Jun 27, 2005
The Rosa Parks Effect
Today, Mukhtar Mai appeared in front of the Pakistan Supreme Court to plead the case against her rapists. Here is a very good timeline/background of her case. Briefly: in 2002, she was gang-raped on the command of the village elders. Instead of committing suicide or staying silent, she pursued justice in the court of law. Six of her rapists were convicted and sentenced to death in the Federal Shari'at Court and she was awarded monetary recompense as well. She used the money to open a girl's elementary school in her village - where she enrolled herself as well. In 2005, the Lahore High Court overturned the conviction and released the men. She appealed to the Supreme Court. The central decision before the SC is whether the Federal Shari'at Court or the Lahore High Court have juridical rights over her case. The very legitimate fear is that the SC may uphold the LHC decision and these horrid men will escape justice. We will find out tomorrow. In the meantime, she was supposed to come to the US on a speaking tour but President Musharraf confiscated her passport and refused her permission to leave the country. Kristoff has led the charge in international coverage of her case.
In Pakistan, stories of rapes and honor-killings [karokari] blend into the cacophony of violence in the daily newspapers. They are chockful of daughters shot, burned or hacked to pieces by fathers, uncles, brothers and husbands in the name of ghairat or izzat - cognates of moral honor that depend on a particularly patriarchal understanding of shame - with nary an effort to stop and rudimentary condemnation of these abhorrent acts. Rapes are reported as brief news items. Honor killings sometimes get front page coverage - mainly for their sensationalism - but the overall response stays the same: Honor defines independent men. The women's body is the locus of a family's honor. It is up to the woman to protect this honor and should they fail - by getting raped or falling in love with someone else or speaking out against domestic abuse, e.g. - the men have the right to seek redress. Along with this honor comes the code of silence. Crimes against women, however unfortunate, are an understandable response from the males, and should be left uncommented. The silence of outrage is mirrored in the silence of the victim. Shame dictates that a family silence their dis-honor. The easiest way to accomplish this, of course, is for the victim to kill herself. The family and the community exorcizes even the memory of the victim. No one remembers, except for those that committed the heinous act and those that used it as an instrument of their power. By staying out of the domain of"honor" and"shame", the state facilitates this. The lack of a police report is, in the end, the most harmful silence of all.
I will put the obvious disclaimer that this is not a situation peculiar to Pakistan or Islam or to this particular moment in history. Domestic violence or honor killings are not a culturally unique phenomenon but they are uniquely patriarchal one. One can easily find instances from Milan to Kentucky with a layover in Dubai. If there is a difference in the rate of incidence between say, Chicago and Lahore, then it is the rule of law and effort of education that has permitted this equality and protection to women in one case and not the other. In many countries, like Pakistan, women have little recourse in law against such violence and insurmountable normative practices that sustain or encourage it. It is easy enough to start labeling Islam or South Asian/"tribal" culture as the root cause of such violence. But that would be a fundamentally flawed and disingenuous conclusion. The culprit is not Islam or South Asian culture, the culprit, undoubtedly, is the State of Pakistan.
Mukhtar Mai's bravest act is to break this lynchpin of silence. She refused to play her assigned part. It was the imam of the local mosque who first urged the family of Mukhtar Mai to break their silence and go to the police. It was Mukhtar Mai who pressed charges against the men and pursued them in court. Neither did she disappear from the community, but used her case and her court award to begin a school for girls in her village. Her act brought serious and critical scrutiny to the plight of honor-killings. As a result of internal pressure from NGOs and external attention, Pakistan tightened the law against such killings - but not enough. Still, her bravery has led to mass demonstrations in her honor both inside and outside Pakistan. It has prompted others to seek justice. It has gathered hundreds of thousands of dollars for schools. Her fortitude has, in effect, crystallized a movement for women's rights in Pakistan.
President Musharraf and his trusted advisor for women's affairs, Neelofer Bakhtiar, treat this as a PR crisis but one can see that they are worried. They maintain that the civil NGOs, in service to the international media, have trumped her up as a cause célèbre. They think that it is an unjust fixation on Pakistan. They should be very worried. The one thing a dictatorship cannot survive is scrutiny. The other thing a dictatorship cannot survive is an internal movement for justice. Mukhtar Mai has given her country, forever mired in silences, both of those things. [x-posted on Chapati Mystery]
In Pakistan, stories of rapes and honor-killings [karokari] blend into the cacophony of violence in the daily newspapers. They are chockful of daughters shot, burned or hacked to pieces by fathers, uncles, brothers and husbands in the name of ghairat or izzat - cognates of moral honor that depend on a particularly patriarchal understanding of shame - with nary an effort to stop and rudimentary condemnation of these abhorrent acts. Rapes are reported as brief news items. Honor killings sometimes get front page coverage - mainly for their sensationalism - but the overall response stays the same: Honor defines independent men. The women's body is the locus of a family's honor. It is up to the woman to protect this honor and should they fail - by getting raped or falling in love with someone else or speaking out against domestic abuse, e.g. - the men have the right to seek redress. Along with this honor comes the code of silence. Crimes against women, however unfortunate, are an understandable response from the males, and should be left uncommented. The silence of outrage is mirrored in the silence of the victim. Shame dictates that a family silence their dis-honor. The easiest way to accomplish this, of course, is for the victim to kill herself. The family and the community exorcizes even the memory of the victim. No one remembers, except for those that committed the heinous act and those that used it as an instrument of their power. By staying out of the domain of"honor" and"shame", the state facilitates this. The lack of a police report is, in the end, the most harmful silence of all.
I will put the obvious disclaimer that this is not a situation peculiar to Pakistan or Islam or to this particular moment in history. Domestic violence or honor killings are not a culturally unique phenomenon but they are uniquely patriarchal one. One can easily find instances from Milan to Kentucky with a layover in Dubai. If there is a difference in the rate of incidence between say, Chicago and Lahore, then it is the rule of law and effort of education that has permitted this equality and protection to women in one case and not the other. In many countries, like Pakistan, women have little recourse in law against such violence and insurmountable normative practices that sustain or encourage it. It is easy enough to start labeling Islam or South Asian/"tribal" culture as the root cause of such violence. But that would be a fundamentally flawed and disingenuous conclusion. The culprit is not Islam or South Asian culture, the culprit, undoubtedly, is the State of Pakistan.
Mukhtar Mai's bravest act is to break this lynchpin of silence. She refused to play her assigned part. It was the imam of the local mosque who first urged the family of Mukhtar Mai to break their silence and go to the police. It was Mukhtar Mai who pressed charges against the men and pursued them in court. Neither did she disappear from the community, but used her case and her court award to begin a school for girls in her village. Her act brought serious and critical scrutiny to the plight of honor-killings. As a result of internal pressure from NGOs and external attention, Pakistan tightened the law against such killings - but not enough. Still, her bravery has led to mass demonstrations in her honor both inside and outside Pakistan. It has prompted others to seek justice. It has gathered hundreds of thousands of dollars for schools. Her fortitude has, in effect, crystallized a movement for women's rights in Pakistan.
President Musharraf and his trusted advisor for women's affairs, Neelofer Bakhtiar, treat this as a PR crisis but one can see that they are worried. They maintain that the civil NGOs, in service to the international media, have trumped her up as a cause célèbre. They think that it is an unjust fixation on Pakistan. They should be very worried. The one thing a dictatorship cannot survive is scrutiny. The other thing a dictatorship cannot survive is an internal movement for justice. Mukhtar Mai has given her country, forever mired in silences, both of those things. [x-posted on Chapati Mystery]