15 year old girl allowed to be married by an IHC judge!

I was not at all surprised when the learned Justice Mohammed Azam Khan of the Islamabad High Court did not annul the marriage of an under-age girl and allowed her to live with her husband (whose age was definitely more than 18). For those who don't know, the minimum age for marriage in Pakistan is 18, but in practice this is widely flouted. Practically every male in Pakistan considers himself an expert on Sharia (without ever having read it), so he naturally assumes that a girl should be married off the day she finishes her first period. There is therefore no way of preventing this, as even a judge of the high court believes it.

Around the time I was 15, two girls in my neighborhood (both sisters definitely aged less than 18), were married off. There was a German engineer and his wife who were employed by the girls' father at the time. The German woman actually wept and asked the father of the girls why he was giving away two helpless children so soon. I think the father must've said the usual thing about all Muslims being ordered to do so.

Come to think of it, even some US states allow girls as young as 14  to marry. So I guess we shouldn't be shocked that there are more than 19 million child brides in Pakistan.

More honor killings

After the horrific murder of a man and woman in Baluchistan, a spate of honor killings has erupted in the country. It's like a contagious disease like polio, spreading from one person to another. First, there was a divorced woman in Sukkur who was killed because she refused to marry either of two men who had been pestering her. Then, a nineteen-year old girl in Rawalpindi was killed after being sentenced to death by a jirga (a tribal court). The shameless man who ordered her to be killed also performed her namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer). Her crime? She had been absent from her home for a week or so. It was believed that she went to her boyfriend's house but apparently he backed out of his promise to marry her.

The latest is that of a couple from a village in Gujranwalla who eloped and escaped to Karachi. Just a week before their murder, the man changed his religion from Christianity to Islam. Despite that, the girl's brother is reported to have killed the couple. I can't understand how he was able to locate the couple so soon after their marriage.

I'm convinced that the most unfortunate people in the world are Pakistani women (particularly those who live in rural areas or who belong to illiterate families). In the countryside, their bodies belong to the local feudal lord, who can rape them himself or ask his cronies to do so. He can even order them to marry the person he has selected for them. Even in illiterate families in the cities, girls are married off a couple of years after puberty. Their parents do not let them study after the age of twelve (assuming they're put in schools at all). They have to agree to marry their cousins (who may be junkies or street criminals). And after marriage they have to bear at least seven or more children (because that is what their husband want). And I doubt if this situation will change in the next five decades, if ever. 

It appears that Pakistan will always have polio

Already seventeen cases of polio have been recorded in the country. It's not only the illiterate parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated against the dreaded disease. About forty years back I asked an engineer if he had got his first child vaccinated. He laughed. "It's all a scam to make vaccine manufacturers rich", he said. This is what many Americans believe as well, and some of them are suffering from the after-effects of Covid. 

In Pakistan, however, the problem is compounded by clerics and some influential people. Many years ago, there was a mullah who used the FM radio channels to brainwash housewives into believing that vaccination causes male children to be impotent, and female children to be infertile. "This is one way of reducing our population devised by the evil Westerners", he used to say. No wonder many polio women workers have been killed in the northern areas of the country, and in those districts where Pathans live.

So I doubt if this and successive governments will ever eradicate polio in country. They should give up trying and the money saved can be used for treating people suffering from cancer or other diseases.

                   

Why so many "honor" killings among the Baloch?

Most of the rural areas in Pakistan are still controlled by tribal chieftains who have their own interpretation of Islam. Some of them believe that a woman talking to a male stranger (or even a distant male relative) is guilty of adultery. A woman refusing to marry the man selected by her father or brothers or marrying a man of her choice is killed immediately.

A few days back a woman and her husband were killed for doing so. Both had been married, she may have been a widow, and she already had children. The couple were told that they had been forgiven and were invited to come back to their village, but of course they should have known they were doomed. I'll never forget what the woman said to the man (her brother) who was about to kill her, "You are allowed only to shoot me", perhaps she feared being stoned to death. It was shocking to hear her mother proclaim publicly that her daughter deserved to be killed. Apparently these women have so many children that they don't regret losing one or two.

As a contractor I used to come in contact with Baloch men frequently. One of my workers once told me, "We're not cowards like you city folk, if our wives even hint at wanting a divorce, we shoot them". When I received a wedding invitation card from a Baloch contractor which didn't mention the name of the bride and asked the reason, I was told, "If a male stranger gets to know the name of my daughter, I can only assume that she's been intimate with him, so I have to kill her". Perhaps this is the reason why even some Memons nowadays don't print the names of their brides on wedding cards, they print "daughter of so and so". 

Honor killing: why only Muslims do it?

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Pakistani men are mostly illiterate and are easily provoked, particularly if they feel (or are told) that their wives, daughters or sisters have been seen in the company of male strangers. There have been cases of men killing their wives for looking out of the windows of their houses. Sometimes a man comes home and hears a male voice, rushes in and kills the man, only to find out that the victim is his brother, back home from abroad. A couple of years back, three girls were killed when a video of them dancing on a stage with boys was seen by their brothers. 

A worker from the rural areas of Sindh once told me, "We are not cowards like you city folks. If our wives want to be divorced, we simply kill them". This kind of thinking is very common. A maid working for us wanted a divorce from her drug-addict husband. The man came to our house, accompanied by seven relatives, and asked that his three daughters should first be handed over to him before he dealt with his wife. The daughters would be sold off so the man could continue buying heroin. I had to call the cops to persuade the man and his relatives to leave.

Why is it that honor killing takes place only in some Islamic states? Why aren't Buddhists and others provoked so easily? I've heard of honor killings happening in India, but those are done mostly by Muslims.

Polygamy is banned in UK but some Muslims have more than one wife

In most countries, a man can't have more than one wife. In Turkey, polygamy is banned. In Pakistan, if a man wants to take a second wife, he has to get written permission from his current wife, who has no choice but to agree, as she knows he will divorce her if she says no. 

Muslims living in the UK have found a way to practice polygamy without being arrested. They can't divorce their current wives because they would have to give her half their properties and incomes, without having full custody of their children. So they have an Islamic marriage in a mosque. The second wife doesn't object, she's already a British citizen and even if she has children without being legally married, the state cannot punish her. In fact, her children will also get UK citizenship.

During my recent vacation in England, a ten year old girl (Sarah) was killed, and her father (with his second wife called "partner") escaped to Pakistan. They are now back in the UK, facing trial for murder of the little girl. Her biological mother is Polish, and her father evidently didn't want to divorce her (for reasons cited above). So he married a British Pakistani woman without divorcing the first wife.  I can guess why he killed his daughter. He probably wanted her to go to Pakistan with him so she could be engaged to one of his nephews. I suspect that when she refused, he got enraged and beat her up. I hope he and his "partner" are sentenced to life imprisonment.

Will Pakistani Muslims ever practise birth control?

I've known for a long time that Pakistani Muslims believe that practising birth control is a heinous sin. I used to hear (in my teens) that those who did so would suffer the tortures of hell in the hereafter. When I was asked why I had only three children and replied that I was using condoms, invariably I would be told to stop doing so. There was a Memon, distantly related to me and also resembling me, who had seven children. His wife once told my wife that even if a woman had her womb removed, she would still get pregnant. This is the kind of illiteracy prevalent in the country today. The reason, of course, is that the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims spend their spare time in mosques, where they hear that they should strive to have as many children as possible, if they want to spend their after-lives in Paradise.

In the floods of 2010, it was discovered that most women in the rural areas had more than ten children. There was one woman who wasn't sure if she had sixteen or seventeen children. 

I once told an educated, Memon industrialist that Pakistan's problems are mainly caused by its exploding population. He was shocked. "What kind of Muslim are you?" he exclaimed. "The world needs to have more and more Muslims, so that they can rule over the whole world". When I told him that there is only one Jew on the planet for a hundred Muslims, yet it's the Jews who control the world, he didn't believe me. 

I doubt if Pakistani Muslims can ever be made to restrict the number of children they have. Fortunately, in Malaysia, Turkey, Bangladesh and Iran, Muslims do practise birth control. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.

Raping of young boys in madressahs

One thing deeply religious Pakistanis frequently talk about is the sexual abuse of young boys by Christian priests. "We are so much better than them," they say smugly. Now that a mullah has been arrested after he was filmed raping a boy in a madressah, our religious leaders have not said a word to condemn him. So-called Maulana (Tariq Jamil) who said earthquakes and Covid are caused by our women not observing purdah has also remained silent. The rapist (Azizur Rehman) first confessed, then retracted, saying that he had been made to drink something that made him admit to the crime. No one believes him, except those who are followers of Imran Khan. Instead of condemning the crime, IK's government has banned madressah students from taking their cell phones when they go to madressahs, so no other mullahs can be filmed raping them.

I was talking to one of IK's fervent followers yesterday. I've known him for more than fifty years. He gets incensed whenever I blame Imran Khan for the country's deteriorating situation. Yesterday he said that the raping of boys by mullahs in seminaries is very common, but it's not serious. The government should not do anything about it. However, he insisted that buildings constructed on amenity plots and unauthorized places should be demolished immediately. This would of course mean bringing down at least a quarter of new buildings in Karachi. Of course, there are many such buildings in Lahore and Islamabad, but he didn't say that those should be demolished, as most of those buildings are madressahs.

If ever I meet Imran Khan after he's been deposed, I'll tell him about the damage he's done to Pakistan, especially his quotes about rapes being caused by women not being fully dressed. He probably thinks that Mullah Azizur Rehman raped the boy after he saw some women wearing tight shirts and jeans.

Child marriages in Pakistan

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Even though the Sindh government has fixed eighteen years as the minimum age of girls for marriage, the law is flouted repeatedly. In most villages of the country, no one knows for sure when he or she was born. But in cities at least, people do get their children's births registered. So, when a Hindu or Christian girl child is abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and then married to her kidnapper, it shouldn't be a problem for the courts to annul the marriage and give custody of the victim to her parents. Unfortunately, that is never done.

In February this year, a fourteen year old girl was told to live with her kidnapper-husband after she said that she had willingly converted to Islam and wanted to live with him. Today, we have the case of a thirteen year old who was married to her 44-year old neighbor, and she too said she wanted to live with him after embracing Islam voluntarily. I have no doubt that she too will be handed back to her husband, despite the law against child marriages. 

The question arises, why are the courts so scared of the extremists in our society? Obviously, they know that they may be killed if they enforce the law, so why can't our judges be provided with adequate police protection, like that given to those who are in the government? 

I wonder how Imran Khan can ask for human rights for Muslims in the West when in his own country minorities are treated like second class citizens. Why doesn't he speak out against the rape, kidnappings and forced marriages of Hindu and Christian girls to Muslim men? Does he think it is in accordance with our religion?

Honor killings

One would've thought in the twenty first century, no one would go berserk and kill his daughter or sister for wanting to marry someone of her choice. Yet it continues happening. The other day, a nine year old girl was reportedly declared "kari" and stoned to death. The word "kari" in Sindhi or Seraiki means "black female" and is used to denote a woman who is loose and immoral.

We remember how Mukhtaran Mai was stripped naked and made to walk in public just because her brother had been suspected of having had sex with the sister or daughter of a powerful feudal lord in the area. Instead of her brother and his girl friend being punished (though that too would have been a crime), it was poor Mukhtaran (who had nothing to do with the affair) who had to pay the penalty. Even a so-called liberal like President Parvez Musharraf had condemned the victim (Mai), saying that she was one of those who wanted to get Canadian citizenship. The brave Mukhtaran Mai (who should have been awarded the Nobel Prize) is now involved in running schools for girls in her area. 

In the instant case too, the victim will be forgotten and more girls will be killed sometimes because their brothers don't want them to have their rightful share in the properties left by their parents, but usually because they want to marry men of their choice. I firmly believe that a mass cleanup is necessary to change the mindsets of those living in rural areas. Even if this requires the hanging of many (something which I have always opposed), I wouldn't object to it if it eliminates honor killing.

How can we stop our children from being radicalised by extremists?

Published in The Express Tribune Blogs on March 24, 2015

I ask this question because all around me, our kids are being brainwashed by adults who are scared that Islam will disappear from the world if the younger generation is not trained to kill for the sake of religion.

“Dada, you will not go to heaven if you do not keep a beard, Mehroze Khan Chacha told me”.

“Nana, you should wear shalwar kameez when you go to the mosque, not jeans and T-shirt, Akmal driver Chacha says so.”

“Dadi, you should not watch TV, Allah will punish you for it, our Quran teacher told us.”

“Mummy, why don’t you wear a burqa, our Islamiat teacher says your prayers will never be accepted if you don’t.”

When you hear such sentences from children who are only six or seven-years-old, you wonder how you can prevent your children from turning into extremists.

We cannot prevent our children from speaking to our staff members (drivers or security guards) or those who teach them how to read the Quran. These individuals are placed in our lives and we cannot overlook their presence. Muslims have differing beliefs, but the hard-core ones, which we need to keep our children away from, are the ones who believe that not only Pakistan, but the whole world has been created for Muslims who follow an extremist version of Islam.

This belief automatically negates the concept of sub-sections within a majority. When I was a child, we heard that there were only two sects, which have existed for centuries. Mosque Imams were more relaxed and I never heard anyone preaching that it was a good deed to kill those who did not follow the “true” faith, Islam.

Eventually, things started getting worse. Almost all the Christians of Karachi migrated to greener pastures (most Hindus had fled to India immediately after partition). When we were in school, we would play and eat with Christians, Hindus and Parsis (there were a few Jews as well).

Nowadays, children rarely come across non-Muslims. I occasionally come across teenagers who think that only a few non-Muslims are left in Pakistan, and it’s only a matter of time before they are wiped out.

The decline probably started after some of our labourers and working class individuals began returning from Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia, and became convinced that the hard-line version of Islam practiced there was far superior to the relaxed one inherited by Pakistan.

Suddenly there was a proliferation of organisations preaching what they considered the “true” Islam and many people joined them. It was not long before our TV channels also began to telecast programs in which so-called scholars were invited to convince people to follow their ideologies.

At wedding dinners and such occasions, religion and politics are the most popular topics. I keep overhearing obscure things such as whether Islam allows us to eat prawns and crabs or whether a man’s nikkah is broken if he prays behind a man who belongs to another sub-sect. Extreme cases include brothers quarrelling over which imam should lead funeral prayers because they both belong to different sub-sects.

I wonder if this battle can ever be won. At times I am filled with despair over the decreased levels of tolerance in our society, especially when I witness things such as people in my neighbourhood building a new mosque because the Imam of a nearby mosque followed a slightly different version of Islam. Now, when I go to offer prayers in the mosque where the Imam apparently follows a different version of Islam, some of my neighbours express their aversion openly.

I weep for my people, for my country and for the Muslim world. I have no solution to the problem, except perhaps keeping our children away from individuals who lean towards extremism.

Shakir Lakhani

Engineer, teacher, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani

https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/25370/how-can-we-stop-our-children-from-being-radicalised-by-extremists/

Honour killing in Lahore

On her ‘honour’

Published in The Express Tribune on May 31, 2014

KARACHI: This is with reference to your editorial “On her honour” (May 29). Journalists should ask men from both the rural and urban areas whether women should marry the men of their choice. In all probability, the answer from most men, not only in the rural areas, but also in the cities, would be that such women should be killed immediately.

Obviously, the men who killed Farzana firmly believed that they were acting righteously. That is probably why the policemen at the spot did not intervene to save the poor woman. After all, Mr Imran Khan himself once said that the tribal justice (jirga) system is much more preferable than the one we inherited from the British. And we must not forget the Baloch leader who said that their tribal customs take precedence over everything else. When politicians themselves have this mindset, how can you expect the rest of us to behave in a civilised manner?

Shakir Lakhani

https://tribune.com.pk/story/715418/on-her-honour-2/

Action on the polio front

Published in DAWN on May 20, 2014

With reference to your editorial, "Action on polio front" (May 15), now that the polio virus has been found in sewage samples in both Karachi and Lahore (besides earlier in Peshawer), drastic action is indeed required. Not only those travelling from FATA to the rest of the country, every Pakistani who travels within the country also needs to be immunized, since it is known that adults are carriers of the virus. Polio drops should be administered at bus depots, railway stations and airports to make the program effective. The government should also consider asking visitors to Pakistan from the ten polio-affected countries to immunize themselves before travelling to the country.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Police officer's son is a killer!

Driving while young

Published in The News on May 15, 2014

This refers to the editorial, ‘Dying young’ (May 11). Such incidents have been happening and will go on happening in Karachi. We see boys younger than 16 recklessly driving government cars (with GP and GS number plates) in DHA. Usually they drive at high speeds, trying to overtake their friends’ cars or just to scare other motorists.

Obviously, their fathers are too busy making money to pay attention to their children. These brats should be barred from driving. The police officer whose son shot another boy should be made to answer why the government's car was misused. The fact that the boy took along five policemen with him is also alarming. We have very few policemen on the streets to prevent crime, yet police officers and their sons are provided so many cops for their personal use.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Want to marry your cousin? Think again!

Published in The Express Tribune blogs on October 25, 2013

Embed from Getty Images

Cousin marriages have been very common in the subcontinent and this may be one reason why quite a large number of people in our rural areas are so unhealthy.

I personally know two families whose members are the products of many generations of inbreeding. In one family – distant relatives of mine – many children are deaf and consequently unable to talk. The head of the family reacted with amazement when told that his children and grand-children suffered from various birth defects because of cousin marriages in his household.

In fact, many doctors advised him to stop arranging marriages of his grandchildren with first cousins; they asked him to arrange marriages strictly with non-relatives. Even still when he received a proposal of marriage for his 18-year-old granddaughter from another family whose son was also deaf, he rejected the proposal and instead opted to have the girl married to a first cousin who was also deaf and dumb.

The result was predictable. The couple now has two children, both deaf and dumb.

With the proposal from a on-relative, there was a good chance of a normal child being born from such a marriage, but sadly, this arrangement was not given a chance.

In another family I know, practically everyone is cross-eyed. They cannot be convinced that this too is because they, their parents, grand-parents and even great grand-parents were married to first cousins. They point out to others who married first cousins and have normal children, but obstinately close their eyes to the fact that in those cases the ancestors of the children’s parents were not closely related.

Among certain Hindu castes, marriage between cousins is banned. In fact, in some Hindu sects, a boy and girl from the same village are considered to be brother and sister, even though they are not related. But in most Hindu castes, cousin marriage is considered to be normal.

In Bradford (UK), out of 11,000 children born between 2007 and 2011, 2,000 children (born to Pakistan-origin parents) had a six percent chance of having a congenital abnormality, compared to three percent chance of children of non-Pakistani groups. This was because the Pakistan-origin children were born in families in which cousin marriages had been taking place for many generations. Doctors have also found a link between cousin marriage and heart and lung problems as well as Down syndrome.

This does not mean, of course, that marriages between first cousins should be banned altogether as it is in 24 states in the US. What I mean to say is that if the boy and girl are not the end products of generations of inbreeding and if there is no known genetic defect which can be passed on to their offspring, they should not worry about their children being born with genetic defects. However, in most areas of Pakistan, where marriages between first cousins have been the norm for centuries, it is advisable to educate the masses about the risks which children born of cousin marriages can be exposed to.

Shakir Lakhani

A graduate from NED University in mechanical engineering, he has been part of the chemical and petroleum marketing industry in Pakistan and was a visiting lecturer at NED University. He tweets @shakirlakhani twitter.com/shakirlakhani

Pakistan's exploding population

Population explosion

Published in The News on April 9, 2012

I’m afraid we can do nothing to arrest the exploding population of Pakistan. I frequently tell the religious people I know about how Israel, with only 15 million population, is able to dominate the world, while a billion and a half Muslims lag far behind in almost every field. But most of my friends think that birth control is a sin. Some even say that Pakistan should have at least three times more population than it presently has, as China and India are quite comfortable with their billion-plus populations. And there are others who believe that people who practise birth control are not Muslims.

The situation is hopeless and if the population continues to increase at the present rate, it won’t be long before Pakistanis run out of food and become cannibals. I hope I’m not around when that happens.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Rape victims should not complain!

I've always known that most religious extremists are mentally unstable, and this was borne out by a recent survey which found that in some regions of Pakistan, about 80% of the people suffer from psychiatric diseases. So I was not surprised to hear the chief of a leading religious-political party advising rape victims to simply stay quiet and not lodge a complaint against the rapist or rapists (unless there are four male witnesses who saw her being raped).

For the benefit of any non-Muslims who may be reading this, the requirement of four witnesses is clearly meant for cases of illicit sex, so that innocent women are not falsely accused of adultery. But in Pakistan, a woman who is raped is likely to be charged with adultery if she reports the crime to the cops (who apparently think every woman should have four males with her all the time, even when she's in her own house).

So, when I heard this scholar/politician say that it's advisable for rape victims to suffer in silence rather than go to the police, I was reminded of the survey about 80 percent of the people in certain parts of the country being morons. But this man is not from the regions where eight out of ten people are mental freaks. He is an educated person whose family migrated from India to Pakistan. Whether he became abnormal after years of association with the religious party, or whether he was born a moron, I can't say.

So I couldn't help wondering how this man reacted when he heard about the alleged rape by the ex-IMF chief of a Muslim housemaid in the Sofitel Hotel in New York. Maybe he said, "Serves her right, why did she have to work at all? Why did she leave her country in the first place? Why work in a hotel where so many men are present all the time? She should never have raised a ruckus after being raped!"

In Pakistan, it's the rape victims who are convicted

The late General Zia ul Haq may have done a great service to the country by hanging Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, but his enforcement of Islamic laws has ensured that the guilty go scot-free, while the victims have to suffer. The potential for misuse of Islamic laws is so great that a rape victim dare not go to the police. Since the laws require four male victims to testify that the rape occurred in their presence, the victim is doomed from the start. Once a blind, retarded girl was charged with adultery when she became pregnant after being raped. Recently a Christian nurse in a government hospital was raped by a doctor. She jumped from the balcony to avoid being raped by his friends and had to be hospitalized. At first she did file a report naming the doctor as the rapist, but after a few days (no doubt after being threatened with death by the doctor), she withdrew the complaint. There are rumours that the doctor paid her a couple of hundred thousand rupees (which is equivalent to two years' salary for her)to say in court that she did not remember whether she had been raped by him. And this is the way it will always be, the poor will go on suffering while the feudals will go on raping and plundering.

Honor killings among Hindus in India

It seems that Muslims are not the only ones who kill to save the honor of their families. In Pakistan’s rural areas, one hears daily about boys and girls falling in love and fleeing their home towns after marrying in court to escape being killed. But invariably they are traced by their relatives and shot dead. But in India (”shining” India, remember?), the situation is the same.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a man was killed after he married the girl of his choice. It appears that their customs don’t allow marriages between members of the same caste (surprisingly, since in Pakistan, such couples are killed if they don’t belong to the same caste or “biradari”).

One wonders why this kind of thing is happening in the twenty-first century, and how long it will take India to join the group of civilized nations. But I suppose the Indian elite is too preoccupied with getting super-power status rather than attending to problems like illiteracy and poverty.

Our Schools Are Worse Than Madressahs

Fifty years ago, no one thought it was wrong to have children admitted to schools at the age of five (or even later). Now even two-year old children are admitted into schools. If there is any reason for doing so, it can only be that others are also doing it (the same logic is used by bribe-takers and fornicators: everyone’s doing it, so we also do it). What parents don’t realize is that their children are being turned into nervous wrecks by being forced to go to schools at eight in the morning. Children need to play and interact with others to grow up into healthy human beings. But with this absurd practice of keeping them away from homes for five hours daily, not only is their health being adversely affected, they will end up hating everything to do with the learning process. And then there is the huge workload given to them.

My son’s five-year old daughter has to do so much homework that she has no time to play with other children. She’s dead tired by seven o’clock in the evening. Here she goes to school every morning in tears, but she loved going to school in Dubai (where she spent the past year). There, the atmosphere was relaxed, children were taught basic math and languages (English and Arabic) in a friendly manner, and she learnt to speak fluent English in just a year. Here, teachers’ cruelty to children could turn children into anti-social humans.

How can children be made to love learning? Obviously, by training teachers to be kind to children. But with the kind of salaries teachers get even in our elite schools, it’s doubtful if we’ll ever see any improvement in teachers’ attitudes. Right now, it seems that even madressahs are better than most of our schools.