Pakistan: Rape victim cannot travel abroad

Re: "Pakistan's opposition says that she is being prevented from travelling abroad because the government believes any such visit would hurt the country's image..."

Gee, do you think so?

She better run for her life, after all, getting raped is ALWAYS the womans fault, and that's a death penalty.
Plus it shames the family name, so that usually calls for a good soaking of kerosene and a match.

Now that's respect!

Nicholas Kristof writes about this today. He gets the facts right, as he does about Darfur. He is properly indignant.

But where he fails utterly is to relate the practices of Muslims to Muslim doctrine. In Darfur, for example, he has never begun to ask himnself "why" -- why does the government of Sudan support the Janjaweed, and why do Arab Muslims believe it right to massacre non-Arab Muslims? He may believe there is no particular reason, he may think they just felt like it.

Until he begins to study the tenets of Islam, the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam, he will not be a guide to anything -- but remain a mere reporter, one who may believe that having the right indignation is enough. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is all very well. But it isn't nearly enough. Not nowadays.

And needless to say, his comments over the past few years on Israel show that he parrots the party line on "two tiny peoples" and really has no idea about what underlies the relentless and unappeasable Jihad against an Infidel sovereign state within dar al-Islam -- the hapless, nearly invisible because so very tiny, state of Israel.

Hugh, I think you miss the point about the liberal habit of moral equivalence between religions. Remember, all politics begins with domestic politics. Foreign politics are nearly always a secondary consideration with most people - they are always more worried about what local powers, and local opponents, are going to do, and their attitude to foreign policy is to a very large extent determined by what they regard as desirable at home.

Liberals such as Mr.Kristof begin with an opposition to orthodox Christianity, or clericalism, or whatever you want to call it. They wish to believe the worst of it. Therefore the moral equivalence they draw between religions, and specifically between Islam and Christianity, is determined not by their image of Islam, as such, but by their attitude to Christianity. They begin with a conviction that Christianity is backward, oppressive, socially undesirable, negative, destructive; they therefore take Islam to be merely the demonstration of what "religion" - or, in some cases, "monotheism" - or even "Semitic religion" - does to mankind. In effect, they unconsciously use Islam as a stick to beat Christianity with.

It follows that, in a general sense, liberalism of the American kind - what I would prefer to call anti-clerical leftishness - cannot allow itself to recognize Islam as a thing apart. If it allowed itself to recognize that the differences between "religions" or "monotheisms" or "Semitic religions" are not only in degree but in kind, it would have to surrender what is to them the central issue, the struggle against Christian influence at home. Compared with this, any issue of Muslim cultural specificity must seem to them both secondary and distant, irrelevant to the great domestic issues they feel they face.

And from this, in turn, two things follow: first, that while individual liberals may be found to oppose Islamic crimes, or even - as in the case of our two lonely but motor-mouthed specimens, Giaour and KJ - Islam itself, this will never affect the mass of liberals; because liberalism cannot admit the specificity of Islam without losing a powerful argument against what they call "religious extremism of any kind" - by which they really mean the "religious extremism" they oppose at home. Second, even those of the liberal camp who can bring themselves to accept the essential difference of Islam will make less than ideal allies. Orthodox Christians and Jews, and even agnostic or atheist conservatives, do not lose or challenge any basic part of their world-view, explicit or implicit, by treating Islam as a thing of darkness; but liberals of this kind, well, the more they commit themselves to the struggle against Islam, the more they must demonstrate that they have not lost their appetite for the struggle against "religious extremism". The result we see on this blog, nearly every day: Giaour and KJ spending as much time opposing the views of the majority of posters, and even treating the rest of us as menaces barely smaller than Osama and Khomeini, as they ever spend in escoriating the real enemy.

As for Mr.Kristof, it is not that he cannot see the evidence of the essential criminality and difference of Muslim politics; he cannot. The more he justly attacks Muslim criminality here or there, the more he binds himself to show his even-handed opposition to all "religious extremism". If he did otherwise, he would challenge the heart of his views - and, perhaps more importantly, of those of his employers.

Why don't the do gooders of Amnesty go visit her in the land of the "spiritually pure and clean" What are they afraid of, after all Pakistan is the land where Islam the religion of peace reigns supreme.
Sarc/off

Paolo:

"anti-clerical leftishness" really is a pretty accurate description of what passes for liberal (ostensibly enlightned) though these days. Only problem, as Chris Hitchens might say, is that there is no "left" anymore, just slime like George Galloway, the Oswald Mosely of our time.

Paolo - Thank you. A very thorough analysis of the Liberals. Unfortunately, as you have pointed out, liberals have a solid grasp on media

The more he justly attacks Muslim criminality here or there, the more he binds himself to show his even-handed opposition to all "religious extremism". If he did otherwise, he would challenge the heart of his views - and, perhaps more importantly, of those of his employers.

Amnesia Int'l invited her.

Is Amnesia still good for something?

Excellent point Hugh. When I also noticed the article by Kristof I too was hoping that along with his notes on Sudan, this was part of a trend. You sent us straight on that.

Paolo; Very trenchant analysis. Here's a couple of interesting quotes by Giaour directed to a Christian two days ago:

"I think that monotheists are addicted to bloodshed, war, strife and disorder."

"It is idiots like you, that are responsible for liberals and leftist taking sides with Islam."

So much for personal responsibility!!!

William wrote...Why don't the do gooders of Amnesty go visit her in the land of the "spiritually pure and clean"..

Exactly. After all Muslims are peaceful loving people. What's that AI? You may be attacked if you visit her, or she may be killed by a mob if you try to visit? Nonesense. After all those peaceful loving Muslims in Gitmo... They have been so wronged. You said it, now go over to that lovely peaceful love shack of a country called Pakistan, and share the love!

Hugh-

The "heart on the sleeve" is fine, but the brain in the head is better.

(And a lot less messy.)

I'm no lover of organized feminism beyond suffrage and equal pay for equal work; but on this one, I will oudly scream that Pakistan is babarous towards women.

This (the gang-rape of a woman because her brother walked with a girl from another clan) does not strike me as a particularly Islamic thing - more like a Pakistani thing. The proper Islamic thing would have been to stone the brother and the girl he walked with, or (for more "liberal" kind of Islam) force them to marry each other.