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Taking back the night<\/div>\n

<\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Ever since the country was carved out of colonial India, there has always been a struggle in Pakistan between state institutions or laws and entrenched tribal customs. Nowhere is this conflict more evident than in the unfortunate string of events involving the use of rape or abuse of women<\/a> as punishment for real or imagined (usually the latter) infractions of cultural rules. Despite Islam\u2019s clear injunctions to eschew tribalism in favor of religious community, in certain areas of Pakistan tribalism has emerged victorious, subsuming Islam and allowing it only the role of casting a religious justification on what can only be described as barbarism. The latest such case is that of Mukhtaran Bibi<\/a>, otherwise known in the Pakistani press as Mukhtar Mai (\u201crespected big sister\u201d), whose gang-rape at the order of a tribal council of elders in the village of Meerwala would be unknown if Mai had kept quiet, as hundreds of similarly-raped Pakistani women have done in the past several years. But, with the help of her local imam, Mai fought<\/a> to seek justice and reclaim her dignity through the Pakistani civil courts, which (under the light of international media) tried and sentenced six men to hang for the offence. Afterwards, she took the settlement money she received and started the first girls school<\/a> in her village. This would be a happy story if it ended here, but it doesn\u2019t. An Islamic shari\u2019a court overturned<\/a> the ruling (really, who\u2019s in charge here?), acquitting five and communting the death sentence of the one who pleaded guilty to the charges. But Mai \u2013 with thousands of Pakistani men and women, along with well-wishers around the globe \u2013 fought back<\/a>. She led marches<\/a> that called for justice and organized international pressure, which has resulted in the re-arrest<\/a> of the rapists and the taking on<\/a> of the case by Pakistan\u2019s Supreme Court. But Mai has little faith left in the back-and-forth nature of Pakistan\u2019s convoluted legal system. \u201cThere is another court. And that is the court of Allah,\u201d said Mai, who despite being illiterate herself has proven<\/a> to be articulate and media-savvy. \u201cI will definitely get justice from Him.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.\n<\/p>\n

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