A pretty story from Afghanistan:
It was bad enough that the alleged rape took place in the sanctity of a mosque, and that the accused man was a mullah who invoked the familiar defense that it had been consensual sex.
But the victim was only 10 years old. And there was more: The authorities said her family members openly planned to carry out an “honor killing” in the case — against the young girl. The mullah offered to marry his victim instead.
Just gorgeous, isn’t it? The mullah said it was consensual – when the girl he raped was ten years old. And he’s a mullah. In a mosque.
Plus the bit about her family’s plans to kill her.
And it gets even more wonderful, because she was in a shelter, but this week the police took her out of the shelter and gave her back to her family – so that they could kill her easily, I guess.
The head of the Women for Afghan Women shelter here where the girl took refuge, Dr. Hassina Sarwari, was at one point driven into hiding by death threats from the girl’s family and other mullahs, who sought to play down the crime by arguing the girl was much older than 10. One militia commander sent Dr. Sarwari threatening texts and an ultimatum to return the girl to her family. The doctor said she now wanted to flee Afghanistan.
The head of the women’s affairs office in Kunduz, Nederah Geyah, who actively campaigned to have the young girl protected from her family and the mullah prosecuted, resigned on May 21 and moved to another part of the country.
The case itself would just be an aberrant atrocity, except that the resulting support for the mullah, and for the girl’s family and its honor killing plans, have become emblematic of a broader failure to help Afghan women who have been victims of violence.
Support for the mullah. How does that even work? Even in their terms? Why would anyone support the man while at the same time supporting the family’s plan to kill the girl? Are they thinking the girl raped the mullah?
Most of the anger in Kunduz has been focused not on the mullah but on the women’s activists and the shelter, which is one of seven operated across Afghanistan by Women for Afghan Women, an Afghan-run charity that is heavily dependent on American aid, from both government and private donors.
So…the raped girl is a kind of American by proxy, and that’s why they support the mullah?
Yes but then there’s that hole he punched in the wall of her vagina.
The accused mullah, Mohammad Amin, was arrested and confessed to having sex with the girl after Quran recitation classes at the mosque on May 1, but claimed that he thought the girl was older and that she responded to his advances.
The girl’s own testimony, and medical evidence, supported a rape so violent that it caused a fistula, or a break in the wall between the vagina and rectum, according to the police and the official bill of indictment. She bled so profusely after the attack that she was at one point in danger of losing her life because of a delay in getting medical care.
After the two women’s officials began speaking out about the case, they started receiving threatening calls from mullahs — some of them Taliban, others on the government side — and from arbakai, or pro-government militiamen. One of their claims was that the girl was actually 17, and thus of marriageable age, not 10.
And that fistula was totally consensual and legitimate.
Photographs of the girl that Dr. Sarwari took in the hospital clearly show a pre-pubescent child, and the doctor said the girl weighed only 40 pounds. Few Afghans have birth records, and many do not know their precise ages. But the girl’s mother said she was 10, and a forensic examination in the hospital agreed, saying she had not yet started menstruating or developing secondary sexual characteristics.
Well…maybe the mullah doesn’t see very well.
In the hospital room, the doctor found the girl’s mother holding her child’s hand, and both were weeping. “My daughter, may dust and soil protect you now,” Dr. Sarwari quoted the mother as saying. “We will make you a bed of dust and soil. We will send you to the cemetery where you will be safe.”
Even mothers here often believe that there is no choice but to kill rape victims, who are seen as unmarriageable and therefore a lifelong burden to their families, as well as a constant reminder of dishonor. “Their men feel they have to wash their shame with blood,” Dr. Sarwari said.
And last Tuesday she went back to them. She’s probably dead now – in her bed of dust and soil, safe in the cemetery.
Words fail. I am sickened.
This is impossible to fathom if you think women are even partly human. But if they’re not, if they’re some kind of chickens, for instance, it all makes sense. I mean, you’re not going to send your highly respected neighbor to jail over a chook, are you? Get real. And if it can’t lay eggs any more, what can you do except kill it, right? It’s no use.
(I’ve visited Afghanistan several times in the high and far-off days. I met people who could have helped their country out of the dark ages. Like Dr. Sarwari in the report, they’re probably all dead or gone now.)
Under Sharia law adultery is a capital offense. So why isn’t the mullah running for his life since he committed adultery?
Under Sharia law adultery is a capital offense
He didn’t commit adultery…the girl seduced him. /sarcasm
Sick, sick tribal culture devoid of any logic.
fuck…..
The mom wants to kill her not because she thinks she is unclean or horrible, but because she knows how much MORE suffering will come her way if she lives. This is the only way she can stop the suffering, death IS her only protection in such a barbaric society. Remember- there ARE fates worse than death, and marrying a man that raped you hard enough to cause a fistula at 10, then being forced to have his babies until it kills you, is surely worse.
I used to think moms that killed their daughters (in utero, at birth, whatever) in these cultures were cruel, but that is not it at all. Now that I have kids, I get it. These moms have lived the life of a woman, and they know how awful it is, and they know they cannot protect their baby from the any of the devastating realities of life as a female. Plus, any pain another man forces onto the girl (like this rape), will then make it harder for the rest of the family to survive, including any other kids they have.
If I knew my sweet daughter had to live the life of constant rape, beatings, terror, oppression and dire poverty, well, I would be thinking the very same thing. Yes, the killing of girls needs to stop. Yes, someone has to be the one to stand up and say no more, I won’t do it. But It is easy to be brave and say you would do different, when you are on the other side of the world. Facing the realities they are facing, well, don’t be so sure you would be so brave.
Until they change their actions as a culture, and start seeing women as human, this will never change. There will be sad story, after sad story. I wish all women could be removed to somewhere safe, and let the barbaric MEN live alone with each other.
(I am sure there are evil women too, ones that really buy the “unclean” nonsense, but MEN rule that society and make the rules, women do not. They are merely trying to survive.)
Thank you for that lecture but no one singled out the mother for blame. Rather the opposite. It’s pretty obvious that the mother has no good options. (The family as a whole on the other hand has the option of just cutting the daughter loose as opposed to taking her out of the shelter.)
Are the Muslims out in front of the mosques protesting about the way their children are being treated?
My guess: Not one picket line anywhere in the world.
The followers kill their own children for the sake of their religion, but dare not even shake a fist at the mullahs.
Fine people. Sincerely held beliefs. Religion of peace. Blah, blah, blah.
@staceyjw didn’t say that anyone singled out the mother for blame. She talked–movingly, I thought–about her own change in perspective regarding mothers in such circumstances.
The closest analogue in Western literature that I’ve read is the choice made by the mother in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
That was fiction. Fiction based in fact.
Sharia law. Biblical law. What’s the difference, they both promote the same behavior.
A ten year old child is dead and the mullah can look for a new victim. I don’t know what is worse, that the family was prepared to kill the child or that it was viewed as her disgracing the family.
> Sharia law. Biblical law. What’s the difference, they both promote the same behavior.
How many Christian, Jewish, Ba’Hai, Mormon etc. honor killings have their been this year? How many this last CENTURY?
Let’s see how Karen Armstrong and the folks at Salon rationalize their way into justifying, or more likely ignoring, this new sample of MUSLIM behavior.
This is animalistic degeneracy of unimaginable proportions.
johnthedrunkard @11, perhaps your information is less than exhaustive.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing#By_region