Rampage in Central Park: Prevention Better Than Cure

I am sitting down to write this article after watching one of several disturbing news reports describing the chaos in New York's Central Park following this past weekend's Puerto Rican Day Parade in the city. Several women were attacked by mobs of drunken partying men who doused the women with water and beer, tore off their clothes and groped the womens' bodies. To date, 24 women have come forward as victims. The amateur videotapes taken of the horrifying incident are evidence of what happened and will be used to identify and charge the guilty.

When we hear of such outrageous behaviors, it should force us to take a harsh look at society and ask how and why such crimes occur. One has only to look at the video tapes to see that more than one factor is at play. While police have been accused of not taking steps to disperse the unruly crowd and of displaying a dismissive attitude towards many of the female victims, it is clear that the main problem lies in the very fabric of the society, the same society which raised its young men and women with very loose restrictions with regards to setting limits for themselves in the outside world.

As a Muslim woman trying to make sense of what happened, I just think to myself how amazing Allah is and how great the laws of Islam are in preventing such situations before they have the chance to be born. For example, drugs and alcohol are prohibited in Islam. This alone is very effective in treating many of society's ills as a great number of crimes are committed by people under the influence of various intoxicants. It is a major problem.

Islam also prohibits the free mixing of unrelated men and women. While both genders are allowed to move around in public in order to tend to their needs and live normal lives, there is no allowance for the casual atmosphere we see in non-Islamic societies. The environment in Central Park on the day the rampage occurred was one of unbridled pleasure-seeking. While there is no justification for any man to rip off a woman's clothes, we must take an objective look at the tapes to see that a number of the women in the park that day were just as intoxicated as the men and that they were laughing, flirting and even encouraging the men to touch them. One amateur photographer witnessed a woman who flashed her breasts to the crowd at it's request. These women must share in the responsibility for whipping the crowd into a frenzy and setting the stage for what happened to other women who did not want to be involved in the chaos.

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