Crime and Punishment
So, another village council in Pakistan is having some fun with the local female population.
A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood “marriages”.
Really…what can these people be like? I can’t entirely get my head around it. What can men be like who solemnly get together and decide that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed? Why don’t they embarrass themselves? Why don’t they sicken themselves and each other? I can understand how people can do horrible things in a temper – but this calm cold-blooded judicial-seeming official-like ‘decreeing’ business – this monstrous business of punishing other people – and weaker, more defenseless other people at that – for something done by different people entirely – it’s so brutal and disgusting and contemptible and just plain chickenshit one wonders how they can stand themselves. I mean, what’s the deal? A man does something, but they don’t punish him, because what? he’s a man and he might slap them, so they punish various women who have nothing to do with it instead, because the women won’t slap them, because they know they would immediately be torn into shreds and fed to the dogs?
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 [be] fulfilled.
Yes, well, that’s fair.
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…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.”
You know – sometimes I get a feeling that a lot of men in Pakistan don’t much like women.
This story has one unbelievable (or, sadly, too believable) horror after another.
The girls should be “abducted, raped or killed” for refusing to “honour” marriages, arranged, in compensation for the father of ONE killing a rival, when they were 6 to 13 years old, to men whose identities are not really known.
On top of this “the village council has sentenced to death Jehan Khan Niazi, the father of three of the women, and the fathers of the other two”.
I can comprehend crimes committed, in cold-blood or hot, for gain or retribution. But, as you say OB, I just cannot comprehend these decrees which, in the name of some perverted idea of “justice”, encourage greater crimes and inflict them on the innocent.
Merde!
I don’t want to try to explain or understand any of this, except to say it is the work of studip, evil people.
G. Tingey – though I would accuse village elders of this particular persuasion of many things, buggering pigs isn’t one of them.
Anyway, the reasons behind all of this seem easy to understand to me. Either you violently terrorize the female population, or any patriarchal structure will fade within a decade. You noticed that the bridegrooms here were illiterate, while the women were in the business of getting educated? I would fancy that in many ultra-patriarchical societies, the men are too used to being pandered to and fawned over, being little princes – and thereby never really grow up as responsible adults. The girls understand they have to fight to get ahead, and take any chance they can get.
Apparently there’s villages in Albania where the entire male population spends its days cowering behind closed doors because of bloodfeuds – they’d be shot if they venture outside. So, the women actually do all the work. Perhaps in a similar way WWII helped women’s emancipation in the West, they will be loath to leave their new positions once the feud’s over.
Disgusting as this is, it’s a sign of weakness. To perpetuate these power structures, the demented village elders in question not only have to close all doors to the outside (globalization here is helping women) but also subject half the population to abject terror. It won’t last.
Considering that most of us know people who pay to eat pigs, and perhaps some who actually kill them, why is buggering them so bad?
Hey, I didn’t say it was bad. It’s just not my kink. But it’s something I can hardly see deeply traditional muslim village leaders doing.
My comment was more directed at G. Tingey. But you know, not so long ago, people couldn’t imagine deeply traditional catholic priests molesting little boys, but now we know better.
This is not really a story about Islam per se, though there is no doubt some near illiterate village elder will wave a copy of the quran he’s either never read or does not understand, shouting, “but it is all in here!”
It is about illiteracy, rural isolation, feudal despotism, clan warfare, deeply-held misogyny due to the patriachal set up (which Islam certainly does not encourage anyone to question, I concede this)and so on. Like Merlijn noted, the very fact that we are reading about this particular story means that the traditional tribal DIY justice set-up in that part of Pakistan is under stress. Luckily the girls have got to the media before the rape, kidnap etc and likely will receive help in relocating or in resolving their problem to some extent. Not ideal, but not that bad, by Pakistani standards.
In fact I will even go so far as to say that the girls’ fathers seem a tad more enlightened than the norm, allowing the girls access to tertiary education and standing up for them against the demented village council, despite the threat of death. In a culture that tacitly condones honour killings by one’s one family, that has to count for something.
No, I don’t take this to be about Islam. It’s about isolation above all, is my guess. So when bores and fools of the Madeleine Bunting type drone about urban alienation, we know what to think.
typo alert: I meant one’s own family…
Ah,the madeleine buntings of this world. Truly a species unto themselves.
Well, she has a lot in common with Baudrillard, we find. “Freedom? What freedom? Freedom to buy this car and not that one?” Quel idiot.
Ophelia,
I must confess I had no idea whatso ever who this Baudrillard geezer was and after having read the NYT article you linked- it was hilarious, much funnier than bunting anyday- I don’t think I missed much.
‘What we want is to put the rest of the world on the same level of masquerade and parody that we are on, to put the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful. It’s a game.’
It is the matrix-lite explanation, isn’t it?
I had the feeling the whole interview was some cheeky parody of a french intellectual/philospher…
Mirax,
Oh, you bet – Baudrillard is key to the Matrix. (Baudrillard himself could be considered Berkeley-lite, or Hegel-lite.) I think there’s a shot of a book by him in the movie somewhere. He’s way trendy. All those trendy geezers are hilarious – as Ken says in t’other thread.
Oh, I am way beyond trendy when it comes to the matrix like discussions since i have seen about 10 minutes of each movie in all.I did not actually realise this guy was the guru to all the Neo-wannabes of our time.
It is not really a new idea- not of you are a hindu(all the world is maya kinda crap).
OB
“Bunting”: Asserting the existence of choice where it does not lie, whilst sucking a lemon and sitting on a pile of cash ?
Rather weirdly I would like to defend the Matrix as a philosophical film. I thought of it as an updated version of Plato’s cave rather than a version of Baudrillard’s crap, shallow pseudo- intellectual triviality.
Not weird. TPM for instance has an online game that takes the Matrix seriously. That’s sort of what I meant, or what I would have meant if I had taken the time to say it more carefully. And I’ve only seen a few minutes of it myself (got bored quickly) so wasn’t dissing it, was only dissing Baudrillard. Am I right about the shot of his book? Or is it someone else’s book. Or perhaps you don’t remember.