Adil Najam
This is a VERY DISTURBING video. Please view at your own discretion.
It is important, however, that we speak about and shout out about this video.
It shows a 17-year old girl being flogged by a Taliban leader of some sort in a perverted form of justice. Reportedly the incident happened in Kalakalay, Swat around 3 months ago (before the supposed peace deal with the government). The girl is being ‘punished’ for going somewhere without a male relative. Supposedly, the male companion was also flogged.
This video is also be discussed vigorously at Pakistaniat’s new Facebook page. Some of that disussion does not carry over here, although we hope it ultimately will.
In more recent developments, supposedly Sufi Mohammad in Swat has condemned the act and said this was not Baitullah’s Taliban. More importantly, the recent reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has taken su moto notice of this incident. According to The News
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry Friday took a suo motu notice of the media footage in which a 17 year old girl is being whipped out in the broad daylight in Swat. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhdy ordered the matter to be presented before a larger bench on April 6. He also summoned Secretary Interior, IG and Chief Secretary on April 6. He ordered formation of 8-member larger bench to be headed by himself.
This is a story that all Pakistanis and all Muslims must speak about and speak against. There are those who will try to make this a story about what Pakistan or Islam is. Such bigoted approaches are to be resisted. This is not a story about what Pakistan is. This is clearly not about what Islam is. This is a story about what the enemies of Islam and enemies of Pakistan are doing. This is a story about what Pakistan must not allowed to become. The bad news is obvious in the video itself. The bad news is about the criminality being conducted in the name of religion. The good news is that the media, the judiciary and ordinary Pakistanis ARE speaking up and speaking out. We must do more so. For if we do not speak out against this criminality, who will?
Karachite, your argument is stale as well as wrong. Another Taliban supporter ashamed even to give his name.
Does not matter when the video was taken. If this is what their shariat is then we do not want it. We just dont want you Taliban types. Period.
Stop finding excuses in everything in outsiders. There is plenty of outrage for the Americans and drone attacks on this forum and elsewhere but you Taliban types cannot forever distract us from your murders of Muslims and Pakistanis by this misinformation.
For those of the MQM persuasion:
“Lashing out at Ulema who had issued statements in support of flogging, Altaf said as per the Quranic verses, the girl could only be punished if four pious eyewitnesses, who prayed five times a day, were produced. He added if these people failed to produce such witnesses, then the people who had flogged the girl should be whipped publicly 80 times.”
He has a good point. But Hanafi law also says a judge is allowed a discretionary punishment of up to 40 lashes. Which is what the ‘Taliban’ do. Go around sentencing people committing any sort of ‘offense’ at all to 39 lashes.
There’s more to the law than even that, but that is why the government is now running Shariah there. If we stop, there will be war again.
He’s also plainly lying about this having taken place after March. This happened back in January.
Perhaps you people should read Pakistani newspapers.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=170821
The flogging was by people in SWAT a few months before the end of the fighting/war. They were running around instituting their own backyard ‘Shariah’ law. The government formed that peace agreement so that WE (as in they, the government) could enforce Shariah law to prevent people from distorting it and doing things like this.
The key thing here is that this peace agreement was against the United States’ wishes. This video was held by media companies for months until it was released just now, to foster division between the government and the peace treaty.
If that peace treaty breaks, you will see much, much worse than this. Even the BBC and Western news organizations have reported that this sort of vigilante-backyard-Shariah has gone down with the new agreement and government-run Shariah courts.
The other thing I have issue with is the President and Prime Minister and other government officials condemning this as barbaric yet their own officials and law enforcement illegally arrest, detain, and abuse people all the time. They rape and sic dogs on the women in normal jail cells. That’s okay? Why don’t they start by working on that? Zardari himself used to kidnap girls, and God knows what he did with them, did everyone forget? The country elected this sort of man as its President but then has a problem with rural backwardsness?
On top of that the Taliban themselves have said that this violates how a flogging punishment according to Shariah should be carried out. Of course that doesn’t mean much, it could just be damage control.
However, according to the newspapers, the Taliban flogged 25 men and 2 women in the past 2 years. This is verified. To say that this sort of thing happens all the time would also be to fall into the sort of Western propaganda that seeks to start a war in our backyard.
If you read Western social news sites like Digg, Reddit you will find a surprising amount of knowledge and even SYMPATHY for the Taliban. Why? The USA is being forced to confront the fact that their government is more conniving and deceitful and corrupted than they had imagined. I saw one user comment from Digg something like “I would rather get that kind of a ‘flogging’ than be thrown into jail for years on false charges. There are videos of cops physically abusing women being upvoted on this site every week. At least the Taliban kept her clothes on.”
And lest people forget, we need any kind of peace at all in the tribal regions so we can develop the area and root out fundamentalism at its source… poverty and lack of education.
And lest you people ALSO forget, all of the values that you have had beaten into you by the British and the Americans over the past century or two… those same two countries pushed the Taliban into Pakistan and caused this mess. While they stayed in Afghanistan, we had no problems. Most of Afghan culture is compatible with Taliban culture. But now half of Afghanistan has been displaced into our country.
The only way to save the country is to get up and do something. People who sit and issue official-sounding condemnations of the Taliban, government, USA, etc etc are laughable. So who is left? You. And now you can’t escape Pakistan for the West either, they are going to come crashing down harder than anything.
You are worrying about attacking the Swati Taliban who themselves want to keep the peace agreement in effect and want the Pakistani government to enforce Shariah. But you don’t worry about the Waziri Taliban of Baitullah Mehsud who are at war with Pakistan and are threatening multiple attacks per week. Nor do you realize the way to prevent the latter is through the former.
In short there is no difference between floggers and bloggers who have been chanting in cyberspace
@Farrukh: I think I am the only one here on board who rejects the fascism of both right and left wing. Those who have been chanting against Talibans are those who hapily endorse the fascism of left wing secularists and liberals and it’s not a hidden secret.
Adil and CO will never make new post after each DRONE attack because it would be giving them tough time in US where they reside and where they are fed by those who fund them but Adil and other liberal lefts will make post if something is done by those who they despise or paid to despise them.
The Pakistani Society needs to getrid of both left and right wing fundos. Thankfully both dont exist in majority and are never took seriously by majority of Pakistanis.