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Author Topic:   Rape law reform roils Pakistan's Islamists
AcousticGod
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From: Pleasanton, CA
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posted November 17, 2006 01:55 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
By David Montero, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Fri Nov 17, 3:00 AM ET

Putting an end to a skirmish but not to the longer battle, Pakistan's lower house of parliament voted on Wednesday to amend the Hudood Ordinances, the country's religious-based laws that govern rape and vice.

Before, women who reported rape were compelled to produce four male witnesses to the crime or face charges that they had committed adultery. If the law passes the upper house, it will replace that burden of proof, deemed both virtually impossible and misogynistic, with standard evidentiary procedures.

Wednesday's vote was a chance for lawmakers to show that secular law trumps religious edict in Pakistan. But this small victory for secularism comes only a day after provincial legislators in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a stronghold of conservatism, passed a bill establishing an Islamic accountability bureau - a kind of vice and virtue squad with analogies to the Taliban.

The bills passed this week promise to reheat the existential debate about what Pakistan stands for and how it projects itself to the world: whether it is driven by "enlightened moderation" or the tenets of religious conservatism.

Even the national assembly's progressive sex crimes bill, officially known as the Women's Protection Bill, came with caveats. Pakistan's minority religious parties managed to squeeze in an amendment making sex between unmarried persons a criminal offense.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's treatment of the amendments to the Hudood Ordinances exposes his waning commitment to secular reform at a time when religious parties are becoming one of his pillars of support, analysts say.

"This is a major compromise on the part of the government," says Farzani Bari, director of the Women's Study Center at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. "They want to sleep with the strange bedfellows of the mullahs. It is women who will suffer."

Rape is already a common tool of revenge and settling tribal scores in Pakistan. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated in 2002 that a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.

The Hudood Ordinances were adopted in 1979, when a clutch of Islamic clerics argued that such austere laws stem from interpretations of divine precepts in the Koran that adjudicate vice and virtue-related offenses, including rape and adultery. Pakistan's then religious-minded dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, bolstered support for the laws.

Activists and Islamic scholars have argued ever since that the Koran contains no such dictates. Their movement to repeal Hudood has driven forward in fits and spurts over the years, peaking this summer after a ground-breaking television series brought the issue before the wider public.

The series helped push the debate into parliament this summer, but once there, politics blunted its force, analysts say. Each time the bill came up for debate, a coalition of religious parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ama (MMA) or United Action Front, cried foul and threatened to resign en masse from parliament. Before the new law, extramarital sex was brought before Islamic law but rarely prosecuted. By placing extra- marital sex under the penal code on Wednesday, the government kowtowed to their demands once again, analysts say.

That's because the Musharraf regime, finding itself politically isolated, looks increasingly to the MMA for support, observers say. And the MMA, which faces the same predicament, is only too happy to accept.

It's a curious reversal. There was a time when the MMA and Mr. Musharraf's ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, defined themselves as opponents. Indeed, the MMA came to power in 2002 on pledges that it would resist Musharraf's Western-driven calls for liberal moderation. Musharraf's support base has waned the longer he has run the country as a military leader, breaking promises to step down in place of democratic government.

Activists certainly welcome the removal of the four witness rule, but they shudder at what it symbolizes: Sworn enemies are more interested in political survival than human rights.

Not that Wednesday's results please the MMA - they stormed out of the National Assembly and refused to vote.

"After this bill, we feel that government has withdrawn its duty [to create an Islamic atmosphere]," says Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a member of the National Assembly from the MMA. "They are going to create a free-sex society."

The fact the MMA succeeded in stalling the bill for so long is registering as a subtle victory for religious forces. That has many worried because a not so subtle victory came just the day before, when the MMA pushed through a highly controversial bill at the provincial level in the NWFP.

Known as the Hasba bill, it calls for a kind of accountability bureau, headed by a religious cleric, to ensure that - in terms many find troublingly vague - Islamic virtues and doctrines are adhered to in public in the NWFP.

Taken together, the criminalization of extra-marital sex and the Hasba bill highlight why it is troubling for the ruling government to back the MMA, analysts say.

Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor

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pidaua
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From: Back in AZ with Bear the Leo
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posted November 17, 2006 02:08 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pidaua     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"Rape is already a common tool of revenge and settling tribal scores in Pakistan. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated in 2002 that a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours."


God, that is sickening. I hope this leads to an overhaul in how women are treated. Using rape as a tool to settle a score or for revenge is barbaric.

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lioneye68
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posted November 19, 2006 10:29 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Lemme see if I understood that correctly. The main objective is to remove the traditional requirement of proof (ie 4 male witnesses)in order to prosecute rapists, without which the woman is prosecuted as an adultress...

And this is being fought strongly by those who are supposedly concerned with preserving the traditional religious edicts. Is that right?

My interpretation: Men do not want to ever be held accountable for their indiscretions, whether those indiscetions be by force, or by mutual consent is of no matter. In other words, it's never their fault. It's perfectly ok if the woman (or girl, as the case may be) is prosecuted for it, but the men do not think it's fair or right if THEY are held accountable.

Where does one begin to even try to feel empathetic toward that? As a self respecting female, it's just not possible. They give men a bad name.

Men are obsessed with sex & power. And they're only obsessed with power because it can afford them more sex. So, really, they're main obsession is sex. In all cultures.

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DayDreamer
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posted November 20, 2006 12:08 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That sickens me too pidaua...

I hope you understand that using rape as a revenge tool is illegal there and is un-Islamic...whether justice prevails is another story.

Any man that does this should have their thing chopped off.

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DayDreamer
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posted November 20, 2006 12:24 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
4 reliable witnesses are required to prove adultery...not rape. I dont know where "4 male" witnesses comes from...it doesnt come from the Quran.

It doesn't make any sense to have 4 witnesses (at least eye-witnesses) to a rape crime - when the only two people at the scene of the crime are most likely the rape victim and the rapist only.

Anyone who accuses an innocent woman of committing adultery without evidence is actually supposed to be punished according to the Quran.

Watch the generalizations lioneye.

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lioneye68
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posted November 20, 2006 12:33 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I'm not generalizing - I'm trying to understand the issue, according to this article. It's worded in a rather awkward way, and what I took from it was that in order to prove rape, a female must have 4 male witnesses - That's the only way to officially prove it as a rape. (which is impossible in most cases)

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DayDreamer
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posted November 20, 2006 12:44 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
No where does it say eye-witnesses...or male witnesses...the word rape isnt even in the Quran.

In rape cases here in North America, you probably need more than 4 witnesses anyways...

The cops and crime scene investigators that examine the scene of the crime, the doctors who examine the victim, the scientists that examine evidence from the crime and check dna, and the people that know or spent time with the victim and rapist or knew their whereabouts, etc, etc,....generally add up to more than 4 witnesses.

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lioneye68
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posted November 20, 2006 12:54 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well, is that what they mean in Pakistan too? The people who follow up after the charge is submitted? I thought it meant they had to have 4 male witnesses with them reporting the crime.

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lioneye68
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posted November 20, 2006 12:56 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It's probably not covered in the Quran, because it's unGodly.

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AcousticGod
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posted November 20, 2006 12:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Yes, you read it right Lioneye. Apparently a woman wishing to charge a man with rape has to produce four men that agree with her that the man's actions constitute rape.

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DayDreamer
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posted November 20, 2006 01:12 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I dont know Pakistani laws...looks like they followed their own brand of Sharia.

Dont think its not there because it's unGodly...there are a number of unGodly things discussed and their consequences outlined in the Quran. The Quran does not by any means cover everything...it's just a general outline of how to live one's life.

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lioneye68
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posted November 20, 2006 01:18 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Yes, I know that. And, really it's a good guide. I've checked it out.

This awful treatment of women does not come from the Quran. It comes from some second generation books that followed the Quran, but were attributed to Mohamad...maybe they were his words, but he told his people to not listen to him as a man, only to listen to the divine words of the Quran. He knew his words would be taken out of context and manipulated. He gave warnings about that. He was truly divinely inspired, but he was truly human too.

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DayDreamer
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posted November 20, 2006 01:26 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Are you refering to the Hadith? Thats a really complex and complicated matter...

There are authentic and many non-authentic hadith...and their misuse is indeed dangerous.

Still have a lot to learn about that.

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lioneye68
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posted November 20, 2006 01:43 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I think every abuse of females and every permission of lack of integrity is in the Hadith. It's like the light came, and then then dark had something to say about it. I admit, I don't really know, but I suspect it had something to do with very trying times and struggle, and the righteous way did not work for the warriers of the time. The Catholic Church has simular skeletons, but the only difference is they didn't make it a religious tomb, saying it was ok. They just kept it on the down-low and did bad things anyway, knowing they were wrong. They figured the end justified the means. No tell, no fault - kind of policy. Perhaps Muslims were too honest, and when they did bad thing they needed to exhonerate themselves somehow, so they wrote a text saying it was ok to do bad things, if the situation called for it. ???

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aqua inferno
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posted November 20, 2006 08:51 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Ugh, I’ve never understood rape.

Anyway, this reminded me of something I read in Snopes that’s really interesting…disturbing too

quote:
As comforting as it might be to believe there's only one sort of baddie out there and if you understand his mind you can stay safe, that just isn't the case. There is no one set of right answers, and e-mails of this ilk potentially put us at even greater risk by suggesting that there is.

Around 1980, Nicholas Groth, director of Forensic Mental Health Associates, established a typology of rapists. Groth arrived at his conclusions by distilling his observations of more than 3,000 sex offenders over the course of 25 years of practice. (Most of his patients, Groth points out, were not sexually deprived at the time they committed rape, thereby exploding that most common of rape myths: that men rape because they're unable to get sex any other way.)

In a general sense, rapists fall into three motivational types: anger, power, and sadism. In anger assaults, the rapist is getting even for "some wrong he feels has been done to him, by life, by his victim at the time. He's in a frame of rage and attacks someone sexually." The anger rape is usually unpremeditated and impulsive, but the impulse drives the rapist into excessive force: the victim is punched, choked, and kicked into submission. Most such offenders derive little pleasure from the act, says Groth, but "they want to degrade their victims, and sex is something bad, dirty, the worst thing you could do to someone. That reflects a lot of our values in society."

An anger rapist could be discouraged by a potential victim who yells at him or puts up a physical struggle, thanks to the unpremeditated nature of the attack. Because the aggressor may not yet have fully decided to pursue this course of action, resistance may well change his mind. Here, even a half-hearted attempt might prove to be all it takes to end the assault. On the other hand, the rage the attacker is feeling might well be further fed by active resistance — this could be taken as yet another instance of one more person trying to deny him something he wants.

Power rape, according to Groth, is a form of compensation, committed usually by men who feel unsure of their competence. Rape gives them a sense of mastery and control. Power rapists usually hunt for victims or seize opportunities that present themselves unbidden. A power rapist is unlikely to be discouraged by resistance because his whole self image is wrapped up in his attempt to prove mastery. A woman who chooses to fight one of these had better do a darned good job of it, because she could well end up fighting for her life.

Groth defines his third type, sadistic rape, as eroticized aggression perpetrated by those whom the very act of forcible sex excites in ways that consensual sex can't. "If the anger components of aggression are eroticized," he explains, "then you see sadistic acts, such as deliberate sexual torture, using an instrument to rape the victim." A sadistic rapist is interested in inflicting pain and lasting harm. Any countering aggression on the part of the victim could well add to the attacker's enjoyment of the experience, prompting him to further acts of depravity in an effort to provoke further resistance.


http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/rape.htm

------------------
aka WaterNymph - pisces/virgo/pisces/aquarius/aries/aries

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Rob_W
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posted November 20, 2006 06:07 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The Christian Science Monitor are hardly going to be the most impartial source reporting on Muslim affairs.

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SecretGardenAgain
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posted November 21, 2006 11:22 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Ill agree with Rob (and with pidaua and DD as well, re: rape). But so far as the article, I dont think its telling the whole story. From Pakistani media, my understanding is that the religious groups are upset because this same bill will also make it illegal for cousins to marry each other and for a pair of a brother and sister to marry another pair of a sister and brother (what we call vatta-satta). They are outraged at this, and not the rape statutes, if I have understood correctly from the news. Although I have no difficulties believing that there may be some psycho sick people who are against the Hudood being repealed. But the religious-political parties? I dont think that is their point.

Love
SG

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DayDreamer
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posted November 21, 2006 11:12 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
yes that's disturbing, AI

Good point, Rob_W

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mysticaldream
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posted November 21, 2006 11:18 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Not only is it disgusting to imagine having to find 4 men to side with you if you are raped....... I don't understand what you are saying DD about adultery having to have 4 witnesses. Are you saying adultery is ILLEGAL? It seems to me that adultery is a personal choice; I think it's ridiculous it could be a crime (if that what's you are saying). Yes, in some parts of the world, it sucks to be a woman..........

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DayDreamer
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posted November 21, 2006 11:29 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well yes...you're breaking a legal contract...the marriage contract.

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