NW Pakistan Surrenders to Taliban Justice? Let's Hope Not...

honor |ˈänər| ( Brit. honour)noun1 high respect; esteem : his portrait hangs in the place of honor.• [in sing. ] a person or thing that brings credit : you are an honor to our profession.• adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct : I must as a matter of honor avoid any taint of dishonesty.2 a privilege : the great poet of whom it is my honor to speak tonight.• an exalted position : the honor of being horse of the year.• a thing conferred as a distinction, esp. an official award for bravery or achievement : the highest military honors.• ( honors) a special distinction for proficiency in an examination : she passed with honors.• ( honors) a class or course of degree studies more specialized than that of the ordinary level : [as adj. ] an honors degree in mathematics.• ( His, Your, etc., Honor) a title of respect given to or used in addressing a judge or a mayor.• Golf the right of teeing off first, having won the previous hole.3 dated a woman's chastity or her reputation for this : she died defending her honor.

Over the past few hours, film footage of the Taliban stoning a woman to death has been circulating the wires. The woman, thought to have been seen out and about with a non-relative male, was hooded, tied to the ground and then stoned to death by a crowd of Taliban gathered around her in Orakzai, in the Northwest area of Pakistan. It is claimed that the video was shot about two months ago, smuggled out and given to the Dubai television outlet Al Aan. Reportedly, the man involved may have been merely shot to death.

Don't worry: This is NOT the actual video...

Carriers of honor? What honor is there in the lives of women who are forced to endure the miserable circumstances of life under the Taliban?

Let's think about the honorable minds that think a woman even being in the presence of a man not of her family must have sexually degraded herself and her family's 'honor'. 

All I can say is that I look forward to the time when the Taliban are either abolished or get their minds out of the gutter. The day when they stop persecuting women for their evidently immense corrupting power over men. Because as we know, men are so very, very weak.

Unless they are flinging stones.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010