Because Pakistan was founded on and is run by the precepts of Sunni Islam, which is a highly misogynist path in Islam, where it is allowed to run to extremes, the position of women in Pakistan is really not good at all. Pakistani women are treated as second or even third class citizens and the Islamic culture often overrides the civil law when it comes to the treatment of women.

Because of the dire and secondary position of women in Pakistani society, women are often subjected to extreme violence by Muslim men who take the view that they ‘own’ the women in their families. In the modern West we quite rightly condemn the slavery that occurred in our own nations pasts and also the modern day slavery that occurs in various parts of the world, but we should never forget that in places like Pakistan, a whole gender are treated as little more than slaves.

One of the outcomes of women being treated as second class citizens is that they are often subjected to ‘honour’ killing a practise where men kill the women in their family because of some perceived ‘slight’ committed by or blamed on a woman, on the family’s reputation. Today’s Pakistan shithole piece is on just that subject, that of ‘honour’ killing. The Pakistan International News website (h/t ROP) is carrying the story of a series of these murders that have been carried out recently in Pakistan.

The Pakistan International News said:

A man in Gujranwala has allegedly killed his wife and four children, police revealed on Thursday.

The murders, police said, were committed by the woman’s husband, identified as Imran.

According to Geo News, after being arrested, Imran confessed to committing the crime, the police said, adding that it was a case of “honour killing” as per Imran’s confession.

Police added that the accused also confessed to “killing all of his children who woke up from their sleep and witnessed him killing their mother.”

Cases of violence against women seem to be on a rise in the country as several cases of honour killing were reported earlier this month.

A man identified as Liaquat Shar allegedly killed his sister over suspicion of having “illicit relations” with a boy in Ubauro, a town in Sindh’s Ghotki district to save his “honour,” per police.

The suspect, however, managed to escape arrest and fled before he could be detained.

In another case of “honour killing”, a man allegedly axed his wife to death in Khairpur’s Piryalo Town in the first week of January 2021.

According to police, the suspect tried to flee after killing his wife, but he was apprehended.

During interrogation, the person, according to police, “confessed” to his crimes and said that he had killed his wife “for having an affair with another person”.

Pakistani society is run and controlled by some of the worst forms of Islam on the planet. It’s not dominated by the more peaceful Ahmediyyas or the woman respecting groups such as those that exist within Ismaili Islam, it is run by the worst of the worst of Islam. Pakistan is what you get when you allow extremist Islam to run a country and it is why I believe that Pakistan is not one of the family of nations but more of a cautionary tale of how far a country can sink when it is run by terrible and destructive ideologies.