The household was fast asleep when the six men broke in. They sought out Sobia Batool Shah, 22, and one of them attacked her with a hatchet, chopping at her limbs in an effort to sever her legs. “He was relentless and must have hit me at least 15 times,” she says.
“I screamed in pain and pleaded with him to stop, but he was like a man possessed,” she adds. “I even told him I will not seek a divorce.”
Shah was attacked by men from her own family – including her father, Syed Mustafa Shah, her uncle and cousins – who broke into the house, in Naushahro Feroze, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, as “punishment” for refusing to withdraw her application to divorce her husband.
Speaking to the Guardian by phone from the Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women, in the city of Nawabshah, where she is being treated, Shah says she is in “immense pain” and her legs are both in plaster.
When religious fanaticism combines with ignorance this is how the men are. They carry iPhones but their morals and ethics haven’t changed in centuries. Pakistan remains a backward shithole.
I wish there were a way to eradicate religious fundamentalism from this world. I have issues with religion in general, but the big problem has always been fundamentalists, unwilling to change and progress and keep up with modern morality.
And to be clear, this is not a condemnation of Islam as a whole. There are lots of more moderate Muslims in the world who, I am sure, are just as horrified by this as I am.
Mandatory
laicsecular free public education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ferry_lawsBut how do you get people in fundamentalist-run countries to agree to that?
You pray your private god that there will be a Taliban Gorbachev in a few decades?
Yet you’ll hear none of them condemn this action. There will be no new stories or articles. Nobody will protest. Which indicates tacit acceptance.
There are people protesting in the image from the article…
Notice it’s only women?
There are seven or eight men clearly visible in the photo.
Are you protesting? Otherwise, I’m not sure you should be pointing fingers.
I protest the malfeasance committed in my own country whether it be travesties of justice, bad policy, or corruption. In the above case, protests against the subjugation and violence against that woman in the name of religion should come primarily from Pakistani muslim men. The world takes a keen interest in such brazen acts with common news reports on acid attacks and maimings. You know who you never hear from on the subject though?: Muslim men.
Sorry… you’re saying Muslims should protest religious fundamentalism in a country full of religious fundamentalists?
Because I’m guessing they don’t have any more of a death wish than you do.
So you’ve actively searched the web for every Muslim man who’s on social media to see if they’ve stood up against these brutalities?
Cool. Please post a list so we can verify it.
This is the same “but do you condemn Hamas?” nonsense. If you’re a Muslim, you don’t need to condemn things like this any more than anyone else does. That this is wrong is the default position. I have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that this is something most Muslim parents would do to their children or approve of anyone else doing it to their children.
Sorry Squiddy. I was asking that of skeezix.
Actually, it’s my fault. I was backing you up and wasn’t making that clear enough.