Patriarchy systematically denies women basic respect and dignity by defining whose honor and social worth merit protection and whose do not. Even claims that appear protective often operate on gendered assumptions, assigning moral value according to adherence to prescribed codes of chastity, obedience, or religious conformity.

Take the following example. During the anti-fee hike agitations at Aligarh Muslim University in August 2025, female students who abstained from prolonged participation or expressed ambivalence were publicly branded as dalals. This targeting operated through a continuous churn of Instagram reels, WhatsApp clips, and live shaming rituals, amplifying the social censure of women who refused to perform the expected militant activism. 

One prominent female protester, who wore an abaya yet opposed extending the agitation, became a central target of AI-morphed videos, parodies, and relentless online mimicry. A student leader posted a reel invoking Islamic teaching: actions like these are claimed to go against the principle that one should not make false accusations (tohmat) against a believing woman (momin aurat), thereby bringing her shame (ruzwa) in society. This selective invocation of Qur’anic law mirrors the patriarchal logic embedded in texts like Surah an-Nur, where protection from defamation is granted only to women already inscribed as chaste, believing, and honorable, while others remain exposed to moral policing and social sanction. In contemporary practice, such claims of religious legitimacy function to discipline female behavior, policing desire, presence, and participation in public life through a highly selective, misogynist logic that denies equal protection and respect to all women.

Surah an-Nur constructs a very particular vision of femininity that receives divine protection from defamation, and this protection is carefully delimited. The text introduces a sharp contrast between women marked as chaste and those associated with sexual transgression. For example, verse 2 establishes a harsh punitive order: “The adulteress and the adulterer – whip each one of them a hundred lashes.” Adultery refers to sexual relations outside the sanctioned framework of marriage, whether through premarital or extramarital intercourse. This stigma around adultery the ground by dividing the social body of women into two categories: those who fall under the stigma of sexual sin and those who remain within the bounds of purity. 

Verse 4 explicitly states: “Those who accuse chaste women, then cannot bring four witnesses, whip them eighty lashes, and do not ever accept their testimony.” Here the law against defamation applies only to muhsanat i.e. women who are already recognized as pure, believing, and respectable. The presumption of innocence is therefore selective: only women inscribed in the register of chastity receive this shield. Others, those associated with adultery, prostitution, or even suspicion, fall outside this safeguard.

This selective immunity becomes sharper in verse 23: “Those who slander honorable, innocent, believing women are cursed in this life and in the Hereafter.” The triple qualification – honorable, innocent, believing – reveals the textual construction of the ideal feminine model. Such women embody modesty, piety, and conformity to divine law, and therefore slander against them invokes severe divine wrath. The verse implicitly excludes women who lack these attributes from the same level of........

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