PROSTITUTION in a Muslim country s sex trade, Connections between sex trafficking, prostitution and polygamy

PROSTITUTION in a Muslim country

The victims of Pakistan’s sex trade, Connections between sex trafficking, prostitution and polygamy

BY KATE ORNE, JULY 16, 2010

It’s another evening in one of the red light districts of Pakistan. It never seems to be quiet here except for the very early morning hours when the customers are home with their families or at work. The rickshaw drivers pound impatiently on their piercing horns, people shout at one another in Urdu or Punjabi, while stray, emaciated dogs bark and Bollywood music blares from the mujra dance halls. The humidity is relentless even though the sun has set several hours ago.

I have been coming to this area since February of 2005 when prostitution in Pakistan was still little reported on. Gaining the prostitutes and madam’s trust is a complicated task and so I continued to return to the area over the coming years. These women live stigmatized and shunned from a society where prostitution is illegal and hardly acknowledged, except for a few media reports in the local English newspapers. My fixer, a Pakistani human rights activist, cannot tell his family that he is working with me on this project for fear they will feel that he has dishonored them by entering into this ostracized community. The women also risk being arrested or subjected to high bribes by local police if they are found to be talking to a stranger like myself.

Over time I gain these women’s trust and I begin to deepen my understanding of the lives of prostitutes and the inner workings of the sex trade in Pakistan. Unlike anywhere else in the world (except for other countries with a conservative Muslim majority) modesty is practiced according to Islam – even among the prostitutes and inside the brothels. At first it’s strange for me to witness a language of seduction we have long since lost in the West. It’s subtle and discreet compared to what I am accustomed to to, but it’s important for me to attempt to see beyond this modesty – what are the women’s lives like beneath the head scarves and the covering of their chests?

“When I’m sent to private homes or hotels, there is sometimes more than one client waiting for me – sometimes five or six. There isn’t much I can do but obey. If I don’t, they beat me bloody and break my bones.” explains Samsara,* a prostitute in her early twenties who I am visiting. Her scars are a sign she has attempted to fight back but quickly learned her “lesson.” She sits on a bed she shares with another prostitute. The room is part of a rundown flat on the 3rd floor of one of many dilapidated buildings where brothels are found. There is no running water or bathrooms except for the toilet in the courtyard below that the all the tenants share. In a corner a rickety fan blows air providing momentary relief from the heavy heat, except for during the frequent power interruptions. Her madam is an older, seemingly friendly lady who chews her paan and to my surprise leaves us in peace to talk.

Samsara is one of approximately 4,000 prostitutes living in this particular area. She came here from a small village with a distant relative in the hopes of becoming a dancer but was soon entrapped and sold to a madam. She can’t return home; her family would no longer accept her since they have heard she is now involved in the sex trade. Samsara has resigned herself to this “vocation.” Her life, like those of her roommates, is a sordid mix of violence, sex and rape. While visiting the brothels, I observe that many of these young women have scars of self-mutilation covering their arms, offering an overt glimpse into their deep suffering and unresolved internal struggles.

Here, unlike in the rest of the country, the birth of a daughter, rather than that of a son, is cause for celebration. The baby will be the future breadwinner for the extended family. Until April of 2005 the children of the prostitutes did not have access to education since the discipline required to attend school was not part of their upbringing. The general school administrators shrank from the idea of integrating these stigmatized kids with the rest of their students, leaving the children of the brothels without hope of breaking free from the relentless cycle of illiteracy and poverty. Since 2005 a small organization called the Sheed Society has established two schools providing non-formal education to these forgotten children, allowing them to eventually transfer to the standard government run schools. The Sheed Society’s schools also serve as a refuge, keeping these children from roaming the streets, where they are easy prey for drug dealers and pedophiles, while their mothers earn their paltry income.

Despite their noble mission, funding for Sheed’s schools remains a struggle since many NGO’s are not willing to support programs in brothels – places that remain shameful, unacknowledged parts of society. Thankfully donations through Giveology, a powerful organization that partners with grassroots groups to sponsor education grants and innovative education related projects, have been a great help in paying Sheed’s teachers’ salaries. The children yearn for school uniforms but there are more urgent items on the list, like regular school lunches for the children who go without or a small library where the students can borrow books that would promote reading during their free time. But all this will have to wait; salaries, rent, electricity and school books are a priority.

Sheed Society was founded by Lubna Tayyab a rotund, pretty women with an infectious laugh and an unyielding determination to improve her own community.

Lubna and I quickly became friends even though she initially saw no possibility of me entering the brothels, let alone photographing the women. There was simply too much risk involved for the women to consent to being captured on camera. The women agreed however, and over the past five years, a bond developed between Lubna and myself. Though we belong to radically different backgrounds, our worlds intersect at a common point — a deep desire to create a healthier future for the children of Pakistan’s prostitutes.

One of the primary reasons why Islam was revealed was to guarantee and clarify the important basic rights of women, and particularly their rights with regards to marriage, divorce, alimony, custody and related issues. We should not allow horrors such as sex trafficking, prostitution, and other sexually exploitative unions to hide within the guise of Islamic marriages.

Sex trafficking and prostitution are not unique to Muslim people or to Muslim countries. They are, however, harder to identify when they take shelter within the confines of Islamic marriages. In religions that only recognize monogamous marriages, it is easier to take the first step of categorizing a relationship as deviating from a real marriage. In Islam, however, both monogamous and polygamous marriages are considered legitimate, and Muslims from different parts of the world and from varying schools of Islamic thought have created forms of purported marriages that, in some instances, seem difficult to distinguish from prostitution. Furthermore, because some Muslims find room for debate about the rules governing marriage, as well as divorce, alimony, custody, and child support issues, there is a potential for the creation of suspect relationships labeled as marriages.

Even a cursory survey of practices existing within the guise of Islamic marriages reveals that the boundaries of legitimate marital unions have been expanded to hide within their folds all manner of exploitative relationships. These include associations which are, in fact, sex trafficking and prostitution; one partner is either forcibly used for sex or is compensated through some monetary benefit.

These relationships range from those that are relatively easy to categorize as truly exploitative to those that appear to be legitimate polygamous unions, but do not conform to the Islamic requirements of a polygamous marriage. Though they exist on a wide spectrum, these relationships share commonalities. The most fundamental is that these unions deviate from the Qur’anic rules for both monogamous and polygamous marriages. They are also generally solemnized and consummated privately, their existence hidden from public view. The Prophet was known to have said, “What distinguishes the lawful from the unlawful was the drum and shouts of the nikah [marriage day].” Because these relationships are hidden from society, they also all involve situations where the Islamic rights of monetary support for spouses and children are denied.

The relationships easiest to recognize as pure sexual exploitation are those that involve sex trafficking, a form of sexual slavery. One famous instance was brought to light by Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times, who in 2006 covered the story of Aisha Parveen, a 20 year old Pakistani woman who was kidnapped and forced into prostitution as a 14 year old. Mian Sher, the man who kidnapped her and acted as her pimp, kept her as his youngest wife. During her six years as his slave, he beat her daily and sexually tortured her. Parveen finally managed to escape with the help of a man who was in the house doing repairs, and the two fell in love and married after their escape. Mian Sher was enraged, and he brought a case against Parveen for adultery, based on the legal argument that Parveen was his wife and had unlawfully fled with a lover. His plan was to then bail her out and take her back to the brothel.

Nicholas Kristoff began covering Parveen’s story while she was waiting for a verdict from the court, and the Pakistani and international press picked up on Parveen’s story. The publicity led to the court dismissing the case, allowing Parveen to permanently escape from Mian Sher. The fact that Mian Sher felt emboldened enough to pursue legal avenues to recover his sexual slave, based on this fictionalized marriage, indicates the grievous state of the law with regards to women’s rights in Pakistan. It also indicates that corruption and relaxed standards allow men to practice putative polygamous marriages and engage in terrible crimes, such as trafficking, under their guise. When Kristoff asked renowned Pakistani human rights attorney Asma Jahangir about Parveen’s case, Jahangir explained that she was completely unsurprised about Parveen’s situation, because it happens all the time in Pakistan.

While this instance is clearly sex trafficking hiding within the pretext of a marriage, there are other relationships which are harder to qualify as such, but still appear closer to prostitution than legitimate marital unions. For instance, mut’aa marriages are temporary marriages which are practiced by Shia Muslims. In a mut’aa marriage, men (and sometimes women) agree to pay their partners a certain sum of money for a marriage lasting a set period of time. The putative husband can end the contract before the expiration of the agreed upon period, but a wife must compensate the husband if she wants to end the union more quickly. Though Shia law recognizes the children of such marriages as legitimate, in practical terms it is difficult for women to prove the paternity of these children, because there are no witnesses to the creation of a mut’a relationship and no registration requirements. It is entirely a private transaction.

Similar to mut’aa marriages are urfi marriages practiced primarily in Egypt. These are referred to as secret marriages, as they are not sanctioned by the bride’s family, but they are actually conducted by a Muslim cleric in the presence of two witnesses. However, they are not officially registered and are not binding on the man. These marriages exist outside of the formal marriage contracts required by the Quran, even though there is usually a document containing some basic terms which is signed by the couple and two witnesses. Furthermore, though they were officially recognized under Egyptian law in 2000, women involved in these marriages have no rights to alimony or child support.

While temporary and non-public marriages such as mut’aa and urfi deny the partners the rights given to full-fledged Islamic marriages, there are even “real” Islamic marriages that are used to hide sex trafficking and prostitution. There are prominent examples highlighting this problem. One is of men from Arabian countries in the Gulf states travelling to places like India and Indonesia and marrying young girls from poor families. The families are given gifts and money and led to believe that their daughters will return to the husbands’ home countries to lead stable and respectful lives. Instead, the husbands spend a few days or weeks with the wives in hotels and then divorce them and return to their own countries. The women return to their families humiliated, disgraced, and often pregnant, with little means of tracking down the husbands or seeking alimony or child support.

Another example of troubling “legal” marriages includes unions involving Muslims who marry for immigration benefits. The couple decides to enter into marriages with the express purpose of one spouse sponsoring the other for legal status, and the other typically agrees to provide sexual services in return. This phenomenon is on the rise in the United States, and, in fact, often involves individuals who entered the marriages with the belief that they were the real thing. Again, if the exchange for one of the parties is simply sex for a benefit like immigration status, which clearly is an economic benefit, the line between a marriage and prostitution is blurry. As with other marriages discussed here, these marriages are in many instances hidden from public view and carried out as private transactions.

Finally, at the very end of this spectrum, there are the polygamous marriages that men carry out as a cover for an affair. Both mut’aa and urfi marriages can be polygamous, but even so-called “traditional” polygamous marriages are sometimes officiated without the consent or knowledge of the first wife, or the knowledge of the community. These are particularly easy to spot as affairs in countries that do not recognize polygamous unions, and the second or third marriage is therefore only officiated by a cleric from the community.

There is clearly a need for dialogue within the global Muslim community about the purpose and rules of marriage, and a need to soundly reject many of the unions discussed here. One of the primary reasons why Islam was revealed was to guarantee and clarify the important basic rights of women, and particularly their rights with regards to marriage, divorce, alimony, custody and related issues. We should not allow horrors such as sex trafficking, prostitution, and other sexually exploitative unions to hide within the guise of Islamic marriages.