BABAKOT, Pakistan – In a tangle of bushes and trees outside a remote village in southwest Pakistan, six close male relatives of three teenage girls dug a 4-foot wide by 6-foot deep ditch, on a sweltering night in mid-July, and allegedly buried the girls alive.
The girls' crime: they dared to defy the will of their fathers and the customs of their tribe and choose their own husbands. The mother of one of the girls and the aunt of another were shot and killed while begging for the girls’ lives, according to local media reports.
The incident has touched off widespread condemnation from human rights groups, but also a sturdy defense from local officials. "This action was carried out according to tribal traditions," said Israrullah Zehri, a senator representing Balochistan in the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament in the capital Islamabad. "These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," he said.
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While this doesn't specifically address religion, I think we're very safe in assuming that a fundie interpretation of Islam is used to justify those tribal traditions, just as antebellum preachers mined the Bible for quotes to justify American slavery. Without religious backing, stupid cruelty is much tougher to defend.
General Charles Napier, who 'acquired' Scinde for the British Empire, when sati was defended to him as an ancient traditional practice:
'We too have our customs. When men burn a woman alive, we put a rope around their necks and we hang them. Let us all follow national customs!'
A good reason for rejecting multiculturalism and insisting that those who come to live in another country (this includes me, incidentally!) should conform to the mores and laws of that country - so long as it's not Pakistan or similar. In a word, barbarism is barbarism and has no place in Western culture, even if it is sanctioned by religion or custom.
The majority of Pakistan is extremely pissed off about this. Their ruling party was running under the banner of Benazhir Bhutto.
The problem is that its a tribal dispute and tribes of baluchistan and the NWFP basically do their own thing. Pakistan did not interfere because it was encouraged to do so by the US (These are the true strongholds of the Taliban back when they were the Mujahadeen). So this kind of thinking is rife there. It has nothing to do with their religion.
Remember somethings we find odd and disturbing in other cultures such as Sky Burial or the burial rites of the group of people I am from (Decapitation of the corpse and preserval of the head) but those are relatively harmless while this is murder. Pakistan is taking steps to nail this stupidity to a wall but it has a lot of problems.
I want someone to kidnap you from your house, tie you up, bury you alive until you're a freaking INCH away from death, dig you back up, and then ask you how you like the tradition! Then I want the same thing to happen to all the "this isn't Fundie" people, except you can KEEP them in the ground, 'cause quite frankly, I'm sick of seeing that sentence!
@anevilmeme
After all, just look at all the fundies who seem to imply tha the only thing that prevents them from going on a murderific rampage of killing is the fact that th bible says thou shall not kill.
@ #720301
I take your point. But for the present I am concerned about the inroads of medieval thinking into western culture. When that has been adequately countered then perhaps I can start worrying about other cultures.
I make a further point. This burial alive is a form of human sacrifice that once had a place in the West. Vestal Virgins in Rome who broke their vow of chastity were buried alive to appease Vesta and restore the goddess's honour, and to avert disaster from the city likely to be caused by the enormity of their crime. The 'crime' in Pakistan is not so different. It is a question of the 'honour' of the tribe that is being worshipped.
Note that in each case it is the women who are the victims. That speaks volumes. There is more than a hint of mysogyny here.
We've gone from smashing other cultures beyond retrievability to honoring every stupid, harmful thing they do because it's "their tradition." Where is that middle ground? Oh, I forgot, humans don't like middle ground...
just don't expect the secular world to continue to pay you lots of dosh.
Of course we will, because it's politically expedient, a few lives here and there don't count for a lot, and these politicians are better than the more strictly Islamic barbarians, and tey're ON OUR SIDe (sort of)
“Evolutionist... there is something weird about your fossil evidence...?
“has a pelvic bone broken into 4 pieces, and badly degraded to the point where it does not even look like a pelvic bone.”
None of this is a problem for a fossil that’s been rattling around for 4.4 million fucking years.
“plus nothing remains in the bone in order to tell if every part came from the same being.”
“also, since the bone was found in the dirt, and were highly subject to contamination, no dating method can accurate date any of these fossils.”
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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