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in category Charities

What is your opinion about the Oxfam charity workers sexually exploiting those who they were meant to help?

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It's another example of men from "Western countries" sexually abusing women and girls who are in a vulnerable state.

This time it's surprisingly about Oxfam charity staff workers. Charity workers sent to a devastated region engaging with underage prostitutes. This comes just after UK parliamentary report calling for codes of conducts to prevent sexual abuse of staff members. It comes after the Harvey Weinstein scandal that suggests Hollywood is engulfed in sexual abuse of not only women but children as well.

I mentioned "Western" to refer to the liberal secular capitalistic societies also known as "developed societies". No doubt abuse occurs in all countries and is a despicable crime so why highlight the West?

This is because of the manner by which liberal secular societies attempt to moralise other cultures' abuse towards women. "Look at those backward barbaric people and their abuse of women and girls", they say. And it's through this moralising that they then push the idea that what is needed is their cultural/ideological values of liberal secularism to civilise them.

However as we say in the UK this is the pot calling the kettle black. If they can't fix the problem in their own countries (which has reached epidemic levels) then what right do they have to point to other societies? Clearly they don't have the solution. And clearly when non white people born and resident in western societies commit abuse it's not because they are not integrated enough into western culture. Rather it's reflecting the sad depraved culture that surrounds them which lowers the standing of women as mere objects that can be abused and used for male gratification.

No doubt solving this problem is complex but clearly part of the root causes isn't just about equalising "power" but the values and ideas that shape people. There'll always be an imbalance in power relationships but that should not mean abuse is inevitable. Rather a person inculcated with the right values (accountability to Allah swt, treating women as human beings, obligation to respect them and ones own honour/chastity) while taking precautions through their actions (eg lowering gaze, prohibition of khalwa not looking at non-mahram out of desire etc) then men are helping to fortify themselves from being abusers. At the same time the society as a whole through pop culture needs to readdress the images and perceptions it promotes around sex and gender. Because it's through these images inculcated from a young age that shapes people's ideas to act in depraved ways.


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