Misogyny 6, women 0

Oh, god. I feel sick. I feel like screaming. I do, I feel like screaming and screaming and screaming.

An Islamic fundamentalist shot and killed a female Pakistani minister yesterday because of her refusal to wear a Muslim veil. Police said that the bearded attacker had singled out the prominent women’s rights activist in the belief that women should not be in politics. Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and supporter of President Musharraf, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala…As party members threw rose petals at her, the gunman shot her in the head, police said. They identified the attacker as Malulvi Ghulam Sarwar and said that he was opposed to the participation of women in politics and the refusal of many professional women in Pakistan to wear the veil…Mr Sarwar, a stonemason in his mid40s, appeared calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said. Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership, he claimed. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said. Usman was well known as a women’s rights activist and had organised a controversial mini-marathon involving female runners.

Meanwhile, back in Lancs:

Mohammed Riaz made every conceivable attempt to prevent his wife and daughters enjoying their Westernised lifestyle. He destroyed their clothes…t[T]he labourer killed his wife and four daughters by throwing petrol over them as they slept and igniting it.

I feel sick. Perhaps I’ll be told again that ‘we partly are for others, not just for yourselves. The aggressive individualism you often put forward here is almost equally as distasteful as the repression of individualism you rail against,’ but that’s just too bad. Funny how this ‘we are for others’ idea applies so much more to women than it does to men – applies to women so thoroughly that some men think they have the right simply to obliterate them when irritated. Fuck that. I’m not for others, and others don’t get to kill me because I’m not obedient enough. Aggressive individualism for all, that’s what I say.

We’re sorry, Zilla Huma Usman. Well done with the marathon and the women’s rights activism. We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry. We’re sorry Caneze, Sayrah, Sophia, Alicia, and Hannah Riaz.

I feel sick.

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