‘Honor’ killings shock Pakistan
“Honor” killings are nothing new in the Islamic world. Though nothing in the Koran sanctions the killing of women to protect some twisted sot’s definition of “family honor”, there have always been those willing to justify this brutal, backward, exceedingly ignorant phenomena in the name of Islam. In a world in which women are regarded as property, chattel to be bought and sold like virtually any other commodity, there are far too many, unbalanced, ignorant, and violent men willing to kill their own flesh and blood to avoid “embarrassment” or the besmirching of the good family name. Frankly, any family name that has to be protected by murder would hardly seem worth protecting.
The normal, every day, run-of-the-mill “honor killing” are objectionable enough, but when the murderous, unfocused rage of one DUMB@$$ is enough to shock a nation inured to “honor killings”, something clearly out of the ordinary has happened. Perhaps this will finally be enough to convince Third World hellholes like Pakistan that no country aspiring to be included in the company of civilized nations should tolerate “honor killings”. Those two words should never appear in the same sentence.
MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Nazir Ahmed appears calm and unrepentant as he recounts how he slit the throats of his three young daughters and their 25-year old stepsister to salvage his family’s “honor” — a crime that shocked Pakistan.
The 40-year old laborer, speaking to The Associated Press in police detention as he was being shifted to prison, confessed to just one regret — that he didn’t murder the stepsister’s alleged lover, too….
Ahmed’s actions — witnessed by his wife, Rehmat Bibi, as she cradled their 3-month-old son — happened Friday night at their home in the cotton-growing village of Gago Mandi in eastern Punjab province….
Bibi recounted how she was awakened by a shriek as Ahmed put his hand to the mouth of his stepdaughter, Muqadas, and cut her throat with a machete. Bibi looked helplessly on from the corner of the room as he then killed the three girls — Bano, 8, Sumaira, 7, and Humaira, 4 — pausing between the slayings to brandish the bloodstained knife at his wife, warning her not to intervene or raise alarm.
“I was shivering with fear. I did not know how to save my daughters,” Bibi, sobbing, told AP by phone from the village. “I begged my husband to spare my daughters but he said, ‘If you make a noise, I will kill you.”’….
Speaking to AP from the back of a police pickup truck late Tuesday as he was moved to a prison in the city of Multan, Ahmed showed no contrition. Appearing disheveled but composed, he said he killed Muqadas because she had committed adultery, and his daughters because he didn’t want them to do the same when they grew up.
He said he bought a butcher knife and a machete after midday prayers on Friday and hid them in the house where he carried out the killings.
“I thought the younger girls would do what their eldest sister had done, so they should be eliminated,” he said, his hands cuffed, his face unshaven. “We are poor people and we have nothing else to protect but our honor.”
Despite Ahmed’s contention that Muqadas had committed adultery - a claim made by her husband - the rights commission reported that according to local people, Muqadas had fled her husband because he had abused her and forced her to work in a brick-making factory.
So, in other words, it’s acceptable to murder a female child because of what she MIGHT do years down the road? What sort of contemptible DUMB@$$ thinks in these terms? What possible sense of “honor” can be restored by this sort of bloody rampage? How can ANYTHING justify the murder of a child?
What sort of people would countenance a system which allows women to be murdered by family members who feel it their duty to protect their family’s honor? And who are they to pass judgement and then serve as executioner? Though “honor killings” are, strictly speaking, illegal in Pakistan, there is little official effort to stop the practice.
Hundreds of girls and women are murdered by male relatives each year in this conservative Islamic nation, and rights groups said Wednesday such “honor killings” will only stop when authorities get serious about punishing perpetrators.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that in more than half of such cases that make it to court, most end with cash settlements paid by relatives to the victims’ families, although under a law passed last year, the minimum penalty is 10 years, the maximum death by hanging.
This is all well and good, but Nazir Ahmed is hardly alone in Pakistan. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has documented 260 reports of “honor killings” through the first 11 months of 2005, and that number is no doubt a mere fraction of the actual number of murders committed.
Yes, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may be an important American ally in Our Glorious Leader’s never-ending war against terrorism, but his government too often turns a blind eye to the brutal subjugation and murder of Pakistani women. Until Pakistan admits to this problem and takes serious action to combat the scourge of “honor killings”, it has no hope of gaining the respect of the civilized world. Too often, the Pakistani government tacitly condones the actions of murderous zealots and DUMB@$$E$ like Nazir Ahmed. Until that changes, Pakistan can only hope to be accepted as a full member of the international community.
WOMEN ARE NOT PROPERTY….
