Sexual Harassment Of Women Alive and Well Where Individuals Worship False God(s):

Sexual Harassment Of Women Alive and Well Where Individuals Worship False God(s):

INTRODUCTION:

Many try to claim that rape and sexual harassment of women is low in countries where many of the individuals worship false god(s) such as Italy and some Muslim countries.

They point to statistics to make their case as shown in the following actual example by a member of Islam:

<<<"Oh, I'm sorry I forgot you are not into fair and equal treatment. When the US is #9 on the list of rape ratios,with muslim countries at the very bottom, you still comdem Islam for the treatment of women....You still have not satisfactory explained how it's ok for women to be raped more often in a christian country but not in a muslim one." [source - by am member of Islam writing under a pseudonym]>>>.

But of course this writer conveniently failed to mention that most Muslim countries are notoriously poor record keepers so no one really knows the correct statistics. However, many newspapers carried a report in their 'Travel' section dealing with sexual harassment women, unaccompanied by a man, can experience in Italy and Egypt that is a real eye opener.

Let's look at what Lynn Doan of 'the Hartford Courant' wrote, in brief.

HOW SEXUAL HARASSMENT CAN TARNISH A TRAVEL EXPERIENCE:

This will be a sort of readers report on Lynn Doan of 'the Hartford Courant' article.

<<<"Harassment in Italy is notorious. But the catcalls I experienced in Venice and Rome pale in comparison to the shockingly sexual statements and shameless groping my roommate and I endured in Egypt" [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>.

The fact of the matter, the situation is so bad that U.S. travel officials even warn women that they are vulnerable to sexual harassment and verbal abuse. The Egyptian Center for Women's rights stated that 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women have reported being sexually harassed in Egypt.

Of course, Egypt is not the exception among Muslim countries as clearly shown by the treatment reported in an article about foreign wives of Saudi Arabian men. Let's look at an actual account from a Los Angeles Times article of 01/14/2008.

<<<" Malof said her husband's family has been very accepting. But it took her a while to adjust to the religious police and the brazen boys in their buffed cars. The police patrol stores and sidewalks looking to fine or arrest women deemed to be improperly veiled. And the boys and young men, living in a country where the only contact with women is arranged through families, are bored and seek titillation by leering and driving alongside cars carrying women, sometimes boxing them in on highways.

"The religious police can spot a [partially veiled] blond head from a mile away. We'd run and hide from them in the shopping malls," she said. "Then there's the guys holding up signs in their cars, pressing them against the windshields and windows. 'Don't call 911, call this number.' Most of the time, these guys are harmless. They're just out cruising." [source - a Los Angeles Times article of 01/14/2008 written by Jeffrey Fleishman]>>>.

Here we see that sexual harassment is alive and well in Saudi Arabia, but takes a different form than it does in Egypt; to wit, by boys and young men who seek sexual titillation by leering and driving along side cars carrying women or by harassing guys just out cruising holding up very suggestive signs. Mind you, this is the country that bills itself as the most Muslim of Muslim countries and where the basic freedom of conscientious is officially denied - no freedom of religion. However, this does not give women as has been shown freedom from sexual harassment, and where women are actually punished for getting raped - no wonder that rape figures are shown as very low here when you consider the notoriously bad record keeping and fear of punishment if a rape victim comes forward. The same publication mentioned.

<<<"... as a recent court case showed, a woman who is raped can also be sentenced to 200 lashes for un-Islamic behavior." [source - a Los Angeles Times article of 01/14/2008 written by Jeffrey Fleishman]>>>.

Now Lynn Doan of 'The Hartford Courant' experienced the following sexual harassment in Egypt.

<<<"Just one kiss, he says, waving five Egyptian pounds at me. One kiss on the mouth, and he'll give me the equivalent of a dollar;" [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>,

And this actually occurred as she was walking through a bazaar next to the Islamic section of Cairo clearly showing that sexual harassment knows no limits in Egypt.

Another incident was,

<<<"Still, one local refused to walk away after we repeatedly turned down his offers to massage us." [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>.

Another incident occurred on a felucca, a type of sailboat, on the Nile.

<<<"This short ride turned into a much longer one than expected, with two local sailors who pawed at us and spent 10 minutes trying to kiss us and lur us back to their flat, where we 'could all drink alcohol and have sex time.'" [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>.

Yet another sexual harassment occurred to Lynn Doan of 'The Hartford Courant' on her last day in Egypt in a bazaar next to the Islamic section of Cairo, as follows.

<<<"So as ... I was not nearly as surprised as I shoul've been when solicited for a kiss. Neither did it surprise me much when a hand reached out and groped my butt." [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>.

But really she was lucky as she noted.

<<<"Some people might say we were lucky. Video clips of women being molested by mobs of men on the streets of Egypt have made their way onto YouTube in recent years, and some local women say they are sexually harassed several times a day." [source - Lynn Doan article in 'the Hartford Courant' and carried by many newspapers such as 'The Palm Beach Post' of Sunday, October 5, 2008 on page 5H]>>>.

IT ONLY GETS WORSE IN SOME MUSLIM DOMINATED AREAS FOR VICTIMS OF RAPE:

[1] THE LAW OF SHARIA
A Woman's Plight
Early in December of 2001, a Sharia religious court of appeal in Muslim-dominated northwest Nigeria ordered a stay of execution for a woman who had been sentenced by a lower court to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage. The woman contended that she had been raped. The court granted the stay to allow Safiya Hussaini, 33, to appeal her sentence by a lower Sharia court in the state of Sokoto. The woman is a divorced mother with five children who would be orphaned and probably perish if the execution were carried out.
The court imposed the sentence after Hussaini asked it to compel a man to pay for her infant daughter's naming ceremony. She charged he had raped her three times and impregnated her. When she charged the man with rape, the court dismissed the charges against him, citing a lack of evidence because she was the sole witness. After dismissing the rape charge against the man, the lower Sharia court then charged the woman with adultery and sentenced her to death in mid-October. She was given thirty days to appeal. According to Sura 2:282 of the Qur'an, the testimony of a woman is equal to only half the testimony of a man, so Hussaini's appeal will automatically be trumped by the rapist's counter-charge.
Hussaini was sentenced to death because she was divorced. Had she never been married, the sentence would only have been one hundred lashes. The fate of her five children, of course, was of no concern to the religious court.
The Nigerian federal government has said it will not allow the sentence to be carried out, but officials in Sokoto indicated that the federal government had not contacted them about the up-coming stoning. Nigeria is not yet "One Nation Under God," since Sharia has been imposed on less than a half of its 36 states. More than a thousand people have lost their lives in riots protesting the introduction of religious law. [source - AP]

[2] Posted: October 12, 2006, (c) 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Lorans Emeel, threatened with rape if she denied Islam

A 15-year-old Egyptian girl has escaped from a team of Muslims who kidnapped her and threatened her with rape if she did not convert to Islam, according to a new report from Voice of the Martyrs."

The group, a Christian aid organization that has helped members of the persecuted Christian church worldwide since its founding in 1967, said it is for situations such as the recent one involving Lorans Wageah Emeel that it runs safe houses in various locations throughout the Muslim world.

The teen, living in El Mahala Al Kobra, about 60 miles north of Cairo, disappeared from a public bus on Oct. 2, when a team of Muslims drugged her and threatened her with rape if she refused to embrace Islam, described by its supporters as a "religion of peace."

Her parents were notified via text message that, "The girl is not accepting easily, but she will embrace Islam for sure." Another said, "Take the rest of your daughters and leave the city, or you will lose them one by one."

The Compass Direct report provided to Voice of the Martyrs said it was the next night, about 10 p.m. on Oct. 3, when she was able to escape from a detention room where she was being held in Helwan, a suburb just south of Cairo.

She fled while the terrorists were taking a break from a Ramadan fast, the report said. She was able to contact authorities, but was told then that if she did not deny the kidnapping had occurred, she would "never see her parents again."

The kidnapping was reported only by the El Tareek, the sole Arabic Christian newspaper in the Middle East. It said that the abductors wanted the girl, a student at Saida Nafesa High School in El Mahala Al Kobra, to reject Christ and embrace Islam.

Her family members had gathered at the El Mahala Al Kobra police station on the morning of Oct. 3 to plead with officers to find Lorans and return her to them. Her parents accused a Muslim man of kidnapping their daughter in a report filed at the police station.

Voice of the Martyrs said the kidnapping of Christian teenage girls in Muslim nations has reached epidemic proportions. Other times, the girls themselves are lured away with promises of material wealth.

The organization, for that reason, sponsors safe houses in various Islamic nations to protect Christian girls who face such threats, or who already have escaped from abduction, officials said.

These Christian refuges are also places where young women learn job skills and receive spiritual training, the group said. [source - October 12, 2006, (c) 2006 WorldNetDaily.com]

[3] Rape Victims Held Criminally Lible, a news item on page 17a, of the Sunday, June 2, 2002, The Palm Beach Post article, "Pakistani rape victims the criminals." This article stated, "The evidence of guilt was there for all to see: a newborn baby in the arms of its mother, a village woman named Zafran Bibi.

Her crime: She had been raped. Her sentence: death by stoning.

Thumping a fat red statute book, the white-bearded judge who convicted her, Anwar Ali Kahn, said he had simply followed the letter of the Koran based law, known as hudood, that mandates punishment.

Furthermore, he said, in accusing her brother-in-law of raping her, Zafran had confessed to her crime.

"The lady stated before this court that, yea, she had committed sexual intercourse, but with the brother of her husband," Judge Khan said. "This left no option to the court but to impose the highest penalty."

Although legal fine points do exist, little distinction is made in court between forced and consensual sex.

When hudood was enacted 23 years ago, the laws were formally described as measures to ban "all forms of adultery, whether the offense is committed with or without the consent of the parties." But women are almost always punished, whatever the facts. [source - The Sunday, June 2, 2002, "The Palm Beach Post" article, "Pakistani rape victims the criminals." On page 17a].

[4] Imam justifies rape of unveiled women
Australian cleric compares victims to 'uncovered meat' that attracts cats

October 26, 2006, (c) 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Australia's top Muslim cleric [Mufti] rationalized a series of gang rapes by Arab men, blaming women who "sway suggestively," wear make-up and don't cover themselves in the tradition of Islam.

Sheik Ibrahim Mogra with Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly. (Courtesy Sydney Daily Telegraph)

Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly's comments in a Ramadan sermon in a Sydney mosque have stirred a furor in the country with even Prime Minister John Howard weighing in with condemnation.

The cleric also said the judge in the case, who sentenced the rapists, had "no mercy."

"But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he said, referring to the women victims - whom he said were "weapons used by Satan."

The victims of the vicious gang rapes are leading the national outcry - with some calling for deportation of the sheik. In a Sydney Daily Telegraph online poll, 84 percent of people said the Egyptian-born sheik should be deported.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?" the sheik said in his sermon. "The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

A 16-year-old girl, whose gang rape investigation was the subject of a secret police report, issued an open letter yesterday.

"You are a sad person who has no understanding of what really happens when these people inflict harm and degrading acts upon me or any other young girl," she said.

Initially, the mufti of Australia would not back away from his comments. But today he apologized.

"I unreservedly apologize to any woman who is offended by my comments," he said in a statement. "I had only intended to protect women's honor."

Howard said the sheik's remarks were "appalling and reprehensible." [source - October 26, 2006, (c) 2006 WorldNetDaily.com]

[5] By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer 58 minutes ago 10/27/2006
UNITED NATIONS - Women are facing increasing violence in
Top of Form 1
Top of Form 2

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, called on for fresh efforts to ensure the safety of women in countries emerging from conflicts, to provide them with jobs, and ensure that they receive justice, including compensation for rape.

"What UNIFEM is seeing on the ground - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia - is that public space for women in these situations is shrinking," Heyzer said Thursday. "Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare defend women's rights in public decision-making."

Heyzer spoke at a daylong open council meeting on implementation of a 2000 resolution that called for women to be included in decision-making positions at every level of striking and building on peace deals. It also called for the prosecution of crimes against women and increased protection of women and girls during war.

Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said that, in the past year, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first woman head of state in Africa, Liberia adopted an anti-rape law, women in Sierra Leone pushed for laws on human trafficking, inheritance and property rights and women in East Timor submitted a draft domestic violence bill to parliament.

Despite these positive developments, he said, women face widespread insecurity and in many societies violence is still used as a tool to control and regulate the actions of women and girls seeking to rebuild their homes and communities.

"In Afghanistan, attacks on school establishments put the lives of girls at risk when they attempt to exercise their basic rights to education," Guehenno said. "Women and girls are raped when they go out to fetch firewood in Darfur. In Liberia, over 40 percent of women and girls surveyed have been victims of sexual violence. In the eastern Congo, over 12,000 rapes of women and girls have been reported in the last six months alone."

Assistant Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja, the U.N. special adviser on women's issues, said that from Congo and Sudan to Somalia and East Timor, she said, "women continue to be exposed to violence or targeted by parties to the conflict ... lacking the basic means of survival and health care."

At the same time, Mayanja said, they remain "underrepresented in decision-making, particularly on war and peace issues."

Assistant Secretary-General Carolyn McAskie, who is in charge of supporting the new U.N. Peacebuilding Commission which was established this year to help countries emerging from conflict, said her office will try to ensure that "space is created for women's active participation in political, economic and social life."

"We cannot ignore the voices of the women from the time we broker peace onwards," McAskie said. "Peacemaking is not just an exercise involving combatants, it must involve all of society, and that means women."
At the end of the meeting, the council said it "remains deeply concerned by the pervasiveness of all forms of violence against women in armed conflicts." and reiterated its strong condemnation of all acts of sexual misconduct by U.N. peacekeeping personnel. [source - By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer 58 minutes ago 10/27/2006]

[6] A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.

The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four Saudis convicted of the rape, sentencing them to prison terms and a total of 2,230 lashes.

The four, all married, were sentenced respectively to five years and 1,000 lashes, four years and 800 lashes, four years and 350 lashes, and one year and 80 lashes.

A fifth, married, man who was stated to have filmed the rape on his mobile phone still faces investigation. Two others alleged to have taken part in the rape evaded capture.

Saudi courts take marital status into account in sexual crimes. A male friend of the rape victim was also sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone with her in the car.

The court heard that the victim and her friend were followed by the assailants to their car, kidnapped and taken to a remote farm, where the raping occurred.

The victim was quoted by Okaz newspaper as saying she had expected harsher penalties for the assailants, especially as they had pleaded not guilty.

Her husband and family said that they would appeal to the court Saturday for harsher penalties for a crime which has shocked public opinion in Saudi Arabia and been the subject of months of debate. [source - AP]

[7] www.rferl.org ^ | Saturday, 07 January 2006
Iran's "Etemad" newspaper reports today that an 18-year-old woman has been sentenced to death by hanging for killing a man she said was trying to rape her. The newspaper reported that the woman, identified only as Nazanin, testified during her trial that she and her niece were out with their boyfriends when they were accosted by two men who chased away the boyfriends then tried to rape the two young women. Nazanin admitted stabbing one of the men to prevent her and her niece from being assaulted. Nazanin was only 17 years old at the time, but under Iranian law...

[update] Iran clears teenage woman sentenced to deathAFP

January 15, 2007

TEHRAN -- An Iranian court has cleared of murder charges a 19-year-old woman who was originally sentenced to death for killing a man that she said tried to rape her, the press reported Monday.

Mahabad Fatehi, known as Nazanin, was cleared by a Error! The provincial court of premeditated murder but still ordered to pay blood money of 260 million Iranian riyals ($30,600) to the victim's family, the Etemad newspaper reported. [[Her crime, defending against being raped.]]

Fatehi, whose case achieved international notoriety when it was taken up by a Canadian beauty queen of Iranian origin, said that she stabbed the man in an act of self-defense after he tried to rape her and her niece in March 2005.

In January last year, Fatehi was put on trial and sentenced to death by a criminal court, a verdict that was then quashed by in an unprecedented move, the report said. Source (original) - Etemad newspaper of Iran]

[8] The Lahore high court ruled on 10 June 2005 that the rapists must be released. Just over two weeks later the supreme court suspended those acquittals and ruled that the men, along with six more who were acquitted at the original trial, would be retried. [1]

Also on 10 June 2005, shortly before she was scheduled to fly to London on the invitation of Amnesty International, Mukhtaran was put on Pakistan's Exit-Control List (ECL) [2], a list of people prohibited from traveling abroad, a move that prompted protest in Pakistan and around the world.

On 17 June 2005, Musharraf in a press conference in Auckland, New Zealand revealed that he had ordered the travel ban to protect Pakistan's image abroad.
Musharraf said Mukhtaran Mai was being taken to the United States by foreign non-government organisations ("NGOs") "to bad-mouth Pakistan" over the "terrible state" of the nation's women. He said NGOs are "Westernised fringe elements" which "are as bad as the Islamic extremists". [3]

On 15 June 2005, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ordered Mukhtaran's name removed from the ECL (Mukhtaran allowed to go abroad, NA told). However, it was reported on 19 June 2005, by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, that as Mai returned from the US embassy in Islamabad, after getting her passport stamped with a US visa, it was confiscated once again, rendering her unable to travel outside the country [4].

On 29 June 2005, on his personal web site [5] Musharraf wrote that "Mukhtaran Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whoever she wants and say whatever she pleases."

On 2 August 2005, the Pakistani government awarded Mukhtaran the Fatima Jinnah gold medal for bravery and courage.

On 2 November 2005, The US magazine Glamour named Mukhtaran as their Woman Of The Year. Upon her visit to the United States, President Musharraf told the Washington Post that claiming rape had become a "moneymaking concern" in Pakistan. Musharraf denied making the comment, prompting the Post to issue a tape of the interview.[6]

On 12 January 2006, Mukhtaran Mai published her memoir with the collaboration of Marie-Thérèse Cuny under the title "Déshonorée". The originating publisher of the book is OH ! Editions in France and her book is published simultenaously in german by Droemer Verlag under the title "Die Schuld, eine Frau zu sein".
On 12 January 2006, To coincide with the publication of her memoir, Mukhtaran Mai will be in Paris (France) from the 12th to the 17th January. She will be attending a press conference on Thursday 12th, at the headquarters of The International Federation for Human Rights.

Mukhtaran was originally slated to speak at the United Nations on 20 January 2006, but the UN postponed the visit at the last minute after Pakistan complained that her appearance was scheduled for the same day as a visit by Aziz. The UN wanted to move it to sometime after 24 January, but since Mukhtaran was due to leave New York on 21 January, Islamabad's complaint effectively cancelled the visit. She claimed she was not going to say anything bad about Pakistan or its government. "I was just going to talk about my work and what people are doing," she told the Times. Aziz claimed he didn't know that Mukhtaran was due to appear. [note, no effective appeal mechanism in Shariah, had to go to secular court].[source - many and varied such as Human Rights Commission of Pakistan - http://www.hrcp-web.org, AANA - http://www.4anaa.org/, New York Times Blog, etc.].

[9] The Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia said the following on the Mai case.
Mukhtaran Bibi, Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year 2005
Mukhtaran Bibi (??????? ?? ??, born c. 1972, now known as Mukhtar Ma'i, ????? ???? ) is a Pakistani woman from the village of Meerwala, in the rural tehsil (county) of Jatoi of the Muzaffargarh District of Pakistan. Mukhtar Mai suffered a gang rape as a form of honour revenge, on the demands of tribesmen - or by some accounts, on the orders of a panchayat (tribal council) - of a local Mastoi Baloch clan that was richer and more powerful than Mukhtaran's clan, the Gujjar Tatla. By custom, rural women are expected to commit suicide after such an event. Intead, she spoke up, and using word of mouth, took her case to court where her rapists were arrested and charged. She took settlement money provided to her by the government following the court case, and opened a center for refuge and education, the Mukhtar Mai Women's Welfare Organization.[1]
In April 2007, Mukhtar Mai won the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe.[2] In 2005, Glamour Magazine named her "Glamour Woman of the Year".[3] According to the New York Times, "Her autobiography is the No. 3 best seller in France ... movies are being made about her, and she has been praised by dignitaries like Laura Bush and the French foreign minister".[4] However, on April 8, 2007, the New York Times reported that Mukhtar Mai lives in fear for her life from the Pakistan government and local feudal lords.[5] General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, has admitted on his personal blog[6] that he placed restrictions on her movement in 2005, as he is fearful that her work, and the publicity it receives, hurts the international image of Pakistan.
According to the New York Times, Mukhtar Mai, her friends, colleagues and their families are at great risk from violence by local feudal lords, and/or the government of Pakistan.
News accounts of the rape incident vary. The account that follows is based on the testimonies of witnesses in the court that sentenced Mukhtaran's rapists to death, supplemented with details from the text of the Lahore High Court judgement.
Mukhtaran testified that in June her adolescent brother Shaqoor was suspected and accused by the Mastoi of committing ziadti (rape, sodomy or illegal sex) or zina (fornication or adultery) with a Mastoi girl, Salma, also known as Nasim. At the trial, the judge commented that the accusation was unsupported.
Early in the afternoon of Saturday, June 22, 2002, Shaqoor was abducted by three Mastoi men. He was taken that afternoon to the residence of the main defendant, Abdul Khaliq, Salma's brother. (Shaqoor testified that he had been abducted by three Mastoi men, each of whom sodomized him in a sugarcane field. The court determined, based on a doctor's testimony, that Shaqoor had indeed been sodomized and/or assaulted. His attackers were convicted in a separate trial.)
Shaqoor shouted for help while being taken into Abdul Khaliq's house, and his relatives heard his cries. Mukhtaran, her mother, and other women of the house rushed outside, where several Mastoi men told them that Shaqoor had committed ziadti with Salma. The women went immediately to Abdul Khaliq's house to demand his release, but Abdul Khaliq refused. Mukhtaran's mother then sent her brother to get the police. There were no telephones or police in Meerwala, and the Jatoi police station was 18 km to the north over dirt roads.
Some members of Mukhtar's clan, the Tatla, assembled. They were told that their kinsman Shakoor had been held by the Mastoi because he had been accused of committing ziadti or zina with Salma. Separately, about 200 to 250 Mastoi gathered outdoors, less than a hundred meters from Abdul Khaliq's house. According to some accounts, a Mastoi tribal council formed, consisting of three defendants: Ramzan Pachar, G.F. Mastoi and a Mastoi clan chief, Faiz M. Mastoi, also known as Faiza or Faizan.
The police arrived before sunset, freed Shaqoor from the Mastoi, and took him to a police station and held him, pending a possible sex crime charge against him. At the High Court trial, the defense contended that prosecution witnesses could not have seen some of the things that they had claimed to see in the darkness (the village had virtually no electric power service).
Mukhtaran's family proposed to settle the matter with the Mastoi by marrying Shakoor to Salma, and marrying Mukhtaran to one of the Mastoi men, and - if Shakoor was found to be at fault - to give some land to Salma's family. This proposal was conveyed to Faizan, the Mastoi elder. According to some of the prosecution witnesses, Faizan was initially agreeable, but two men of Salma's family - defendants Ramzan Pachar and G.F. Mastoi - refused and demanded revenge of zina for zina. Some other Mastoi men allegedly joined them in this demand. Ramzan Pachar and G.F. Mastoi then came to Mukhtaran's family, and told them that the Mastoi would accept the proposed settlement if she would personally come and apologize to Salma's family and the Mastoi akath. She went to the Mastoi gathering with her father and maternal uncle. By the time they arrived, the assembly had dwindled to about 70 people. Faizan stated that the dispute was settled and Mukhtaran's family should be "forgiven."
The accused rapists of Mukhtar Mai
Immediately afterward and less than a hundred meters from the akath, Abdul Khaliq, armed with a 30-caliber pistol, forcibly took Mukhtaran into a stable where she was gang raped. After about an hour inside, she was pushed outside wearing only a torn qameez (long shirt). The rest of her clothes were thrown out with her. Her father covered her up and took her home. (The clothes were presented as evidence in court.)
That same night, the police were informed that the two clans had settled their dispute, and that Salma's family was withdrawing its complaint against Shaqoor. His uncle retrieved him from the police station around 2 or 3 a.m.
The following week, a local Muslim imam (mosque prayer leader), Abdul Razzaq, condemned the rape in his sermon on the Friday after it occurred. He brought a local journalist, Mureed Abbas, to meet Mukhtaran's father, and persuaded the family to file charges against the rapists.
Mukhtaran and her family went to the Jatoi police station on June 30, 2002 to file charges.
References for items in article in Encyclopedia:
[1] 'Mukhtar Mai Women's Welfare Organization'
[2] http://www.coe.int/t/F/Centre_Nord-Sud/Programmes/7_Prix_Nord-Sud/Discours_SG_PNS2006.pdf
[3] 2005 Glamour Woman of the Year
[4] Kristof, Nicholas D. "A Heroine Walking in the Shadow of Death", New York Times. April 4, 2006. Accessed March 29, 2008.
[5] Kristof, Nicholas D. "A Woman's Work Earns Her Enemies", The New York Times, April 8, 2007. Accessed March 29, 2008.
[6] General Pervez Musharraf - Write to the President: The President Responds
[source - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhtaran_Bibi on 10/05/2008].
[10] Turkey works to stop 'honor' killings
The government, under pressure from feminists and the European Union, responds at a level unheard of in the Islamic world.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
January 9, 2007
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY - Desperately unhappy, 21-year-old Sahe Fidan left the husband she despised and sought refuge in her parents' home. They refused to take her in. A married woman can leave her husband only in a coffin, they told her.

Fidan returned to the husband, and she left him in a coffin. A few weeks ago, she was found hanged in the bathroom, her infant son strapped to her back with a sheet.

Her corpse was discovered when the baby, unharmed, began to cry. Fidan had committed suicide.

Or had she?

After her death in a village in southeastern Turkey, another version circulated. Some activists and officials suspect that Fidan may have joined the ranks of Turkish women forced to kill themselves, or whose slayings are disguised to look self-inflicted.

The killing of women and girls by male relatives who think the females have brought shame to the family's honor is an atrocity that has plagued Turkey and other Islamic countries for generations. Thousands of women have died, been attacked or compelled to commit suicide in so-called honor killings.

In Turkey, the government has finally taken action. Under pressure from an invigorated women's movement and eager to win approval from the European Union, the government has launched a major campaign against honor killings, at a level and with a breadth virtually unheard of in the Islamic world.

Turkish imams have joined pop music stars and soccer celebrities to produce TV spots and billboard ads condemning all forms of violence against women. Broaching a topic that remains largely taboo in many conservative societies, the nation's top Islamic authority has declared honor killing a sin.


Late last year, jail sentences for men and boys who commit the crime were stiffened, and new provisions in the penal code make it harder for a court to reduce sentences. (As recently as 10 months ago, in a typical case, the life sentence of a young man who had killed his sister was substantially reduced because the judges decided he had been "provoked." He had buried her up to her neck in rocks after she was impregnated in a rape.)

In cities and towns with the highest honor killing rates, officials working with advocacy groups are holding town hall meetings and setting up rescue teams and hotlines for endangered women and girls.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the head of a conservative, Islamist-rooted party, went before a gathering of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in November to argue for better treatment of women and to condemn honor killings as a scourge that must be eradicated from Islamic societies.

"We can say these murders are isolated incidents, yet we cannot turn a blind eye to such inhuman acts that are largely the product of ignorance," he said. "Discrimination against women is worse than racism. We must reject the treatment of women as second-class beings."

The challenge is enormous: fighting archaic customs based not so much on religion as on deep-seated tradition and feudal clan systems.

Many of the experts, social workers and officials involved speak of a new era of openness and willingness to confront the problem, but they caution that it will be a long time before attitudes are changed. There is no indication that the number of killings or forced suicides has dropped, though advocates say they feel they now have a better arsenal.

"On paper, we seem to have achieved a lot," Fatma Sahin, a lawmaker with the ruling party who oversaw the drafting of a 300-page report on honor killings, said in an interview in Ankara, the capital. "But when we go out into the field, we recognize that a lot more needs to be done."

A significant segment of the Turkish population defines all-important honor in terms of the chastity and obedience of each female member of a family. As "owners" of women, men must defend honor by safeguarding their bodies and sexuality...

Alarmed by the soaring number of women seeking help, the Diyarbakir government opened the region's first proper shelter for abused women in 2005.

Behind a metal gate on the forlorn northern outskirts of the city, the low-slung complex houses about 50 women. Its location is discreet and, theoretically at least, kept secret out of fear of attack by angry relatives. (The Times was given access on the condition that the women's names not be published.)

One resident was a tall, fair 16-year-old who said her father had ordered her to kill herself.

He had arranged for her marriage to a man she wanted nothing to do with, and she went along at first, long enough to become pregnant. Then she left her husband, hoping to join her true love. But he had married someone else. She returned to her parents' home.

Incensed, her father labeled her damaged goods and gave her a single option: suicide.

She fled to the police and was placed in the shelter, where she gave birth.

Many residents of the shelter were young, in their teens or early 20s, and had been raped; several were toting babies, the product of the rapes. A woman who is raped is often blamed for the crime and risks punishment, even death, at the hands of her relatives. Sometimes she is given the "option" of marrying her rapist, on the theory that no one else will want her and that the marriage wipes away the shame.

Only one of the rape victims interviewed said she thought she could go home again. "My parents know it wasn't my fault," she said. The woman was at the shelter under court order because the rapist was loose and considered a threat.

Sacide Akkaya, an official with KA-MER, the leading women's organization in southeastern Turkey, has seen a progression in the women she works with, from a resignation to violence as a part of their hard lives to a timid but growing willingness to challenge the status quo. It enables social workers to save more people, she said.

"I wouldn't say the volume of incidents has been reduced, but it is less secret now," Akkaya said. "The relatives of the women are often the ones who will tip off authorities, or maybe the neighbors will call. Even the men are starting to get it - many of the tipsters are men. That's what gives us so much hope."

Among the hundreds of honor killings in Turkey, it is impossible to quantify the forced suicides. A special U.N. rapporteur, Yakin Erturk, was dispatched to the country's south last year to investigate a rash of suicides. She concluded that some probably had been "instigated" and cited a host of contributing factors: forced and early marriages, denial of reproductive rights, poverty, migration and displacement, among others.

Victims say they've been ordered by relatives to kill themselves, locked in rooms with a gun or rope, watched over while they were expected to slit their wrists. The infraction can be as slight as a desire to work or the wearing of jeans, the sentence often decided in a family council.

Handan Coskun, a former journalist, started a women's center in Diyarbakir in response to suicides she began investigating several years ago, when the rate in southeastern Turkey was two to three times the national rate. There were dozens of cases, many not related to honor issues. One consistency was that far more females committed or attempted suicide than males, which is the opposite of the worldwide pattern.

Women typically feel isolation or alienation more acutely than men, Coskun said, especially if the family has been transplanted from its rural village to a city. Tens of thousands of families, primarily Kurds, were forced to move into southeastern cities during the Turkish army's fight against Kurdish guerrillas in the 1980s and '90s.

At not quite 5 feet tall, Coskun has had to shout down angry fathers as she rescued women and girls, or gone toe-to-toe with 17 armed clansmen who invaded her office looking for their female relative. She believes she and her team have prevented 17 killings in the last year.

"When we intervene with a family that seems likely to kill a daughter, we have to be very tough to show the same toughness that the family shows," she said.

Turkey's failure to improve the status of women has long been one of the impediments to its integration into Europe. Outsiders are watching to see whether the latest steps will bring real change.

"There is no evidence yet that we are changing the mentality," said Meltem Agduk, a Turkish expert on honor killings who works with the U.N. "The important thing is that people are not so quiet about the issue. And because of that, change will be more rapid than it has in the past." [source - Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer, January 9, 2007].

[11] By David Montero, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Tue Mar 6, 3:00 AM ET

GUJRANWALA, PAKISTAN - Working for the public was a gift from God for Zille Huma Usman, Punjab's provincial minister for social welfare.

But two weeks ago, Muhammed Sarwar violently disagreed, killing her before a crowd because, he said, God does not allow women to work. He later told police that he felt no remorse for his crime.

Ms. Usman's death, which shocked the country, comes at a moment of violent flux over the role of women in Pakistan. As the Pakistani government clamps down on Islamist extremists, the conflict over competing visions of Islam has enveloped the issue of women's rights, turning it into a battleground issue between moderates and Islamist extremists.

"There is a growing sense of menace among women. I've heard working women express anxiety about driving on the streets alone. They work not only because they have to, but as a statement," says Jugnu Mohsin, the publisher and managing editor of The Friday Times, a progressive weekly newspaper. She adds that the threat emanates from a minority segment of society, but has grown worse over the years, incited in part by legislative victories favoring women's rights over fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law.

In December, Pakistan's Parliament passed the Women's Protection Bill, which amended the Hudood Ordinances, a set of religious laws long considered discriminatory toward women. But by shifting the laws from religious codes to secular ones, the bill unleashed widespread political discontent.

"The Women's Protection Bill has focused attention on the issue. Women have become the target because it's a victory for women, even a partial victory," says Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in Lahore.

Although not directly related, recent events suggest a growing arc of violence against women and girls. In the North West Frontier province, at least three girls' schools have been bombed, and threats circulated by pamphlets have directed female health workers to leave the area.

Despite what appears to be escalating violence, government officials say the situation is under control. "We are cognizant of the matter, and we are taking all possible measures to make sure the area does not get Talibanized," says Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema. the director of the National Crisis Management Cell, which deals with matters of internal security.

A troubling parable of Pakistani society, observers say, rests at the intersection where Usman and her killer collided on the afternoon of Feb. 20 in Gujranwala, a northeastern city of more than 3 million.

Usman, the first female politician in her family, was a proud symbol of change. Thanks to national laws which allotted one-third of all local legislative seats for women, some 30,000 women entered local politics after 2001, according to a 2004 World Bank study.Usman herself began working up the ladder four years ago.
"She was very interested in giving charity to the poor. Her belief was that if you want to work, it is no matter if you are a man or a woman," her husband, Muhammed Usman Haider, says at the family home in Gujranwala. "I'm proud to say she's the most pious woman. She knows more about Islam than anyone."

Meanwhile, religious leaders universally condemn Mr. Sarwar's stated motives, and while few clerics would support his extreme actions, the rising violence indicates that there may be segments of society who do. A debate rages over what Islam says about a woman's right to work and hold office.

"Whoever did this was wrong. She was not un-Islamic. There is nowhere in the Koran that women cannot hold office, as long as they act with modesty," says Aqeel Ahmed, who works at a computer shop in Gujranwala.

More than religion, what most disturbs observers is that Usman was not Sarwar's first victim. In 2003, he confessed to police that he had killed at least four women and wounded four others, mostly prostitutes and dancers.

His gruesome acts made national headlines, but when Sarwar appeared in court, he changed his story and the cases fell apart. There were also allegations, according to the local press, that religious leaders paid compensation money to the victims' families, who eventually dropped the cases.

While police deny any wrongdoing or neglect in Sarwar's previous cases, his frequent run-ins with the law, observers say, expose the institutional discrimination at work within the Pakistani justice system.
"[Women] are not getting real justice. They're not going through the police and the judiciary ... It will take so much time and insults of that lady," says Humaira Hashmi, the regional general manager of the Punjab Rural Support Program in Multan, which addresses issues of women's rights.

Such lapses are part of the larger fabric of abuse toward women that goes unchecked in Pakistani society, according to observers. An October 2006
United Nations report highlighted that honor killings claimed the lives of 4,000 men and women between 1998 and 2003 in Pakistan.

"Police almost invariably take the man's side in honor killings or domestic murders, and rarely prosecute the killers," said a 1999 Amnesty International report. "Even when the men are convicted, the judiciary ensures that they usually receive a light sentence, reinforcing the view that men can kill their female relatives with virtual 'impunity.' " [source - David Montero, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Tue Mar 6, 3:00 AM ET ].

[12] Ex-Muslims form anti-religion group in Germany

By Norbert Klaschka Feb 28, 2007, 21:35 GMT
Berlin - Former Muslims in Germany publicly launched a group Wednesday with the provocative name National Council of Ex-Muslims, and said they would be a voice for non-religious people of Islamic cultural origin.

The name is deliberately modelled on that of the National Council of Muslims, the German Muslim Council and other mosque federations.

The ex-Muslims in Berlin contest the right of faith-centred groups to speak on behalf of an estimated 3 million to 3.5 million people of Islamic origin in Germany's 82-million-strong population.

They unveiled a poster with the slogan, 'We've Given It Up,' showing the faces of many former Muslims who no longer believe. The 'coming-out' flies in the face of Islam, which does not make any provision for formally departing from membership in the faith.

'We want to breach a taboo,' said the chairwoman of the new Council, Mina Ahadi.
Michael Schmidt-Salomon, chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, which is supporting the campaign, said, 'Never before have Muslims been so open about renouncing their faith.'

He said he hoped the Council would set an example worldwide.
Arzu Toker, deputy chairwoman, used a news conference to announce her separation from Islam: 'I herewith resign from Islam. That's it.'

Toker, a journalist who was born in 1952 in Turkey's eastern Anatolia region, is radical in her criticism of Islam. She does not accept its Sharia system of rules at all, saying they contradict both human rights and the values of the German constitution.

She added that Islam was anti-woman. 'It humiliates women and turns them into servants of the men,' she said, adding the Islam was anti-man as well.
'It reduces men to breeding animals controlled by their urges,' said Toker. She quoted the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: 'He said, God is dead. One can live fine by taking one's own responsibility.'

She said she did not distinguish between Islam and fundamentalism.
'Islam is inherently radical,' she said.
Ahadi described her life to reporters and said, 'Political Islam has afflicted my life.' Born in Iran in 1956, her support for human rights had rapidly put her in opposition to the Islamic Revolution. She refused to wear a headscarf and was expelled from university.

Later her husband was executed. She had lived in Germany since 1996.
'I know all about political Islam,' she said. 'It ends up with us being stoned to death, even here in Germany.'

The ex-Muslims asserted they had already been threatened with violence but would not be intimidated.

'I'm not going to play mouse for the cat,' said Toker, referring to fatwas which state that apostates from Islam may be killed.

The news conference in Berlin was given police protection.[source - Norbert Klaschka Feb 28, 2007, 21:35 GMT]

[13] REFORM NEEDED IN ISLAM PER AYAAN HISRI ALI:

Author speaks out for reform of Islam, by Lona O'Connor.

<<<In her homeland of Somalia - where she can never safely return - Ayaan Hirsi Ali is considered a whore, and infidel, a traitor and a blasphemer.

None of that is surprising, considering that she has called the prophet Mohammed a pedophile for taking a child wife. Under threat of death since 2004, she continues to speak out for reform of Islam.

Ali, author of the memoir "Infidel," was in town Thursday to speak and sign books at several events....

Flying in the face of political correctness, she asserted that democracy and Islam are incompatible. Her audience of 800, ...

One of Ali's contentions is that Islam never encountered a Renissance, a Reformation or an Enlightenment, that Islam's moderates and reformers are two few, an endangered species.

All of this from a woman who was brought up in strict Muslim fashion in Somalia, was deprived of her clitoris at the age of 5 and fled a proper arranged marriage by emigrating to the Netherlands.

There, she collaborated with Theo Van Gogh on a short film, "Submission, that included images of semi-clad women with Quaranic verses inscribed on their flesh.

The film so enraged Muslim extremists that in 2004 one of them shot Van Gogh to death on an Amsterdam stree, then plunged a knife into his [own] chest, pinning a note that claimed Ali would be next. She since has been accompanied by scowling bodyguards....

"Islam today is not compatible with (democracy). Islam denies the separation of religion and political affairs."

Democracy will only have a chance in Islamic run countries when, 'faced with the choice between Quranic command and his conscience, a man can follow his conscience," she said.

Taskeen Naimat, striding out in a snappy...amazement and awe that Ali could speak so freely about things that in Naimat's home country of Pakistan few would dare to voice.[In Muslim countries no true freedom of religion].

"A Muslim would kill her with his own hands," said Naimat, a bank officer who moved here nine years ago, "She is so brave."

In Pakistan, a woman who has been raped needs two men to vouch that the crime occurred, she said.[Utter nonsense as rape is a crime that almost never occurs in public, but is best proven by DNA.]

"I am so glad I live in this country," she [Taskeen Naimat] said. [source - The Palm Beach Post, Friday, March 23, 2007, Page 5C]>>>

This quote from an article in a newspaper speaks for itself with regard to how Islam treats or should I more correctly say, mistreats women. However, many of them are two brainwashed to realize it.

Another article by "The New York Times" highlights the same truth, Islam does not treat women correctly.

<<<German judge's use of Quran riles many. She [the judge] cites a verse {Sura of Quran] that permits some beatings [of wife] in denying a divorce.

Frankfurt, Germany - a German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Quran in turning down a German Muslim's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.


In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Quran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legarl experts and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teachings ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence.[Admittance this is part of Quaranic teachings].

The court in Frankfurt abruptly removed Datz-Winter from the case on Wednesday, saying it could not justify her reasoning. The woman's lawyer, Barbara Becker-rojczyk, said she decided to publicize the ruling, which was issued in January, after the court refused her request for a new judge.

"It was terrible for my client," Becker-Rojczyk said, "This man beat her seriously from the beginning of their marriage. After they separated, he called her and threatened to kill her."...

While the verse Datz-Winter cited does say husbands may beat their wives for being disobedient - an interpretation embraced by Wahhabi and other fundamentalist Islamic groups - mainstream Muslims long have rejected wife-beating as a medieval relic.[Clearly admitting they did it in medieval times even though it is completely wrong.]...[source - "The New York Times," and "The Palm Beach Post, Friday, March 23, 2007, page 22A].

Again, the article says it all. This quote from an article in a newspaper speaks for itself with regard to how Islam treats or should I more correctly say, mistreats women. However, many of them are two brainwashed to realize it.

[14] By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 33 minutes ago [05/27/2007]

KALMA, Sudan - The seven women pooled money to rent a donkey and cart, then ventured out of the refugee camp to gather firewood, hoping to sell it for cash to feed their families. Instead, they say, in a wooded area just a few hours walk away, they were gang-raped, beaten and robbed.

Naked and devastated, they fled back to Kalma.
"All the time it lasted, I kept thinking: They're killing my baby, they're killing my baby," wailed Aisha, who was seven months pregnant at the time.
The women have no doubt who attacked them. They say the men's camels and their uniforms marked them as janjaweed [Muslims]- the Arab militiamen accused of terrorizing the mostly black African villagers of Sudan's Darfur region.
Their story, told to an Associated Press reporter and confirmed by other women and aid workers in the camp, provides a glimpse into the hell that Darfur has become as the Arab-dominated government battles a rebellion stoked by a history of discrimination and neglect.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and rape is its regular byproduct, U.N. and other human rights activists say. Sudan's government denies arming and unleashing the janjaweed, and bristles at the charges of rape, saying its conservative Islamic society would never tolerate it. It has agreed to let in 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers, but not the 22,000 mandated by the U.N. Security Council. It claims the force would be a spearhead for anti-Arab powers bent on plundering Sudan's oil.

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 civilians have died and 2.5 million are homeless out of Darfur's population of 6 million, the U.N. says, and a February report by the International Criminal Court alleges "mass rape of civilians who were known not to be participants in any armed conflict."

Kalma is a microcosm of the misery - a sprawling camp of mud huts and scrap-plastic tents where 100,000 people have taken refuge. It is so full of guns that overwhelmed African Union peacekeepers long ago fled, unable to protect it. It is so crowded that the government has tried to limit newcomers - forbidding the building of new latrines, so a stench pervades the air. Anyone venturing outside must reckon with the janjaweed, as Aisha and her friends found out.

In Sudan, as in many Islamic countries, society views a sexual assault as a dishonor upon the woman's entire family. "Victims can face terrible ostracism," says Maha Muna, the U.N. coordinator on this issue in Sudan. Some aid workers believe the janjaweed use rape to intimidate the rebels, and their supporters and families. "It's a strategy of war," Muna said in an interview earlier this year in Khartoum, the capital. Sudan's government is especially sensitive about such accusations and denies rape is widespread.

Sudanese public opinion would view mass rape much more severely than other crimes alleged in Darfur, said a senior Sudanese government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from his superiors.
He acknowledged the janjaweed had initially received weapons from the government - something the government officially denies - and said authorities now are struggling to rein in the militias.

Nasser Kambal, a prominent human rights activist and co-founder of the Amel center, a Sudanese group helping victims of rape and other abuse, offers a similar view. "I don't think raping was planned by the government. Killing and looting and torture, yes, but not rape," he said.

Kalma isn't the only place where multiple accounts of rape have surfaced. Some 120 miles away, in the town of Mukjar, two men separately described women being brought into a prison where they were being held and raped for hours by janjaweed. They said the assailants shouted that they were "planting tomatoes" - a reference to skin color: Darfur Arabs describe themselves as "red" because they are slightly lighter-skinned than ethnic Africans.

According to Muna, U.N. agencies are working closely with Sudanese authorities to improve the government's response to rape allegations. In 2005, the government created a task force on rape in Darfur, headed by Attayet Mustapha, a pediatrician, government official and women's rights activist. In an interview this year, Mustapha said social workers were being deployed to address the problem and a special female police unit was being assembled in Darfur.
"We tell officials that the government has decided to enforce a zero tolerance policy toward rape in Darfur," she said.

U.N. workers say they registered 2,500 rapes in Darfur in 2006, but believe far more went unreported. The real figure is probably thousands a month, said a U.N. official. Like other U.N. personnel and aid workers interviewed, the official insisted on speaking anonymously for fear of being expelled by the government.
Victims usually can't identify their aggressors, which makes prosecutions impossible. Only eight offenders were tried and sentenced for rape crimes in Darfur by Sudanese courts in 2006, said Mustapha, the task force leader. "They received three to five years prison, and 100 lashes" in accordance with Islamic law, she said.

In May, after the top U.N. human rights official charged that Sudanese soldiers had raped at least 15 Darfur women during one recent incident, Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi asked where the evidence was.

"We always seem to get sweeping generalizations, without naming the injured, without naming the offenders," he told reporters. In Kalma, collecting firewood needed to cook meals is becoming more perilous as the trees around the camp dwindle and women are forced to scavenge ever farther afield. It is strictly a woman's task, dictated both by tradition and the fear that any male escorts would be killed if the janjaweed found them.

Agreeing to tell the AP their story earlier this month through a translator, the seven women's voices wavered and hesitated, broken by embarrassed silences. All gave their names and agreed to be identified in full, but the AP is withholding their surnames because they are rape victims and vulnerable to retaliation.
The women said they set out on a Monday morning last July and had barely begun collecting the wood when 10 Arabs on camels surrounded them, shouting insults and shooting their rifles in the air.

The women first attempted to flee. "But I didn't even try, because I couldn't run," being seven months pregnant, said Aisha, a petite 18-year-old whose raspy voice sounds more like that of an old woman. She said four men stayed behind to flay her with sticks, while the other janjaweed chased down the rest of her group. "We didn't get very far," said Maryam, displaying the scar of a bullet that hit her on the right knee.

Once rounded up, the women said, they were beaten and their rented donkey killed. Zahya, 30, had brought her 18-year-old daughter, Fatmya, and her baby. The baby was thrown to the ground and both women were raped. The baby survived.
Zahya said the women were lined up and assaulted side by side, and she saw four men taking turns raping Aisha.

The women said the attackers then stripped them naked and jeered at them as they fled. On their way back, men from the refugee camp unraveled their cotton turbans for the women to partly cover up, but the victims said they were laughed at when they entered the refugee camp.

"Ever since, I've made sure that women living on the outskirts of the camp have spare sets of clothes to give out," said Khadidja Abdallah, a sheika, an informal camp leader, who took the women to the international aid compound at the camp to be treated.
They were given anti-pregnancy and anti-HIV pills, thanks to which their families haven't entirely ostracized them, the women said. The baby Aisha was expecting at the time is doing well. His name is Osman.

Sheikas in Kalma said they report over a dozen rapes each week. Human rights activists in South Darfur who monitor violence in the refugee camps estimate more than 100 women are raped each month in and around Kalma alone.
The workers warn of an alarming new trend of rapes within the refugee population amid the boredom and slow social decay of the camps. But for the most part, they added, it all depends on whether janjaweed are present in the area.
The sheikas say they are making some headway toward persuading families to accept raped women back into their embrace and let them report attacks to aid workers. One advantage is that they get a certificate confirming they were raped.

"We tell husbands they might be compensated one day," said Ajaba Zubeir, a sheika. "But I don't think that's going to happen." The seven women say they haven't left the camp since they were attacked. They have started their own small workshop and make water jugs out of clay and donkey dung to sell to other refugees. As they worked on their large pile of jugs and bowls, they said they are even poorer than before, because they now have to buy their firewood from other women.

"But at least we never have to go out again," said Aisha.

None of the women has any faith that Sudanese or international courts will ever give them justice. All Zahya asks is that one day she can return to her village.
"If people could at least help end the fighting, that would be enough," she said. [source - ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer on 05/27/2007].

[15] By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 19 minutes ago [07/01/2007]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - As the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street.

The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. The two men however, said they were religious police.

It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the senior of three women, did something that is believed unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court.

On Monday, four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles damages suits for abuses by government and public figures.

The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes on top of two cases involving the death in religious police custody of two Saudi men - one arrested for allegedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family.

A trial opened Monday against three religious police officers and a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death penalty against the defendants.
Taken together, the cases threaten to undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Since the commission's creation more than six decades ago, there has been no known public legal action taken against its members despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries. The public view has tended to be that whatever their faults, they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality.
But things may be changing.

The National Society for Human Rights, a non-government body, has issued a report which, according to the daily Arab News, levels a string of allegations at the religious police: abusive language, unsubstantiated accusations, humiliation of people during interrogation, beatings, unnecessary body searches, forced entry into private homes and coerced confessions.

The report, as well as the extensive coverage the cases have received and editorials calling for the commission's reform, suggest the government may act to regulate the force.

Another setback for the commission came in the appointed Consultative Council, the nearest thing to a parliament in Saudi Arabia. It rejected proposals to build more commission centers and give its members a 20 percent salary raise. While the council's actions are not binding, they reflect a general desire to curb the religious police's power.

"Society has developed and the relationship of other governmental bodies with the people has developed and become more human," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist. "Yet the commission has not changed."

"Society in principle doesn't reject the commission," he added. "But the commission's problem is that it doesn't have a proper job description."
Several media outlets have conducted informal surveys asking Saudis whether the commission should be dissolved. Some have said yes. While the polls may be unscientific, simply asking the question is significant.
Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the commission's head, dismissed the polls, saying the commission is "one of the oldest governmental agencies ... and not a cooperative that can be eliminated because of individual mistakes," according to the Al-Jazira newspaper.

The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with its religious establishments for fear of angering conservatives and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The conservative impulse has lately been illustrated by a request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University's medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic.

But there are signs the commission is acting to limit the damage to the religious police's reputation. It now has a spokesman and a legal department to guide its members.

Umm Faisal - her full name is withheld in reports on the case - says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from the amusement park in the family's new Chevrolet Caprice.
"I kept asking the men, 'Are you terrorists?' They finally said they were members of the commission," she said. "When I asked what they wanted, they called me names, including adulteress."

Umm Faisal said the men drove so fast and badly that smoke came out of the car.
The men stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to pick them up. The women, who don't know how to drive (and can't anyway, under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by.

Umm Faisal headed to the police to lodge a complaint. "When questioned, the commission members claimed we were indecently covered," because her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes, she said.

In early 2004 she filed suit at Riyadh's General Court, but says several judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case was dismissed.
She then turned to the Grievances Court, which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women and acquitted the other.
Umm Faisal isn't satisfied, and her appeal opens before the court on Monday.
[source - DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press on 07/01/2007]

[16] Members of Islam Practice Horrible Heathen Crime Against Nature.

Egypt outlaws all female circumcision 2 hours, 17 minutes ago [6/28/2007]

CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt on Thursday finally banned all female circumcision, the
widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a
12-year-old girl.

Officially the practice, which affects Muslim women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, [[Moslems adapted a horrible practice of pagans yet untruthfully claim they are not heathens, strange]] was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".

On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and
member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from
carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.
Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all
contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a
"permanent ban".

A survey in 2000 said the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the
country's women.

In the latest fatality, 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker was taken by her mother
to a private clinic in Minya, a town on the Nile south of Cairo, for the
operation. She died before she could be transferred to hospital.
Her mother accused the woman doctor of negligence, charging that her daughter's
death was linked to the anaesthetic and not the removal of the clitoris, for
which she had paid 50 pounds (nearly nine dollars). Police have arrested both
women.

There is no excuse for this horrible heathen crime against nature.[source - AFP]

[17] In a satirical poem titled "When," posted on Arabic reformist websites including www.aafaq.org , reformist Saudi author and journalist Wajeha Al-Huwaider lamented what she regards as the conditions in the Arab world. In the introduction to this poem, she wrote: "'When' is an ode to the troubles of the Arab citizen. Both men and women participated in its [writing], and it is still open to additions. This ode will be hung on the walls of the palaces of the Arab rulers, [1] so feel free to add you contributions."

The following are excerpts from the poem:


"When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner - you know that you are in an Arab country...

"When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity - do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.

"When religion has control over science - you can be sure that you are in an Arab country.

"When clerics are referred to as 'scholars' - don't be astonished, you are in an Arab country.

"When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and whom nobody is permitted to criticize - do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country.

"When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery - do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country.

"When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but [see them] seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high positions [in the government] - do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country...

"When monarchies turn into theocracies, and republics into hybrids of monarchy and republic - do not be taken aback, you are in an Arab country.

"When you find that the members of parliament are nominated [by the ruler], or else that half of them are nominated and the other half have bought their seats through bribery... - you are in an Arab country...

"When you discover that a woman is worth half of what a man is worth, or less - do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country...

"When you see that the authorities chop off a man's hand for stealing a loaf of bread or a penny, but praise and glorify those who steal billions - do not be too surprised, you are in an Arab country...

"When you are forced to worship the Creator in school and your teachers grade you for it - you can be sure that you are in an Arab country...

"When young women students are publicly flogged merely for exposing their eyes - you are in an Arab country...

"When a boy learns about menstruation and childbirth but not about his own [body] and [the changes] it undergoes in puberty - roll out your prayer mat and beseech Allah to help you deal with your crisis, for you are in an Arab country...

"When land is more important than human beings - you are in an Arab country...

"When covering the woman's head is more important than financial and administrative corruption, embezzlement, and betrayal of the homeland - do not be astonished, you are in an Arab country...

"When minorities are persecuted and oppressed, and if they demand their rights, are accused of being a fifth column or a Trojan horse - be upset, you are in an Arab country...

"When women are [seen as] house ornaments which can be replaced at any time - bemoan your fate, you are in an Arab country.

"When birth control and family planning are perceived as a Western plot - place your trust in Allah, you are in an Arab country...

"When at any time, there can be a knock on your door and you will be dragged off and buried in a dark prison - you are in an Arab country...

"When fear constantly lives in the eyes of the people - you can be certain that you are in an Arab country." [source - a satirical poem titled "When," posted on Arabic reformist websites including www.aafaq.org , by reformist Saudi author and journalist Wajeha Al-Huwaider]

[18] Saudis Say Punishment of Rape Victim Justified
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
November 21, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - The Saudi government, reacting to international indignation about the punishment meted out to a young gang rape victim, has issued a statement defending the court decision.

The "charges were proven" against the 19-year-old woman, who was sitting in a car with an unrelated male shortly before the assault occurred, the Justice Ministry said in the statement released by the Sunni kingdom's official Saudi Press Agency Tuesday.

"The woman and her companion were sentenced chastisingly to whipping since some of the charges against them were proven," it said, adding that both had "contently accepted" the verdict.

The Shi'ite woman, who has not been named, was initially sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted under a law that forbids non-related men and women to meet in private.

Her lawyer disputed the charge, saying she and the man -- a student she used to know -- had in fact met in a public place, but were abducted and taken to a remote place where they were both raped by seven men

But when the woman appealed against the verdict, the Supreme Judiciary Council, a superior court, last week increased her punishment to 200 lashes and six months' imprisonment.

Saudi news reports say the rapists have been sentenced to prison terms of between two and nine years.

In Tuesday's statement, the Justice Ministry hinted that the stiffer sentence handed out on appeal stemmed from the fact that the victim had gone to the media with her story.

"The system has guaranteed the right to object for whoever has an objection and requests an appeal without resorting to provocation through media which may not be fair nor grant a justice," it said. "Rather media may have adverse effects on the other parties involved in the case."

Saudi authorities also acted against the lawyer who represented the rape victim, revoking Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem's license to practice law.

The Justice Department statement said Al-Lahem had "insulted" the Supreme Judiciary Council, "opposed regulations and instructions and showed ignorance of them." The judges complained about "faulty behaviors that contradict the ethics of his profession and violate the provisions of practicing law," it said.

Al-Lahem told the Saudi daily Arab News that the appeal court's treatment of his client "sums up the major problems that the Saudi judiciary faces."

"From now on people will be apprehensive to appeal fearing they might be punished or have their sentences doubled," he said. "That's exactly what's happened to the rape victim, who only wanted justice."

The lawyer also disputed the accusations about him. He recalled that he had a dispute with a judge over the court's requirement that the rape victim should attend a court hearing in the presence of the rapists, which he said was "totally inhumane."

Al-Lahem has been ordered to appear before a Justice Ministry disciplinary committee next month.

Arab News also reported that the rape victim's husband told the paper she would now appeal the verdict in a higher tribunal, the Court of Cassation, despite having been warned by a judge of the possibility of an even more severe sentence.

Four male witnesses

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a press briefing, when asked about the case, that the verdict "causes a fair degree of surprise and astonishment."

"It is within the power of the Saudi government to take a look at the verdict
and change it," he said.

"We don't understand how something like this could happen. That said, these kinds of decisions are going to have to be decisions that the people of that country, in this case Saudi Arabia, are going to have to take for themselves."

He said he was unaware of any direct contact between the two governments over the case.

Muslim American Society Freedom, a rights-focused sister organization of the Muslim American Society, called the incident "a clear violation of the compassion and mercy taught by the religion of Islam."

"Not only has this woman endured the horror of gang rape, but she is now being subject to an equally terrible infliction of pain and harm by the legal system of Saudi Arabia," said the group's executive director, Mahdi Bray.

He called on American Muslims and their organizations to "condemn this terrible miscarriage of justice."

Saudi laws are based on the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam, and punishments can include penalties such as flogging and the amputation of limbs.

A rape victim is required to present four uninvolved male Muslim witnesses of good standing to back her claim -- a standard virtually impossible to meet -- failing which she can herself be charged with adultery.

"There can be no greater failure by a system of justice than to punish the victim of a crime," Dr. Ali Alyami, executive director of the U.S.-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, said earlier of the case.

Apart from the difficulties rape victims face in proving their case, he attributed the courts' treatment of the woman in this instance - and the lenient sentences handed to the rapists - to the fact she was a member of the Shi'ite "minority who are brutally discriminated against because of their religion."

Alyami said Saudi courts can only be staffed by Sunni religious judges, who view Shi'ites as "heretics and infidels."

Saudi Arabia is not the only Muslim country where legal punishments are controversial.

A similar burden of proof requirement applies in rape cases in Pakistan, where in 2002 it was reported that a young woman had been sentenced to death by stoning for the crime of having extra-marital relations, after accusing her brother-in-law of raping her. Following international condemnation, a federal court acquitted her. [source - Saudis Say Punishment of Rape Victim Justified
By Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com International Editor, on November 21, 2007}

[19] The 200 lashes meted out to a gang rape survivor prompt a rare burst of outrage in the national media and underscore the slow pace of reform.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 16, 2007

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A recent court decision sentencing a victim of gang rape to 200 lashes for un-Islamic behavior has outraged a nation accustomed to harsh punishment and has highlighted the slow pace of government reform since King Abdullah rose to power two years ago.

Judges guided by their interpretation of the Koran insinuated that the married victim, known in the media here as the Qatif girl, was immoral because she was meeting a man alone when the pair were accosted by seven knife-wielding attackers. In November, she was sentenced to six months in prison in addition to the lashing; her assailants received five-year prison terms.

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Saudis are used to the public beheadings of murderers and amputations of the hands of pickpockets, but the Qatif girl's ordeal embarrassed the country at a time Riyadh is negotiating major international business deals and emerging as a potential broker in Middle East peace talks. The government has said it will review the case, an indication that the king may move to overrule Islamic fundamentalists.

King Abdullah is widely regarded as a modernizer in a royal family balanced between those favoring change and others who insist on maintaining a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Satellite TV and the Internet have created a more open media and the king has supported local elections, even if they offer only token democracy. But liberals and human rights activists complain that hard-liners remain in control of the courts, Interior Ministry and other government agencies.

"Don't expect big changes and sudden successes, but reform has taken root," said Mishary A. Alnuaim, the vice dean of law and political science at King Saud University. "Modernizing religion is still slow. That's the million-dollar question. You still find a lot of messages of intolerance.

"Much of this is about the real or imagined invasion of Western culture. . . . The religious hard-liners want to produce the argument that the Muslim world is still being victimized by Western influence and political power."

'Rhetorical reform'

Conservatives have been emboldened by increased global energy demands and high oil prices that have enriched the kingdom. Reliance on oil has tempered criticism from Washington and other Western capitals over the lack of women's rights and the sweeping power of the Saudi state. Some analysts say the king, while more progressive than much of his population, fears that hurried reforms could lead to public anger and possible religious revolt similar to that which brought down the shah of Iran in 1979.

"You have a lot of dynamic change in Saudi Arabia. There's high unemployment, lost investments and a worried middle class," said Martrouk Faleh, a university professor who has been jailed for his reformist activities. "At the same time, the nation's elite feel no external pressure for reform because of strategic U.S. and British business and oil interests."

Mohammed Fahad Qahtani, a talk show host and professor at the national Diplomatic Studies Institute, calls it "rhetorical reform."

"One royal camp truly wants change but another doesn't," he said. "When we had our municipal elections [in 2005] the so-called elected authorities of these councils didn't know their mandate, and when they asked the government, they were told 'It's none of your business.' "

There have been some encouraging signs, however. The quasi-legislative advisory body to the king, known as the Shura Council, appears to have gained influence in recent years. The monarch followed the council's suggestion to deny a 20% pay raise to the country's religious police, known as mutaween, who patrol shopping malls chastising and arresting women whom they deem improperly veiled. The decision signaled that the king was reining in a religious force many Saudis complained had become increasingly repressive.

National dialogues have opened debates on reforms and invited limited input from critics. In 2005, municipal elections in Riyadh, Mecca and Jidda gave hope that democracy could coexist with a monarchy. Elected officials now have some latitude in overseeing development in their cities, but overall, their power is curtailed by the royal family and corruption that drives many business and construction deals.

"We want to know who gave the permit for that shopping center. How much was paid for it? This is how you stop corruption," said Ibrahim Hamad Quayid, an elected Riyadh city councilman, whose corner window office overlooks shopping malls and tinted-glass high-rises. "The king is good, the crown princes are nice. . . . But there are those in bureaucracy who can corrupt everything, even when it comes to putting fire extinguishers in buildings."

The risks of dissent

Challenging the government, especially the judiciary and the Interior Ministry, can still lead to trouble. In November, Abdullah Hamid, a leading reformer and human rights activist, was sentenced to four months in prison on charges of obstruction of justice and for inciting a public protest against the treatment of alleged terrorists held in Saudi prisons for two years without charges or trials. Hamid's brother, Issa, was sentenced to six months on similar charges.

"The verdict against the Hamid brothers shows that the Saudi government's talk of human rights reform is just that -- talk," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch.

Abdullah Hamid, who represented the wives of the suspected terrorists, was arrested in July after demanding that security police present a search warrant before entering the home of one of the women, who was also his relative. He has appealed his sentence. In 2005, Abdullah Hamid, Faleh and other activists had been pardoned by King Abdullah after serving 16 months on sentences that ran for six to nine years on convictions for criticizing the government and calling for parliamentary elections.

"Cracking down on reformers leaves no place for a peaceful civil society," said Faleh, who is representing Hamid. "We are not allowed to question the government, not even peacefully."

Reforming the judiciary is one of the most sensitive political challenges facing the king. The Saudis have parallel legal systems -- one of civil regulations, and the other a more prominent Sharia system based on strict adherence to the Koran. Criminal cases, including the rape of the Qatif girl, are presided over by religiously conservative judges who hold that holy texts are not bound by civil or man-made laws.

Despite discussion of merging the two systems, the religious judges hold tremendous sway; they represent a form of Islam that has kept the royal family in power for generations. They are also regarded by many Saudis as the only check and balance on the monarchy.

Yet their decisions draw frequent condemnation from international humanitarian groups and from Saudi activists for disregarding the rights of women, who are forbidden to drive or vote, and face restrictions on employment, dress and place in the family.

In November, a court found that the Qatif girl violated Islamic codes by being in the company of a man not her husband. She was sentenced to 90 lashes. When she appealed the case and went public with her ordeal, the angry judges suspended her lawyer's court license and increased her sentence to six months in prison and 200 lashes.

Sultan Qahtani, a well-known Saudi writer, posted an essay on the Internet suggesting the royal family was preparing to move against the judiciary: "The controversy over the Girl of Qatif sentence might lead to a strong push for the government, which is inclined toward reform, to confront the other elements that insist the kingdom maintain its extreme religiosity."

Other Saudi writers and commentators, in a rare outburst of harsh criticism, said the sentence, which is under government review, has embarrassed the nation.

"It is a tale that is more reminiscent of the cruel callous punishments meted out to women in medieval times. And yet sadly it is a case that is making headlines in the 21st century," Lubna Hussain wrote in an op-ed piece in the Saudi-based Arab News. "The judges looked into their crystal ball and saw that she had 'the intention of doing something bad' and this, therefore, constituted a very good reason for her to be gang raped. Always the woman's fault, but of course!" [source - Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer on December 16, 2007]

[20] The slain prime minister was the first elected leader of a Muslim state, but two decades later the female population is still subject to harsh repression based on religious and tribal taboos.

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 20, 2008

LAHORE, PAKISTAN -- Squeezed into segregated public buses with scant seats reserved for women, schoolteacher Suneela Mohsin thinks of Benazir Bhutto. She thinks of the slain leader when she walks crowded streets, forbidden to talk to strange men in public or even make eye contact in this society dominated by men.

"Our culture offers women very little public space," she said, wearing a deep maroon dupatta, the traditional shawl-like covering, around her head and body. "Benazir was our last hope of change. But now she's gone."

For women such as Mohsin, Pakistan is a land of bitter contradictions. Entrenched tribal and religious taboos subject women to what human rights groups call some of the cruelest repression in the world. But the country also elected Bhutto, the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation.

Bhutto's assassination last month has led many here to reassess her contribution to women's rights in her homeland: Was she merely an iconic figurehead, or did she bring real change through her actions and public policies?

Lawyer Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's leading human rights advocate, said Bhutto did more for women than any other Pakistani leader, including appointing female judges and establishing a commission for women's rights.

"She opened the dialogue of women's rights in Pakistan," Jahangir said. "She did more than talk, she walked the walk. We just expected her to walk more."

In Pakistan, seven of 10 women can't read, one of the highest illiteracy rates in South Asia. So-called honor killings, gang rape and sexual attacks are frequent, but those who report assaults are more likely to go to prison than see justice.

Critics say Bhutto was a flawed leader whose two terms as prime minister were ineffectual. She wasted an opportunity, they say, to repeal draconian ordinances enacted in 1979 by President Zia ul-Haq, the man who ousted her father from power and then had him executed. The ordinances, part of his radical efforts toward "Islamization," mandated harsh punishments, including death, for extramarital sex.

"She didn't make any breakthroughs to counter brutish behavior; her changes were cosmetic," said Farzana Bari, director of the Center of Excellence in Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital.

"We had such high hopes for her as a woman representing a liberal party in Pakistan, that she could bring about real change for women here. Of course, she didn't do it."

Bhutto's supporters say she brought progress for women in other ways, including the creation of the first bank run by women, healthcare programs and female-staffed police stations.

"Her record on women's rights may not seem great, but she was leader of all people, and felt she couldn't afford to exclusively promote women and alienate men," said Saba Gul Khattak, a fellow at Pakistan's Sustainable Development Policy Institute. "She had to tread a path somewhere in between. That's the reality of politics."

Bhutto held her ground on women's rights while under attack from tribal warlords and conservative mullahs.

"Women didn't take a step backward under Benazir. She didn't allow any new negative polices to be enacted," said Neelam Hussain, a member of the Women's Action Forum, an Islamabad-based political action group.

But in Pakistan, where women account for 49% of the 160-million population, many are entering workplaces that offer them little equality and few opportunities for advancement. In many companies, women are paid less and handed support jobs.

In many schools, for example, women are not allowed to teach male students once they reach a certain age. The thinking: Boys need the firm hand of a man for guidance and discipline.

Barriers for women aren't just in the workplace. They hit home as well.

"I may have more rights than my mother did, but I still can't go out alone after 8 p.m., I can't have boyfriends, and I won't marry for love -- my wedding will be arranged," Mariam Hubib lamented as she walked across the campus of the elite Kinnaird College here.

Hubib, 20, is a linguistics major who has hopes of entering the job market when she graduates. But there's one problem: Her parents won't let her.

"It's still not considered good for women to work," she said with a sigh. "My family is conservative. I don't know what I'll do with my education. I guess just wait around for my husband to arrive."

She aches to become an independent woman like Benazir Bhutto. "She spoke out even though she knew she was in danger. How can I even think of becoming like her? My father won't let me."

Other women say Bhutto's presence alone challenged traditional male attitudes.

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"There were those who said it was un-Islamic to have a woman leader, that any country with a woman leader was going to hell," said Saadia Toor, a sociologist at the College of Staten Island who specializes in Pakistan. "It was incredibly difficult to lead a nation when this is the level of things that were thrown at you."

The populist Bhutto appealed to both women and men. Tahseen Alfarooq, a Pakistani businessman who has lived in Germany, said Bhutto's Achilles' heel was, ironically, a man. Her husband, Pakistani politician Asif Ali Zardari, was widely disliked and has been called "Mr. 10%" for his alleged penchant for taking kickbacks on government deals.

"He was a corrupt man," Alfarooq said, "who sullied the reputation of an honest woman."

Bhutto wasn't the first female politician to be killed in Pakistan. Last year, Zill-e-Huma Usman, the social welfare minister in Punjab, the nation's largest province, was gunned down by a man who walked up to her and asked, "Why aren't you wearing proper Islamic dress?"

The assailant then calmly surrendered to police, insisting that women seen outside the home are evil. "I have killed her out of conviction that she was leading an un-Islamic life and spreading an evil influence on other women," he said.

Activists worry that women in Pakistan are in more peril than ever. Even after the 2002 assault case of a rural woman who had been publicly gang-raped under the order of a village court made international news, such crimes continue.

"There is a degree of violence accepted here that should be unacceptable in any society," said lawyer Hina Jilani, a civil rights activist. "Women's lives and liberties are not considered sacred. And that will certainly not get any better now that Bhutto is gone."

In late 2006, amid widespread opposition from religious extremists, President Pervez Musharraf signed into law the Protection of Women Act, making it slightly easier to prosecute sexual assault cases and reducing the penalty for extramarital sex. Under the previous law, women who alleged rape often found themselves convicted of adultery.

For her part, Suneela Mohsin wasn't always a fan of Bhutto, who had all the entitlements of class, wealth and privilege. But eventually she began to pattern her own life after Bhutto's. After all, what other role models were out there? She pressured her husband, a call center worker, to get them out from his parents' into their own home.

Mohsin wanted independence. After five years of marriage and two children, she wasn't satisfied. She wanted to go to work, and she was lucky -- her husband supported her.

Now she works half days as an elementary schoolteacher. The arrangement allows her to get home before dark, when she says unaccompanied women in public can encounter problems.

On the evening Bhutto was assassinated, Mohsin was shopping in a neighborhood market when a boy rushed into the store and breathlessly announced that the former prime minister was dead.

"Don't you believe him," she told the shopkeeper. "She is too smart for that. They couldn't kill her. Not Benazir."

But then she saw the people crowded before television sets. "I cried all the way home," she said. "I realized that maybe I loved her after all, for what she meant to my life."

There is menace on the streets, she says, so much more now that her Benazir is dead.

"She emboldened all of us," she said.

"She was a strong woman. But if Benazir Bhutto is not safe, what can the rest of us expect?" [source - By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 20, 2008 ]

[21] Nujood Ali, who became an international celebrity after refusing to accept her marriage to a man three times her age and winning a divorce, is now back to a semblance of a normal life in Sana.

By Delphine Minoui and Borzou Daragahi, Special to The Times, September 20, 2008
[source - http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-nujood20-2008sep20,0,3634186.story?track=ntothtml ]
SANA, YEMEN -- Still groggy, the schoolgirl brushed her hair, struggled to pull on her socks and snuggled into her school uniform: a green gown and a white head scarf.

By the time she gathered up her books and strapped on her backpack she was smiling and enthusiastic, her nervousness eclipsed by anticipation of the first day of class.
Like children across the world, 10-year-old Nujood Ali went back to school this month after a lengthy break. But Nujood hadn't been lazing about or playing hide-and-seek with her friends during the summer.

Instead, after she was pulled out of the second grade by her father earlier this year, she was married off to a man three times her age, who beat her and sexually abused her.

For many girls in this traditional society, where tribal custom and conservative interpretations of Islam dominate, that would have been the end of the story. But Nujood was outraged. She gathered up her courage and on the advice of an aunt went to court in April. She got the help of a lawyer and filed for divorce.

A judge quickly granted it.

And on Tuesday morning, the divorcee, possibly the world's youngest, once again became a schoolgirl.

"I'm very happy to be going back to school," she said, waiting in her ramshackle home for her younger sister Haifa to get ready. "I'm going to study Arabic, the Koran, mathematics and drawing. I will do that with my classmates and I will definitely make friends there."

Nujood's unusual story of rebellion made her an international celebrity. Since The Times wrote of her in June, CNN, Elle magazine and other international media have come to this mountaintop capital to chronicle her tale.

Hordes of nonprofit organizations offered to help her get back to school, some even willing to foot the bill to send her abroad or to a fancy private academy, though they ignored Haifa, Nujood's little sister and best friend.

In the end, Nujood opted for a small, government-run public school relatively close to her home. She would begin where she left off, starting the second grade again.

Even then, it wasn't easy. One teacher said she worried that Nujood might disturb other students by talking about her sexual experiences.

The night before she went to school, Nujood said she dreamed of notebooks, drawings and new friends.

"When I left school, I learned how to count from one to 100," she said. "Now, I am going to learn how to count until a million."

Nujood said she wanted to study hard, to be able to attend university and become a lawyer like Shada Nasser, the well-known Yemeni human rights advocate who helped her get her divorce.

The girl's experience, and her ambition, have even served as an inspiration to her parents, uneducated rural people who moved to the capital's outskirts a few years ago and say they married her off to protect her from the dangers of the city.

"We were never asked if we wanted to go to school when we were children," said her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, who has two wives and 16 children.

"If we had a choice, we would have loved to study like Nujood."

On Tuesday morning, Nujood and Haifa climbed into a yellow taxi paid for by an Italian aid group and drove through the capital's smog-choked streets, passing vendors of the mildly narcotic khat leaves and the occasional shepherd.

Outside the schoolhouse, Nasser stood waiting, eager to share a day she had anticipated. "I can't believe we finally made it," said the attorney, who agreed to drop the rest of her caseload to take up Nujood's cause after the girl showed up alone in a Sana courthouse in April. [source - By Delphine Minoui and Borzou Daragahi, Special to The Times, September 20, 2008 at http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-nujood20-2008sep20,0,3634186.story?track=ntothtml ]

CONDLUSION:

As can readily be seen, members of Islam are probably the worst sexual offenders in the entire world and probably the best at covering up this fact by not permitting it to become part of statistics through poor record keeping.

Now some of them may howl and rile against this article and its writer, the fact remains that members of the false old middle eastern mythical celestial moon god, "Allah," made these realities I have only reported and NOT myself who is just reporting them. So if they wish to blame anyone, THEY SHOULD BLAME THEMSELVES.

To learn more, check out the following:

[1] http://religioustruths.proboards59.com/ An Educational Referral Forum

[2] http://www.network54.com/Forum/403209 A Forum Devoted to Exposing The False Religion of Islam

[3] http://jude3.proboards92.com/ A Free-Speech Forum For All

[4] http://www.freewebs.com/iris_the_preacher My web site.

Your Friend in Christ Iris89