Where is the righteous anger and solidarity of women with the plight of their sisters in bondage and hostage to some very stupid ideas? After hundreds of years, in places like Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., they are still often forced to live in head-to-toe cloth bags in 100+ degree heat, beaten, stoned, killed in the name of family honor if they are raped, or at the very least ostracized or charged by authorities if they report the rape. They have their genitals mutilated "to protect family honor" and treated like farm animals kept for breeding purposes. In Afghanistan the hopelessness of their lives seems to have some of them setting themselves on fire as a means to escape. Recently Time magazine featured a young 16-year old wife who would have been a beauty if not for the gaping hole where her nose was before her Taliban husband cut it off as punishment for her running away from the enforced service to and abuse of the in-laws she had to live with while her husband was off fighting. And, of course, she had never had any choice in marrying the much older man who was her husband. Afghan women are property to be given in marriage to settle debts or any other whim their father or closest male relative may have.
There are also a few special refuges for disfigured women and girls who have had acid thrown in their faces by rejected suitors or for the crime of going to school. And on and on. It's difficult to imagine so dysfunctional a society as those so common in that region of the world. Saddest of all is the fact that the underlying causes of the lifetime of suffering and abuse many of these women are continually born into cannot be addressed. It is immunized by religious beliefs that cannot be questioned.
How is this different from slavery that has been supposedly banned everywhere in the world? Why is so little attention paid by governments and media? The world organized against apartheid in South Africa. This seems much more brutal. Where is the outrage?
I read of this same woman who had her nose cut off by her husband. I've seen her a number of times also on news programs. It is simply heartbreaking and outraging. But you're right, it is immunized by their religious beliefs. No one dare challenge that way of life. But, once upon a time (and even still, I guess) people said that slavery was biblical. So who knows, perhaps there is hope of changing this horrid, brutal way of life for the unfortunate women born into that culture.
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