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What the…?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Sep 05, 2008

It’s not legislation. It’s not a nation-wide demonstration. But it’s a humble start in the dissent department.

This is what it looks like when Pakistanis speak out against barbarism in their backyard. By “barbarism,” I’m referring to the crime of burying women alive, which I blogged about a few days ago.

On a related note, the book that I’ve been blogging about lately — The Jewel of Medina — contains a story of how the Prophet Muhammad challenged this disgusting anti-woman custom. Written in the voice of a very young A’isha (Muhammad’s second wife), the passage reads as follows:

“I’d known Muhammad all my life. He held me in his arms just moments after I was born, blessing me with a special prayer as I’d flailed and rooted against his chest in search of a nipple, hungry from the start. He’d saved my life, my parents told me, by convincing my father to break the Meccan law. Too few boys were being born that year, so the [tribal] leaders had decided that all newborn girls should be buried alive in the desert. “Are not girls also the creation of al-Lah?” Muhammad had said to my father, who wept with relief.

In Muhammad’s eyes, girls and women were more than just chattel for men to own and disown depending on their whims. They were valuable in God’s eyes, and in his…”

So here’s the irony, or tragedy, or both: Despite portraying Islam’s prophet in glowing light, this novel gets pulled from publication for potentially offending Muslims. But those pious dudes in rural Pakistan who suffocate women under mounds of dirt, proving themselves offensive, are still free.

As the Prophet might ask, “What the fig?”