Unwanted Physical Contact

Dubai: A Saudi man is being questioned at the Public Prosecution for allegedly attempting to sexually assault a minor at Ski Dubai last week.   “Around 6.30pm on November 6 Ski Dubai staff was alerted that a male visitor was attempting to assault a minor in the snowcave located in the snow park area,” Ali Al Abdullah, Vice-President, Asset Management for Majid Al Futtaim Shopping Malls, said in a statement.  

A security guard who was heading to the bathroom near the children’s zone of the snow park area heard noises before he discovered what was happening between the suspect and the Omani victim who is believed to be a minor (under the age of 14), added the source.  

A witness who did not wish to be identified, described the attack to Gulf News, saying that people watched on as the alleged assault took place, before security staff stepped in. 

Judicial sources explained that sexual assault cases involving minor victims are treated as ’sex against will’ when the victim is a male and ‘rape’ when the victim is a female.  

(Full article is available on Gulf News of November 13, 2007)

Anyone who is remotely familiar with Dubai will know that news like the one cited above appears every single day under the heading of ‘Nation.’ The news is disturbing, more so because rapists of young boys get away with short jail terms (ranging from a few months to two years only) since the rape is classified as “sex against will” and hence young boys are easy and very frequent victims in the Gulf state. However, reporting sex crimes does give people the hope that at least now information is not censored like before. There is some progress. 

This post is not about sexual abuse of minors or rape per se. This post is about why we should not hide crime. It is about censorship and what it can do to a society.  

I firmly believe that every child should be educated and warned about potential abuse. Children should be taught that they are not at fault if anyone touches them inappropriately and they must inform the accompanying adult at once.  

As a 10 year old child my cousin was French kissed on a shopping trip by a store owner many years ago. Her mother was too naïve and even when she mustered the courage to tell her mother she was told to stop “imagining things.” She was felt up often afterwards and too scared to tell her mother in case she was reprimanded again she began to blame herself and ultimately became a depressed recluse.   

I was touched numerous times as a child but never in England. Does unwanted physical  contact not take place in England? Of course it does but I think my parents were more protective of me in England. I assume now that they never mistrusted anyone in Muslim countries because of the false belief that “nothing wrong happens in the Muslim world.” Yet the man who was doing tawaf with me didn’t think twice about God before pinching my behind several times. This total belief in the religion is one thing and extending it to all the followers all over the world is quite another.  

Nothing massive is prompting me to write apart from the fact that a brave woman came out with her story of how she was sexually abused by a Muslim man and another brave woman reported her story of childhood molestation by a Quran teacher and the women are being given the flak for their bravery.  

Apparently all is well until the victim decides to speak. Tainting a Muslim man’s name is serious crime, more serious than molestation itself. Either the victim is to pretend for the rest of their lives that the abuse never happened or suffer in silence. A friend was raped by her husband for seven long years but she suffered in silence because the husband was a deeply ‘religious’ man and her mother made her believe that there is no rape in marriage. Then last year the boy of someone we know was saved from being raped in the basement of a mosque. It took great courage for his parents to report the assault to the police because of threats of ostracisation from other Muslim families.   

Sexual abuse takes place everywhere and the Muslim world is no exception. Let’s accept it. So-called Muslim men father their step-daughters’ children  and they also rape their sisters (Appeal Court increases sentence for incest-rape, Gulf News of December 12, 2006) just like anywhere else in the world. However, every time a victim reports his/her rape in the Muslim world they are blamed for “sexual promiscuity” and medical reports insist that the victim “had had several intimate relations prior to the incident.”  

Muslim (note: not Islamic) sexuality is pretty twisted at times and any abuse that is reported gets the knickers of some Muslim men in a twist compounded with the blaring reality that many Muslim parents who are born and bred entirely in the West are frozen in time and have no idea what faults can exist in fellow Muslim men in Muslim countries.   

Every time a woman comes out with her story, even if it is of quick feel by some pervert in the street, I see hope. I see hope because when I read it out to my mother she exclaims, “Ya salaam! Mish fil Qahira!!” but holds my daughters hand tighter when she takes her to the loo in a mall.  

The parents of every child whether the child is a girl or boy must be aware of sexual abuse and should possess the heart to butcher the hand of a man who braves butchering the child’s belief in goodness; their future; and their innocence. Anyone who tries to stop a sexual abuse victim from speaking out only because talking about it “will offer fuel to Islam-haters” should think, “What if this happens to my child?”  .