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.