Karo-Kari, Part 1

We begin this series by reviewing an article entitled Pakistani lawmaker defends honor killings; Tribesmen bury five women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands, August 30, 2008; the story has received a great deal of coverage in the international media, and various versions of it can be found easily by doing an Internet search.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.

"These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."

All cultures and all cultural traditions are not equally valid. Some traditions are flat out evil, and need to be ended.

The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.

They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists, who said their only "crime" was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.

When similar such lynchings happened to Americans of African descent in the South, society finally decried such lynchings enough to have an impact on the cultural traditions there and change them.

Will that happen now, or will the multiculturalist hypocrites chicken out, and say we shouldn't judge such murders of women?

Zehri told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.

I wonder what these guys would do if they ever got their hands on America's Hollywood crowd?

Many stood up in protest, saying the executions were "barbaric" and demanding that discussions continue Monday. But a handful said it was an internal matter of the deeply conservative province.

"I was shocked," said lawmaker Nilofar Bakhtiar, who pushed for legislation calling for perpetrators of so-called honor killings to be punished when she served as minister of women's affairs under the last government.

"I feel that we've gone back to the starting point again," she said. "It's really sad for me."

Accounts vary

The incident allegedly occurred one month ago in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.

They were said to have been abducted at gunpoint by six men, forced into a vehicle and taken to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot and then buried alive, it said, accusing local authorities of trying to hush up the killings.

One of perpetrators was allegedly related to a top provincial official, it said.

Accounts about the killings have varied, largely because police in the tribal region have been uncooperative. Activists and lawmakers said a more thorough investigation needed to be carried out.

The Asian Human Rights Commission, however, said the two older women may have been related to some of the teenage girls and were apparently murdered because they were sympathetic to their wishes.

This is an old problem in Pakistan, one going back centuries.

This problem is one of cultural traditions, not necessarily related to religion. In fact, as this series continues, we will look at mainstream Islamic scholars who vehemently condemn such "honor killings".

However, Islam is in the eyes of the beholder, and for certain elements in the Islamic world, such traditions are part-and-parcel of Islam -- and some of those elements are spreading their beliefs by every means available, including by the sword.

Stay tuned!