Islamic reflections: the case of Gisèle Pelicot

The recent prosecution and incarceration of dozens of French men for the horrific rape and sexual abuse of housewife Madame Gisèle Pelicot concluded recently. Orchestrated over the course of 10 years, her husband facilitated this appalling crime, callously drugging his wife without her knowledge and wilfully allowing 83 men to sexually assault her comatose body for his own sadistic pleasure.

While Monsieur Pelicot and his accomplices may have been temporarily excluded from society and imprisoned for their cruel, monstrous, and depraved crimes, it was equally disturbing to learn that some of the named convicts bore Muslim names. It is a non sequitur to conceive that any true product of Islamic cultivation – one genuinely steeped in Islamic teachings and values, including strict guidelines on inter-gender relationships such as the prohibition of free and unhindered mixing, the careless touching of women, and seclusion with non-mahram (non-closely related) women – could willingly descend into such moral degradation and perversion. Whatever so-called ‘freedoms’ these men believed a secularised French society afforded them, did it, tragically, include the ‘freedom and license’ to abandon their moral compass and sink into the depths of depravity?
 

These men owe Madame Gisèle Pelicot a debt that can never be repaid in this earthly realm, having utterly violated the inherent sacredness of intimate relationships and the sanctity and dignity bestowed upon every human being by Allah, the Almighty. We urge them to spend the rest of their lives begging her forgiveness before the Day of Judgment arrives, when Madame Pelicot will finally be recompensed without measure for the grievous wrongs she has endured at the hands of these reprobate men.

Indeed, We created man in the best form. Then We returned him to the lowest of the low.

(Qur’an, Ch 45, V 4-5)