Sunday, December 7

Why do these taliban fear women's faces?

I simply do not understand this, so ok, I understand somebody wanting to be modest. I can, even at a stretch, take the justification that its religiously mandated. But what I cannot take is men deciding to take matters into their own hands, murder women, throw acid in their faces or blow them up, just because women are showing their faces?

Here's an idea. The Quran also says that men should lower their gazes when women are about. So would they like it if women decided to threaten to hack their genitals out with a blunt shovel if a man stares at them? How about blowing them up? No, they would not. So why on earth would these Baloch taliban and militants want to do something so medieval and stupid like this?

 

A militant organization in Quetta has distributed pamphlets warning women to cover their faces before going out in public. It has also made threats to CD shops and other outlets that display posters of women. A bomb explosion at a Quetta marketplace last week was evidently intended by this group, calling itself the Jamaatul Tauhid Wal Jihad Balochistan, to show that it meant business. As we have seen in neighbouring Afghanistan and parts of NWFP, such outfits seem to fear the faces of women more than anything else. The horrible case involving the hurling of acid on schoolgirls in Afghanistan, disfiguring the faces of victims, shows how far they are capable of going.
There can be no doubt that such forces have nothing to do with religion. Indeed they represent the anti-thesis to anything that is good or moral. The reason why they have grown in number over the years is linked directly to the failure of authorities to act against them. In Mansehra, in Peshawar – even in Lahore – no measures have been taken to deal with elements involved in blackening the faces of women on billboards or meting out threats to them. In tribal areas and even at the campuses of some educational institutions in settled parts of NWFP, schoolgirls, female students and women leaving their homes have been forced to do veils. The messages to this effect have been reiterated through the illegal FM stations that continue to operate in many places.

It is not only wrong from a moral and ethical perspective, it also violates the Quran. Only conclusion, these are from the low end of the human gene pool. And its not only in Pakistan that they can be found, they can be found in the UK (and here UK), South Africa, Israel, India and the lot. Bunch of medieval, dunderheads.

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