I'm a man of faith, a retired pastor, and I have no intention of changing my beliefs. I can generally get along with almost anyone of any faith (or none), given mutual respect and tolerance. However, when I read a story like this one from Pakistan, it breaks my heart. Bold print is my emphasis.
While girls were buried in pre-Islamic period as unwanted creature, cruel souls in Karachi are a step ahead: they kill and throw them at garbage. This nameless girl is not the only victim of barbarity. From January 2017 to April 2018, Edhi foundation and Chhipa Welfare organisation have found 345 such new born babies dumped in garbage in Karachi only and 99 percent of them were girls.
"We have been dealing with such cases for years and there are a few such incidents which shook our souls as much. It left us wondering whether our society is heading back to primitive age,” Anwar Kazmi, a senior manager in Edhi Foundation Karachi, told The News.
. . .
In many major cities of Pakistan, Edhi foundation installed ‘Jhoolas’ (baby cradles) so that the people should leave unwanted children there instead of killing them. The number of such sites is in hundreds across the country but this initiative received little success. One of the reasons for the lack of response to such ‘Jhoolas’ is wrath of religious leadership which believe this will promote illegitimacy.
. . .
“We have seen so many horrible incidents. One such incident which still I remember despite passage of more than a decade is the stoning of a new born baby who was found outside mosque”, says Mr. Kazmi.
“A few people found a baby at the door step of a mosque in Karachi and they handed the baby over to the prayer leader. The cleric decried that this is an illegitimate baby therefore he should be stoned. Resultantly the baby was stoned to death. I tried to register a case against the cleric but nothing happened”, narrated Kazmi.
There's more at the link, and in this report.
I would ask how any human being could be so warped and twisted as to blame an innocent child, who did not ask to be conceived or born, for the sins of his or her parents . . . but then I remember the label "illegitimate" that Christian nations used to attach to infants born out of wedlock. It's completely wrong, of course. According to the Christian moral code, those children are not "illegitimate" at all; the sin is their parents', not the child's. However, that didn't stop such children growing up with a real stigma attached to them until very recently. It might affect their prospects for marriage, work, and in many other areas.
There are those who claim that religion is at the root of most of the world's evils. When one reads reports like this, it's very hard to defend one's faith against such claims. Of course, they're not true: evil human beings have committed those crimes and sins, not God, and to blame God for the actions of sinners is nothing more or less than a cop-out. (Unbelievers will retort that God doesn't exist, so why not blame those who act - or claim to act - in his name?) I won't go down that rat-hole here . . . but I will mourn today for that little girl, stoned to death at the command of an alleged religious leader who deserves nothing more than to suffer the same punishment. I wouldn't like to be in his shoes when he comes to face his own Judgment.
Peter
9 comments:
By your logic, there are no illegal aliens, either.
Conventional terminology may not be surgically precise, but it serves the purpose.
I noticed that "access to abortion" seems to be one the inferences made of a solution to help solve the problem in The News International article. The irony of that is crazy. One just occurs inside the womb while the other occurs shortly after the 'fetus' has exited the womb.
No mention of the religion - Islam.
And how do Hindu’s act? Since Pakistan was part of British India and share some culture. There is some sex selective abortions in India, so an issue of too many males to females. China has same issue.
Bastardy isn't the child's fault, but given the social consequences of children being raised without fathers, the stigma is understandable. Such children are far more likely than not to grow up to create problems for their communities.
That said, killing them is a ridiculous response, especially in a society which can afford to find them stable environments if the mothers can't or won't raise them properly. Plenty of Americans would happily adopt these children. The stigma should more properly rest on the mothers IMO (difficult to lay it on the fathers as there's no obvious way to identify such, though a general societal disapproval of such things would help).
Perhaps bad of me to wish that cleric to burn in hell, and the sooner the better.
But is he any worse really than the petty bureaucrats and government doctors who demand that parents watch while their child dies under their benevolent control rather than allow the parents to take the child away to seek alternative treatment?
We can only I suppose take a bit of comfort in our belief in a just God, and the knowledge that the Lord has very clear feelings for those who would harm innocent children.
I spent a month in Karachi a long time ago. The people were friendly, outgoing and in the main, quite hospitable. Nonetheless, I didn't roam the back alleyways after dark. I wouldn't be at all surprised if parents of a pregnant daughter put her in purda until the baby was born and then dropped it in the trash. I wonder what happens to the daughters who carried those infants to term. However, I have watched several series on tv about how the Irish nuns and society 100 years or even 50 years ago treated illegitamte children and what became of many of both the mothers and the children. And then I read about the continuous non-stop grooming horrors going on in England every single day and nobody can do anything about and should a father try to stop it the police are sure to lock him up in jail and continue to look the other way.
Modern westerners have no idea how callous the rest of the world is to unwanted children. On the other hand they sanction abortion as if was consequence free. I was hoping for a better 21st century.
The next time some Multiculturalist insists that "all cultures are equal" show them this.
Pwl47, we've recently had a couple of cases of this in the UK but we continue to be told we must treat all 'cultural values' as equal. The older I get, the more I believe the lunatics have taken over the running of the asylum.
Religion is not the root of all evil, but Islam is inherently evil.
"It left us wondering whether our society is heading back to primitive age." Pakistan has never left the primitive age. They're barbarians with nuclear weapons.
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