Nicholas Kristof on gang rape in Pakistan
Ginny blogged an op-ed piece from one Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, on a lady he met in Pakistan while in some way helping to find Osama bin Laden. The lady in question is Mukhtaran Bibi, who was sentenced by a "panchayat" or impromptu local meeting (or kangaroo court) to be gang-raped by a group of local thugs for some petty infraction by her brother against the local caste code. The victim was expected to crawl away and kill herself, as past victims have done, but instead the incident was brought to light, she received compensation from the government which she used to start a school, and the people responsible are now on death row.
Kristol calls Pakistan a "conservative Muslim society" which expects victims of this kind of attack to kill themselves. Of course, Islam absolutely forbids suicide and there is a severe (and everlasting) penalty for anyone who dies this way. Islam also has no truck with kangaroo courts and rape – surely everyone knows what Islamic law does to convicted adulterers, and adultery does include rape. These people also know that there are penalties for heresy, which includes the idea that adultery (and rape) are acceptable when a bunch of your elders tell you to do it. And there is no "rape penalty" in Islam.
Perhaps he wasn't listening when the original story broke, but this incident was actually brought to light by the imam in a neighbouring village! A local man who was disgusted by what had happened decided to go to the next village to pray on Friday, and he told the imam.
The issue here is the Indo-Pak caste system, which affects people of every religion in India. The Indian system is more entrenched and supported by some sects of Hindus, who regard some classes of people to come out of the head of Krishna (or is it Brahma? it's one of them) and others to come out of his shoulders, and some out of his feet, and this sort of thing. In Pakistan it tends to take the form of "biraderism", in which classes of landowners (Rajputs) and farmers (Jats) both think they are better than each other. (There are other biraderis besides these, by the way.)
And the problem doesn't end when they leave Pakistan. The BBC did an investigation into biraderi politics in the UK, which actually go on in mainstream political parties including the Labour party. Many members of the Rajput and Jat groups will not vote for a member of the other group – they will prefer to vote for a non-Muslim white candidate. The candidates who get put up are often elders whose names are well-known.
Among the abuses which were reported is a clan elder contacting an official of Pakistani origin, and pointing out that none of their biraderi were magistrates and maybe it was time to fix that, and a Kashmiri elder visiting the UK and visiting three constituencies where members of his biraderi were standing for different political parties, encouraging the local biraderi members to vote for them!
The attitude of the unrepentant local "matriarch" in the report is actually a directly anti-Islamic attitude; she scorned a woman who attempted to do some good in her village when she could have kept the money for herself, because she is of "low status" which is even lower now that she has been raped. Of course, this kind of status has no real value in Islam (except for purposes like suitability in marriage, according to some authorities). There were those who rejected the Prophet (sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam) because they did not see him as sufficiently high-status.
