A reader of Pakistani origin living in America has recently sent me an e-mail reporting a National Geographic TV programme which covered cruelty to animals the world over.

It seems that Pakistan is on the list of ten countries where the abuse of animals is most widespread. As my reader watched this programme with his two young sons, both of whom were born in the United States, he had a hard time explaining to them why we are so horrid to beasts.

Among the things that qualified us for this Top Ten award is bear-bating, an atrocious spectator 'sport' in which a bear is tied up and attacked by specially raised dogs; cockfights that are still common; and horses and donkeys that are routinely worked for up to sixteen hours a day on very little food until they drop from exhaustion. They are then killed or sold off.

Pakistanis can hardly be shocked by this report: all of us are witness to the daily cruelties animals are subjected to. Skinny dogs with sores all over their bodies are a common sight in all our cities as they scavenge for scraps and are stoned by boys who double up with laughter when they hit their helpless targets. At our pathetic zoos, animals are cramped in small cages and tormented by visitors. In summer, many of them suffer from unaccustomed heat and can be seen panting in their baking enclosures.

But if we are heartless towards our animals, we do not treat millions of human beings much better: of late, the national and international media has been full of incidents in which women and members of minorities have been singled out for particularly vicious treatment.

The New York Times recently carried the tragic story of Naseem Mai who committed suicide by drinking a bottle of pesticide in public view when the police allowed her rapist to escape. In the next village, the tribal council ordered the rape of Mukhtaran Bibi by four men. This shocking incident was carried by the media around the world, and forced the government to act.

These have been the rare cases where the police have been forced to take some action because of a public outcry. Normally, because of social pressure, women do not even report rape, knowing that if they do, there is every chance that they will be ostracized or be accused of zina themselves. In a patriarchal, backward society like Pakistan, a woman who has been raped has virtually no chance of getting married.

Our treatment of minorities continues to tarnish our image abroad, specially the pernicious blasphemy laws are used to settle scores or usurp property. Scores of Ahmadis languish in jail for the 'crime' of uttering the traditional Muslim greeting; illiterate Christian boys have been accused and sentenced to death for writing supposedly blasphemous sentences; and Hindu girls have been raped by landlords in Sindh in a sickening reprise of the old 'droit de seigneur'.

All this is at the everyday level and mostly goes either unreported or makes the inner pages of the local press. The killings that grab the headlines are generally those relating to sectarian and ethnic terrorism that have become part and parcel of the fabric of our lives. Of late, westerners are being targeted by terrorists seeking to discredit this government while simultaneously lashing out at the American-led coalition that has destroyed the Taliban and is attempting to root out Al Qaeda.

Naturally, these attacks make headlines around the world, and make Pakistan seem an impossibly violent and dangerous country. Many Pakistanis feel such a description to be exaggerated, but is it? According to a researcher, the number of murders in Pakistan has gone up to around 85,000 in the last two decades compared to just over 61,000 in the previous twenty years. He ascribes this rise to the Qisas and Diyat Laws introduced by the late military dictator, General Zia, in the early eighties.

Under these laws, blood money can let a killer off the hook if the family of the victim accepts the offer made by the assailant. In most murder cases in Pakistan, victims belong to the downtrodden classes and their families can be relatively easily bullied and bought off. Judges and police go along with this sham, thus lightening their workload, and killers go scot free.

Is there a connection between these different strands of violence in Pakistani society? Clearly there is: when there is virtually no deterrence, there is no respect for the law. And when even the law is loaded against specific sections of society (women and minorities), then there can be no protection for them. But perhaps the most important is the virtual absence of women from our public life: without their humanizing influence, the most brutish behaviour has been accepted as the norm. In a society where women have been locked away and deliberately kept backward, they can hardly modify and refine the macho, feudal image that is now the Pakistani role model.

Ultimately, this male posturing and swaggering colours and permeates attitudes and policies at the individual and national level. In our region, it is reinforced by the belief that Muslims have ruled much of India for nearly a millennium. Of course we tend to forget that most Pakistani Muslims are in reality the descendants of Hindus who had converted to Islam somewhere along the line. Historical and social distortions make us behave in a stiff-necked and uptight manner that precludes flexibility and realism, blocking a settlement with India. Our neighbour responds in an equally prickly way, thus ensuring that our borders are as prone to violence as our society is.

We Pakistanis resent the negative image we have acquired abroad, ascribing it to hostile Indian propaganda combined with anti-Muslim sentiments in the West. We overlook the unpleasant reality that, seen from a distance, we have developed into a very unattractive state that is violent not only to its own people but also to foreigners. It has not produced any arts or literature of note in recent years, nor has it made any contribution to the sciences. It has acquired nuclear status, thus - together with India - making the region a more dangerous place. It has many social and economic problems seeking urgent attention and redress but it chooses to spend enormous sums on its armed forces. Meanwhile, poverty and disease continue multiplying.

All in all, if the rest of the world is critical of us, it is not far wrong.