Knock, knock

The militants strike and kill at free will every day; there is no guarantee that they will not come after this woman.

The Peshawar area has been home to many, many injustices against its people. When it is not a bomb blast, militants send threatening letters, resulting in its residents living as if their every move is being watched by those self-righteous groups, which claim to act in the name of religion. The latest such plight is that of a 45-year-old woman, living in Sheikhan village in humble means with her eight children. The woman’s perfectly normal practice of answering the door when her husband is not home is not agreeable with the militants and for this, they have deduced that she is of ‘ill-character’. Since when has answering the doorbell become a tool to judge whether a person is of ill-character? Elders in Sheikhan village received a letter, the third of its kind, stating that they either hand over custody of the woman to the Lashkar-e-Islam or kill her. That seems to be the militants’ response to everything that is disagreeable with them — to simply kill a person if they are even suspected, before any sort of trial, of what they perceive as wrongdoing. And, if the victim is a woman accused of immoral behaviour, all the more sadistic joy is derived from the threats and murder by the militants.

In a somewhat positive aspect of the story, the elders have decided not to hand over the woman. Likewise, her husband has vowed to protect her. What the militants need to realise is that the woman is not an object that can simply be ‘handed over’. Of course, this signifies the cultural context in which women are thought of as objects that need to be handled and provided guidance to, rather than being able to speak and act for themselves.

The militants strike and kill at free will every day and there is no guarantee that they will not come after this woman. The elders and her family must be supported in their stance against the militants’ ridiculous letters and the authorities are urged that she and her family are provided protection by the state’s law-enforcement agencies.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.