Monday, April 25, 2005

The NW Frontier: Sharia versus Lust!

Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police chief of Badakhshan province in Afghanistan denied that a woman in Gazan village was stone to death for adultery .. wait, let me rephrase that … for alleged adultery.

Noori stated that because a woman had been stoned to death in the same village in the 1990s, when the Taliban was in power, people assumed it must have happened again. He rejected this notion, reminding reporters that under the new government of Afghanistan, the judges, not the people, should decide who was at fault.

However, Noori didn’t offer any explanation as to why the woman had been executed, purportedly by her father … or perhaps even stoned to death by the villagers, as was reported, before the Afghan judges had a chance to determine the allegation.

The alleged male offender escaped. I wonder whether the woman’s husband will demand 'revenge rape' which is commonly practised among the tribesmen of NW Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A couple of years back, village elders including those who judged the case raped an innocent woman on the basis that her young brother had an affair with an older woman. That was an example of how Pakistani tribesmen applied the law of revenge rape. It was subsequently revealed that the charge against the brother was a frame-up, a lie, and that her brother was actually sodomised by one of the accusers. It appears that Sharia, the rule of Islamic law in force in Pakistan and Afghanistan, didn't help that unfortunate woman or her brother.

I have no doubt the village elders, who judge such matters, will support the husband's demand, and may even … let me rephrase that … will certainly join in. Up there in the NW frontier, they don't let issues like facts, evidence or the Sharia, that they claim to observe and practise, stand in the way of some free nookie.

The saga of Muktaran Bibi, the rape victim, exemplified the lie of PAS, the Islamic Party of Malaysia, that adoption of the rule of Sharia will stop "endemic social decadencies and rampant injustices."

1 comment:

  1. This situation for the women in the affected countries is so, incredibly, harshly unfair. I don't know what to say any more. Years ago, I read a couple of books written by a member of a saudi arabian royal family, titled Princess. Read abt the revenge rapes, mutilation on the girls... jeez. still happening.

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