To Maqsood: Some very interesting statistics..... Part II

Submitted by Plato (India), Aug 16, 2007 at 00:42

Hello again Maqsood,

Please read the reports below of what is going on in a country that was founded on Islamic principles and prides itself on its Islamic heritage. The reports all originate in Pakistan. The web page addresses are given in each case. Please visit those sites and read them in full and carefully.

…According to reported incidents of child sexual abuse in 2000 collected by an Islamabadbased

NGO Sahil, 2,397 men along with 49 female abettors sexually abused 1,317

children; whereas in 1999, 1,629 men had sexually abused 945 children. This clearly

shows a significant increase of 39% in cases of child sexual abuse as well as an

increase in the ratio of abusers to children. It also suggests that reporting of such cases

has increased, though the reported incidents are still the tip of the iceberg due to societal

tendencies of denial and silence. In the case of girls, 266 cases of rape, 238 cases of

abduction for sexual purposes and 148 cases of gang rape were reported. In the case of

boys, 240 cases of sodomy and 115 cases of gang sodomy were reported. 64 girls and

51 boys were murdered after being sexually assaulted. Of the reported 1,317 cases, 793

(60%) were girls and 524 (40%) were boys.4

Child sexual abuse is considered to be fairly widespread in Pakistan, although it is underreported. According to a survey carried out in 1996 of boys in grades nine and ten,70% had been abused at some point in their life. According to another estimate, eightwomen are raped every day in Pakistan, out of which more than five are minors.

According to a report compiled by ESCAP, it was found that there was a clear difference between who the molesters are likely to be for boys and girls. It was thought that girls were likely to be abused by family members, acquaintances and neighbors, while boys were likely to be abused by teachers and total strangers. Both boys and girls are at risk of being exploited by shopkeepers, with girls having a slightly higher risk factor.

Common Facts about CSA in Pakistan1

�� 1 rape case is reported every three hours in Pakistan

�� 90% of child sexual assault cases are not reported

�� 1 in 3 girls are likely to be sexually abused before the age of 18 years old

�� 1 in 4-7 boys are likely to be sexually abused

�� 75% of abusers are usually known to the child and are often close relatives

�� Girls are more likely to be abused inside their homes and boys outside them

�� Abusers mostly target children aged 10-15 years

Male Child Prostitution in the NWFP

In the NWFP, some wealthy and elderly people customarily keep young attractive boys for sexual pleasure. In order to understand this attitude, a study was commissioned by National Coalition for Child Rights, Unicef-Peshawar and some NWFP CBOs in 1997. It revealed that 23% of the population in the province considers pedophilia a matter of pride, 14% a symbol of status while another 11% does not consider it bad. The report suggested that male child prostitution, instead of decreasing, is on the rise in the NWFP and found boys to be sexually abused and exploited at work places, markets, hotels, bus stands, video shops, snooker clubs, schools and other community places. Children are not considered to be safe anywhere, not even in schools, where even teachers exploit them.

Another important aspect of child sexual abuse is incest. Generally it is perceived that this phenomenon is non-existent in our society, or if it does happen then it is negligible.

The data shows 70 cases of incest during 1997-99, with the predominant numbers of abusers being fathers. Interestingly, all the victims were girls and there was not a single reported case where a father or brother had sexually assaulted a boy. Even these cases were reported after the girl had gone through a long ordeal of sexual violence. Mostly, in these reported cases the mother was the one who mustered up enough courage to finally take action and approach the police. In all the reported cases, the crime was rape.

According to Dr. Ambreen Ahmad3, several factors contribute to this. Firstly, we as a society do not accept that it could occur in our culture and hence we close our eyes to the warning signs even when they are quite obvious. Of course, stereotyped gender roles, the subordination of women, the dependence of women on men of their family, false notions of family honor, all contribute towards the exacerbation of this problem. Children seem to be the most vulnerable to incest in the 6-8 year age group.

(http://www.sappk.org/reports/rep-csec.pdf)

V. THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE

AGAINST WOMEN

Women in Pakistan face the threat of multiple forms of violence, including sexual violence by family members, strangers, and state agents; domestic abuse, including spousal murder and being burned, disfigured with acid, beaten, and threatened; ritual honor killings; and custodial abuse and torture. In its annual report for 1997, the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) reported,"The worst victims were women of the poor and middle classes. Their resourcelessness not only made them the primary target of the police and the criminals, it also rendered them more vulnerable to oppressive customs and mores inside homes and outside."38

The most endemic form of violence faced by women is violence in the home.39 For 1997, HRCP reported that "[d]omestic violence remained a pervasive phenomenon. The supremacy of the male and subordination of the female assumed to be part of the culture and even to have sanction of the religion made violence by one against the other in a variety of its forms an accepted and pervasive feature of domestic life."40 A United Nations report on women echoes this point, explaining the nature of domestic violence generally in terms of the structure of the family:

Comprehensive studies on domestic violence indicate that domestic violence is a structural rather than causal problem. It is the structure of the family that leads to or legitimizes the acts, emotions or phenomenon that are identified as the "causes" of domestic violence under the causal analysis. This family structure is a "structure that is mirrored and confirmed in the structure of society, which condones the oppression of women and tolerates male violence as one of the instruments in the perpetuation of this power balance."41

Estimates of the percentage of women who experience domestic violence in Pakistan range from 70 to upwards of 90 percent.42 According to HRCP, "[T]he extreme forms it took included driving a woman to suicide or engineering an `accident' (frequently the bursting of a kitchen stove) to cause her death . . . usually . . . when the husband, often in collaboration with his side of the family, felt that the dower or other gifts he had expected from his in-laws in consequence of the marriage were not forthcoming, or/and he wanted to marry again, or he expected an inheritance from the death of his wife."43 During 1997, the Lahore press reported an average of more than four local cases of women being burnt weekly, three of the four fatally.44 Police follow-up on these cases was negligible, with only six suspects taken into custody out of the 215 cases reported in Lahore newspapers during the year.45 In 1997, there was not a single conviction in a "stove-death" case in the country.46 The Lahore press also reported 265 homicides against women in the local area resulting from other forms of intrafamily violence. In the majority of cases, husbands and in-laws were responsible for the murders, while in other cases the perpetrators were brothers and fathers.47

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/pakistan/Pakhtml-05.htm#P402_73923

Now Maqsood you have a problem here. Pakistan is not an alcohol swilling pork eating nation. How will you go about explaining the statistics on these sites. Let me try and give you my thoughts on them.

1. The reports are false and concocted by Zionist-Christian agencies to defame Islam and Pakistan.
2. Alcoholism and pork consumption is rampant in Pakistan but all done very secretly, hence the sex crimes.
3. Your theory about alcoholism and pork being responsible for sex crimes against children and women is wrong.
4. The explanation for such crimes in an Islamic nation is now obvious.
5. The difference between Islamic Pakistan and non-Islamic US is that Pakistan follows Islam and the US is mostly Christian.
6. It then follows that the higher prevalence of sex crimes against women and children is due to Pakistanis following Islam.
7. Or there is some other ingredient in the Pakistani diet that is different from that of the US population which needs to be investigated to absolve Islam of responsibility for the crimes. A possible culprit is the burning hot chillies you use in your food preparations unlike American foods which are bland.

Doesn't my anaylsis of sex crimes make you uncomfortable, Maqsood? The conclusions I have drawn are to show why you should not draw wild conclusions from statistics quoted from sources like the Zakir Naik site or use properly researched figures and draw conclusions totally unrelated to the research like you did with your claim about pig fat and hypertension.

Regards

Plato

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