“It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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“It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

Bina ShahFebruary 17, 2011 (2 days ago)

http://www.dawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/vigil543.jpg

A woman lights a candle next to an image of the governor of Punjab Salman Taseer during a candlelight vigil in commemoration of Taseer. - Photo by Reuters (File Photo)

In Pakistan,Salman Taseer’s assassination in early January has blown the lid off the seething cauldron that has been bubbling in Pakistan for the last several years: the divide between Pakistan’s extremist forces and its minority liberal community is now so wide that it seems nothing can bridge the gap anymore. Worse, the extremists greatly outnumber the liberals, endangering whatever advances have been made in the Pakistani society.

But the women intelligentsia of Pakistan is determined not to let the religious right gain any more ground in the struggle for Pakistan’s soul. They have responded to the onslaught of the right wing with such ferocity that a Pakistani man said on Twitter: “I definitely see more women out on the streets after Salman Taseer’s killing. Does this mean that it is the women that have the guts in this country?”

It all started with a woman: Aasia Bibi, the hapless Pakistani-Christian mother of five who made the mistake of getting on the wrong side of a group of malicious village women. One moment Aasia Bibi was offering her coworkers a cup of water; the next, she was facing the death penalty for having supposedly committed “blasphemy”.
Activists and women’s rights groups, aghast at the blatant abuse of human rights that Aasia Bibi’s case represented, agitated for the country’s leaders to have her acquitted. Pakistan’s progressives, especially women, got in touch with the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer through his Twitter account – one which he used mostly to tweak rival politicians’ noses, share his favorite Urdu poetry, and communicate with his daughters. They besieged him with 140-character-long appeals to save Aasia Bibi’s life, hoping against hope that he would listen.

Taseer not only took Aasia Bibi under his protection, but he widened his scope to take aim at the blasphemy law itself. But Taseer’s strong voice was silenced on January 4, when his own bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, shot him 27 times with his state-issued Kalashnikov.

After the initial shock of the assassination, women activists vowed to use it as a rallying point: not just because they feel for Aasia Bibi, the first woman in Pakistan to face the death penalty for blasphemy, but because they know that women are the first to lose their freedoms when extremism takes over a nation. They are organising candlelight vigils, rallies, and media campaigns to defend their hard-won rights, despite knowing they are outnumbered by the other side.

One of the bravest women in today’s Pakistan is Shehrbano Taseer, daughter of the slain Governor, who wrote several pieces for the newspapers protesting the death of her father and the way in which his killer was showered with rose petals by lawyers who vowed to defend him in court. For this, she received threats from extremists: “She should remember the fate of her father and refrain from issuing statements.”

Taseer, a graduate of Smith College in the US, draws inspiration from other brave women in Pakistan who came up against the same forces: Asma Jehangir, Benazir Bhutto, Jugnu Mohsin, Sherry Rehman (who is now living under virtual house arrest in Karachi because of death threats she has received for her stance against the blasphemy law), Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Beena Sarwar, and Marvi Sirmed are some of the women whose struggles against injustice in Pakistani society have inspired her.

And of course, there is her father’s legacy: “My father’s fire has come inside me … I don’t wish for any other family to have suffered what mine has had to.” Her father’s violent death has illustrated most vividly to her how both men and women in Pakistan have worked together for generations in the name of social activism. “Men and women have marched on the streets together and sacrificed a lot, so I don’t feel one sex is more dominant than the other in this regard.”

But it is not enough. The men in Pakistan need to step it up greatly when it comes to supporting women in social activism. Nuzhat Kidvai, a human rights activist in Karachi, says, “In general, men are more active in the left and labour movements – they will march for economic or political reasons. But when it comes to supporting women’s issues, they just aren’t there.” Her husband, Zaheer Kidvai, a long-time proponent of social activism in Pakistan, agrees that “women are certainly more engaged in this battle and despite bad attacks – lathis, jail, beating, and even rapes by the police! – they have moved this forward against all these odds. If there is any way for this society to evolve further, it’ll have to have even more women come out.”

So, back to the original question: is it really the women in Pakistan who have the guts? When it comes to fighting for their rights, definitely. Life in Pakistan is hard for women, but they don’t give up easily. Perhaps this is why they haven’t yet suffered the fates of their compatriots in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and other supremely conservative Muslim countries in the region.-
http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/17/“it-is-the-women-who-have-the-guts-in-pakistan”.html

so many articles on strong pakistani women facing extremists head on, with no fear on their face, heroes in my eyes including officer shamshed begum

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

Too Much Drama baazi ...

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

I didn’t know Salman Taseer was a woman :konfused:

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

:rolleyes: i’m not even going to bother responding to the childish woman-hater comments…

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

[mod] Trash removed. Stick to the topic. For jokes, there is a jokes forum. [/mod]

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

Agreed :lifey:

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

haan bhayi kanjron ko laa kay bitha dein is mulk pe. barhal men have more intelligence then women bt they dont use it in positive ways isliay wo badnam hein. baqi agar men aur women ki harkitein theek hojaen to pakistan surely progress keray ga but not like the way as it is been corruptly governed now.

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

hahahahaha :slight_smile: he was not a woman but was interested in many. hahaha :slight_smile:

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

silly... yawn

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

ok maybe the writer of the article shouldn't have made it into a man vs woman thing, the title could have been "women have guts in Pakistan"

it's not drama baazi. i would think this is something to be proud of

if i go back to officer shamshed begum's story, how the talibs threatened her many times to give up her job as a police officer b/c they didn't want a woman to work but the way she still held on strong even if her life was on the line for the cause of women. She did have guts.

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

^ ok but where is shamshad begum in this useless essay ?

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

clawns dont have such sence to note where they joke its their job.

on topic, that lady surely having a brave heart even she know what kind of reaction she might be got by her action and little examples we can see here THE REACTION .

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Re: “It is the women who have the guts in Pakistan”

Sherbano Taseer wrote an article for the newsweek:

        **Rose Petals for a Killer**

                      **My father’s assassination could teach us something.**

                                          My father, Salmaan Taseer, governor of the  Pakistani province of Punjab, was murdered on Jan. 4, shot dead in broad  daylight by the policeman tasked to protect him. Acting out of a  twisted piety, the man—Malik Mumtaz Qadri—shot my father because of my  father's belief that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been misused to  persecute religious minorities.*

Five days later the hardline Sunni Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party organized a rally in support of those blasphemy laws in Pakistan’s commercial hub, Karachi. This coming-out party put on display the ugly face of the tens of thousands of religious fanatics who wish to destroy Pakistan’s secular, liberal, progressive, and democratic forces.

In the days before his death, these same men had issued fatwas against my father, burned him in effigy, and put a bounty on his head. There could have been no plainer incitement to murder.

My father had spoken out repeatedly against the blasphemy laws after Aasia Noreen, a Christian farm worker in rural Punjab, was sentenced to death in November. These laws, which carry a mandatory life sentence, were enacted by the military dictator Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s.

Seeing these fanatics scream religious slogans and wave pictures of the killer Qadri, their latest messianic foot soldier, was sickening, as was seeing more than 200 lawyers—our vanguard of justice—garlanding Qadri and showering him with rose petals at his court appearance.

Sherry Rehman, a former federal minister and a current member of the National Assembly, who tabled a bill seeking to amend the blasphemy laws, has been declared wajib ul qatal—fit to be killed—by the religious fanatics.* I should mention—although I make no special claim of courage—that my own life has also been threatened. “She should refrain from issuing such statements and must remember her father’s fate,” the fanatics have warned, referring to me.

From 1986 to 2009, 479 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus, and 10 others have been charged with blasphemy, according to the National Commission for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group set up by Pakistan’s Catholic bishops. No one convicted of blasphemy has ever been executed by the state, but many have been mowed down by Islamist vigilantes.

The biggest danger faced by Islam comes from those who claim to serve it. Its first victims are its own adherents. But our fight against these forces of darkness—forces that seek to snuff out the voices they disagree with—must begin with the strengthening of basic law and order. The extremists are a small minority, but they’re raucously vocal, well armed, and well funded. They operate by instilling fear in those they oppose. This intimidation works all too well.

After evidence is presented in court, the fate of the men involved in my father’s murder will be decided by a judge. Yet because of poor prosecution, especially those in the antiterrorism courts, have a sorry record for convictions. I hope things will be different now, but in the past some judges have been easily threatened. This is not necessarily the product of cowardice. Poverty and lack of upward social mobility is a serious problem in Pakistan, and its consequences have infected the judiciary.

After the 2008 Islamabad Marriott bombing, the people arrested were acquitted of all charges. This is almost always the case in Pakistan. It shows a depressing inability to take on the extremists. Our judicial system needs to have a no-holds barred policy toward these terrorists, but I don’t see it yet.

It is unrealistic, however, to expect the judiciary to send a strong message when so many of our elected politicians consort with religious extremists. They provide them with logistical support, fund them, and give them a place to regroup.

A U.S. Embassy cable disclosed by WikiLeaks says President Asif Ali Zardari complained about Shahbaz Sharif, the current chief minister of the Punjab, to the then U.S. ambassador accusing Sharif of tipping off Jamat-ud-Dawah–the philanthropic front of terrorist organization Laskar-e-Taiba which was involved in the Mumbai attacks–about impending United Nations sanctions.*

Sadly, just eight days after my father was gunned down, a court in Punjab sentenced a Muslim prayer leader and his son to life in jail for blasphemy. According to reports, they were found guilty of tearing down a poster of a gathering to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. They deny the charges, but we can only fear for their lives.

My father’s assassination could teach us something, if only we let ourselves be taught.

Taseer is a graduate of Smith College and a reporter for NEWSWEEK Pakistan.

*This story has been modified from the original which appeared in the January 24, 2011 issue of Newsweek.