Rape in Pakistan, or, The Madrassa vs. The Pill

One item of news today that flew under the radar of the major newspapers but got picked up by the bloggers: Pakistan has (slightly) toughened its laws against rape. From the story:

Until now rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime - if not they faced prosecution for adultery. Now civil courts will be able to try rape cases, assuming the upper house and the president ratify the move...A woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours in Pakistan, according to the country's independent Human Rights Commission... Pakistan's laws have made it virtually impossible to prosecute rape.

Of course, guess who's not happy about this:

Religious parties boycotted the vote, saying the bill encouraged "free sex"... Pakistan's religious parties called the new legislation "a harbinger of lewdness and indecency in the country", and against the strictures of the Koran and Sharia law. They have threatened nationwide protests over the revised bill. Addressing parliament on Wednesday, the leader of the six-party MMA Islamic alliance, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, said the bill would "turn Pakistan into a free-sex zone". "Existing laws are correct and should be maintained... The changes are not in line with Islamic teaching."

Prosecuting rape will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex zone"? If that doesn't make one iota of sense to you, well, join the club. British blogger Laura Sheffield writes:

Would someone care to explain exactly how allowing a woman to claim - independent of male witnesses - that she was raped encourages free sex, lewdness and indecency? So fucked up is the male power system here that arguments against prosecuting rapists don't even have to make even the tiniest bit of sense...

Clearly there is nothing wrong or indecent in raping a woman in these men's eyes; the indecency lies in the woman's cheek in attempting to report what happened and in trying to get justice, in trying to assert that she too is a human being, that she too has rights, and that her right not to be raped outweighs their 'right' to use her body. In their eyes no injustice has been done - women are male property and can be used as males see fit - every hour of every day.

Laura is exactly on the money. Rape is endemic in Pakistan precisely because "Islamic law" is being used to keep men in a position of absolute power and women in a position of absolute servitude.

It occurs to me that, everywhere we've seen an "Islamic resurgence", we've seen brutal oppression of women. We've seen it in Europe, where immigrant women are kept as house slaves. We've seen it in Australia, where an Islamic cleric blamed rape victims for being "uncovered meat." We've seen it in Afghanistan, where the Taliban launch suicide bombings against girls' schools. We've seen it in Saudi Arabia, which is considering a law to ban women from the Muslim holy city of Mecca (after they've been allowed to pray there for 14 centuries). The examples run on and on.

Historically, misogyny is not an essential feature of Islam. The new law in Pakistan is, in fact, very similar to a decree made by Muhammad in the Koran, when he ordered that a rape victim not be punished (a revolutionary idea at the time). But nowadays it seems like turning women into sex slaves is Message #1 coming out of madrassas the world over. Maybe it's because Muslim men feel threatened by wars in their countries and feel the need to reassert their personal power; maybe it's because high birth rates in Muslim countries have led to a surplus of sex-starved men; maybe it's because women's rights are seen as Western infiltration. I have no idea.

But I do believe that stopping and reversing this misogyny is the key to establishing peace in the Islamic world. All over the world, the trend in poor countries is clear. Women's rights lead to birth control and smaller families, which leads to fewer angry young men, which leads to peace, higher incomes, and stability. The opposite is also true; female servitude leads to unsustainably high birth rates, which produce hordes of pissed-off, sexually frustrated men with nothing better to do than to shoot their neighbors, blow themselves up...and oppress more women.

This is why our modern crusade should not be a battle to slay angry young jihadist men. That is a losing proposition, and an immoral one. Instead, we must fight politically, for freedom for the women of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. We'll not only be righting a great wrong, we'll be making sure that the next generation of Muslims is a lot smaller, a lot richer, and a lot more sexually satisfied.

There are two great reasons, then, to pour the energy of the West into fighting for Islamic women's rights. One is human rights, and the other is the prosperity and stability that results from lowered birthrates. It's time for the West to live up to its pro-woman rhetoric. Pakistan's government may already have the right idea.


Bonus Reading Guide: More support for my idea that national power stems from local power. Democrats need to keep winning control of the States if they're going to keep winning the favor of the United States. Go volunteer for a Democratic Party near you!