What Kind of Justice is This?

This is a blatant example of the use of religious authority to permit the commission of immoral acts. On Thursday April 21, 2011, Pakistan's Supreme Court acquitted and freed five men accused of gang-raping a village woman in 2002 on the orders of a tribal council. The case received worldwide attention, and the victim Mukhtar Mai has become an international icon of women's rights. Women's groups and human rights monitors in Pakistan called the high court verdict a travesty of justice and said it showed that the country's judicial system is patriarchal and prejudiced against women. How can a tribal council order the rape of a woman? In June 2002 a village council ordered Mai, then 33, to be gang raped in retaliation for an alleged romantic relationship between her 13-year old brother and a woman from another tribe. After the rape, she was paraded naked around the village by the Islamic hard-liners who viewed her punishment as compensation for the perceived sins of one of her relatives. Does the punishment fit the crime? Absolutely not! There was no crime. There was heavy, heavy lust. There was a desire to have sex with an attractive young woman. The Islamic tribal leaders found a way to do it. This is evil. It is an outrage. What kind of justice is this? It is not justice. It is crime.