Aasif Umer (Aasif Abdullah)

I rarely respond to opinion pieces, even when I strongly disagree with them. Every individual has the right to express their views. I firmly believe society's progress through debate rather than silence. Yet there are moments when remaining silent allows certain narratives to go unchallenged, particularly when they seek to lecture society while remaining insulated from the very standards they advocate.
The recent article published in Greater Kashmir, “When Outrage Has a Gender,” raises important and timely questions about online behavior, harassment, and the nature of public discourse in contemporary Kashmir. No reasonable person would or should justify abuse, threats, character assassination, or targeted harassment directed at any individual, regardless of gender. Such conduct is unacceptable and contributes to the erosion of civility in the digital sphere. However, while the article rightly condemns online abuse, its broader framing invites closer examination. It primarily interprets criticism directed at women in public spaces through the lens of patriarchy while also drawing upon both Islamic principles and feminist thought. This raises broader questions about whether these different frameworks are being reconciled in a sufficiently comprehensive manner. to defend its argument and feminism to support its broader framework, despite the tensions between the two. In doing so, it gives insufficient attention to an equally important principle: public visibility, by its very nature, entails public accountability.
In any functioning society, those who voluntarily enter the public sphere inevitably expose their ideas, actions, and conduct to scrutiny and criticism. Kashmir is no different in this respect. Political activists, social activists, etc., are often labelled traitors and agents by one section and opportunists by another. Journalists are accused of bias. Religious scholars are mocked and vilified. Academics, civil servants, and social commentators are frequently subjected to personal attacks that go well beyond reasoned criticism. Character assassination, misinformation, and coordinated trolling have become defining features of social media itself rather than experiences confined to one gender. A balanced society cannot operate on selective standards. Criticism must be assessed on its substance, not on the gender of the individual receiving it. Abuse is unacceptable in all forms; legitimate criticism must remain legitimate regardless of who is being criticized. This does not minimize the abuse faced by women. Rather, it broadens the conversation, not whether women belong in public spaces, but that they already do. Whether women belong in public spaces, they already do. The more important question is whether every instance of public criticism should automatically be interpreted through a gendered framework while overlooking the wider culture of online hostility that affects nearly everyone engaged in public life. Over the last decade, Kashmir has witnessed a significant and visible emergence of women journalists, entrepreneurs, activists, artists, influencers, and academics. This growing participation has rightly challenged the idea that women are absent from public life. Women today actively shape public opinion, influence discourse, and command large audiences across platforms. Social media has fundamentally transformed public discourse across the world. It rewards outrage, amplifies polarization, and encourages anonymity-driven abuse. International organizations, the United Nations, and numerous civil society groups have repeatedly highlighted online hate as a global challenge rather than one confined to any single gender. Initiatives by organizations working on digital rights and online dignity, including those operating in South Asia, recognize that online hate, harassment, and digital violence affect diverse communities and require universal standards of accountability rather than selective narratives.
An important issue in the broader debate is the selective engagement with Islamic principles in contemporary public discourse. While it is correct that Islam emphasizes individual accountability and moral responsibility regardless of gender, religious frameworks should be applied consistently rather than selectively. Islamic teachings constitute a comprehensive ethical system whose principles should be understood holistically rather than invoked only where they reinforce a particular argument. The author correctly notes that Islam emphasizes individual accountability and that moral responsibility before Allah is not determined by gender. That principle is well established. However, the article's broader application of Islamic teachings appears uneven, with a selective emphasis on certain aspects. This raises a broader methodological concern. When religious frameworks are invoked in public discourse, they require consistent application rather than partial deployment in support of pre-existing arguments. Islam is not a collection of isolated verses that can be quoted selectively to support contemporary arguments. It is a comprehensive moral, ethical, legal, and spiritual framework, and a way of life. Intellectual honesty requires that anyone invoking Islam as an authoritative source engage with its teachings in their entirety rather than extracting only those principles that support a predetermined position.
This becomes particularly relevant when discussing feminism. Feminism is not a single, unified philosophy but a broad collection of intellectual traditions and social movements that have evolved over more than two centuries. Liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, postmodern feminism, intersectional feminism, Islamic feminism, and numerous other schools often disagree fundamentally with one another on questions of family, authority, gender roles, sexuality, religion, and social organization. Historically, Islam recognized many rights for women at a time when large parts of the world denied them legal and social recognition. It granted women rights relating to inheritance, property ownership, financial independence, consent in marriage, divorce under defined conditions, education, and legal identity centuries before many modern legal systems acknowledged similar protections. This historical reality deserves recognition when discussions portray gender justice as exclusively emerging from contemporary ideological movements.This is not to suggest that Muslim societies have always implemented Islamic principles perfectly.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp ChannelOn the contrary, many cultural practices have distorted or ignored Islamic teachings regarding justice, dignity, and accountability. Criticizing those failures is both legitimate and necessary. However, there is an important distinction between critiquing Muslims for failing to practice Islam and critiquing Islam itself. Conflating the two often creates more confusion than clarity.
From my own observations, I have seen situations where conduct that would ordinarily attract moral criticism was explained away when it involved particular individuals. I have witnessed religion being invoked not as a source of accountability but as a shield against criticism. These experiences reinforce a simple truth: principles lose their moral force when they become flexible according to personal preference or ideological convenience. This is precisely why the debate should not be reduced to simplistic binaries such as men versus women, conservatives versus feminists, or religion versus modernity. Such polarization obscures the real issue. It is also important to distinguish between Islamic principles themselves and the varying ways in which they are interpreted or implemented in different cultural contexts.
The widely discussed Physics Wallah incident mentioned by the author illustrates the complexity of public debates surrounding morality, religion, and gender. The incident generated intense reactions online, with many condemning the abusive and humiliating language directed at the student. Such abuse is unquestionably wrong and cannot be justified under any circumstances, but this pattern of selective accountability and ideological cherry-picking becomes explicitly clear when the author addresses real-world events. In her article, the author decries the brutal online trolling and humiliation the girl faced, framing the societal backlash purely as an exhibition of violent misogyny, character assassination, and selective male outrage. However, in defending the incident, the author selectively weaponizes modern feminist theories while conveniently omitting the foundational Islamic principles of modesty (haya) and the clear boundaries governing interactions between non-mahram men and women. By framing the public distress over this public violation of religious norms purely as an attack on "women's visibility," the author displays a profound intellectual double standard.
The public reaction in Kashmir was not born out of a desire to see a young girl humiliated; rather, it was an expression of collective social anxiety over the rapid erosion of cultural and religious values in public, institutional spaces. By justifying the physical interaction through a lens of westernized individual autonomy, and subsequently using selected Islamic teachings regarding individual accountability to target and silence the segment of society that questioned the incident, it illustrates a broader tension between appeals to individual autonomy and religious ethics. Any meaningful discussion should acknowledge both perspectives rather than privileging one while minimizing the other.
The author criticizes society for associating morality disproportionately with women, yet she simultaneously demands that society respect Islamic principles of equity while simultaneously excusing public departures from Islamic principles. This is not a defense of justice; it is the weaponization of faith to protect modern modes of individual visibility. And attempts to introduce nuance by arguing that class shapes how women are treated online, citing a modest food content creator from rural North Kashmir who faces trolling because she does not fit Instagram's bourgeois capitalistic aesthetic. While the intersection of class and digital visibility is a valid sociological observation, the author misattributes the root cause. Online toxicity is a structural feature of modern algorithmic platforms that monetize outrage and polarization, and it is not a unique conspiracy by Kashmiri men to discipline rural women. By framing every negative digital interaction through the singular, monolithic lens of patriarchal control, the author creates a false binary between "women" as a permanently oppressed class and "society" as an aggregate of male oppressors. The reality of Kashmir's digital landscape is far more complex and indiscriminate in its cruelty. There is no doubt that social media has become toxic for everyone. Male public figures, journalists, and young boys are doxed, threatened, and mocked daily without receiving institutional sympathy or op-eds decrying their gendered suffering. Many civil society organizations, such as Dignity with Difference in South Asia, are actively researching online hate. Their findings confirm that digital harassment is driven by political polarization, regional instability, and algorithmic design, not by selectively engineered gender dynamics unique to Kashmiri culture.
Anyone who demands accountability from society must also be willing to subject their own arguments to consistent scrutiny. When we oppose online abuse, we should oppose it regardless of gender. If we reject abuse and character assassination, we should reject it irrespective of gender, political affiliation, ideology, or religion. Kashmir undoubtedly faces serious challenges in its digital public sphere. Online hatred has become increasingly normalized. Public shaming has become a form of entertainment, and outrage often spreads faster than the truth. These are genuine problems requiring collective reflection. However, they cannot be adequately understood through a framework that selectively highlights certain experiences while overlooking others. Nor can they be solved by replacing one form of selectivity with another.
Kashmir does not suffer from a shortage of opinions. It suffers from a shortage of intellectual consistency. Public discourse cannot be built upon selective outrage, selective morality, or selective accountability. It can only be strengthened through principles that apply equally to everyone—men and women, public figures and ordinary citizens alike. Only when accountability becomes universal rather than selective can public debate move beyond ideological divides and contribute meaningfully to a more just, respectful, and intellectually honest society.

The author is an independent researcher, entrepreneur, development and public relations practitioner, political analyst, and State Head of the Academia Vertical, All India Professionals' Congress (AIPC), Jammu & Kashmir.