La vie en rose
Asked why she was serving seven years in jail alongside hardened insurgents and criminals, the 15-year-old giggled and buried her head in her friend’s shoulder. “She is shy,” apologised fellow inmate Zirdana, explaining that the teenager had been married at a young age to an abusive husband and ran away with a boy from her neighbourhood…Ostracised from her family and village, Saliha was convicted of escaping from home and illegal sexual relations. The first carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, the second 20.
‘Escaping’ from home. Escaping from ‘home.’ It was a home she was put into as if she were a parcel, or a prisoner; and in sane parts of the world, people are allowed to ‘escape’ from home if they’re miserable there. But in Afghanistan, you get up to ten years in the slammer for it. And of course twenty years for having sex with someone other than the man you were given to in childhood as if you were a parcel. Women in Afghanistan are treated like livestock.
Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah’s medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man…Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities’ right to convict victims of rape. “In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is,” he claimed. “I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today’s world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations.”
Yes indeed, and punishing women for being raped is just the way to put a stop to that. Because that of course will discourage men from raping women, because – because – because if they keep doing it eventually all the women will be in prison and there will be no one left to rape? Yeah that must be it. Anyway, note the stupidity of ‘whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is.’
Pushing her five-year-old son’s arm forward imploringly, Zirdana, 25, pointed to the festering wound buzzing with flies. The little boy was just two months old when his mother was convicted of murdering her husband, his father. Zirdana had been handed over to him at the age of seven, as part payment in a financial dispute. She gave birth to the first of her children when she was 11 and was pregnant with her fourth when her husband disappeared and she was accused of killing him. Her three older children were taken from her by her brother-in-law. “When I first came to jail I cried so much blood was coming out of my mouth. My husband’s brother told me he would give my children back when I came out of jail but he has become a Talib.”
She was married to a guy who tooks her as a form of currency, and who fucked her when she was ten if not sooner.
Earlier this year a report by Womankind, Taking Stock: Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, revealed that violent attacks against women, usually in a domestic setting, are at epidemic proportions – 87 per cent of women complain of such abuse, and half of it is sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced and, despite laws banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under 16. Many of these girls are offered as restitution for a crime or as debt settlement.
So for women Afghanistan is pretty much one big prison, run by sadistic rapist guards. How nice.
And an novel which really gave an imprimatur to all this nonsense was imagined to stir up sensitive Muslim concern! And what is more, as the report from Le Monde says, it’s been done before, avec ‘ni fatwa, ni fraca mais un debat constructif et passione…’ And Spellberg, being the responsible scholar that she was (tongue firmly in cheek) must have know (mustn’t she?) that that Aicha, la bien-aimee du prophete was out there. The story gets even words. What is it with scholarly morals in the United States, but especially about cultural oversensitivity?
Sorry about my poor proof-reading. Just have to say something more, though. This is one of the most frightening stories that I have read about the way women are treated in so-called Muslim countries. (I hate this language. Just as there should be no Muslim children, Christian children or Hindu children, etc., there should be no Christian countries, Muslim countries, etc.) Well, then, countries in which Islam is in the ascendent, and has illegitimate power over people’s lives. (And don’t kid yourself, if the pope or the ABC or any number of religious groups today had their way, they’d exercise similar kinds of power.) Not only are women jailed for being raped. (I mean, there’s no such thing as rape, right?) They are also used as trading goods. It’s unbelieveable. One 7 year old girl was given to a man in settlement of a debt, and when she ran away with a boy her own age, she is sentenced, not only for illicit sexual relations, she is also punished for escaping from her home!!!!!!!!! Home!!!!
Christ! Does it ever give you and urge to knock some heads together! (By the bye, there’s quite a good piece by Cath Elliott (“I’m not praying”), in reply to Julie Burchill’s breathless Christian feminist, Zionist, etc. inanity, in this morning’s Guardian.)
Realist says: (Independent comment)
“I have a Pakistani friend who told me that he was taught at the Mosque in the UK/Bradford (it was beaten into him as a kid by the Imam) that a women is a 2nd class (sub-human) on earth (even your family), only to become in heaven closer to God than the male (more worthy), a short life of suffering on Earth for eternity at Gods hand.”
Along with Realist- who asks “How do you `interpret`this teaching? I don`t know if every Muslim is taught this institutional abuse towards women” I also wonder if Muslim boys/men are truly aware that they are – to the last – denigrating women – because of the fact that it was by imams beaten into them (at some stage in their lives) – that women were mere nonentities.
“Sitting among the plastic flowers around his desk, where an optimistic United Nations scales of justice poster competed for space with images of Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities’ right to convict victims of rape. “In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is,” he claimed. “I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today’s world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations.”
Even against the background of the United Nations scales of justice poster this so called ‘high ranking” low-life officer, Ali, was still defending Islamic rules. Ali, like the rest of them, who are convinced women should be brutalised and imprisoned ought be rounded up and held accountable for condoning the rape & brutality of women.
Using the AIDSs argument to defend the atrocious actions of the authorities is absolutely despicable. Women do not give themselves AIDS. It is passed on to them by those monsters who rape them.
I am no scholar, but I’m reasonably familiar with how sharia works and these guys represent the key problem. Interpretation is all, there is no final arbiter. Your interpretation says nothing about the text, it says everything about you. And if you are the voice that strikes a chord with the men with the power, then that’s how it is. So if your judgement is that a rape-victim is a dirty slut deserving of punishment, that’s valid.
I have read mainstream sharia judgements on rape which have stated that the victim is without any guilt but that there will be a likelihood of family and socaial rejection as being ‘devalued’ in the marriage stakes, so that if a man steps up and marries a rape-victim, restores her standing and treats her well, he gets on the guest list to paradise.
Both interpretations are valid.
Anything is possible once you have a text which is both infallible and capable of interpretaion. It’s a really bad way of thinking, although it may once have been better than the alternative.
Paedophilia, the penultimate hate crime is so very easy to deal with – within the two monotheistic religions as clerics/clergy can hide behind Sharia/Canon law.
My god, what inhuman thugs. This isn’t a “culture”–this is a bunch of men terrorizing women.
“It is not just us pushing our ideas on to them.” So what if it is? Who is “them” anyway? The men who uphold this system of “justice” or the women who are doubly victims of it?
Don,
You say:
>>I’m reasonably familiar with how sharia works and these guys represent the key problem. Interpretation is all, there is no final arbiter. Your interpretation says nothing about the text, it says everything about you.>>
Is the text(where it exists, remember that S Arabian clerics do not work with a properly codified set of laws, for instance) really so independent of the interpretation that is made of it? Does the ‘4 witnesses to zina’ rule, that is a pretty standard requirement, not play a huge role in these grotesque judgements? Do not the texts – quran and hadith that are accepted widely – promote an overall view that marginalise and reduce women’s independence and even their legal status? From child custody to divorce to inheritance laws? Even to manner of dress that squarely place the onus of guilt on women for being sexually seductive?
>>I have read mainstream sharia judgements on rape which have stated that the victim is without any guilt but that there will be a likelihood of family and socaial rejection as being ‘devalued’ in the marriage stakes, so that if a man steps up and marries a rape-victim, restores her standing and treats her well, he gets on the guest list to paradise.>>
I am guinely curious to know where these ‘mainstream sharia judgements’ are from. It sounds a lot more humane than what sharia practice generally suggests. But it still objectifies the women as having to be rescued though she is completely innocent and it is the man who gets to be a hero on the fast-track to paradise. As always! Isnt the underlying mindset a cause for concern?
>>Anything is possible once you have a text which is both infallible and capable of interpretaion. It’s a really bad way of thinking, although it may once have been better than the alternative.>>
I am sorry but I think the qualification to your last sentence echoes too much the excuses I hear in ‘explanation’ of sharia. What is the ‘alternative’ that is so much worse than sharia? Apart from a complete breakdown of society and any semblance of law and order as happened in Somalia and maybe in Afghanistan, it is hard for me to envisage an alternative that is more arbitrary and cruel to women.
Janavir. Why isn’t it a culture? Men have been (and are doing it now) doing this for thousands of years. It is a very deepseated aspect of nearly every religious culture. And, yes, the men involved are thugs, but cultural ones.
mirax,
‘But it still objectifies the women…’
Absolutely, the nature of of the religion – probably of all major religions – makes that central. I agree.
My point was that people choose to interpret – or to accept an interpretation – according to their inclination. The system is inherently arbitrary and unjust, as you rightly say. It is barbaric, bloody and vicious when that is the inclination of those with the power. It can never be fair or just, but it need not be as vile as this example, unless that is what the men want.
I have no time or respect for religious interference in people’s lives and still less for theocratic legal systems and I consider that in our time islam is the worst offender in this regard.
However, perhaps because of my ingrained hostility, I may be a shade over-alert to claims that a particularly appalling case represents ‘moslems’. I have had far too many moslem friends, neighbours and colleagues who would be as disgusted as you or I at this story.
I am emphatically not suggesting that you ever do this, but there is a tendency to take an egregious example and say, ‘You see, that is what moslems want.’ Usually followed by mutterings about dhimmihood and sending people packing.
I appreciate that your own situation makes assertive islam a real and practical problem and I am (I hope it hardly needs to be said) utterly against any suggestion that sharia should be seen as anything other than a medieval hangover which one hopes will wither away.
As for the judgement I mentioned, I’m afraid I can’t track down the actual reference. I was engaged in a debate on PP after the AoC’s recent stunt about the inevitability of sharia and spent far too much time looking up fatwas to see what was actually being said. Most of it was irrational, much was bizarre but some was basic common sense. I’ll keep trying and get back to you.
The qualification in my last sentence just recognised that a bad system can still be better than the one it replaced. Or no system at all. it doesn’t make it a good system and times have changed. But the early chapters of Infidel give a persuasive account of how even this crude and unfair system is preferable to unrestrained tribalism.
“Ah, but it’s THEIR country, and their wonderful (religious) rules, and who are we to impose out hegemonistic Western moralising upon them?”
Their “liberators”, I think we were supposed to be…
There was also this piece of genius:
“I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today’s world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations.”
Um… how exactly does the *legality* of a sex act affect STDs?