muslim women face sexual abuse just as much as Western women but, is this the case?

On 17^th April 2015, the Telegraph Newspaper in the UK published an article with a headline that read ‘100 per cent of Frenchwomen victims of sexual harassment on public transport'. It contained the discovery that "every female user of mass transit has been a victim of gender harassment or sexual assault even though some are unaware of this because they have been conditioned to accept low-level abuse”. In 2013, some 207 sex attacks were registered in Paris public transport. The trend forced the High Council for Gender Equality to recommended launching a national plan of action called "Stop gender harassment and sexual assault".

On 21^st November 2017, Quinnipiac University published the results of its survey on sexual harassment in America. The results showed that 60% of American women have been sexually harassed. Of the women who said they had been harassed, 43 percent said the harassment took place in social settings, 45 percent said it was on the street and 15 percent said they experienced it at home. The survey by Quinnipiac University was based on interviews with 1,415 voters with a 3.1-percent margin of error from November 15 to 20 of 2017.

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) 1 in 6 American women has been a victim of an attempted or complete rape in her life time. High estimate of the number of women raped every year in America according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) is 1.3 million.

What makes the case of women far more tragic is the fact that face the scourge of sexual violence everywhere even in places that are regarded save zones. On 2^nd May 2014, USA Today published the article, ‘Sexual assault in the military by the numbers’. It revealed that the Pentagon's own estimate from 2012 (the most recent year it calculated at that time) showed that only 11% of sexual assault victims in the military report the crime. That compares with estimates of 22% to 41% of sex crimes reported by civilians. The military's best guess based on surveys in 2012 is that 26, 000 troops were victims of unwanted sexual contact. In 2016 it was 15, 000.

No Muslim nation (including secular ones) has it as bad as this.

Any one alleging that Macca is a hub for sexual assault will have to do us the favour of providing us with verifiable facts like have been present here rather than expecting ‘sympathy-following’.