RUTHFULLY YOURS

In America, if you’re a young woman and your parents disapprove of your boyfriend, you’ll probably marry him anyway. But in Afghanistan, it happens a little differently, maybe even something like this:

1) Your parents will force you into an arranged marriage.

2) They will sell you for something like 30 goats, and even some cows, if you look sexy in a burka.

3) If you instead elope with your boyfriend, your family will hunt you down to try and kill you.

4) If you go to the police for help, the police will arrest you for adultery.

5) When a mob comes to the police station to demand your release, the police will hand them over to you.

6) Your family members will execute you for having shamed them, since they received all these lovely goats and you refused to let a strange man rape you.

An armed mob that included relatives of a young woman who had eloped with her lover stormed a police station holding the couple in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, then dragged the lovers off and killed them, officials and witnesses said.

The woman, Fatiha, 18, was described as having been married against her will and eloping instead with a young man…. But on Saturday the police caught and arrested the couple on suspicion of adultery.

Salam Khan, 22, a witness from Fatiha’s village, Sar-i-Pul, said he saw what had happened to the couple after the police surrendered them. “Some of Fatiha’s relatives, her cousins, were beating her with their fists and saying, ‘Why did you do this?’ Then her older brother got angry and shot her with a hunting rifle and her younger brother shot her with an AK-47.

It is common in many parts of rural Afghanistan for fathers to marry off their daughters without the daughter’s consent, even though both Afghan civil law and Islamic Shariah law [really?] require such consent.

The authorities, however, often side with the families, and honor killings in cases where the girl refuses the marriage are common, although rarely publicized.

This case came to attention because of the notoriety surrounding it and what Ms. Nuristani said was a high bride price paid to the girl’s father, reputedly 30 goats and seven cows.

As of Monday in the Nuristan case, no one had been charged or arrested in the fatal shootings of the couple….

The article went on to say that this occurred an area under government control that also had Taliban sympathies. I think the entire Afghanistan is under government control, complete with Taliban sympathies, if you know what I mean.

This is what the people of Afghanistan are. This is not the exception, this is the rule. It’s just like the recent story about the Pakistani mom who burned her daughter to death at her daughter’s wedding reception. This culture is savage, brutal, inhuman.

Questions for discussion:

1) Why are American soldiers still fighting and dying for Afghanistan?

2) Why is America still admitting Afghan refugees who practice an evil 7th century culture where the murder of family members is celebrated?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.