I am curious about something....

[Doc]

True enough, but it tends to be the coin of the realm, doesn't it?  ;)

Occhi
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Should be the subject of our next debate/flamewar?

I suddenly sense a lot of commotion under the bridge.

[whyBish]

Something about catching flies with honey . . . but it seems that the shrill, in your face attitude of the PC crowd carried into our foreign policy for a while, along with the symbols and images of how to sluttify your society carried by the satellite transmissions. 

Occhi
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I nominate this as quote of the thread :P

[Occhidiangela]

I nominate this as quote of the thread  :P
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Talk about weird timing. We talk about the women in Muslim countries thing, and presto:

New York Times June 21, 2005 Pg. 1
Rice Urges Egyptians And Saudis To Democratize
By Steven R. Weisman
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, June 21 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, delivering a challenge to the United States' closest allies in the Arab world, called on Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Monday to embrace democracy by holding fair elections, releasing political prisoners and allowing free expression and rights for women.

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither," Ms. Rice declared at the American University in Cairo. "Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

Praising President Hosni Mubarak for taking some "encouraging" first steps toward democracy, she said Egypt's elections "must meet objective standards that define every free election," including freedom of assembly, speech and press.

As for Saudi Arabia, where Ms. Rice flew after speaking in Egypt, she said that "brave citizens are demanding accountability from their government" and that "many people pay an unfair price for exercising their basic rights."

She praised "some first steps toward openness" in the holding of municipal elections. But she condemned depriving women of the right to vote and the arrests of some dissidents.

Ms. Rice's appeal, some of the toughest talk in the Arab world from a secretary of state, drew a mixed reaction, including criticism from Egyptian opposition groups demanding an even harder line. On the other hand, the Egyptian foreign minister, dismissing her comments, said Egypt's planned elections were already going to be free and fair. ==snip the rest==

I wonder if Secretary Rice Lurks the Lounge. :) *waves just in case*

Occhi

[SetBuilder]

Here's what I'm curious about:

All other issues aside, how can any Western female be pro-Muslim culture/society, just on the strength of something like this? This is pretty typical in that type of society after all.... Anyone who wants to dispute that and say that this is the exception and not the rule, can go do some research on their own.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050610/wl_n...an_rape_dc
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Friday ordered the release next week of 12 men connected to a notorious gang-rape case, including six convicted of the crime, court officials said.

The men, detained in connection with the 2002 rape of Mukhataran Mai, were ordered to be freed by the high court in the central province of Punjab, officials of the court said.

Authorities had petitioned a review board of the court to extend the detention of the 12, which expires next Monday, but the court rejected the plea, the officials said.

It was the latest twist in a case that provoked an outcry in Pakistan and focused international attention on the treatment of women in the country, particularly in rural areas, where sometimes brutal tribal customs hold sway.

The original trial before an anti-terrorism court in 2002 found that Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother -- who was 12 at the time -- was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from their tribe.

Six men were originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but five were later acquitted on appeal to the Punjab provincial court, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth man had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

The provincial government subsequently intervened and ordered that the men be detained for three months pending the outcome of an appeal by the victim against the acquittal. Six men who served on the village council were detained at the same time.

"The review board has held that there is no justification for the detention of these people and has ordered their release after depositing surety bonds of 50,000 rupees ($840) from each of them," Malik Saleem, a lawyer for the 12 men, told Reuters.

Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat declined to comment on the decision.

Mai expressed fears for her life after the provincial high court announced the acquittals in March.

Gang rapes and honor killings are common in feudalistic rural Pakistan. In most cases the perpetrators go free because of incompetent police investigations and flaws in the legal system, which have been highlighted in the current case.

President Pervez Musharraf, who has been trying to project Pakistan as a moderate and progressive Muslim nation, has taken a personal interest in the case, saying it was tarnishing the country's image overseas.
I'm curious to see some of the reasoning. Really I am.
-A
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While I'm not a woman, I do have an answer that works in some cases.

Security. Have you met many homeless women in the western world? How about in the US? How about in one state? One city? One block? The point is, there's little security if you're a woman in the west now. If you can't find a job, and aren't married, unless your family can take care of you, you're #$%&ed.

With women there, they have no worries about making a living. All they have to worry about is how to survive their man, and figure out how to control him, vs being controlled.

Also, as far as that specific Rape, we are talking tribes here, people. We are talking about a warlike culture that is set up as tribes. Alliances and enemies made of tribes are everything. If the girl's brother offended the other tribe and created an enemy, he and his entire family had to be made an example of. That's where she came in. I don't necessarily know there was any malevolance or any hatred in the specific rape of her even. She was the object used to make the point, little more.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily support this, but it IS a different people, a people stuck in a time we have long since passed. Judge them based on the appropriate times in England's history, and they're actually not so bad. Really.

This all may have been said, but I'm still reading through replies...

[SetBuilder]

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither," Ms. Rice declared at the American University in Cairo. "Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This worries me. Very intensely, in fact. This is what the cold war was about. This is what prompts large wars. This is talking about changing the entire structure of a society. Every time we do this successfully, we break that country, economically, and effectively control their economy for quite a while. We also happen to have a lot of our servicepeople die in the effort. If you want an example that is current, look at iraq.

Creating stability is excusable, and even a good thing, as it helps that country stay strong and independent. Changing the way a society works (in the end usually forcefully)? That's invasion/colonization. Bad.

[Ashock]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050629/ap_on_...tan_rape_victim

Here's another beauty of a story about how things are for women there.
I especially like the last sentence.




Pakistan Lifts Ban on Rape Victim's Travel By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer
18 minutes ago



Pakistan's president said Wednesday he had lifted a ban on travel abroad for the victim in a high-profile rape case, a restriction that was strongly condemned by Washington.

The statement by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf came one day after Pakistan's Supreme Court overturned the acquittals of 13 men and ordered their re-arrest in the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, whose plight has cast a glaring light on the treatment of women in this conservative Muslim nation.

"Let me make it absolutely clear that Mukhtar Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whomever she wants and say whatever she pleases," Musharraf said in a message on his Web site. "I have full faith in her and in her patriotism."

Despite the reversal, Musharraf defended his earlier decision to restrict her travel. His spokesman said he had received some 1,000 e-mails about Mai's case.

"While I sincerely regret what Mai had to endure, the government is taking action to remedy it," Musharraf said.

Mai, 33, was allegedly ordered raped in 2002 by a council of elders in Meerwala, her home village in eastern Punjab province, as punishment for her 13-year-old brother's alleged affair with a woman from a higher caste family. Mai and her family deny any affair ever took place and say the brother was in fact sexually assaulted by members of the other family.

A trial court in 2002 sentenced six men to death and acquitted eight others in Mai's rape. In March, the High Court in Punjab province acquitted five of the men and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison.

The Supreme Court ordered the re-arrest of all 13 men on Tuesday, a day after an emotional appeal by Mai.

Mai welcomed Musharraf's remarks, but said she had no immediate plans to travel abroad.

"I wanted to go (abroad) as ambassador of Pakistan," she told The Associated Press in an interview in the capital of Islamabad, where she arrived this week to attend the appeals.

She said she hoped those who attacked her "will get punishment" soon.

The rape made international headlines and become a major embarrassment for Pakistan's Western-friendly government, drawing attention to a legal system that has done little to protect women from violence.

In Washington, a U.S. State Department spokesman said the perpetrators of the gang-rape must be brought to justice, adding that the United States is closely following the Mai case..

"The use of rape or sexual intimidation as a means of punishment or retribution, whether by individuals or by groups, is unacceptable in our view," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Mai won international renown and praise after speaking openly about her ordeal in a country where most victims of sexual attacks suffer in silence for fear of being ostracized by their families.

She has been the subject of editorials in prominent newspapers, including The New York Times. And she has received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from sympathizers around the world.

Several courts — local, federal and religious — have issued conflicting rulings in the case this year in a legal pingpong match that has often seemed capricious and confused, further embarrassing authorities.

But perhaps the greatest damage came after revelations that the government had barred Mai from traveling abroad and placed restrictions on her movement within the country.

Mai had been invited by the U.S.-based women's rights group Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women to tell her story in the United States. But she could not attend because authorities had confiscated her passport.

After officials in the Bush administration strongly condemned the move, Islamabad rescinded the ban. On Monday, Mai said the government had returned her passport.

Musharraf, a strong ally of Washington, acknowledged in an interview while on a trip to New Zealand that he had ordered the travel ban to prevent Mai from casting Pakistan in a bad light.

On his Web site, Musharraf defended that decision.

"I have already publicly stated that I took the decision to stop her from going to the U.S. myself. I took this decision in the best national interest of Pakistan because I truly believed that the invitation would have tarnished Pakistan's international image rather than help improve the lot of women folk in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world," he said.

"I believe there was a strong ulterior intent of maligning Pakistan by vested interests, rather than sincerely helping Mai out," he said without identifying the vested interests.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for Musharraf, said the president issued the message in response to the e-mails about Mai's case. Some people were supportive of the government's action but others called it "retrogressive," Sultan said.

Hundreds of women are raped, maimed and killed every year in Pakistan in so-called "honor" attacks over behavior deemed inappropriate such as extramarital affairs or marrying without the family's consent. Many are killed by their own families.




-A

[whyBish]

The rape made international headlines and become a major embarrassment for Pakistan's Western-friendly government, drawing attention to a legal system that has done little to protect women from violence.
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