Did you ever read a sadder headline?
“An Afghan woman was choked to death by her husband – a local militiaman – and mother-in-law for delivering a baby girl for the third time in northern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.”
Which Officials? Is it possible that human beings actually behave in this barbaric way? Is it possible that this is a trumped-up news story to satisfy our lust for hating that which is unlike us?
I read the news report over and over, feeling sicker and sicker as the words sink in (not ‘killed’ – such an anemic PC word – murdered in cold blood!), and imagine the horror of looking into your husband’s eyes – the person you should trust most in the whole world – as he kills you, slowly and brutally, taking each breath of life from you until your body stops thrashing, For a moment I understand in my gut why a person might be tempted by organised religion. I want desperately to know there’s some neat answer to this in the hereafter. I want to believe that heaven and hell exist. I see the woman with a purple neck, her husband’s finger-prints fading as she dwells in a realm of peace and sweetness, and I see him suffering, a burning torch staggering around a wasteland of tortured miserable souls. For days I relive the sensation of believing that the abomination of suffering forever is a just punishment for the devil’s spawn.
My mind reverts to early childhood; the catechism books that showed levels of human beings, with my beloved pets right off the radar screen, unlovable and unbaptisable. I can’t help myself; when I read that headline I want the husband and the mother-in-law to burn in hell for a very very long time. But most of all I want the right authorities to step in and say this is not the way of our religion; we do not hurt women and children, we subscribe to the laws of civilised human behaviour that protect the vulnerable and honour grace and courage. Is that so diificult to do? Where are the wise men and women of the Afghan nation who can change the way their people think, and the way we think about the Muslim religion and its followers? May the gods (whoever they may be) help us all.
