What is conspicuously absent from this New Duranty Times article is any mention of the basis for the Hudood rape laws in Sharia law, and in the Qur'an, which specifies the requirement of four male witnesses in a revelation Muhammad reported he received in response to allegations of adultery against his favorite wife, Aisha (24:13).
Nor does the article mention Islam by name; only the mention of "hard-line clerics" offers the slightest hint that these laws weren't solely the brainchild of General Zia ul Haq, who enacted the Hudood Ordinance in 1979. To do otherwise would require speaking ill of Islam, and of Muhammad -- a cardinal sin against the dhimmi mores of mainstream media.
From the New York Times:
KABIRWALA, Pakistan -- Pursuing justice is not easy for a woman in Pakistan, not if the crime is rape. Ghazala Shaheen knows.
Two years ago, relatives say, an uncle eloped with a woman from a higher social caste. The revenge by the woman’s family was the rape of Ms. Shaheen, she and relatives charge, after a gang of men raided her father’s home and abducted her and her mother in late August.
It is not uncommon in Pakistan for women to suffer callous vendettas for the wrongdoings of their male relatives. That was the case for Ms. Shaheen, a 24-year-old from a relatively poor family who had nonetheless managed to earn a master’s degree in education. She says she wants to be a teacher.
Under what are known as the Hudood laws in Pakistan, a woman must produce four witnesses to prove rape. A failure to do so can result in her becoming a victim twice over, and being charged for adultery. The stigma alone is enough to keep many women from trying to bring their attackers to justice.
[...]
Ms. Shaheen recounted her ordeal at an uncle’s home in Kabirwala, a dusty farming town in the southern part of Punjab Province. It was not far from where she says more than a dozen men on Aug. 25 forced their way into the house owned by her father, who is a retired military police officer.
Some of the attackers were wearing police uniforms, Ms. Shaheen said. "‘Pick up the women,’ they shouted," she said. "They dragged me and my mother and put us on two motorbikes."
[...]
Ms. Shaheen said that evening at the police station that she had been threatened and harassed to keep silent about the ordeal by her attackers. A police official, too, told her not to mention rape, she said, and the police logged the case only as a kidnapping. "I was frightened. They threatened they would kill my father," Ms. Shaheen said, referring to the Miralis, who are a relatively well-connected family in the area.
[...]
Since then, Ms. Shaheen’s ambitions have been shattered, and it is she who suffers scorn for the rape. She says she feels helpless. The school where she was to teach has refused to accept her.
"They said they can’t accept me as it is a matter of their repute now," Ms. Shaheen said.
Catch 22 and the liberals on this site would probably say that she should have defended herself against gang rape because we can't do anything it for her. I understand there is a certain futility about telling mahomettens what to do. On the other hand does your moral instinct say you should do nothing? Or is it OK because this is mahometten on mahometten violence? Think about it as you come home from your places of worship this weekend.
Robert as always your comments are quite illustrative of the short-comings in our "free press". What a joke the vast majority of the print media has become.
Four men, INCLUDING or EXCLUDING the rapist?
If a second man also raped her, would this require EIGHT witnesses or SIX?
If the four men held her down, as men are wont to do, while the fifth raped her, is their testimony that a rape occurred valid or are they co-conspirators?
If there were four men willing to come forward as witnesses and swear they were there and saw the rape and knew it was illegal, why didn't they warn him, stop him, pull him off or were they scared to act, as Moslems tend to be, pre-emptively?
Am I being obfuscatory or are they?
Why am I talking to myself?
"Why am I talking to myself?"
Posted by: eliXelx
You're not. These laws are ridiculous and force one into similarly ridiculous speculations.
The requirement is four sane pious adult Muslim male witnesses to the actual penetration.
Obviously, any man saying he saw it runs risk that the case would fall apart due to one of the four's testimony being ruled invalid (having had their piety, sanity or vantage point refuted). Then it would appear that he (and the others) had falsely impuned the piety another Muslim man.
The men would also run the risk of being accused (by the perpetrator) of the act themselves, having placed themselves at the scene.
The whole thing doesn't make any sense anyway. The "four witnesses" came from Aishah being caught whoring around with Safwan bin Al-Muattal As-Sulami Adh-Dhakwani (The Truth About Muhammad, p.62). Note that it does not appear that the "accusers" met a good end.
How this formula became extrapolated to only rape and not other hudood crimes is appalling. It just goes to show the LOW status of women in Islam, as the immediate and sole focus is on the question of breach of piety by the woman. Then and only then is the piety of the perpetrator in question.
This is an incredible perversion of the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", whereby the "presumption of innocence" of the perpetrator requires the "assumption of guilt" of the victim.
Oh. I almost forgot.
Naseem? Care to comment, Paki muslima?
Is Pakistan a Staunch Ally or a Valuable Friend? I can never remember.
Why any woman is a Muslim is beyond me. Why one would actually convert to this crazy cult is even more mystifying. If a rag like the NYT can make this cult sound so awful one can only imagine how truly dreadful it really is. What a wonderful Stone Age culture this is-saying it's from the Dark Ages would be modernizing too much.
"Is Pakistan a Staunch Ally or a Valuable Friend?"
Posted by MontyRock IV
Thanx for the laughs! It's important to be accurate, of course. Actually its a staunch friend and a valuable ally.
Sigh! Such is the world of meaningless, shallow politically correct platitudes.
It's a floor cleaner! No, it's a whipped topping!
Wrong! It's both a floor cleaner and a whipped topping!
ISLAMSFORLOSERS wrote, "Why any woman is a Muslim is beyond me."
They are Muslim for the same reason the Fox reporters became Muslim: They would be killed otherwise. That's all that keeps 90% (minimum figure) of Muslims Muslim: the threat of death if they convert.
Never show any respect for Islam or any other "religion" that keeps its followers by threat of death.
Another story on the same topic:
In Saudi Arabia, the place where the Religion of Peace and Tolerance and Respect Toward Women was born, a young Saudi women in fighting off a would be rapist, killed her attacker.
She has been imprisoned for murder. She can, howver, be released if the family of her would-be rapist forgives her.
Link is here:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=88126&d=13&m=10&y=2006
Is naseem around? Maybe she can explain how sharia is so fair and just.
ISLAMSFORLOSERS wrote, "Why any woman is a Muslim is beyond me."
They are Muslim for the same reason the Fox reporters became Muslim: They would be killed otherwise. That's all that keeps 90% (minimum figure) of Muslims Muslim: the threat of death if they convert.
Never show any respect for Islam or any other "religion" that keeps its followers by threat of death.
Posted by: Scotfree at October 15, 2006 06:28 PM
It would be laughable if it weren't true.
I guess bombing them to the Stone Age wouldn't help, considering they've always been there.
guess bombing them to the Stone Age wouldn't help, considering they've always been there.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS
Got no problems with that. I don't mind really if they stone their women or saw each other's heads off or blow themselves up en route to the 72 houris. Trouble is, they want me to be like them.
Jay,
That article was horrific. The poor woman, she studies, or has to pretend to want to study, Islam all the livelong day, the very amoral system that created her suffering in the first place. I am reminded of something Ariel Sharon said - the middle east is an empire of lies.
Scottfree said
I don't buy that Muslim women want to live outside Islam. There was the story the other day of two burqa-clad students who tricked their non-Muslim classmate to go to a room with a bunch of waiting bearded Muslim men who wanted to gang rape her so she would be forced to marry one of the Muslims. There have been women suicide bombers. There is the "Palestinian" politician who became famous for praising her suicide-bomber sons.
If only 10% of the Muslims (by your calculation) are the "few radical Muslims", and the 90% "vast majority of moderates" are being held captive, then we would have seen a blossoming of freedom and democracy when we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Baathists in Iraq. We didn't see that. They had their chance to vote, and they voted to reinstate sharia.
Your opinion is common among some posters here, and among virtually all top government officials. But what are the statistical foundations for this belief that 90% of Muslims want to live in freedom and democracy? What makes you think they believe the same things we do, that they have the same goals as we do? What examples can be given of Islamic societies that overthrew the 10% of "radicals" and lived in freedom and democracy? There have been 1,400 years of history to use as examples, so how about just one or two examples?
This is a hard point for some to understand or accept, but Muslims are not Muslims because someone is holding a gun at their head. They get something out of it, the total regulation of life and thought. They believe it is the immutable word of Allah, that to not follow the Qur'an will lead them to an eternity of damnation. They are the religion of suicide bombers; they do not fear death, they fear being seen by Allah as not having killed enough infidels.
The Fox reporters you mentioned came back and repeated the lines that "Islam is the religion of peace". There is something motivating them beyond fear of death. There is empathy for the "poor downtrodden Muslims". There is reverance for "multiculturalism". There is an "Arabian Nights" fantasyland of the exotic and mysterious Arabs. There is a Machiavellian desire to play along in order to get access to Muslim news sources and interviews.
If we continue to build foreign policy on the assumption that 90% of the Islamic world is just like us and is being held hostage, things will not improve beyond the current levels of success.
lonewolf said
If, for some reason, I found myself walking into that room in Kabirwala Pakistan holding an Uzi, I wouldn't hesitate to solve the situation like a Hollywood action hero. Maybe I would even come up with some sardonically funny quote before I started shooting, like they usually do.
But how would the U.S. have stopped this woman from being raped in Pakistan? I mean, really. Should we have a Super Action Team (tm) flying around the world listening with their Super Auditory Sensors for any cries of "Help me, Super Action Team!"?
When you base your society on the teachings of the Qur'an, some bad things are going to happen. Understanding that is very important, because it teaches us why we should not base our society on the Qur'an.
It sounds like you are a person of faith, so it may just be difficult to accept that evil exists in the world; you want to end all suffering everywhere. I understand the sentiment. If a Muslim kills/rapes/attacks a Muslim somewhere in Hellholeostan, and I say it's none of our business, that we need to focus on protecting ourselves from the other Muslim killers, then you think I'm advocating for the side of evil. I'm not. It's called choosing your battles wisely.
Special guest's analysis is right on target. Muslims are NOT like everyone else. They may start out like us, if born in a western-style society or home, but they are subject to being ruined very quickly, and once they have gone bad there is RARELY any hope of rehabilitation.
I liken them to cucumbers. Once they become a pickle, they can never be a cucumber again.
Back when I was a police commissioner, my predecessor chillingly told me his philosophy: "Don't get mad, get even." That's precisely what this poor, revenge-raped muslim creature must do. Otherwise she will probably go crazy with depression, and may become suicidal.
I don't know how she must seek her own revenge, but she can do it. A silenced pistol may be too much to hope for, but it would be very effective, quick and clean. So would poison, maybe even an overdose of a date-rape drug, in itself an elegant balance of the parties. The trick is putting oneself in the right place, under the right circumstances, to (1) legitimately explain one's presence if detected too soon or avoid detection altogether, (2) conduct the assassination or maiming, and (3) make an unobserved escape.
This requires meticulous study of the target, and detailed planning. The final act is a cold and calculated pay-back. In the meantime she will have something to live for.
And the war goes on.