The scourge of Islam is reflected in the manner Muslim women are treated–but especially when they are mistreated.
We typically think of terrorism as a political act.
But sometimes it’s very personal. It wasn’t a government or aguerrilla insurgency that threw acid on this woman’s face in Pakistan.It was a young man whom she had rejected for marriage. As the UnitedStates ponders what to do in Afghanistan — and for that matter, inPakistan — it is wise to understand both the political and thepersonal, that the very ignorance and illiteracy and misogyny thatcreate the climate for these acid attacks can and does bleed over intothe political realm. Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times op-edcolumnist who traveled to Pakistan last year to write about acidattacks, put it this way in an essay at the time: “I’ve beeninvestigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorizeand subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistanthrough Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Becausewomen usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackersare rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s akind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noisein the region. …
“Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks,but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buysulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face.Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because thevictims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor andfemale. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to givevoice to these women.”Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’sAssociation (www.pwaisbd.org)to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who weredeliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in theIslamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”