Cleric's power too large a challenge for the Indian Government

The 'culture' of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies in their moral code, which is based on concepts of honour and shame. In honour-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honour resides in the sexual probity of women, and the 'shaming' of women dishonours all men. Any country claiming to be a democracy must secularise and unify its legal system, and take away power exercised by medievalist religious institutions that teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of religion.

Ever since the Indian Government caved in and passed an act that nullified the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shah Bano case, denying alimony to divorced Muslim women, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge Islamist clerics' power.

Another honor rape in Pakistan

Another woman has been "honour raped" (read gang-raped) by five men in Pakistan's Central Punjab province where another high-profile gang-rape of a woman, Mukhtaran Mai, on the orders of a village council had triggered an international outcry.

Violence against women is common in rural Pakistan where tribal and feudal customs hold sway. Hundreds of women are raped or killed every year by men intent on restoring honour after behaviour by the woman or a male relative deemed inappropriate in the male-dominated society.

An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective.

Muslim council "finds" that the rape never occured....and hence the matter is closed?

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board which sent a team on a fact-finding mission says it is unlikely that Imrana was raped. They "support their finding" on the argument that her house did not offer sufficient privacy for a rape to have occured.

Protest against India rape fatwa

A ruling by a Muslim seminary in India that a woman allegedly raped by her father-in law must separate from her husband has been met with wide protests.