Adil Najam
Sometimes one is left completely speechless. And I was upon seeing this picture in the Daily Times (21 April) of a man beating his wife as their son looks on.
But the real story here is about a society that chooses to loose its speech and prefers to remain silent in the face of a wide scale menace of acute domestic violence and spousal (and familial) abuse of women.
This is not something that is restricted only to the poorest classes. Although it is often hidden behind ’sufaid poshi’ such violence against women is more common in our society than most of us would care to accept. Remember, for example, the case of former Pakistan cricket captain Moin Khan who was taken in custody after beating his wife while drunk.
I wonder what the child in this photograph will grow up thinking. I wonder how many children have grown up witnessing such scenes. I wonder what such emotional scars have done to them.
It is indeed true that such incidents of violence happen all over the world. There is no evidence at all that they happen more in Pakistan than elsewhere. In terms of reported cases they may be even less. But that is not the point. This is not a competition.
Saying that it happens everywhere or that it happens even more in other places is neither an excuse nor a consolation. One case would, in my opinion, be one too many. And there are clearly much more than one. As Pakistanis - no, as human beings - we must speak against such violence everywhere; but, first within our own society.
Salamalikum,
First, food for thought: How did ATP decide that this still picture depicts wife-beating? How many people verified this outside of the photographer? Perhaps, the wife tripped and he’s trying to pick her up! No? Not possible? Are you people so naive that you can’t imagine a newspaper, which needs to affirm its enlightened side everyday, making up this story. This is especially easy for the newspaper since it fears no legal action. Is the poor gypsy going to read the newspaper and come looking for Daily Times?!!
Nevertheless, the question is what’s the reason? To me, the reason this person is beating his wife like this is that he doesn’t have the fear of Allah in him and is not Islamically educated enough (Allah knows best). Otherwise, he won’t humiliate her and try to dominate her like this. Most probably, he doesn’t know his wife’s huqooq over him and his huqooq over his wife.
You mean the case like mukhtaran mai getting hundreds of hours on MSM and an Indian case getting a teensy weensy mention on BBC site are equal? I applaud you for this masterpiece of balanced reporting.
Can you deny her case was in a court when her handlers showed her ways of making shameless dollars? Why didn’t she wait for the verdict? Isn’t she guilty of manipulating and pressurizing the courts by playing in the hands of western MSM?
bibi cases in courts are not to be discussed until finalized, in case you are forgeting it in some liberal fervor. Dont deny she opted to make money out of it and did not keep silent until the verdict was out.
Second USA with 200000 rapes per annum has no business whatsoever to lecture us on our domestic problems, or hijack case like mukhtaran mai. Tell them to bring that horrendous figure to zero before pointing a finger towards other. Those liberals goons involved in her case give a damn and are only concerned with dollars attached to it. And when is the last time some American rape victim was paraded in Islamabad? If the answer is no then why is our problem magnified in their capitals?
We will solve our problems ourselves. Hijacking of these issues by west and liberal goons only complicates things for other victims. Muktaran mai lost the support of majority of people as soon as she became a pawn in the geopolitical war that is being waged against Muslim world. But much of the blame rests with her liberal handlers. No one can deny that fact. And who knows maybe the other party was innocent and it was liberal goons who made the whole fuss?
First of all the case of the Indian nurse did make the international media (check BBC) and second, to even be able to say that Mai was “making fun of Pakistan” by trying to raise awareness shows you are a long way from understanding anything about women’s problems.
Please look at this picture above again and tell me where foreigners come into it.
Being proud of your country should not mean being blind to its faults. Mai did not deface Pakistan to the outside world. Her rapists did that.
Please identify the correct people as the source of the problem and take care of them, and then Pakistan will have a reputation as a shining beacon of virtue.
Every day in Dawn or other Pakistani dailies there is some horrible story about rape or murder of women that does not make the international press. Take for example the story in Dawn a few weeks back about a young female athlete from the punjab countryside who was promised an Army scholarship and upon her arrival in Lahore, soldiers took her to a hotel room and raped and murdered her. This tragic story of a strong young woman who did not survive her ordeal did not get any international press. 99% of them don’t, in fact. Nobody in the MSM is out to get Pakistan.
The press feeds on a diet of sensational violence, they will take it from any country whatever, and sure this is disgusting and prurient but I don’t see that Pakistan has been specially selected out. There really is a significant problem with violence against women. Foreigners will never fix this problem, however many misguided do-gooding NGOs they set up in the country. They are well intentioned (sometimes) but because they are not well received by many people their effectiveness is limited. Therefore to continually harp on foreigners hijacking this or that is just a way of saying, first of all:
1) there is no problem, just foreigners say that we have a problem
2) we are not responsible for fixing the problem, which we are unwilling to admit exists
By saying this you are basically saying that the West defines and drives the whole social agenda in Pakistan and that I think is a cop-out. Pakistanis have to fight the injustice of domestic violence themselves, just as every other country has to.
I am not going to write the same thing in different words over and over, so I am done with saying this, but the next time someone wants to cry out that foreigners are the problem in the Mukhtaran Mai case, I will ask which foreigners raped her or ordered her raped.
And others might do well to consider it also.
tina again you are getting it wrong. The problem with our liberals is they are unbale to draw a line of respect for their country. I say do struggle for justice (if you are sincere) but do not let outer powers hijack our domestic issues. This is where our liberals fail miserably day in day out.
Remeber the mukhtaraan mai case? You see I did support her in her struggle against her alleged culprits UNTILL she opted to sell her ordeal to foreign powers and make fun of my country. In those same days, a nurse in Delhi was so brutely raped that when she was escaping her aggressor, her eye was dangling out of her eyesocket with the optic nerve, and there simply was NO NEWS of this incident in MSM. Don’t I have a right to ask about this hypocricy?
Tina i think u should start believing that DV happens on men too, it just happened at our ATP home.
we saw Tina bashing two men at the same time
On a serious not, i think its absurd to consider male victims just now because the percentage of female victims is overwhelmingly great. Having the same law for both is not good to start off with, however is required sometime afterwards.
I generally perceive women to be physically weaker than men (haven’t been in any physical fights
so cant say for sure) so I think beating women and rapes r just a statement of power and dominance.
However, a DV against men does not necessarily has to be on the lines of physical violence. In an Islamic family, a woman not fulfilling her roles as prescribed is a culprit under DV, a Christian woman not fulfilling her Christian duties as wife, mother, sister, etc is doing likewise. Same goes for men. Violence beyond the physical…
“ They (your wives) are your garment and you are a garment for them.„ â€â€?Qur’an, 2:187
Jabir, this picture was posted by a Pakistani on a Pakistani website, mostly I assume for consumption by other Pakistanis, and yet as Atif points out some people immediately connect this issue with the West; what I am asking it what is driving your knee jerk defensive reaction and desire to stifle discussion of the issue by saying yet again that it’s not a problem, it’s only the hypocritical foreigners blowing the issue out of proportion. If the foreigners all shut up will the problem go away? I don’t think so. But maybe Jabir won’t have to bother himself with thinking about it?
This is not the foreigners’ fault. There are zillions of books and television shows about abuse of women in America; nobody is trying to say that wife beating is confined to Pakistan. However as Atif correctly points out conflation of this issue in Pakistan with the Western condemnation of it has, unfortunately, had a negative adverse effect.
and Jabir, please accept that it does not in fact “happen both ways” in any significant sense. There are no hospitals with a regular influx of men who have been beaten to within an inch of their lives by their wives, and we all know that. I’ll condemn it when it happens, but it is really so rare as to not be a factor in the discussion. Like I said trumped up efforts to make it appear otherwise are a carefully calculated backlash attempt.
I think it is everyone’s responsibility to deplore abuse of women regardless of their national origin, and wherever it happens. I agree the press likes to dwell on the gruesome but let’s face it, they do that with every country including the U.S. not just Pakistan.
tina, you are wrong in assuming that I am downplaying dv on women by any means, BUT it happens both ways. One should be honest in condemning both.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/ipvfacts.htm
Second if a woman is abused in Pakistan, the international audience will only see her suffering, as the mass media will only ‘amplify’ this incident beyond proportion. If you think US domestic violence should be confined and discussed only in their boundaries, then same should happen to Pakistani cases. And here the liberal hypocrisy starts, as they will willingly and joyfully play in the hands of foreign media in condemning and blaming Pakistan. By the way is this policy acceptable by you?
I am amazed at the ability of people to turn everything into something about religion.
The previous discussion on this with Mohsin Khan beating his wife showed that this violence is not restricted to religious or wealth issues (he is neither religious nor poor).
This post clearly points out that this is not restricted to Pakistan. The excellent videos posted by a reader above show that it is all over the world which is why these videos are there.
The REAL issue is not whether it is there but WHAT ARE WE DOING TO STOP IT. No religion says go beat your wives. But are our religious leaders telling people to not do this. How many times have your heard a Jumma khutba against beating wives? Why do we have so many conversations about hugging and dancing but silence on beating wives? What are our politicians and social leaders doing? What about media? Do they have awareness programs on this issue? Why not have adds like the ones in the links above?
Somehow we are so scared that talking about this will give us a ‘bad reputation’ that we are willing o overlook the pain and violence on real people. This is what I think this is about.
Thank you ATP for having the courage to force us to think about uncomfortable and really important things.