The American news channel CNN broadcast a report on the multiplying rates of human trafficking of women for illegal sexual exploitation throughout the world.

Based on a study conducted by a research group in Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, 2,000,000 women and girls are sold every year as sex slaves, with 120,000 of them from Eastern Europe, including Russia, exported to Western Europe and upwards of 15,000 mainly Mexican women sent to the United States of America, to that end. Women from East Asian countries are also sold for up to $16,000 to be later employed in brothels and bars. The shocking report also reveals that nearly 200,000 girls from Nepal most of them under the age of fourteen are sold as slaves in India every year. About 10,000 girls from ex-Soviet states are forced into prostitution in Israel with the same number from Sri Lanka between the age of six and fourteen also coerced for the same purpose, and double that many, according to the number of reported cases in Burma, are forced into prostitution there.

We must not forget child trafficking either, whether in international adoption or prostitution markets.

Wife swapping

Some newspapers published the story of a 56-year-old bankrupt German man who rented out his 26-year-old wife to a 36-year-old fellow German businessman. They formulated a one-year contract, which was formally authenticated, in which the latter would have sexual relations with the woman whose spouse leased her out, for 500,000 German marks (about $250,000). Being a bachelor who did not want to financially bear the costs of an actual marriage that might fail, the businessman paid the money that was stipulated, amidst congratulations from witnesses to the contract. This is but a glimpse into the lives of wealthy societies that have turned their backs on values and ethics, allowing their citizens and parliamentary and official institutions to sanction homosexual marriages, humiliate the dignity of the poor and objectify their women, as the report shows.

Where are the UN and human rights organizations on this matter? What about the media pundits who attacked an Arab Muslim man for marrying off his daughter at the age of sixteen? We all know the story of the Muslim father who lived in the United States and wanted to get his daughters married while young, which the US press, and some of our copycat journals, seized upon and went into a tirade over.

Where are the UN organizations?

Where are the UN organizations in the midst of the actual moral degradation that has turned poor women into slaves in prostitution markets? Why is no spotlight shed on the disgrace that permits child trafficking? Compare the decadence that permits a husband to willingly rent out his wife with her consent to another man and the society’s positive reactions, to the incessant attacks on polygyny in Islam, which, from the mercy of the Creator to His slaves, is a means of justly rationing the conjugal and emotional life of the spouses. Why do those who call for liberating Muslim women from the oppression of their husbands, not analyze the immoral practices and expose the other face of those societies and the oppression of their social systems on women, whether in the house or the workforce?

Dr. Nawaal As-Sa‘daawi often attacks polygyny as well as the dowry of the bride, which she considers the price of selling her to the husband. Where is she now, in the face of this shameful report that indicates how the life of women is, in other communities?

I genuinely hope that international conferences that support the rights of women and children adopt these issues; and that Muslim scholars and intellectuals participate in such events. I also hope that Muslim women play an active role in reinforcing the Islamic concepts of women in our Fiqh and the essence of honoring women in Islam. They should combat negative practices of some individuals being turned into a stereotype by which people judge what Islam has legislated to protect the sanctity of the man, woman and family, in general.