Intimate Partner Violence

This is an issue close to Umm Ilhaam’s heart at the moment, as she didn’t pick up that it was happening to a close friend for two years. It’s the new term for domestic violence. It has been described as a major public health and human rights issue. Women are overwhelmingly the victims, but it affects entire families, including children, making the statistics even more shocking.

In the latest issue of Q-News, http://www.q-news.com/thisissue.htm in an excellent article on “Making Our Homes Soulful”, Sidi Nazim Baksh reports that domestic violence occurs in 60% of marriages, and is, not unexpectedly, the most underreported crime. From American studies, in 90% of cases involving battered women, children were present. Last year in South Africa, the number of children and families exposed to this violence increased by 80%. Scary huh?

We will soon have reliable estimates of its international prevalence, determinants, and consequences when the World Health Organization reports on its multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence against women. www.who.int/gender/violence/multicountry

The attitudes of boys and young men towards girls and women are formed and impressioned by the acts they see in their own homes, and so the next generation carries in the vicious cycle without knowing any different. As we don’t like to talk about it, I feel our silence is often acceptance.

“The Muslim community has shamefully tolerated abuse for a long time. How much longer will Muslim families (and therefore the Muslim community) be weakened by abuse? How much longer will abusers be allowed to run free and unpunished in the community? How much more abuse will Muslim women have to endure before the community decides that enough is enough?”

http://www.jannah.org/sisters/wifeabuse.html

As Sidi Nazim says,

“Our homes should be places where our children and our women are safe. Husbands and wives should make a pact with each other and with their children that voices should not be raised in the home. Let us commit to make our homes gentle, pleasant, clean and tidy places, infused with beauty.”


Another good site dealing with this issue:
http://www.themodernreligion.com/index2.html