MOTHER GETS THE BLAME. From Swiss daily Le Matin, a curious story (in French) of parental responsibility, Pakistan style.
A 50-year old mother has been stripped naked and forced to parade through a village in Northern Pakistan because her son had got a married woman living next door pregnant.
Seeing as I suspect rural Pakistan is the sort of place where women tend to raise a family at the younger end of the fertility scale, we’re not likely to be talking about an underage child.
Holding parents accountable – at least to some extent – for how their children turn out doesn’t seem that daft an idea. It would reduce shoplifting and petty thieving for a start. But it bothers me than in an Islamic society, the notion that the young man might be in any way responsible for his actions seems to be absent. That’s not how Switzerland, which is where the story was published, developed into a society that has achieved one of the highest levels of wealth per inhabitant of any country in the world.
Switzerland GNI per inhabitant: $65,430
Pakistan GNI per inhabitant: $1,000
Figures are from 2009, using the World Bank’s nominal Atlas method.
Note: I use GNI rather than GDP as the latter tends to underestimate revenue from investments abroad.
And please someone make me laugh by claiming that Switzerland’s natural resources, colonial slave empire and friendly terrain gave the Swiss a head start.
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2 Comments
Yep Antoine – Switzerland blows the left’s “arguments” out of the water, but no doubt they will throw the “Nazi gold argument” at you (something they always forget to do with Sweden – which really did get substanial economic benefits from its relationship with Nazi Germany).
As for Pakistan – yes stripping women and girls naked and have them walk through the village is a common “punishment” for things that (everyone admits) they have NOT done. “Someone in your family has [suppesdly] done something bad – so……”
It is almost as if the village elders look foe any excuse to stip women and girls naked and humilate them by having them walk through the streets (oh yes – they are often raped as well, if they are not from a powerful family).
But it could not be the case that the village elders are a bunch of perverts – of course not.
By the way – yes there is a lot of sex crime in Britain and the United States (and Switzerland), but it is not officially ordered sex crime.
Yes. It would be interesting to work out how long ago Switzerland and Pakistan had the same economic wealth per inhabitant. A lot earlier than the 1930s I’m sure.