Back in the spring, when the Pakistani Taliban still controlled the Swat valley, video footage of a girl being flogged became one of the most powerful images of their rule. The footage, shot on a mobile phone and circulated on YouTube, turned public opinion against the Taliban and helped lay the groundwork for a military offensive there.
In the latest spate of bombings sweeping Pakistan, women have again become targets. First came the twin suicide bombing on the International Islamic University in Islamabad which included an attack on the women’s canteen. Then last week, more than 100 people were killed in the car bombing of a bazaar in Peshawar which was frequented largely by women.
“It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan in two years and its target was clear: not the police, not the security forces, not political leaders, but Peshawar’s women,” wrote Rafia Zakaria in the Daily Times. ”The site of the blast, Peshawar’s Meena Bazar, as is well known in the area, is an exclusively women’s shopping area where women and children shop for clothing, household wares and similar goods. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of those killed were women and children.”
“While the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have denied involvement in the bombing, investigations, the modus operandi of the attack and most importantly the target of the bombing all point to their culpability. Most significant of these factors is that the attack targeted women. It is after all females who have borne the brunt of the TTP’s onslaught since they began their reign of terror in the northwest of Pakistan. As the Taliban’s war against the Pakistani state has ensued, the marginalisation of women, the destruction of schools constructed for their education and their banishment from public spaces like the Meena Bazar have been a central facet of the Taliban’s campaign of terror and hatred. This latest attack thus fits perfectly into this grimly familiar design. The massive and indiscriminate killing of scores of innocent women and children who had dared to leave the walls of their home inculcates the very fear that the Taliban seek to instil among Pakistani women across the country.”
There are many overlapping reasons for women being killed, of which forcing them to stay at home is only one. Misogyny, in any culture, has always been the preserve of the weak who cannot show their power in any other way. So what seems to be happening here is actually about power. By attacking women and children, along with the teenage girls in Islamabad University, the militants can prove they will stop at nothing in order to drive fear into the civilian population.
My question is how this should be addressed.
In Afghanistan, the west has begun to “load-shed” the rights of women on the grounds that the environment is already complicated enough.
But what if we turn this around and say that the only way to respond to the current wave of violence sweeping Afghanistan and Pakistan is by looking at the 50 percent of the population who are women?
Please post whatever links you can, and I’ll collect and make sense of them.
(Photos: funeral of a girl killed in Islamabad; after the bombing in Peshawar)
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Anjum won’t condemn the terrorists because in the back of his mind he can’t condemn a terrorist who could be used elsewhere. What he really means to say when he obfuscates and feigns offence is that he wishes the victims were not Pakistani. In his mind it was not what they did that was wrong, it was who they did it to.
He’s okay with everybody else dying. But if it’s a Pakistani Sunni Muslim (other religious minorities don’t count) then he becomes deeply flustered and can’t explain or condemn terrorism. But, of course, if this was a market in Mumbai or a building in New York or a subway in London, he’d tell us it was justified because of Kashmir or the Indian/Western treatment of Muslims, blah, blah, blah, whatever else he can think of to justify the killing of innocents.
He doesn’t seem to understand that men who kill so easily rarely discriminate. And eventually when they tire of killing infidels, they’ll on their own. That’s what’s happening now. This strategy of cherry picking which groups Pakistan fights won’t work either. These men change their colours like Chameleons. One day they are fighting NATO in Afghanistan, the next they are fighting the Pakistan Army in Waziristan. As long as the Pakistanis cherry-pick they won’t win. That’s why the Americans don’t discriminate. For them Baitullah Mehsud was just as much of a threat as any Afghan insurgent leader. Till the Pakistanis understand this concept, they are doomed to suffer.
My heart goes out to the innocents of Pakistan. They are doomed to suffer for the failings of men like Mr. Anjum who can’t see past his moral equivocation even when the most vulnerable of his country are dying.
- Posted by KeithAnjum.
You were not asked to apologise for the actions of the terrorists. Nor were you accused of being their representative.
You were asked to condemn their actions. And to admit that the forces of militant islam are a scourge on innocent people and Pakistan. And you didn’t. Rather, you were offended that you were asked to do so.
But even now, you blame other nations. Is it Americans who are blowing themselves up in Pakistan? Indians? Or Israelis?
No. It isn’t. It is Pakistani militants, of the Pakistani religion, blowing up Pakistani streets and killing Pakistani people. Pakistan allowed these groups to grow. Now Pakistan is at war with those groups.
It is a sign of the duality of Pakistan. Even as their own faith and own militants kill them, they still blame America and the West for it all.
Perhaps they are simply in denial. Or perhaps this anti-west view is simply a sign that many people in Pakistan agree with the very mindset that seeks to kill women and children.
- Posted by JoeyjoeMohammad Anjum wrote:
Terrorists do not discriminate. They target everyone when they blow themselves up.
-Just like the Pakistani LeT terrorists caused a massacre in Mumbai went around killing all those who were non-Muslim.
I am not their representative. So expecting me to apologize for them is ridiculous.
-As an Indian I would expect an apology from Pakistan for all the years of terrorism it sponsored against India. However, looking at Pakistan today, I have a revived belief in karma.
Pakistan has been turned into a war zone by your countries. And unfortunately civilians are dying in the bargain. Your countries do all atrocities against humanity and preach to others about human rights. I don’t have to justify anything to any one of you.
-Pakistan created and nurtured these terroists via its Zia ul-Haq blessed Madrassa system of schools. It used the Taliban to stategically control Afghanistan under a barbaric regime.
-Just like most of Pakistanis on blogs you fail to come clean about your past failing and blame everything squarely on others. The last Soviet tanks left Afghanistan in 1989. If you think the fighters of that time are the same ones as the Taliban then you are mistaken. Taliban came into being in the mid-1990s with all the blessing of N. Sharif.
A question for you:
- Posted by bulletfishIf these holy warriors were so courageous and victorious in bring down the so-called mighty Soviet Empire. Then why could they no get tother with the same zeal to ask for help in rebuilding Afghanistan?
Keith,
Terrorists do not discriminate. They target everyone when they blow themselves up. I am not their representative. So expecting me to apologize for them is ridiculous. That is like expecting you to apologize for killing innocent civilians by your drones. As an individual I feel sorry for everyone who is a victim, including women and children. We do not know what the plans of the terrorist elements are. Tomorrow they might attack a bunch of hospitals. Then I wonder how that will be extrapolated. May be someone will blame Muslims again.
Pakistan has been turned into a war zone by your countries. And unfortunately civilians are dying in the bargain. Your countries do all atrocities against humanity and preach to others about human rights. I don’t have to justify anything to any one of you.
- Posted by Mohammad AnjumMohammad Anjum,
As always, all you have to offer is, distorted facts, ridiculous analogies & a juvenile penchant to point fingers at others instead of accepting the defects of your own society. Comparing the plight of women in Pakistan to the problems they face in the west or even in India is quite laughable but even if one were to buy your own distorted version of ‘facts’, how does that help making the lives of Pakistani women any better? It’s exactly due to such lack of introspection & bigotry, that your country is sinking deeper in the abyss.
- Posted by MortalMr. Anjum,
Sir, you’ve made a habit in these blogs, thread after thread of stopping short of condemning the insurgents without condition. It’s always the fault of someone else: the West, or the Indians or (what always makes the rest of us laugh) Mossad and the Jews. And if they run off to kill Indians or westerners, than it’s entirely justified…Of course, western intervention in your country, that follows is not justified. (I am starting to wonder what kind of logic they teach in the Pakistani schools.)
Even now, you don’t seem to condemn the insurgents for attacking innocent women. Instead you rush to defend Islam or to ramble on how bad the situation is for women in India (which is still far better than what’s in Pakistan, there’s UN stats to back that up). How is any of that relevant? Sure prostitution is legal in Nevada. And you and I both know that prostitutes are an easy find in any major Pakistani city as well (even if it’s illegal). How are comparisons like this going to save your women? Are you suggesting that it’s tolerable for women to get blown up in Pakistan because prostitution is legal in Nevada or because there’s some human trafficking in India?
Do you not have the moral fortitude, sir, to state clearly that all terrorism is wrong and that all those who kill are against Islam, regardless of who the victim is? You cannot, yet, bring yourself to condemn those who kill, without reservation or condition? Even now when the women of Pakistan are dying, you can’t say that much? wow.
Stop labelling them as criminals. Call them what they are: terrorists. Condemn violence against civilians everywhere, not just in Pakistan. A woman in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai is worth just as much as a female secretary working in the World Trade Centre in New York and a mother buying groceries in a market in Peshawar. Can you, for once, condemn all those who kill women, anywhere and everywhere as terrorists? Not just some common criminals, on par with pick-pockets?
- Posted by Keith@ Crimes against women are definitely worth condemning. But stop singling out Pakistan or Muslims for it. Islam is a very progressive religion. It protects the dignity and honor of women.”
-Mohammed Anjum
—Can you elaborate more than saying “Islam is a very progressive religion” A woman in Pakistan who fails to prove rape is often prosecuted for zina. The requirement of proof for rape has made absolutely impossible to prove it. Rape confirmed by medical examination is not a rape if four victims are unavailable. But this is taken as woman’s confession for Zina. Laws are anti-women so what progress are you talking here. And guess what these are under more relaxed laws since 2006 not under Zia time. In India, the law does not discriminate this and the problems are at the level of exercising the laws if a rape goes unpunished.
If you are talking about the progress in science in Muslim countries, that is also not the case.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn -content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/colu mnists/irfan-husain-survival-of-the-fitt est
Quote“Our excuse for our backwardness in the sciences is the poverty that is endemic in so many Muslim countries. But this is not true for several oil-rich states. The reality is that there is not a single world-class research institution in any Islamic country. Instead of squabbling over the fine points of dogma, if we could devote some of our energy to acquiring knowledge, we would all be far better off today.”
- Posted by rajeevAthar Osama in DinarStandard.com:
Quote“Scientific and technological research and innovation is not among the qualities that one may attribute to the countries in the Muslim World. Having missed the dawn of scientific age due to reasons beyond the scope of this article, the 50-odd countries of the Islamic world cut a sorry figure when stacked against the modern and advanced countries of the West or even, for that matter, the states of the former Soviet Union and the under-developed India or China.”Unquote
Mr. Keith,
Please read my words again. I said, “If people do not follow its tenets and start abusing them, you cannot blame a religion or a nation for it.”
And you ask, “Perhaps you can interpret for us how the progressive nature of Islam with regards to women was demonstrated by these supposed Islamist militants with their execution of an attack on a women’s canteen of an Islamic University”
This like accusing all of Christianity for the actions of the KKK or Nazis. Terrorists and militants do not represent Islam. They distort everything to suit their needs and attack whoever they think are weak.
Other than that, injustice to women has been done across the globe in all societies. Women are still used as property in many places. All this injustice will need to be highlighted by organizations like the UN and something needs to be done. India is famous for human trafficking for flesh trade. Why attack militants selectively when there is no awareness about what people are doing in their own countries? I am not supporting the actions of the militants. We all know what criminal do. But criminals are everywhere in various forms.
- Posted by Mohammad AnjumMohammad Anjum,
Perhaps you can interpret for us how the progressive nature of Islam with regards to women was demonstrated by these supposed Islamist militants with their execution of an attack on a women’s canteen of an Islamic University.
Care to shed some light on that?
Is it progressive that Islamist militants give women preferential treatment on the target list? Perhaps they were trying to liberate women from the burden of an education…by killing them.
Yet, remarkably not once in any of your ramblings have you called these terrorists what they are: anti-Islamic. That you can’t call them that, even when they kill muslim women speaks volumes about you and your character.
- Posted by Keith