The cruel and vicious gang-rape of a lady from Karachi and the subsequent ‘public gossip’ surrounding the incident should really serve as a grim reminder and reality check to Pakistanis that the attitude of a number of our countrymen towards female victims is seriously flawed and until that changes, the ability of Pakistan to prosper on any front is questionable.

Our criminal justice system failed the victim – that much is clear; with the complicity of the media, the female was blamed and humiliated in a number of ways, some more arbitrary than others. Accusations were made surrounding the ‘circumstances’ of her rape for instance, her being out at 2 a.m. at a “party”, the clothes she was wearing, the fact that she co-habited with a male, her not being overly keen on identifying the perpetrators – the point that such rhetoric was designed to make was that the victim perversely deserved some of the blame for being raped by five men. Even later, her ‘mysterious disappearance’ was being touted as a conspiracy theory hinting that she had some ulterior motive for being raped. The government minister, who was supposed to be protecting the victim added fuel to the fire of victim degradation by revealing the victim’s name and interpreting her trauma as “hyper” behaviour. However, I, don’t want to nominally exaggerate Mrs. Sharmila Faruqui’s incompetence in the matter (she simply has the unfortunate honour of being an easy target) because doing so distracts from the real issue at hand; the cruel double standards applied to female victims of crime by Pakistani society. This deficiency is particularly troubling because, unlike other areas of the law, in criminal law the nature of the loss the victim has suffered, often cannot be compensated in monetary terms.

I also reject the argument that the application of this distorted mentality of “she asked for it” to female victims is only prevalent among a certain ‘morally decayed’ minority on the margins of our society. The reality is that it has become an integral part of Pakistani culture and is not confined to any ethnicity or class: let us not forget that this incident took place in the elite locality of DHA, not in some farming village in a remote corner of Pakistan where honour killings have taken place before and where we can conveniently find the usual easy culprits to blame such as feudalism, extremism, poverty and lack of education. As the crime and the subsequent drama took place in the most ‘progressive’ and ‘educated’ area of the most ‘prosperous’ city in Pakistan, surely we must be doing something wrong?

While most of us would no doubt have already identified this bias in our social structure and question why I am highlighting something many already recognise as wrong, we need to realise there is significantly more at stake by demeaning female victims of crime than morality or justice. I could easily appeal to Islamic, secular or humanist philosophy or law, but there is a much more fundamental reason I want to raise this issue: Pakistan’s progress as a nation is directly co-related to the legal status it accords to its women. An abundance of literature from law, economics, and political science has shown time and time again that until a state begins creating a respectful place for its women by providing equality and a measure of respect, the chances of that state ‘growing out’ out of the third world are indeed, very slim. Bernard Lewis, perhaps one of the most famous historians of our time, has pointed out that one of the greatest causes of the decline of the once prosperous Muslim empire was the inferior legal and cultural status subsequent governments began to accord Muslim women. The word ‘began’ is used because for much of history, Muslims were the most progressive society in terms of their treatment of women – for example Muslim women had the right to legally divorce, trade, own and inherit property while European women did not. David Landes, a professor of economics at Harvard University has argued that the best barometer of an economy’s potential lies in the legal rights and status of its womenfolk: “To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent.” Similarly, Steven Fish, a Berkeley-based political scientist, has demonstrated that the biggest obstacle to achieving democracy in Muslim countries today is not the economy or education levels, but the subjugated status of women.

I could go on highlighting tons of research but I think the point is already made: no amount of combating terrorism, spending on education, healthcare or infrastructure-building can bring the kind of sustainable change that is needed for Pakistan to reclaim its lost hope, until and unless we strengthen the legal and economic rights for our women. What better way to start than by treating female victims of crimes as exactly that: victims, who deserve the utmost respect and protection of the criminal law and society. If we cannot reform this weakness in our societal structure, we can forget about Pakistan ever being able to fulfill its promise to its people.