Punished For Being Raped and For Accusing Rapists: Women's Burden Under Sharia by Phyllis Chesler Breitbart October 28, 2014 http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/1381/punished-for-being-raped-the-burden-of-women Print Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. ISIS has just be-headed a woman in Baquba because she dared to resist being raped. In the process of struggling to defend herself, she actually killed her would-be rapist, an ISIS warrior. The woman was at home recovering from a medical illness. This is precisely the crime that led to Reyhaneh Jabbari's execution in Iran at dawn this past Saturday—except that the Iranian regime first jailed and tortured her for five years. Her life might have been spared if her victim's family had forgiven her, but that did not happen. Her would-be rapist was a former member of Iran's Intelligence Ministry. And thus we learn that under Sharia law the penalty for resisting rape is torture and death for women. What happens when a woman does not or cannot resist being raped? In 2008, in Somalia, 13-year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was accused of adultery ("zina"—in her case, sex outside of marriage). She had reported being gang-raped to the controlling jihadist group there, al-Shabab. The very act of accusing her rapists condemned her-- but not her rapists-- to a brutal death-by-stoning at the hands of fifty men. She begged for mercy, crying out up until the moment of her death. Sharia courts in Pakistan have punished thousands of raped women who dared accuse their attacker of the crime with long term imprisonment. Bangladesh has flogged, beaten, and imprisoned raped women. Families of rape victims in Afghanistan have honor-murdered their daughters for the shame of having been raped. Most recently, in 2014, one ten-year-old victim who was raped by a mullah in a mosque was saved, temporarily, by an Afghan and international woman's group which has, so far, successfully persuaded her family not to kill her. We have all heard about Aisha Bibi or Muhktar Mai, who reported her more powerful Pakistani gang-rapists and managed to get some convicted. She lives with permanent death threats—she also shelters other such rape victims and their families. A very powerful opera has been written and performed about her bravery. » CONTINUE READING

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