The height of misogynistic crap


Senator Hafiz Hamdullah of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF) last week floated a brilliant suggestion in the Senate. He asked for a law to make it mandatory for a woman to get married if she reaches the age of 30. The senator, however, failed to mention any mandatory age for men in his ‘ultimately intellectual’ statement.

This week, at Senate, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar informed the house that over the past five years 14,583 cases of rape had been registered and 12,795 of these occurred in Punjab. A significant number of these cases involved minors with girls aged between three and eleven on the list of victims. What a gross violation of human rights!

But, again a JUI-F senator tried hushing the subject by objecting that the rape of minors should not be discussed in the house as it would bring Pakistan’s name into disrepute.

Definitely, one has to agree with this logic.

Pakistan has just been ‘honoured’ with being declared second-worst country in gender equality, in the annual Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum. The report measures the difference between Pakistani men and women in terms of access to basic facilities of health, education, economic and political empowerment.


This ‘prestigious’ repute of Pakistan can, indeed, be severely damaged by bringing up issues of gross human rights violation, such as disgustingly high number of rapes. 

The so-called laws in place to prevent such heinous crimes are obnoxiously chauvinistic against women victims. And whenever, someone tries to raise this alarming issue, so that some actions can be taken against it, some bigoted MNAs or senators would reject them in the name of honour – falsely moulding ‘religion’ for their misogynistic interests.

Discussing actions to curb rapes is dishonourable to them, but restricting only women from making their own choices, on things as personal as marriage, is a very critical issue, indeed. 

Of course, Mr. Senator, if these women are not rushed into marrying and they developed in to educated and independent citizens, wouldn't they start to challenge your misogynistic practices and thoughts?

2028 hours
Friday 31 October 2014
Bushra

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