Pakistani lawmaker defends honor killings
Posted on 31 August 2008 by Jack
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.
“These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them,” Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”
The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.
They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists, who said their only “crime” was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.
Zehri told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.
Popularity: 14% [?]
August 31st, 2008 at 11:18 am
Did I hear somebody say “29th Century Nuclear Power?”
I can see it now “Don’t make a fuss over the nuclear bombs in Toronto, they’re mostly Non-Muslim anyway. This is a centuries old tradition.”
Don’cha’jes’love stone age people with advanced weaponry!!
August 31st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Pat, I think you meant “19th Century Nuclear Power” but with thinking like that in Parliament it’s more like 10th century. Problem is that thinking like this is prevalent in Muslim communities in Canada as well.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
What can anyone say in a situation like this? Actually to suggest that stone age man was like this is an insult to early man. Men and women in early hunter gatherer society’s were equal — but of course that was long before “religion” and supposed “family honour.” No, this is more like behaviour in the 10th and 11th centuries AD.
Actually these types of killings have very little to do with “family honour.” Its about control, sex and money. It’s about sex because if you want to choose someone it means you are physically attracted to that person and that is wrong if you are female. It’s okay for men to lust after young women, but not the reverse.
It’s also about parental control, usually the father’s control. So, if a young woman is being disobedient to the father’s wishes, it supposedly brings dishonour on the entire family. What a perversion! How very insecure those men must be that they can’t accept any level of autonomy or independence in their “female” children.
It is also about money — and how much the grooms family will “get” in gifts and cash once she is betrothed.
Put another way, parents of girls obviously try to negotiate the best deal to get their daughter’s married off. Fortunately in the west, most families share wedding costs.
But, my bet is this is an extreme perversion of Islam. That it is 100% cultural and local custom in the extreme just as “sati” is in India. Banned for decades, it is still going on. Young brides being burned to death on their husband’s funeral pyre.
In any event, this politician is saying what his constituents expect him to say. And, we call Pakistan a democracy. Sure, and Santa lives in the North Pole.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:21 pm
This is a fine example of why we need to keep Third Worlders OUT of First World countries.
I’ve said it a thousand times,Third world countries are not Third world because of geography,they are Third world countries because of the people that are in them.