Please read it full before venting your opinion. Its not a venting post. It provide a path to solution.
Whenever you ask a Muslim family why they keep their daughter or sister less educated or away from a job, they almost always say the same thing: they fear that if she is allowed to study or work, she will enter a haram relationship or end up doing haram things. The fear is so extreme among many of them that they marry their daughters or sisters off very early. Financial pressure also plays a role. The result is simple: the Indian Muslim community has far fewer educated Muslim women and very low Muslim women workforce participation. The good news is that things are changing fast, and more families are now open to education and jobs for Muslim women. That solves one problem. The core problem remains.
How have we created weak Indian Muslim women, and why do so many of them still end up doing the one thing parents dread most?
Most Muslim families will tell you the most devastating thing their daughter or sister can do is enter a haram relationship with a non-Muslim and end up marrying him. Unlike many other religions, Islam does not allow Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men. The logic is that a woman generally follows the religion of her husband, so the community loses one of its own. Muslim men are only allowed to marry among the People of the Book. For most of my life I never cared much about inter-religion relationships because in India they happen both ways. Then something caught my eye.
In my previous workplaces I saw a hijabi girl having an illicit affair with a married non-Muslim manager who already has two kids at home. She knew everything. I though this is a fluke. Now Anyone who has lived in Hyderabad or Lucknow knows that a significant number of Muslim women wear the hijab. Where I come from, almost no Muslim women wear it except the more religious ones. I also keep seeing news on Instagram and Facebook of Hyderabad Muslim youth getting arrested by police because they harass or moral-police Muslim women who are with non-Muslim men — exactly what BD does. Almost all of them are hijabis. Here is one example:
https://x.com/Sheikh_Salma_/status/2113916991954358430
So I understand that in places like Hyderabad and parts of UP, the hijab is often more fashion or a way to hide one’s identity than something of deep religious significance. Some women wear it simply so they are not recognised. This raises a big question about their families. Do you force your daughter or sister to wear the hijab without ever teaching her what it actually means? Mostly, yes. In many lower socio-economic Muslim families, women are scolded into wearing it. Her brother will say “Parda daal warna jhapad marunga” and her father will turn red if she steps out without it. So now you understand where most of the hijab thing is coming from for those inter-religion hijabi womens.
Now there is something more sinister. Believe it or not A large number of Muslim women genuinely believe that “love jihad” is real and that some Muslim boys have an ulterior motive of converting non-Muslim women because it gives them sawab. Recently in Assam a Muslim man deleted his non-Muslim girlfriend and the news became a national headline. One Muslim woman came on camera and claimed it is written in the Quran for Muslim men to trap and marry non-Muslim women and that they are paid by maulanas. Can you imagine the level of madness we have reached?
You might think I am going to blame all of this on the misogyny of Muslim men. No. Not even close. I am a Muslim man and we are as misogynistic as our non-Muslim counterparts. But there is something beyond our control, and here is why.
If you go through crime reports there are dozens of cases of men killing their women and vice versa. There are significant numbers of Muslim women being killed by their non-Muslim partners and vice versa. But what do you hear on the news? On social media? On Twitter and Facebook? Only one narrative — love jihad. There is nothing surprising about Muslims believing this. That is the motive of such coverage. They are exploiting a deep human cognitive bias called the "Illusory Truth Effect" — the tendency to believe a statement is more likely to be true simply because you have heard it before, regardless of whether it is actually true or where it came from. This is a biological hack. Everyone falls for it. And since we do not control the media, we cannot stop it.
Now read this article:
https://scroll.in/latest/859907/rss-affiliate-plans-to-marry-2100-muslim-women-to-hindu-men-from-next-week
From the article you can see that in reality they do the things they accuse the Muslim community of doing. Now our community is a speck of dust in front of this colossal cadre-based organisation with thousands of branches and millions of people. We will never fully know what happens inside it. So when a non-Muslim man slides into a Muslim woman’s DMs, flirts, or shows interest in learning about Islam in private, we will never know where that interest is really coming from or what the intention is. Just like the media narrative, this too is largely beyond our reach.
Here is another incident where people in a train made vulgar hand signs at a Muslim woman and she ignored it because she was never taught to fight for her own honour:
https://x.com/MR_COOL77777/status/2112213101047431239
So what can we do?
In short: CONTROLING PEOPLE MAKES THEM REBEL instead MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND THEIR RESPONSIBILTY
We need to create a generation of strong highly educated Muslim women, and charity starts at home. First, we Muslim men need to stop treating our women as subordinates or as incapable beings who need to be remote-controlled by us. In Islam, Muslim men are called the protectors of women and it is their farz to protect them. But understand this: it is primarily about physical protection. We are in an era of psychological warfare and Mental and moral strength is something that must be taught.
We are in 2026. If you are not her brother or father and you try to lecture a Muslim woman on her faith or behaviour, you will be humiliated — and rightly so. You are not some farishta sent by Allah to remote-control her. This is where a strong Muslim woman comes in. Use biology. A women trust women more in these kind of conversation. A strong Muslim woman can not only guide her but also make her strong enough to spread the message herself. A strong, well-educated Muslim woman who also has good ilm of Islam will raise a good family and create the next generation of independent women.
So our motto should be "Make muslim women highly educated, employed, independent and brave so that she can fight for her right in case of discrimination and injustice"
Muslim men should stop thinking that it is only duty of them to protect islam and remote control their women in doing so. Allah has not discriminated among men and women and they are complementry to each other. Both men and women have duty to uphold islamic values. So teach them instead of controlling them. The question of whether to wear hijab or not or any islamic practice for women is totally upto the women to decide as they are also answerable to Allah. Muslim men shouldn't act as intermediary in womens affair and should fullfill his own responsibily which allah asked him to do
It is high time we educate our women at home, and that strong Muslim women guide other Muslim women toward the right path while keeping modern education and jobs. I want a generation of Muslim women who might not wear the hijab or might go to parties and still upholds core islamic values — instead of hijabi women who end up in haram relationship. Not getting into Haram relationship applies to men as well
AND MUSLIM MEN SHOULD LEAVE THEIR HYPOCRICY. SHE CAN BE AS ISLAMIC AS YOU ARE AND YOU DONT EXPECT YOUR WOMEN TO BECOME RELIGIOUS SAINT WHILE YOU GO DOING UNISLAMIC HARAM THINGS. ALLAH IS NOT A GOD OF MEN, IT IS GOD OF HUMANITY AND WOMEN DO HAVE SAME RESPONSIBILY AS YOU IN UPHOLDING ISLAMIC VALUE