UP Police have arrested 4 women – Shabnam, Madina, Shahnaz and Shabana – for supplying cannabis (ganja) inside Azamgarh prison. They would carry the drug inside their burqas for sale inside the prison, under the pretext of meeting relatives lodged inside. 4 kg of cannabis was reportedly found hidden inside their burqas, an Islamic attire that covers women from head to toe so as not to ‘excite’ males. Two jail inmates – Imran and Ismail – were also involved in the racket.
They have been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. They were caught when women police officials were specifically asked to thoroughly check these burqa-clad women visitors to the jail. A probe is being conducted to identify and apprehend others involved in the racket.
The burqa makes it virtually impossible to identify a person, and such Islamic clothing has been used to conceal identity and carry out various crimes such as shoplifting, smuggling, terrorism and even by sexual predators.
But most dangerously, the burqa and hijab make an artificial distinction in the mind of the Muslim males about ‘God-fearing and moral’ (those who wear the Islamic clothing) vs ‘immoral and characterless’ (those who choose not to wear the burqa, even if conservatively dressed by subcontinental standards) females. The mindset created by such religious preaching is clearly visible in the epidemic of sexual violence against Hindu girls by Islamist males, and in the terrible misogynistic violence unleashed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan .
