IT MAKES YOU ILL -- SICK TO YOUR STOMACH
The ghastly news out of Bangladesh is about a 14-year-old girl named Hena Akhter who has been killed by a public lashing. Hena was raped by her 40-year-old cousin. That's why she was beaten -- she was a rape victim.
Bangladesh is almost 90 percent Muslim and under sharia, or Islamic law, rape cannot be proved without the testimony of four witnesses. As explained by Andrew C. McCarthy, The National Review:
MUSLIM LAW STACKED AGAINST WOMEN
"Rapists tend not to bring witnesses along for their attacks. In any event, moreover, sharia values a woman's testimony as only half that of a man, so the deck is stacked and rape cannot be proved in most cases. Yet that hardly means the report of rape is of no consequence. Unable to establish that she'd been forcibly violated, the teenager became in the eyes of the sharia court a woman who'd had sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thus the draconian lashing sentence that became a death sentence."
Hena's flogging under a fatwa -- for being a "participant" in her assault --would have been 101 lashes except she fell unconscious when the count was reportedly around 50. She was rushed to a hospital where she succumbed to her injuries and died, whipped to death.
VICTIM IS PUNISHED
"Died because she was raped," says the blog Conservative New Jersey. "What a loving religion." (Pictured above right is another sharia flogging of a woman.)
Surprise -- last year the Bangladeshi High Court banned punishments handed down by fatwa, or religious edict, following a series of cases of Muslim women who were beaten or caned for religious offenses, reported Huffington Post in July. The court ruling resulted from petitions filed by human rights groups and Bangladeshi women lawyers, who argued that women were publicly whipped for supposed crimes of adultery, having a child out of wedlock or even talking to people of other faiths -- and, of course, being a "participant" in their own rape.
The court's ruling also imposed jail terms for clerics and other members of village courts who order such punishment by invoking Islamic Shariah law.
FATWAS & VEILS RULED ILLEGAL
The same court ruled last April that women who were employed in public institutions were not required to wear the "hijab" or veil against their will, which would be a "flagrant violation" of basic human rights.
TEENAGE GIRL STILL WHIPPED TO DEATH
Yet, although punishing fatwas were finally against the law, young Hena was whipped to death.
Following Hena's death, the High Court has ordered district officals to explain in 15 days why they failed to protect the 14-year-old rape victim from being beaten as per a fatwa, according to Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star.
DOCTORS LIED ABOUT WOUNDS
The recent news is that three doctors are being investigated for claiming the teenage girl had no signs of injury in a postmortem examination, says The Guardian (UK):
"But Hena's body was exhumed on orders from the High Court and a second autopsy concluded that she had died from internal bleeding and septicaemia caused by wounds "of a homicidal nature" on her scalp, abdomen, back, chest, arms and legs."
Police are now treating the case as murder and have arrested six, including a Muslim cleric.
CLICK & READ: "Yet Another Saudi Sheikh's Fatwa: Women Must Wear One-Eyed Veils"
CLICK & READ: "Has Saudi Arabia Beheaded Fawza Falih for 'Witchcraft'?"
by Sharon McEachern
