* The veil ‘protects women’ from rape? NOT!
* 100 rapes a day. And that’s just in Karachi!
KARACHI: On average, 100 women are raped every 24 hours in Karachi city alone, and a majority of them are working women, said Additional Police Surgeon (APS) Dr Zulfiqar Siyal.
A majority of them are working class women or those working as domestic help and are mostly up to 20 years old, he said.
“I am saying with full authority that such a large number of rape cases happen in the city,” he told Daily Times on the sidelines of a discussion on sexual violence organised by the Aurat Foundation on Monday. “But very few rape survivors have the courage to come forward in search of justice.”
They do not come forward because of the lengthy medical process and delayed justice system in Pakistan. Only 0.5 percent of cases are reported and the majority (99.5 percent) of survivors prefers to stay silent.
Part of the problem is that there are 11 medico-legal sections in three major public sector hospitals but there are only six women medico-legal officers (WMLOs) for the 18 million population of Karachi.
“I am sure that there are more than 100 rape cases every day … but you can gauge how many are reported from the official data which says that during the last eight months (between January to August 2008) a total of 197 cases were reported,” Dr Siyal said.
The WMLOs also face a lot of problems, he said.
Karachi is also short on hospitals where rape survivors can go through the entire medical examination. “It isn’t just medical facilities but you won’t find a single women police officer (WPO) in any of the total 101 police stations of the city,” he said.
Provincial minister Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto said though previous governments had passed legislation they were not implemented. amar guriro
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Moroccan theologian: marrying 9 year old girls permissible; “mainstream” Muslims accuse him of “distorting” Islam
Ready to settle down, raise family of own
Strangely, however, another Muslim theologian at the other end of the Muslim world reached the same exact conclusion? “Moroccan theologian: Muslim girls can wed at nine,” Middle East Online, September 15:
Sheikh Maghraoui reiterates his claims are based on Prophet Mohammad’s sayings.
RABAT – A Moroccan theologian repeated his claims Sunday that Muslim girls could marry as early as nine years old, arguing it was sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed.
“The marriage of nine-year-old girls is not forbidden because according to the Hadith (the Prophet Mohammed’s sayings), Mohammed married Aisha when she was only seven-years-old and he consummated his union when she was nine,” wrote Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui on his website (Maghrawi.net).
“I am a confirmed theologian and I have not made this up. It is the prophet who said it before me,” said the Marrakesh-based founder of a religious association.
So get off my back already!
“Those who criticise me, like the press or Moroccan television as well as the lawyer who filed the complaint (against me), are part of a secular attack against the Islamic nation and its theologians,” he added.
Earlier this month, Rabat-based lawyer Mourad Bekkouri filed a complaint against Sheikh Maghraoui and his fatwa, which he said damages children’s human rights, and the family and criminal code by increasing the risk of rape.
He said the theologian is undermining Islam and its followers and that he had requested the state prosecutor to speed up the case.
His views were backed by the left-wing newspaper Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki, which claimed that “vicious theologians are today capable of putting religion in the service of paedophilia.”
The views of Maghraoui, which contradict the teachings of mainstream Islam and the interpretation of the life Prophet Mohammed, has sparked anger and criticism among pious Muslims, who accused him of deliberately attempting to distort Islam.
Where does one start here? As odious as Maghraoui’s fatwa is, he does, in fact, ground it in Islam’s roots of jurisprudence. After all, if the most “perfect” man married a 9 year old, and Muslims are supposed to emulate him, how has Maghraoui’s fatwa “contradicted the … interpretation of the life of Prophet Mohammed”? As for accusations that he is “deliberately attempting to distort Islam,” are these “pious” Muslims saying Muhammad never married a 9 year old? So much for the importance of the hadith and the sunna it offers.
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The main reason that there are so few reports of rape in Pakistan is the fact that most women get arrested and charged with adultery when reporting rape.