COMMUNICATION
The current media hype over the alleged ‘child marriage’ and ‘sale’ of the Hyderabadi poor girl, Ameena, to a Saudi ‘shaikh’ is yet another example of how a section of the Indian intellectuals grabs any opportunity that presents itself in order to put the whole Muslim community on the defensive and make it feel guilty, instead of treating the matter as an individual case. Ameena is being used by people who have no sympathy for Muslims. The same section earlier blew up the Shah Bano and Babri Mosque controversies out of all proportions. Hell broke out when Syed Shahabuddin called for the boycott of the Independence Day celebrations in 1988.
Aany opportunity to humiliate Muslims is seized. The “idea of the media hype, as practiced in the west, is that by focusing on the ‘evils’ of others (‘them’) you make your guys (‘us’) feel good about themselves, and strengthen their unity.
Coming back to the Ameena case, we find that her age has now somehow been shifted from 10 to 11 years. But looking at her pictures in the press, this is not how a girl of 11 years from a poor family of a rickshaw-puller looks like at 11. Girls of such poor background take much more time to come to this physical stage.
Every year countless minor (Hindu) children in rural India are married. Have you ever heard of an outcry? There are millions of bonded laborers. Hindu females are killed systematically.
Ameena’s and Shah Banos will not provide fig-leaves to cover our naked bodies. Media hypes of this kind will only help alienate a large segment of our population. It will turn our country into another & Lebanon and Sri Lanka (if we are not already there).
