We have yet another story of a rape victim subjected to a demand for an honor killing in a traditional Muslim area. Kainat Soomro was gang-raped by four men at the age of 13. According to their religious and cultural traditions, her village classed her as a “Kari” or “black virgin” and ordered her killed. The family was attacked by the four men and other villagers and one of the sons was murdered after they refused to carry out the “honor” killing.
This nightmare unfolded in the rural village of Dadu in southern Pakistan and was chronicled in a new film “Outlawed in Pakistan.” Kainat was raped after walking home from school down a narrow village street. As she passed a shop owned by Shaban Saikh, he says that he and three other men including a father and son held her down and assaulted her. The rapists are accused of beating the father and one of her brothers and then the oldest brother disappeared (and was found murdered). This was all done in conformity with a bizarre religious code as a moral course of action.
The film shows how Kainat was faced with a hostile judge who attacked her for accusing a father and a son. The men were acquitted and she was found to lack “good character. If she was a decent woman, she would have sat at home, silent.”
Source: AU
Professor thanks for sharing this story.
Insight into Ms. Kainat Soomro and her family can be found in a documentary:
Outlawed in Pakistan, http://video.pbs.org/video/2365018071/
Jean, “Why…because men are attracted to women! Why do we keep insisting that sex is not really the issue!”
Rape is always about power. There are men in the military who are threatened by the idea of women being there. If a woman says “no”, it is all about power, the power to force her to submit.
If it were really about sex, seduction would be in order, not force.
What Mike S said.
There are no words…but my word is Everyone’s Bill becomes due at the end of their life! As far as the military comment on sexual abuse via the military…this comment will not be popular…but women do not belong in the military…..Why…because men are attracted to women! Why do we keep insisting that sex is not really the issue!
Jean
Well, the post is good. This is a heinous response to a very real rape, wherever it occurs. Linda should realize there are a lot of dingalings on these sites making ridiculous comments about religions & other things they know little about. These blogs do include rapes inside American borders too, but I thought the recent one trying to wring out that American producer 40 years later for statutory rape after he fled to France was relatively weak. Lets always discriminate between the good people & the criminally antisocial, no matter their religion.
Rape is about power. An educated woman is far more powerful than one who is not. Attacking a school girl by raping her is one way of putting her in her place (as they see it) and serves to intimidate other girls who might want to increase their own power through education. It’s pitiful that so many men are so threatened.
My own observations is that men, in general, want to accumulate power. They choose associates who will help them. They simply don’t trust women to help them accumulate more power, so they work to keep women from gaining any power on their own. I’ve seen it at home, in schools and in the work place. Examples fill the media.
Every instance of rape is someone looking to increase his perception of his own power by diminishing hers.
Dear Kind Gentlemen,
Please look no farther than your own country, where the victim of rape often does not report the crime because she knows she will be blamed. Many women in the US military have been assaulted, and demoted or had their pay docked, for reporting the rapes. I am appalled to read the suggestions that the backwards people in Pakistan should be bombed. The US government kills and disrupts societies in other countries, and are part of the cause of ignorant and superstitious brutality. How can a more just society be built there if Pakistani people are continually attacked? Are Americans who conduct drone strikes any less brutal than these poor villagers? Do you call for justice for those killed in US drone strikes, or do you condemn all Muslim people to death by simply sharing religion with these villagers? Should you receive rough justice to atone for the sins of other Christians and Jews?
Sometimes religions can create a kind of cultural insanity. Knowing how much I love my children it is unfathomable to me that these people would want to murder a child for something she is blameless in. It shows a hatred for women that is disgusting and also that these “manly men” are in truth not really men at all.
There are courts in this country that try the victim rather than the perpetrator/s.
Consider the number of rapes in the US military that have been reported and nothing done while the victim must continue to serve under to her attacker or the commander who condoned it by doing nothing about it. Consider the number of rape victims, male and female who don’t report it b/c they know they will be blamed. It isn’t just some Muslims that do horrific things and get away with it.
Finger pointing should only be done after a careful look in the mirror.
It isn’t “only Muslims.” Women and girls are blamed for their own rape in cultures around the world, regardless of religion. Not all are ordered to be put to death, but they suffer the misery of being told that somehow they brought their rape upon themselves. So get off your high horses, anti-Islamists.
m:
then why is it that only Muslims [maybe gang members do this stuff as well] do this type of thing?
Disgusted:
that was sarcasm.
It is sick and wrong. It is not Islamic.
Arthur, your drones would kill more than those responsible for this atrocity. Let’s keep the punishment in line with the crime.
It’s no crime to kill people from the 6th Century… They should already be ‘DUST’.
OH, yes, the “religion” of peace and love strikes again.
But one should not condem anothers culture, there is room for all. There are no moral principles which guide human action just whatever the culture says is correct. Ah, democracy in its purest form, unrestrained by objective values or morality.
Sorry, Bron…. There’s no room on my Planet for these ‘ANIMALS’……..
The only way this is going to stop is for the Pakistani federal government to force the issue with the rule of law, justice for victims and a responsible judiciary. Sharia law is an oxymoron a best and at worst a convenient excuse to murder other persons. If this type of brutality was stopped maybe it would be a matter of time when the old coots of the past die off and a new, younger generation which has not been socialized into being raping murderers takes over.
Raping, murdering, and using a broken system of justice to get away with it. What a depraved society these individuals there create.
Disgusting story. What goes through the minds of these people that they would allow the killing of a 13 year old victim? The men who perpetrated this heinous crime and the villagers and the judge, should rot in hell.
where are those drones when you need them? I hope that this village gets visited by them sooner rather than later.
Aaah, Another one of the ‘Beautiful’ facets of Islamic Culture……