The ghastly gang-rape of a young medical student and her subsequent death left the whole country aggrieved. This led to protests in the national capital and other cities and many of the scholars and thinkers came up with the demand for Islamic punishment for the culprits. To address this issue Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, during its monthly press meet, raised the point that the situation must be looked in its totality and that there are social, economic and legal factors that together contribute to the rise in sex-related crimes.
Ameer Jamaat, Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Omari, said Islam calls for stricter punishment to such crimes but before that it lays emphasis on constructing a value-based society. He said it was only when the Islamic state got formed in Medina that the laws and punishments were revealed. He further said that Islamic laws are best to control the crimes but they cannot be implemented anywhere; instead they must only be applied in the Islamic system. It is basically the system which subserves the laws and without the system, implementing laws would probably add on to more chaos, he added.
He urged the people to look into Islam in totality and not just to vouch for its one or two laws. He further argued that there are social and commercial factors which contribute to the crime. The way the culture of nudity and vulgarity is being promoted by the media is something inappropriate. Giving the example of the society that was there at the time of the Messenger of Allah and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, he argued that one could hardly find such offences. The reason for this is that the whole system of Islam was being implemented at that time and hence everything was at its place and the crime was contained.
Besides rape, which is illegal sexual intercourse without the consent of the lady, he took a dig at those acts wherein the couple does the act by their consent. Islam considers both as sin and there is a prescribed punishment for these offences, he added.
As for the complete solution to this menace, Maulana Omari reiterated the formation of the society wherein people would not commit offences fearing the accountability before the Lord. Concluding his address, he said that instead of a few laws, there should be a discussion on the complete and comprehensive system of Islam so as to understand that the divine laws are best for mankind.