Taboos are created to maintain ethical norms within our society.
KARACHI: Taboos are created to maintain ethical norms within our society. However over the course of history certain acts are deliberately prohibited to repress people and their thought. Be it watta satta or karo-kari, we’ve implemented everything we imagined on our women. One taboo which is not talked about much is of women being forced to marry the Holy Quran.
The term, traditionally known as Haq Bakshish, literally means giving up the right to marry. This tradition is as inhumane as anything else in the world where women are forced off their rights to marry, and live in isolation. Come to think of it these women since childhood are treated as born slaves who will do whatever the patriarchal mindset of their family says. The things they look forward to is taken away from them.
Through this the family gets to keep the property with them, instead of giving it away to the girls upon their marriage. To link something so selfish and inhumane with religion is questionable itself, but to do it for the sake of money only makes it worse.
Under Pakistani law, the Haq Bakshish tradition is punishable by a seven-year prison sentence, but no one dares to report such cases. Since it is mostly practised by Syeds, it is believed that the issue should be kept in secrecy, due to the nature of their shajra.
Although Islam allows women to marry whoever they want, it seems that the hidden taboo in Pakistan will claim a few more brides before it is addressed publicly.
Alyna Aslam
Published in The Express Tribune, March 12th, 2020.
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