Posted on 03/08/2020 2:45:14 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Demonstrators belonging to Islamist groups attacked an International Women's Day rally in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, hurling rocks, chunks of mud and even their shoes. The demonstrators, who were at a rival rally held by hardline Islamist organizations, were particularly enraged by one slogan the women's day rally adopted: "mera jism, mera marzi" – "my body, my choice."
Riot police set up large cloth barricades to dive the rival rallies, which flanked either side of a main road. But the police were also there to protect the women's day protesters, after the hardline men and women threatened violence.
As the protest was winding down, dozens of men tried to push through the barricade, including a man who held a little girl aloft on his shoulders. According to a video uploaded to Twitter by a BBC reporter, police used batons to push them back. Still, for the next few minutes, they hurled projectiles that scattered the women's day protesters, as journalists huddled behind concrete road dividers.
The hardline groups, their surrogates and conservative talking heads, took to the airwaves preceding the rally to condemn Pakistani feminists, accusing them of encouraging anti-Islamic vulgarity by raising a slogan that hinted that a woman had the right to do as she pleased.
The tensions even boiled over on a live talk show, where a screen writer swore at a prominent Pakistani liberal after she interrupted him by chanting the slogan. "Nobody would even spit on your body," he shouted in a clip widely shared on social media.
A protester at an International Women's Day rally in the pakistani capital islamabad holds aloft a sign that reads "my body, my choice." Hardline Islamists held a counter rally across the road, largely angered by that slogan, which they said was un-Islamic and vulgar. they accused the women's day marchers of spreading a liberal, western agenda.
Conservative lawyers petitioned the courts in Pakistan's three cities to try ban the women's marches. One prominent Islamist opposition leader, known as Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, threatened protesters on Feb. 29, warning them not to chant "my body, my choice." "God willing, we will also come out into the streets, and we will destroy you," he warned. And a senior teacher at Jamiat Hafsa, a hardline women's seminary in the Pakistani capital, told NPR her students would halt the march by organizing a rival "modesty march."
"This is a march to stop that march," said the woman, who uses the name Bint Azwa (the women at the seminary often use first names or fake names to avoid being identified by security institutions that monitor their activities). "We are not going to let those women march the streets of our country, our neighborhood, with those vulgar chants."
The violence underscored how hardline Islamist groups played upon conservative outrage over the slogan "my body, my choice," to assert their presence in the Pakistani capital – and demonstrate their muscle.
The opposition leader Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman has struggled to find a toehold in Pakistan's freewheeling politics since his party was forced into opposition. The hardline Jamiat Hafsa was violently shut down in 2007, after a standoff that killed more than 100 people. The women returned to the seminary only this February, and have dared security forces to remove them again.
On Sunday, dozens of the seminary women turned up at the counter-rally, clad in long black robes, headscarves and face veils, segregated from dozens of men who stood in a nearby park. They stood in military-style rows, their fearsome appearance only jarred by blue, green and pink bows pinned to their shoulders, to identify which bus they should return on, explained one 25-year-old, who only gave her first name, Rubina.
"We don't want women to make choices for their bodies. The choice rests with God," she said. Nodding toward the women's day march, she described the women there as "naked." "These people don't even wear dupatas," she exclaimed, referring to the shawl that Pakistani women traditionally drape across their chests to signify modesty.
Women from a hardline religious seminary in the Pakistani capital Islamabad form military style rows in a counter protest against an International Women's Day march - held across the road.
On the other side, at the women's march, hundreds of men, women and transgender Pakistanis clustered. Some waved the red flag of a leftist party. Others held up signs, including "my body, my choice," but they denounced so-called "honor" killings, where men murder their female relatives for bringing alleged shame onto the family. Some demanded to know the fate of female political activists who mysteriously disappeared.
"Pakistan is getting more and more divided over time," said Ambreen Gilani, a 41-year-old development consultant, gesturing to the Islamists across the road. The opposition to the women's march helped motivate another protester to turn up, Sukaina Kazmi, a chemical engineer. She gestured to her Muslim headscarf, "Our religion does not teach us any of the things they are standing up against, our religion actually does fight for women's rights," she said.
As the protesters regrouped and walked away from the dozens of men trying to assault them, one organizer, Anam Rathor, said the violence underscored why they were demonstrating. "This proves our point, and this movement is growing. And now we will have more people. The reason why they are throwing stones is because they are afraid of us and that makes us happy."
I’ve been told all cultures are equal.
But some cultures are more equal than others.
“...mera jism...”
???
Gotta choose between (1) abortion and anything-goes sexuality and (2) Islam? If that’s our choice, the Muslims are starting to look better by the year.
It’s a Communist holiday. I wouldn’t let them define ‘capitalism’ either.
I heard that International Women’s Day events were disrupted in Kyrgyzstan as well. Have feminists gotten upset about this yet? I haven’t heard anything from them, have you?
Before we ridicule the feminists for their refusal to speak out against the abuses of women in Islamic countries, let's not forget that they are walking all over the men in this country with their "war on men" and "war on boys". In that battle, with very few exceptions it's American men that are the no shows.
Islam isn’t good for Pakistan; but Western abortion, transgendered kids, anything-goes sexuality, and de-population are even worse.
Notice there’s no day associated with men? Like Prostate Awareness Month? Sexist? My grandad has problems as well as my dad. More guys die from prostate cancer than women do of breast cancer. Prostate Awareness Month is September along with child cancer awareness. Any mention about these in the media?
Must we choose between these two extremes? Judeo-Christian morality worked out pretty well for this country for centuries. No matter how you slice it, Islam is still a death cult.
So what are men waiting for? Men should take those billions they have to spend on prostitution every year, and use it to fight for some of these issues.
Is there an ‘International Men’s Day”, or is it just assumed that the other 364 days are ?
Bloody savages!!
Would like an A-10 Warthog to work those all-male Muslim mobs over REEEAL good!
They keep on using the word ‘conservative’ . It does not mean what they think it means.
We used to call them “Wacky Pakis.”
feminazism was never about equality or sharing the power.
It’s been about supremacy since Kate Millett’s founding of NOW.
thy’ll insist that the Soviet Communists were conservative because they banned porn and rock an roll.
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