The High Gender Equality Council (HCE), the equality watchdog of France, recently got a survey conducted on the state of sexism in that country. According to the survey report made public, 37% of women in France have faced forced sexual encounters, while 14% have been a victim of sexual assault or rape.It says that “sexism is not decreasing in France.” “On the contrary, it persists and the most violent expressions of it are aggravating, the younger generations being the most affected by it,” it added. The situation has come to such a sorry pass that the watchdog has called for a national “emergency plan” to combat what it described as “the massive, violent and sometimes lethal consequences” of sexism in a country with stubbornly high rates of gender-based violence.
This scenario of the French society may well be termed as the natural corollary of the ‘modern moral concepts, capitalistic civilizationand democratic politics’ in vogue in the country for over a century. These man-made concepts deprived the people of their moral sense insexual affairs. Modesty and sense of honour came to be things of the past. The institution of family was despised and the distinction between marriage and illicit relationship came to a naught. It was as early as towards the end of the 19th century that the French began looking upon fornication as an ordinary, natural act for males but could not bear their own women and girls going promiscuous. However, with the advance of the 20th century this distinction between males and females too vanished. Therefore, now towards the close of the first quarter of the 21st century, there is no wonder that the HCE survey presents this alarming situation.
This is the net result of total indifference to Divine Guidance. Due to his short-sightedness and limited faculties, man cannot devise a perfect social system to lead a peaceful life. Hence, he always stands in need of Divine Guidance in every aspect of life. The Qur’ān is the Final Book of God, which leads us to the perfect way of life fully aligned with the Way of Nature. The modern society says that man and woman should enjoy perfect equality between them, but the Qur’ān gives us the Islamic laws that govern the matters of family relations and marriage. In his book, Purdah and the Status of Woman in Islam, Maulana Sayyid Abul A’laMaudoodi says: “Islam aims at canalising man’s sex energyby moral discipline so as to render it conducive to the building up of a clean and pious cultureinstead of wasting it in dissipation and erotic passions.”
Islam in fact closes every door of moral delinquency and perversion and paves the path for a morally healthy society. Thus, the “emergency plan” to combat to the rising sexism in France chalked out only in the light of the teachings of Islam can serve the purpose.