Posts
Video of Taliban Flogging Rattles Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The video shows a young woman held face down as a Taliban commander whips her repeatedly with a leather strap. “Leave me for the moment — you can beat me again later,” she screams, pleading for a reprieve and writhing in pain...An undated image taken from mobile phone footage released by Dunya TV Channel shows a woman in a body-covering burka face down on the ground being flogged. Paying no heed, the commander orders those holding her to tighten their grip and continues the public flogging. A large group of men quietly stands and watches in a circle around her.The woman in the video is a 17-year-old resident of Kabal, in the restive Swat region in northwestern Pakistan. ...They have also raised questions once again about the government’s decision to enter into a peace deal in February that effectively ceded Swat to the Taliban and allowed them to impose Islamic law....it demonstrates vividly how the Taliban have used public displays of punishment to terrify and control the local population...One account said she had stepped out of her house without being escorted by a male family member...Another account said a local Taliban commander had falsely accused the teenager of violating Islamic law after she refused to accept his marriage proposal...A Taliban spokesman defended the punishment...In February, after 20 months of losing battles against the Taliban in Swat, the government and the military accepted a peace deal and the establishment of Islamic courts in the region. ****So much for accommodating Islamist extremists. ****Why is it, when investigating Islamist atrocities, do things get only worse with details? The cause and context of this "punishment" is clarified: the beating, watched silently by a crowd, and its cause -- the married girl appeared in public chaperoned only by her father-in-law -- ...puts a sliver of their country under brutal Taliban laws governing women.... Swat and its courts are firmly under Taliban control. U.S. officials fear the peace deal is giving the Taliban, al Qaeda and their allies a haven....The girl was accused of having an affair with her father-in-law because she was seen leaving a house accompanied by him. Under the Taliban brand of Islamic law in Swat, a married woman can be accompanied out only by her husband or a blood relative, said Muslim Khan, the group's spokesman. He said she was punished after an investigation, although she hadn't been tried in a proper Islamic court. She "would have been stoned to death if there was a proper Sharia court," he told the private Geo News television station. "Nothing will deter us from enforcing Sharia rule." Islamic law is known as Sharia. ...saying the punishment was in line with Islamic law. "How can we term it un-Islamic?" said Mufti Munibur Rehman, a leading Muslim scholar, in a televised debate. "This is the punishment that is written in the holy Quran." Late last year, residents of Swat say the Taliban shot dead Bakht Zeba, a woman ... condemned the militants for torching girls' school... incidents of women being beaten for refusing to marry Taliban fighters. The harsh treatment of women isn't restricted to the Taliban in the deeply conservative rural areas. Even in areas far from regions controlled by the Taliban, women are accorded few rights and crimes against them, such as honor killings, are often ignored -- and sometimes officially sanctioned by village or tribal councils. In one of the most notorious cases, a woman named Mukhtar Mai was gang raped in 2002 at the order of a tribal council in a remote corner of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, to punish her family for her brother's alleged affair with a woman from a family of higher social standing. ****So, this is what is written in "the holy Koran", taken as divine by all Muslims. How does one accommodate the Taliban? How does one deal with ALL followers of a religion that takes such behavior as divine in origin and authority?
No comments:
Post a Comment