Killers of women mostly get off the hook
Culture, illiteracy and male chauvinism have rendered Pakistani women a tool of male brutality.
Your editorial “Assault on women”, (July 16) provides food for thought for our thoughtless lawmakers – steeped in all forms of corruption, the most recent being fake degrees – to put their heads down and formulate laws to put an end to this gruesome practice of ‘Karo Kari.’
I would like to draw the attention of our religious leaders to Sura Nur, verse 6-10, which says if a husband suspects his wife and has no witness but himself he must then swear four times on the Quran that he is telling the truth and the fifth time he swears that if he is lying may the curse of God be upon him, and then witness God’s mercy in the following two verses.
God says, “But it would avert the punishment from the wife, if she bears witness four times (with an oath) by Allah that (her husband) is telling a lie; And the fifth oath should be that she solemnly invokes the wrath of Allah on herself if her (accuser) is telling the truth.”
After this there should be no ‘ifs,’ and ‘buts’ on Allah’s words of command and they must be followed to the last letter. However, after this it is obvious that the husband and wife must seek a divorce.
How many of us, so-called Muslims, are prepared to follow Quranic sayings and let the woman go scot-free. Whether it’s the husband, the police, the jirga or even our learned judges, they will all go by what their culture tells them rather than the Quran. And yet we call ourselves Muslim.
Women in Pakistan are killed on the smallest pretext without any justification and the killer invariably gets off the hook because of our system of justice.
Day after day, we read about instances of criminal injustice meted out to women, whether it’s the beating in public by the husband or brother-in-law; the stripping of a mother and daughter because their son/brother had fallen in love with the perpetrator’s daughter, or getting a hired assassin to kill their daughter because she was seeking a divorce from her cruel husband (Dr Sarwar case) are just a few examples of how we flout our Quranic injunctions without the slightest compunction just to assuage our inflated male ego.
Such men little realise that if the husband has been cuckolded, killing the woman will not wash away his tarnished image.
People will still speak and the whispering will continue even after the death of the husband.
But even far more worse is the curse of Allah and the perpetual burning in Hell for taking the life of a human being.
May God forgive me if I have erred, with a request to our religious scholar to set right what is amiss.
SARDAR AHMED SHAH JAN
Peshawar
Source: Dawn
Date:7/23/2010
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