Today, respect for women no longer exists
From Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin, pp 69-70.
“A typical case was related to me by Deputy Police Superintendent Farkander Iqbal…the chief of an all-female police station in Lahore, which was set up to handle only crimes against women.”
Iqbal tells about a sixteen-year-old girl, Rahina Jasnin, who was married to an unemployed laborer and whose in-laws complained that her dowry was too small. They beat her; she screamed; the neighbours heard the screams, but did nothing. Rahina gave birth to a daughter, and was beaten because it wasn’t a son. One night she woke up to find her mother-in-law holding her down.
“Her husband poured kerosene over her and then ignited it…When it was over, Rahina’s in-laws, thinking she was dead, took her to the local hospital and reported she had killed herself. But the young woman, who was burned over ninety percent of her body, lived for two more days. Before she died, she spoke about what had happened to her…’The local police dropped the case,’ Iqbal told me…’You find male police officers siding with the men under suspicion…We see ten to fifteen wife burnings a month at this location alone.'”
“Pakistan is very different today from what it was twenty years ago, according to Iqbal. ‘Before, crimes against women were relatively rare. If a man misbehaved himself toward a woman, he was promptly dealt with legally and society ostracized him. Today, in Pakistan, respect for women no longer exists, and crimes against them have increased dramatically. They claim to have “Islamized” us,’ she says derisively. ‘How can you Islamize people who are already Muslim? Ever since Zia gave power to the mullahs, it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.'”
I am lost for words I mean what can you say about people that would set fire to the mother of their grandchild?
I’ll have to file this one under the “So utterly incomprehensible that I can’t really process it so I’ll just sweep it under the mental carpet” category, where, horribly enough, it will join so many similarly categorized posts and articles.
“it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.'”
The newspaper articles stated that women are minors all their lives, and need male guardians to run their affairs and keep them on the straight path.”
Another said,
Women are so deficient they are only capable of cleaning, cooking, and serving members of the family. ‘They possess a physical makeup suitable only for menial tasks.
In return for these services, a woman’s remuneration will be that she is fed, given shelter, and clothed.’
A third read,
It is permissible to beat a woman if’ she disobeys her husband’s instructions. Beating does not hurt a woman’s dignity. “This is impossible, because woman is born without dignity.”‘
They claimed women go crazy when they have their period, and they also said that the fact that women love their children is a sign of their weakness.
http://www.dhushara.com/book/zulu/islamp/good/price.htm
They talk about ‘weakness in women’, yet in saying this – has one of them – I wonder, ever suffered a haemorrhage in the course of begetting a child?
Men, in this respect, have a very easy time. It is a man’s world. And it is their to smite the one’s who have to bear all the physical pain.
Vulnerability stinks!
Q: How do men (some) keep women (some) on the straight and narrow path?
A: Quite simple really. Men (some) just burn women (some) alive and thereafter as a result they become no bother to men (some) at all.
While men (some) are doing the job above some others are kept busy kicking the
bejasus out of them. Beheadings. Choppings. Honour killings. Torturing, Sati, you name it, they do it.
Gender cleansing which is systematically the wiping out of the female population is exactly what is occuring.
This is genocide.
Why are more people not talking about it?
Why are world leaders not declaiming it?
Why is there not visible the shock, the fury, the sadness that usually accompanies any mass murder?
Why is it important only to a handful of academics and development workers?
So asks a human rights journalist.
When they are not busy doing the above this is what the thugs resort to doing.
The brutality is never-ending in these third world countries.
http://www.themuslimwoman.org/ –
It should have read, >’occurring’< Am always 'losing it' with these wretched r's. “Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh” I signed the petition over @ B&W News Quarters. It is so utterly frightening to think what may occur to this young student. His life is in the lap of the Gods’.
I think OB has linked to Soumaya Ghanoushi’s piece on the Guardian blog stating that western feminists’ critiques of Islamist misogyny are merely stalking horses for western imperialism… ?
Depressing.
@ Nick S.
I couldn’t agree more.
Interestingly, since the Guardian implemented reader comments we’ve been able to read the thoughts of its readers (of the online version anyway) as well as its writers, and I’ve noticed that in many cases the former are not nearly as ideologically stereotypical and predictable as one might have expected (although I confess I haven’t seen the post you refer to).
If so, who’da thought it? Political and academic dogma brought to heel by the simple mechanism of the blog comment.
But that’s not how you worded it, is it.
Anyway it’s not the commenters who banned you, it’s the editor or editors.
@ Roger Lancefield
– CiF ? I sort of agree, but I do find it tends to get incredibly polarised between a rabidly neocon, vehement pro-Israeli group and a sort of subaltern / postcolonialist / Chomskyite school of people who seem to simply mistrust our core concepts of democracy, universal rights, etc… which means that the noisiest critics of the likes of Ghanoushi, Seumas Milne can come out with some similarly, or even more, reactionary stuff…
there are occasionally some hidden gems of erudition and compassion among the dogma though… One guy (?)RameshN, posts really well on this area.
Roger, Nick – I think it is clear that the very vocal rightwing group on CiF are not regular Guardian readers in any useful sense.
They are simply hanging out on what they regard as a discussion board for the purposes of baiting those liberal Guardian reader types they so despise.
PM Or they may just be Guardian readers that disagree with the veiws expresed by a large number of other Guardian readers? is it baiting to strongly diagree with someone Peter Tachell does it all the time on c.i.f is that baiting.I think the point Mr Tingey is making is that disgusting anti semetic comments are left up (because its free speech) but comments about islam that are negative are deleted because they are aledgedly racist.Mr Tingey says that on several ocasions he has tried to post a comment about islam being a violent,misogenystic religion and on every ocasion they have been deleted.
Obviously I can’t comment on whether the CiF posting policy favours anti-semitic over anti-muslim views because I’m not privy to the inner workings (but having just skimmed a few relevant threads I call bollocks on it). In the distant past I’ve noticed that the system could best be described as ‘capricious’, and I’m with OB on this one, based on his previous behaviour I doubt GT was making measured relevant comments and just got censored by teh evul liberal moderators.
But I can say that the comments are filled with a large number of rightwingers – sure they might be _really_ representative of Guardian readers, sure they might be a particularly vocal _minority_ of Guardian readers – but much more likely is that they are rightwing trolls (this is particularly suggested by their pattern of posting). I occasionally read the Telegraph because it has ok news coverage, I’m sure rightwingers do the same with the Guardian, but they aren’t likely to spend their lives constantly posting the same old rightwing talking points in the newspaper comments.
They’re one of the reasons why I pretty much ignore CiF, because there’s no point trying to argue with the “subaltern / postcolonialist / Chomskyite school” (as Nick puts it) who I regard as misguided but potentially persuadable, when the comments are filled with people making outrageous reactionary rightwing statements just to provoke, there’s no point trying to have a discussion on topics from a left-liberal perspective when half the commenters are making points that wouldn’t look out of place in the Daily Mail.
It seems that you want an echo chamber rather than a discussion forum P.M.
Hardly. And why aren’t you off posting to Islamic extremist websites and postcolonial gender studies mailing lists instead of here?