No culture has the right to kill and harm persons based on their perceptions of morality or honour. Stoning is a brutal example of how culture and religion are being misused to perpetuate violence against women
Barbaric tribal forces were once again at work on March 31, 2008, when a couple was stoned to death after ‘militants’ declared them guilty of adultery. The incident took place in Khwezai-Baezai, about 40 km west of Ghalanai, Mohmand Agency headquarters.
The woman identified as Shano, who hailed from Mohmand Agency, had allegedly eloped with Bara’s Daulat Khan Malikdeenkhel a fortnight before the horrific incident. Later the Taliban captured the couple in Nowshera after receiving complaints from the woman’s family. Typically, the family first alleged that Shano had been abducted by Daulat Khan but later changed its stance and maintained that she had eloped with him.
Pakistan’s shoddy record of violence against women is replete with cases of stoning to death; this latest incident involving Shano and Daulat Khan is certainly not the first of its kind. Such death sentences are routine in rural, particularly tribal, areas. But not many are publicised. In January last year, a couple was caught by their relatives, tied to a tree and killed with bricks in a village of Punjab, again on alleged charges of adultery.
Interestingly so far all the cases of stoning to death in Pakistan have been decided by traditional courts or jirgas and executed mostly by the victims’ relatives among whom family honour is paramount. Not because law in Pakistan disallows stoning: in fact according to the Zina (Hudood) Ordinance, the maximum punishment for adultery and fornication is stoning to death for married people and a hundred lashes for the unmarried.
That the state has not executed anyone in this manner by no means glorifies the formal courts’ track record. Deaths have been ordered, sparking outrage and protests predominantly led by human rights activists, thus pressuring the courts to dismiss the orders.
Take the Fehmida-Allah Bukhsh case. The couple were convicted and sentenced to death by stoning under the Zina Ordinance in September 1981. Under immense national and international pressure the verdict was set aside. In 1983, the 13-year-old blind Safia Bibi, allegedly raped by her employer and his son, was sentenced to stoning to death for adultery. Her rapists, however, were acquitted. Once again jurists and activists protested, compelling the court to set the young girl free.
Shahida Parveen and Muhammad Sarwar met with similar fate in 1988. Twenty-six-year-old Zafaran Bibi of Kohat was ordered to be stoned to death in 2002 for having extramarital relations. Bibi claimed that she was raped by her brother-in-law in a remote village of north-western Pakistan. Again, submitting to public outrage, the court acquitted her but shied away from punishing the rapist.
This is the horrific history of stoning in Pakistan, a mere tip of the iceberg. The fact remains that stoning (lapidation) has been executed for centuries and in many cultures and religions, in Muslim and Jewish tradition and in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Iran is the world’s most prolific practitioner of stoning to death. It allows individual judges to pass a stoning sentence without checks and balances or the burden of proof. Currently there are about eight women and one man in prison waiting to be stoned. Earlier this year in February, 14-year-old Saeedeh was stoned to death by her father. Two Iranian sisters, Zohreh and Azar, have been sentenced to death by stoning and have requested the court to review the order. Alongside, the Iranians rejoiced at the release of Mokarrameh Ebrahimi after a long and difficult struggle last month. Mokarrameh was sentenced to death ten years ago along with her husband.
Although there is no mention of stoning in the Quran, the practice is prevalent in Muslim cultures and is wrongly associated with Islam. The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women (SKSW) comprises a group of lawyers, activists, journalists and academics that address the intensifying trend of cultural and religious legitimisation of violence against women. It maintains that stoning is a highly debated issue among Muslim religious clerics, and there is no consensus within the global Muslim community over the validity of the practice as Islamic Law.
Further, it says that many Muslim clerics cite instances in hadith, the acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH, when discussing the legitimacy of the practice of stoning in Islam. In the hadiths, the Prophet PBUH is said to have prescribed stoning for Jews who were found guilty of adultery and the verdict was based on Jewish law.
But after the Prophet Muhammad’s PBUH death, SKSW explains, the first generation of Muslim legal scholars included adultery as one of the six major offences in Islamic law for which the penalty is fixed by God and Quran (Hudd). However, because the justification for stoning relies completely on hadith and not on the Quran, many scholars question its label as Hudd or punishments mandated by God.
Such inconsistencies between hadith and the Quran have been a source of confusion and remain controversial today. The point is: is there any excuse for killing men and women for religion or culture?
Rightly, SKSW stresses that no culture has the right to kill and harm persons based on their perceptions of morality or honour. Freedom of belief does not mean freedom to kill, and stoning is a brutal example of how culture and religion are being misused to perpetuate violence against women.
Alefia Hussain is a freelance columnist
Courtesy: Daily Times, 7/4/2008
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