Blood debt women offered up for rape

[Thom Little]

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.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/22/wdebt22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/22/ixworld.html

[progressivebydesign]

1. Pakistan.. doesn't Bush praise them as one of our "friends"?

Horrendous. Women are treated like this in most countries to some degree. We are objects. That is just sick.

[Odin2005]

2. This is sick.

The sad part is there are many "cultural relativists" around who think this is OK. :puke:

[sam sarrha]

3. proof Allah is Merciful.. or whatever..

[bitchkitty]

14. Don't fault all of Islam for the crazy-ass fundamentals.

They don't all live in the Stone Age.

[ninkasi]

4. This is criminal

and sick. To support a society which treats women like this is nothing short of criminal. Do they all forget, when speaking of "freedom" and democracy", that women are human, too, and no less deserving of rights than men?

If Bush supportts this, then damn him to hell with the rest of them. He can issue some kind of half hearted objection, but if he keeps acting as if Pakistan is our ally, then he may as well kill the women himself. Damn all of these evil men to hell.

[corporatemedia]

5. A few hundred years ago, marriage wasn't much different...

in the "western world."

The glorious history of the of marriage is just one of the many reasons we have to protect the sanctity of that instituion.

But please let there be gay marriage. There is no reason that gay folk should be exempt from the misery that the rest of us endure!

[aquart]

6. Patriarchs are pricks.

I just love patriarchal 'religions.'

The Book of Judges ends with a similar settlement of a dispute.

[upi402]

7. religious fanatics are dicks, nutty dicks

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. Village Council =

Og and his cousins, Og, Og, Og, and Og. :eyes:
Fuckin' cavemen.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Islam it ain't

I don't claim to be an Islamic scholar by any means, but I'm pretty sure that this kind of thing is condemned by most Muslims. Like female genital mutilation and a host of other crimes perpetrated in the name of "Shari'ah", many Imams, Mullahs, and other Islamic scholars have written abou the un-Islamic nature of these folkways.

These inhuman practices usually long predate Islam. Human beings have been living in the hills of Pakistan for well over 75,000 years, which is a lot of time to accumulate both "ancient wisdom" and destructive notions.

Our own backwoods preachers often preside over quasi-pagan rites; the doctrine of Hell and the emphasis on being "washed in the Blood of the Lamb" are two such rites which came from the confluence of paleo-pagan practice and two metaphors in the Bible. The old Mediterranean European practice of a man hanging the blood-stained sheet of the wedding night for all the village to see that he had "fulfilled his duty" and had truly married a virgin is another "charming" practice that has nothing to do with Christianity, let alone paganism.

The "Old Ways" are not always steeped in wisdom and meaning. Some of them are just plain evil. There is always a justification for doing it, and it's always a bad one.

--p!

[BlueIris]

11. Thank you, Pigwidgeon. Islam is a religion of peace and fairness,

which does not condone these kinds of practices.

I really, really wish more allegedly tolerant, enlightened, educated individuals on this board would learn at least the basics of this rich, complex faith, (and those who embrace it) before posting anymore of the ignorant, bigoted crap I've read around here tonight. It's called cultural literacy, everyone. Look into it before you continue to make yourselves look like assholes.

[Psephos]

31. I really, really wish more enlightened moderate Muslims would speak up

and create social pressure against these kinds of barbarious acts.

Seriously, where's the Muslim outrage? The only change that's going to work is that which comes from within.

Peace.

[TheWraith]

34. Most religions are religions of peace.

It's the followers that are the real danger. Jesus said to love your neighbor, and somehow that got interpreted as "Kill all the queers." I'm all for religion, but I think that we should ban people from putting their own spin on it. If your deity/prophet/idol/role model didn't directly say anything about it, you're forbidden from having an opinion.

In any event, I can't say I'm surprised by this story. Northwest Pakistan is the dueling-banjo country of the eastern hemisphere: arguably the most knuckle-drag savage place on the planet Earth, ruled by people whose idea it is of fun to torment and mutilate others based on what the voices in their heads tell them is God's Will. If I had the people and the resources, I'd cheerfully go town to town and execute the leadership and anyone else who stood in favor of this kind of thing.

[ljaycox]

36. The problem I have...

with this: Where are these enlightened moderate Muslims? Why are'nt they out front and loud on this crap. We have religious nuts in this country, but religious non-nuts are calling them on it all the time and loud. I have been looking and I cannot find many straight, non-hedged loud denuciations of this kind of activity.

[PsychoDad]

13. Right on !

Well said. This isn't Islam.

Please see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5427622#5428193

Islam forbade forced marrage 1400 years ago.

[bleedingheart]

16. like all religions, it has been adapted to the culture of the region

just as Catholicism was adapted by the different cultures of Europe.

[smirkymonkey]

23. So why doesn't the greater Islamic society in which these crimes

are being committed protect these women or at least arrest and jail their murderers & rapists? As far as I know, at least in this country if some backward religious nut-jobs pulled something like this they would be tried and convicted under the law of the land.

[redqueen]

26. Because that country is run by nutbar fundies.

Just like we'll be soon if we don't secure elections here.

[bluedawg12]

30. Unless of course it's Utah, where polygamy and child brides

are ignored.

Recent thing on CNN ( I think) about this sect on the border of Utah and Colo., 14 year old girls are forced to marry 43 year old men.

The cops know, and are part of the sect.

The Atty. Gen. has bigger fishy to fry than human rights.

Ain't faith grand?

[PsychoDad]

33. The villages involved are remote.

Pakistan, like many countries in the region, is a land of extremes. Well educated and affluent people in the cities and and poorer and less well educated people in the countryside. The villages involved aren't just in the countryside, they are in the more mountainous regions.

The society as a whole does condemn this sort of thing, just as in America we condemn the childhood marriages that take place in parts of Utah and other remote regions where law enforcement doesn't have the will or resources to go. Not all of our own homegrown "religious" nut-jobs get convicted.

An example of this same mindset is a brave and wonderful Muslim Pakistani woman by the name of Mukhtar Mai.

Three years ago, Mukhtar Mai was brutally raped in her remote village in Pakistan, on the orders of her village elders because her 13 yr old brother was a little too friendly with a girl from another clan. What was her crime? Mukhtar Mai defended her brother in front of the elders, and she was much more knowledgeable of Islamic law than them. They decided to "teach her her place" by ordering her rape. But she would not be silenced, and after a long struggle Pakistan's Islamic supreme court convicted her attackers and sentenced them to prison and one to death.

The Pakistani government awarded Mai a sum equivalent to nearly 20 times the average annual Pakistani salary.

She could have moved away and started a new life. But instead, Mai used the money to build two local schools.

"Education is power". She stated, "People can be trampled on if they are not educated. But if they are educated they can fight back".

May she be a guidance to the next generation of Pakistani women, and may Muslim men learn the meaning of courage from her.

peace.

[smirkymonkey]

35. What a brave woman!

People like her bring hope to all oppressed individuals.

Thanks for the education, I appreciate it. Peace.

[niyad]

10. thank goodness the fathers are standing up for their daughters.

[Endangered Specie]

12. This well crosses the limit of my tolerance for extreme "cultures"

I hope every last pig involved in making that "sentence" dies slowly.

[Jersey Ginny]

15. Our country should speaks out LOUDLY against this shit

Instead we condone it with our financial support and silence. I am grateful not to live in that type of hell, however, where women have less value than goats.

[Megahurtz]

25. Yeah, instead we are forced to live in the country

that condones it with their financial support and silence!
Now that's fucking sick!:puke:

[bleedingheart]

17. The militant feminist in me says give those gals some flak jackets

and some automatic weapons so that when their prospective husbands and their families come to visit they can give them a real surprise...

but the bleedingheart in me says no...that is not the answer...

[Streetdoc270]

18. Blood Debt women offered up for rape (Pakistan)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=EPCRLO0OWMZNFQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2005/11/22/wdebt22.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/11/22/ixportal.html

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood "marriages".

-snip-
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.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Just disterbing.....

[...of J.Temperance]

19. Yes and instead of putting sanctions on Pakistan over this

Let's just sell them some more fighter jets and whatnot.

:sarcasm:

[Nite Owl]

20. It just gets me furious

when I think of all the rights that women have lost in the 'new Iraq'. We didn't bring real democracy there and things like this in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other places are what we should have been standing up for and we just ignor it.

[rodeodance]

21. but the WH thinks we have to nice to Pakistan!!!!

[superconnected]

22. Sick men but it's not this black and white in pakistan.

the artical states that pakistan itself has groups fighting this and the girls are trying to get college educations and their fathers won't hand them over.

---------
"The case is becoming a cause célèbre 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.

more...

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"

[smirkymonkey]

24. How sad when your only choice is to kill yourself or offer yourself

up for something worse? What makes these men such sick bastards?

[superconnected]

27. they are sick, but there are people there trying to change it.

Read the artical.

The people are calling on the prez to change it. The girl's fathers are refusing to hand them over. The problem is an undeducated town, nationally the gov appears to be outlawing what they are doing.

Interestingly these people aren't even sure of the mens names they're supposed to hand the girls over too but still voted to rape/and kill them. Barbaric and uneducated. I think the point of the artical is showing that the educated side of the country is trying to deal with the uneducated side.

How would you like the US to be known by freepers alone.

Okay, skip that. We are... Bad example.

[uniden]

40. so essentially

they either get married or lose a few male members of the family, and risk being raped. Some choice...

[PurityOfEssence]

28. Are there any more despicable people than some of our "friends"?

I can't think of any official enemies who are worse than the many assorted "friends". Can you think of any?

[Psephos]

32. I might put Iran on that list

They have this little problem about public execution of gay teens, you see...

Peace.

[NYC Liberal]

39. Our own Fundies would absolutely LOVE to bring that

here.

[jseankil]

37. North Korea /nm

nm

[madmark]

29. These are our allies; and they have nukes

[nickgutierrez]

38. Isn't it odd...

...how religious "fundamentalism" will always take up positions that are directly at odds with the teachings of the religion? No matter the religion, they always seem to gravitate toward absolute authority and brutal punishment for dissenters, and away from the positive aspects of the faith that draw people in to begin with.

[daleo]

41. The story is from the Telegraph

It might be true, but it is not a source I trust.