TRY this for a scenario: a young woman is gang-raped in, say, the US. The rapists are given a few months, while the victim is sentenced to three months in jail as well as 90 lashes. And when her lawyer appeals for a stiffer sentence for the men, it is her sentence that is doubled.
We can imagine the worldwide uproar had such a grotesque travesty actually taken place. Except that it has, in Saudi Arabia, not the US. In much of the Muslim world, this horrifying episode has been virtually blanked out of the public consciousness, with the media maintaining a discreet silence.
And to compound this judicial farce, the judges have also barred Abdalrahman al-Lahim, the defence lawyer, from appearing in their court. According to them, by going public with this horror story, both the victim and her attorney have attempted to influence them.
The tragedy began last year when the unnamed 19-year old woman got into a car to discuss a professional matter with a male colleague. Two other men entered the car, and forced them to drive into the desert where they were joined by the rest of their gang. Here they gang-raped the woman, and attacked her male companion as well.
When the traumatised woman and her husband reported the matter to the police, she was accused of being in the company of a na-mehram (an unrelated male), a crime in Saudi Arabia. On this charge, she was sentenced to three months in jail, and 90 lashes. And when she appealed, the sentence was doubled.
The whole sickening episode casts an unflattering light on what passes for justice in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Archaic laws, interpreted by judges with little or no formal legal training, form the backbone of jurisprudence. Although termed 'Islamic', in reality they are a vague collection of tribal customs and rules imposed by men who seldom bother to refer to precedents. Far too often, they are arbitrary and harsh. And invariably, they are anti-women.
When incidents like the Mukhtaran Mai gang-rape are reported in Pakistan, international outrage puts pressure on the government to act against those responsible. True, many such cases never make it to the international media, and victims suffer in silence in a male-dominated, archaic society. But at least, there is a theoretical recourse to justice.
In Saudi Arabia, public opinion counts for very little. As the planet's biggest exporter of petroleum, and with coffers bulging from soaring oil prices, the Saudi ruling family does not have to care what the rest of the world thinks of them.
Even White House spokesmen, normally so ready to criticise human rights violations around the world, are reduced to mumbling about 'cultural differences'. Surely no system anywhere allows the victims of crimes to be punished.
And within the Islamic world, there is a tendency to ignore excesses committed by Muslims against their fellow-Muslims. Thus, when believers blow up, behead, torture, maim and slaughter their brethren, a conspiracy of silence comes into operation. Rulers can jail and torment opponents, steal elections (when and if they are ever held), and invade their neighbours with scarcely a word of criticism from fellow-Muslims.
So nobody in the Muslim world protests when Hamas gunmen kill Fatah foot-soldiers or vice versa. But when the Israelis join in, there is a wave of outrage. Similarly, when Iraqi militias slaughter other Iraqis, none of us protest. But when Americans kill Iraqis, we are rightly incensed. In Afghanistan, far more innocent Afghans are killed by other Afghans than by Nato forces.
As moral human beings, it is right that we should raise our voices against illegal occupation and invasion. But who has invaded Pakistan where daily, terrorists kill innocent people in the name of Islam?
The truth is that we are very selective in our condemnation of violence, reserving our criticism for the West. But this hypocrisy is apparent to the rest of the world. When we defended the Taliban, we invoked their peculiar tribal customs to justify their vicious practices. In fact, had 9/11 not occurred, they would still merrily be flogging women for inadvertently showing an inch of skin.
And when the Lal Masjid insurgency erupted in the heart of our capital, there was more sympathy for the armed militants and the crazed students who were killed than there was for the soldiers and policemen who died to restore the writ of the state.
In part, these double standards are caused by an unspoken 'them versus us' syndrome that rests on the notion of a Muslim ummah encircled and victimised by the West. So we tend to overlook the horrors that are committed daily across much of the Muslim world. But this quest for a united front proves elusive when placed in the crucible of self-interest.
The reality is that this whole notion of a vast Islamic brotherhood stretching from Morocco to Indonesia does not bear close examination. Over the years, despite much bombast and tall claims about Islamic unity, Muslim countries have done exactly what suited them, without any consideration of what was good for the ummah.
The reason this polite fiction is kept alive, in public at least, is that Muslim rulers can exploit such popular sentiments when it suits them. So although there were no public protests in the Islamic world when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, or Kuwait in 1990, many Muslims did stage protests against the American-led invasions of Iraq in 1990, and then in 2003. But it should be noted that the massive demonstrations in western capitals against the second Gulf War were far larger than those organised by Muslims.
So we can see that we are very selective in deciding how we react to actions carried out in the West and in the Islamic world. These double standards rob us of the moral high ground. By applying one code to judge fellow Muslims, and an entirely different one to pronounce on the West, we have lost the right to be taken seriously in the counsels of the world.
Thus when human rights violations take place in Pakistan, we look to the West to apply pressure on our rulers, not to our fellow-Muslims. In any case, for the latter, official thuggery is the norm, not the exception. Unquote
Link: http://dawn.com./weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
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Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm
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VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
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