Continuing my series of posts about women’s rights, I’d like to point out that rape and the threat of rape is a huge problem for women everywhere, especially in the third world. In fact, the word “problem” doesn’t even really sum up how terrible many women’s lives are made by rape, violence and other abuse.
Via Feministing I came across this disturbing report from Pakistan:
A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood “marriages”.
The women, who are cousins, were married in absentia by a mullah in their Punjabi village to illiterate sons of their family’s enemies in 1996, when they were aged from six to 13.
The marriages were part of a compensation agreement ordered by the village council and reached at gunpoint after the father of one of the girls shot dead a family rival.
The rival families have now called in their “debt”, demanding the marriages to the village men are fulfilled.
The case is becoming a cause celèbre in Pakistan, pitting tribal mores against a group of modern-minded, educated women. Amna Niazi, the eldest of the five at 22, is taking a degree in English literature, while both her sisters want to attend university.
Their fathers are supporting them and have refused to hand them over, leading to a resumption of the blood feud, with two relatives shot recently and 20 people arrested, while promises of further retribution and murder abound.
In addition to the sentence on the women, the village council has sentenced to death Jehan Khan Niazi, the father of three of the women, and the fathers of the other two for failing to honour the supposed bond with men whose identities they are not even certain of.
The women have said they will commit suicide if their fathers obey the council.
Speaking at their home in Sultanwala, a remote cotton and sugar-cane growing village, Amna said: “It is a great injustice that should be ended. Why should we pay for a crime committed by someone else? We will commit suicide if it happens. We would be treated like animals by them. Our misery would never end as this is just another way of using us as tools in the feud.” None of the women has so far been able to marry as their childhood “marriages” hang over them.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the “barbaric custom of vani”, - the tradition of handing over women to resolve disputes - and called on President Pervez Musharraf to enforce a ban.
Last year a three-year-old girl near Multan was betrothed to a 60-year-old man in a similar settlement. The case led to parliament passing a law banning vani and honour killings, but it has been widely ignored.
The case of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman whom a village council ordered to be gang-raped for an alleged offence committed by her brother, has also reached international attention.
The Daily Telegraph was granted access to the young women, despite Mr Niazi’s fear that the village will further condemn him for being “un-Islamic” by allowing his daughters to be photographed, albeit with their faces covered by veils.
Amna, who hopes to become an English lecturer, said: “We are proud of our father. Despite having little money, he has educated us and shown us that we must stand up in society and demand our rights.”
She is studying at a college affiliated to the university of Lahore, while her sister Abida, 18, is applying to study medicine, and Sajida, 15, is still at secondary school.
The other girls, Assia, 20, and Fatima, 16, are the daughters of Mr Niazi’s brothers.
“Only a few of my friends know about this,” said Abida. “But those that do support us and say we are fighting for the oppressed women of Pakistan.”
Mr Niazi, who is a government accountant, was candid about the cause of the feud. “My brother murdered one of our neighbours after being shot at. But it is complicated, they had already insulted us by making indecent remarks to our girls,” he said.
He added that his family had already paid blood-money to the aggrieved party. “I have refused to give into the council’s request as it is un-Islamic. I cannot hand over my girls like goats to marry these illiterate boys,” he said.
The whole situation, from the blood fued to the marriages to the call for the girls to be raped, is horrible. The Mr Niazi is to be commended for standing up for the rights of his daughters and nieces, for helping them become educated, and for treating them like humans rather than chattel.
For more information on women’s rights around the world, Amnesty International has some disturbing but not surprising information.
How does this fit in with the Left’s support for Muslim rights, and its opposition to imposing Western ideas on foreign populations?
How does this fit in with criticism of The Left for not addressing issues facing women in Islamic societies?
*and a big fat cuddle, for ya*
So what you’re saying is EP, you believe all Muslims are rapers of small girls and that not raping small girls is purely a western ideal that we might “impose” on other cultures?
I guess Mr Niazi might have a differing opinion to you.
Mohammed himself married a six-year-old girl, although to be fair he waited until she was nine before having sex with her.
The Koran repeatedly states that a woman is worth one-half of a man.
A woman who is raped must produce two male eye-witnesses to prove it, otherwise she will be stoned to death for adultery.
All of these are recognised as official Islamic tenets. Some elements of Islamic culture, such as forced marriage, ritual gang rape, and “honour killing”, have been imported into our society via immigration. Yet anyone who criticises Islam or unchecked Muslim immigration is branded a racist.
Furthermore, when Bush invaded Afghanistan and overturned the fundamentalist Taliban, he was condemned as a warmonger. Many people hate the West and its leaders so much that they support Islamic fundamentalists in their attacks on our people.
This is a serious problem for the Left. Its commitment to multiculturalism and anti-imperialism is not compatible with its commitment to feminism and gay rights. When will the big split come?
EP says
1) The Vani custom is not part of Islam.
2) The law was passed banning this by the Pakistan government to prohibit it, not by THE LEFT.
3) This is supporting the rights of Muslims.
1) The Vani custom is a consequence of the devaluation of women in Islam, as is the custom of female genital mutilation.
2) The Pakistani government is a dictatorship which was imposed to prevent the election of a fundamentalist Muslim government. If Islam had prevailed, it is doubtful that the Vani custom would have been outlawed.
3) Islam does not support the rights of women. The religion places strict limits on women’s rights both in scripture and in practice.
Don’t you love how pussums there has all the “data” at his fingy-tips?
Rape happens in first world: Kitten Little blames women.
Rape happens in third world: Kitten Little blames Islam.
For those readers who don’t have the blinkers on and may, on the off-chance, believe EP for a micro-second, neither rape nor female genital mutilation are Islamic practices. As you were.
I don’t want to derail this discussion, so forgive me if I go slightly off-topic. I’m not sure how much work has been done by the sociologists here on crime and ethnicity, but it seems that in Australia there is quite a strong link between enthnicity and the type of crime committed. Go to austlii http://www.austlii.edu.au/ and check out the various State Courts of Appeal, or Court of Criminal appeal. You can usually make a pretty safe guess at ethnicity from the name of the accused/appellant. My (brief and unscientific) survey indicates:
Muslim/Arabic name - preponderance of violent sex crime;
Chinese/East Asian name - drugs, often heroin, sometimes with attendant violence;
Vietnamese name - ditto, or gang-related;
Hispanic name - drugs, often cocaine importation
Anglo-Celtic name - a panoply of crime, but often methamphetamine manufacture/distribution.
The results will be skewed somewhat because often only initials or other code-names are given in sex-crime cases to protect the identity of victims, or where perpetrators are entitled to anonymity. Results may also reflect current policing priorities. It is also unscientific because it only makes use of appeal decisions, and the decision to appeal has many variables. I don’t have an axe to grind here, but I have noticed this correlation in the course of unrelated research and have not read anything scholarly to explain why a surname yields fairly predictable results. Chinese names, for instance, rarely feature in violent sex crimes. If anyone has some material on this, please cite.
I can understand why the family of the girls are shooting the other family trying to enforce their “marital” contract.
Haven’t you heard of Uncle Toms and Aunty Safias EP?http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK24Ak01.html
What’s worse:
a) Being treated like a goat by a brown man?
OR
b) Being a sock puppet for a certain white male president who shall remain nameless?
RWDB multiple choice detection test question 101. Careful how you answer now or they’ve nailed ya.
Here’s >a selection of cites for you, Lord Cardigan.
Gang rape is commonly used in Lebanon, Pakistan and the Sudan as a means of enforcing conversion to Islam, or obedience to the tribe. We’ve seen some backwash of this custom in Australia recently.
Link not work, eepers.
Sigh. That didn’t take long.
I can’t see this conversation going anywhere productive so I’m shutting the threads down.