On the 7 of October 2000 Noor Suzaily Mukhtar (photo below), a computer engineer took the public bus to work thinking it was the safest mode of transport for her as there would be many people on the bus.
She had no inkling that fate would take an evil turn that day that would take her on a horrifying journey to her death.She was raped, sodomised and brutally murdered in the bus by the driver. The perpetrator, Hanafi Mat Hassan is a married man with family of his own.
Noor Suzaily Mukhtar was a good Muslim girl who dressed accordingly.She was not in any revealing dress or made any attempt to dress in such a way to attract the opposite sex or to arouse their sexual appetite.She was properly attired and wore a tudung (headscarf) yet she was raped and killed.
Schools girls Farra Derba Rustam and Nurul Hanis Kamil (photo left) who were adolescence also met the same fate on February 13th and July 3rd 2001 respectively. They were young innocent girls who were just reaching puberty and wouldn't have yet reached the level of sexuality to know how to be attractive to the opposite sex.Than there was the famous case of Canny Ong who was kidnapped from the basement car park of Bangsar Shopping Centre brutally raped and murdered, also by a married man.The case of Nurin Jazlin, the pretty 7 year old girl brutally raped, murdered and her body stuffed in a bag.The latest case was Sharliene Mohd Nashar abducted on Jan 10 2008 and still missing.Are the dresses they used on the fateful day to be blamed for what happened to them.
There were many similar rapes and murders with many cases remain unsolved.
None of those victims were in revealing dresses yet they were raped and killed.
It is most disheartening that such shallow statement should come from the vice-president of the National Islamic Students Association of Malaysia. Munirah Bahari (photo left) who, like many religious bigots in this country, were just too lazy to do her homework before she opens her big mouth and embarrass herself.Even if she wishes to seek some publicity, at least do it with some finesse.I find it intolerable that she uses religion to try score a point on a subject that concerned Malaysians of every race, colour and creed.If she has done her homework she wouldn't be making such presumptuous conclusion.
Police statistics on rape shows the breakdown of rape victims in the year 1995 as shown below:
Malays (645)
Chinese (139)
Indians ( 97 )
Others (124)
The statistic above may shock Munirah.Most rape victims were Malay girls and most of them were dressed in compliance of Islamic dress code.Why are they raped? Are they more licentious?Should they be blamed for the rape?
There have been cases where even 70 year old grandmother had been raped by rapist less than half her age.Is she to be blamed for the way she dressed?
It is also an insult on the male psyche that she thinks of a girl or woman who dressed attractively as fair game for rape.Maybe, Munirah should take a trip to South Beach in Florida or Copacabana Beach in Rio, Brazil and see for herself how thousands of naked and half-naked women in all shapes and sizes frolicking the beach with hardly any of them getting raped.
Although she is not completely wrong in her observation, she could have better presented the case if she had looked at it from a moral standpoint rather than religious viewpoint.
I certainly agree students should have proper dress code and transparent blouses for girls may not be appropriate attire in schools.The Ministry of Education should look into it and rectify the problem if it is true.
Munirah also said "It becomes a distraction to men, who are drawn to it, whether or not they like looking at it," she said of the current uniform.
"All this leads to babies born out of wedlock and to an extent, even prostitution," she said.
Gosh! Where this gosling come from. Go back to school, baby!
