Afghan Women Increase Suicide

by Grant Swank

They despair. They light themselves on fire. They die. Their number increases daily in Afghanistan, per AP Alisa Tang.

"Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match.

"Desperate to escape domestic violence, forced marriage and hardship, scores of women across Afghanistan each year are committing suicide by fire. While some gains have been made since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape.

"More than a month after her attempt, her gnarled hands still bleed."

It is puzzling why more Western news feeds do not print this kind of extremist Muslim reality. But they don’t. Western women’s rights organizations don’t touch this kind of mistreatment. Why? It has no logical answer.

Actually in this AP article, there is not once mentioned "extremist Muslim" or "fascist Islam." The women are merely tagged as "Afghan women." Once again, extremist Muslim atrocities get masked by a free press.

"’It was my decision to die. I didn't want to be like this, with my hands and body like this,’ she said, sitting on a hospital bed in Kabul and hiding her deformed hands beneath her shawl.

"’It's all over the country ...The trend is upward,’ said Ancil Adrian-Paul of Medica Mondiale, a nonprofit that supports women and girls in crisis zones.

"The group has seen girls as young as 9 and women as old as 40 set themselves on fire. But many incidents remain hidden, Adrian-Paul said."

West news reports, including web sites overseen by conservatives, report on Anna Nicole Smith or the Tom Cruise wedding. Such trivia dominates an entertainment-crazed society such as America. Truths that expose Islamic extremism related to females are sidelined for the banal.

"’A lot of self-immolation and suicide cases are not reported to police for religious reasons, for reasons of honor, shame, stigma. There is this collusion of silence,’ Adrian-Paul said on the sidelines of a conference this week in Kabul on self-immolation.

"Five years after the fall of the repressive Taliban regime, domestic violence affects ‘an overwhelming majority’ of Afghan women and girls.

"An estimated 60 to 80 percent of Afghan marriages are forced, the report said. More than half of Afghan women are married before they turn 16 and many young girls are married to men who are several decades older, the report said. The exchange of women and girls to resolve a crime, debt or household dispute is also common.

"Under the hard-line Taliban regime, women were unable to vote, receive education or be employed. In recent years, women have gained the right to cast ballots and female candidates have run for parliament, but women are often still regarded as second-class citizens."

The Christian Church should be informing its constituents of the facts regarding extremist Islam. Instead, Christian leaders muffle themselves rather than get into the macabre of extremist Islam practices. The pastors don’t want to depress their congregations; therefore, they say basically nothing regarding extremist Islam. The same for most seminaries. The same for most Bible colleges. The same for most religious publications such as denominational family magazines.

It is the same positive thinking, comfortable spread put out throughout Christianity. It is the same ritual, liturgy, religious forms while Islam World Rule moves forward with a fresh zeal.

"For Gulsum, who goes by one name, the marriage proposal came with a simple cultural gesture her father could not refuse: The groom's sister-in-law lay her newborn son at the father's feet - an act signifying purity and innocence - and asked for the girl's hand.

"’My father said, "The baby is like a holy book, so I can't say no,"" the teenager recalled of her abrupt betrothal last year to a white-haired, 40-year-old man. ‘In the tradition of our country, when our fathers give us away to be married, we have no choice but to accept.’

"She and her husband lived for six months at her parents' home in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The newlyweds then moved in with his family in neighboring Iran, which is home to many Afghan refugees.

"Once out of her parents' care, her husband turned to heroin and alcohol, and the beatings began, Gulsum said. The beatings became worse when she confronted her husband about his addictions. The last time he hit her was earlier this fall when she set herself on fire.

"Her husband and his family did not help the burning girl. Their neighbor wrapped her in a blanket to put out the fire and took her to the hospital.

"Herat public health director Raoufa Niazi has seen about 150 self-immolation cases over the past two years and pleads with women who survive that fire is not the way to escape their problems. ‘I tell them to go to complain to the government, but the government doesn't help them,’ Niazi said. ‘The government doesn't punish the people who hurt these women. Instead, they just say, 'Why has she done this to herself?'"

Copyright © 2006 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
http://www.truthinconviction.us/weblog.php
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links:
Women on Fire in Afghanistan

Afghanistan: Behind the burqas

Of kites and makeup