In Pakistan, Those Who Cry Rape Face Jail — These nighmarish situations that evolve from Islamic laws are getting worse and now they want to implement Shar’ia in Iraq.
In 2002, Bibi catapulted onto the world stage when a court in her native Northwest Frontier Province sentenced her to stoning by death under Pakistan’s controversial Hudood Ordinances, which effectively equate rape with adultery. Despite Bibi’s repeated charges that her brother-in-law had raped her on multiple occasions, the presiding judge convicted her of zina (adultery).
As is common in such cases, nothing happened to the man involved.
Promulgated through presidential decree by former military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979 as part of his Islamization program to deal with a spectrum of sins ranging from theft, to false accusations, to adultery, the Hudood Ordinances are a volatile mix of Islamic decrees and Pakistan’s secular laws and are part of almost every court’s legal arsenal.
Those aligned with the clerics argue that the Hudood are God’s law and term any tampering of them un-Islamic. “If there are any problems, it is with poor work by judges, lawyers or the police, not with the word of God,” says Khurshid Ahmed, member of the six-party religious alliance United Action Forum.
Up to 80 percent of the 2,000 women now in Pakistani jails are facing charges related to the Hudood Ordinances
related links:
Gulf Daily News
Rapists freed
Certainly, Islamic law plays a role in this but probably the bigger reason is a medieval view of women.. that they are property. Islam doesn’t have a corner on that!
That being said, it is horrible in Pakistan. It can be horrific for women. Especially in the rural areas, if a women is sexually victimized (or even accused of it!) then she has shamed her family for being a “hussy” and, often, her own brothers will violently turn on her. Every (well educated) Islamic scholar that I know of says there is no basis in the religion for this. It’s a cultural thing, even if the locals think is religious.
Pakistan’s “Islamization program” was of course sponsored by American government’. How would then “freedom fighters” (or terrorists in today parlance) come to Pakistan to fight the Soviets?