Society in general has a tendency to kick people when they’re down. Throughout history, the weak and defenseless have been targets for abuse. This continues on today.  The young, the old, the poor, the orphans, those with little education and those with disabilities all qualify as victims of this abuse,  so that the very people who have nothing to lose become the people who also have nothing to gain.

Widows are one group of such people. In developing nations – particularly in South Asia and Africa- when a woman loses her husband, she herself pretty well dies, too. This “social death” involves verbal, emotional and physical abuse from the community as a whole as well as from her husband’s family. She can be subject to accusations that she killed her husband. She can be thrown into the street with no one to protect her. She can have her children stolen from her. She can even be set on fire. In some African cultures, a deceased spouse doesn’t end a marriage and a widow can be forced to marry her brother in-law or other male relative to carry on the relationship. This is called a "levirate” arrangement, whereby the children conceived are considered the children of the widow’s original husband. Actually, if the new “husband” doesn’t want kids, he can choose to throw his dead brother’s wife, now impregnated by him, out of the house. All of these horrendous acts of hate are either permissible by law or so culturally normal that the laws against them aren't upheld.

Setting aside the psychological damage this would have on a person; these women have literally nothing left once their partner dies. It's illegal for their husbands to leave them wealth or land. Even if they do get to keep their children, they often have to pull them out of school or have them work due to exceptional circumstances. One can imagine what kind of a mess this gets kids into. Child slavery and prostitution are often the result of a widowed mother.

The most tragic part about this whole ordeal is the heedlessness regarding the issue. There are no laws being enforced to protect a widow’s rights. In India, where in 1856 the law preventing widows from remarrying were abolished nationally, it was still left up to the various religious authorities in different parts of the country to decide what to do with these women. While efforts are being made by a few global organizations such as Empowering Widows in Development (EWD), it is said that no change can occur until these women bind together and call for change themselves. May Allah SWT give them the tawfiq, ameen.

It’s shameful to think that entire communities witness this treachery and yet there is still so little reported on it. Indeed, widows take up large proportions of the population of any country that is at war due to casualties, and there are plenty of those.  Yet there is seldom any statistical evidence to prove the extremeness of this point. One of the few times it has been reported is during Rwanda’s genocide (1994), where over 70% of adult women were widowed. How is this so easily overlooked in other nations?

I’d like to end by asking you to join me in making du’a for our fellow mothers, daughters and sisters. May Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, soon relieve them of their distress; may He guide them and keep them firm in their iman; may Allah protect them from the evils of this life and the next; and may He ease them in their accountability on the Day of Judgment for the troubles they’ve seen in this dunya, ameen. O Allah send blessings upon our beloved Prophet SAW, who was a mercy to mankind and an example to be followed when dealing with the destitute.