This is a story about a young woman who awakes to find herself in prison having just been sentenced to 2 years. Lying beside her is her infant child. Her mind is a whirl of thoughts mixed with fear and sadness as she tries to regain her full sense of being after a night of fitful sleep on a hard, cold cement floor covered only with a blanket and her clothing as she and her child exchanged body heat during the cool night desert air.

Her name is Gulnaz. She is either 20 or 21 years old. She really doesn’t know for sure. She is from the peasant class and comes from a culture where education is unimportant and even restricted or prohibited for young girls and women. She’s a citizen of Afghanistan and has just been sentenced to prison for the crime of “adultery by force”. Specifically, she allowed herself to be raped by her brother-in-law.

A Gulnaz appeal of her punishment results in a new sentence. She must now serve 12 years assigned by the appeals court, or she could marry her rapist. On a third appeal, Gulnaz’s sentence was reduced to 3 years and the marriage requirement was dropped.

In a rare occurrence, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement pardoning Gulnaz for her crime. There are still 300-400 women in prison in Afghanistan at this moment for the same “crime”. There is also no sign that President Karzai intends to pardon them as well. So, what makes Gulnaz’s case the exception rather than the rule?

Her case attracted the attention of the international community after she took part in a documentary commissioned by the European Union. The release of this documentary, once the controversy began to stir, was withheld by the EU authority overseeing the documentary. According to those who made the documentary, Gulnaz wants the film to be released and her story told.

American defense attorney, Kimberley Motley, chose to take on the role of acting as counsel for Gulnaz. Ms. Motley’s activism and efforts eventually led to a heightened awareness of Gulnaz’s specific case, which was raised to another level with the revelation that she may have to marry her rapist, who was also the father of her daughter. Gulnaz agreed to the marriage under the terms of the earlier release agreement, but Atty. Motley states the actual release does not require the marriage and that she’s not certain what course Gulnaz will choose.

The rapist is currently serving a 7 year sentence in prison. There are no records of previous marriages having been performed in Afghan prisons, but the option is allegedly available.

Gulnaz’s story has made it out, unlike those from the other women in that same documentary. The EU refuses to authorize the documentary’s release and not a single nation is negotiating for Gulnaz to emigrate from Afghanistan in order to get a fresh, safe start elsewhere for her and her child. This is in spite of the fact that over 6,000 persons have signed petitions to do so and that human rights groups worldwide have shown support for.

The EU welcomed the woman’s release; however, they are declining to release the documentary about how women are persecuted for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan out of fear that the women in it would be harmed as a result of their identity being shown:

“Her case has served to highlight the plight of Afghan women, who 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime often continue to suffer in unimaginable conditions, deprived of even the most basic human rights,” the European Union’s Ambassador and Special Representative to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, said.”

What the decision doesn’t remove is the real possibility of Gulnaz becoming the victim of an honor killing. If she marries the cretin who raped here, he could end up killing her on his release for shaming him. There is also the possibility that her family members [males] could kill her for shaming them; although, her mother advised her to keep the child, while others urged her to give it away, to prove her innocence. So much for human dignity and the right to live. Gulnaz barely has a reason to simply exist. However, the European Union, through its ambassador seems to care little of such a possibility. That’s possibly because the EU has been so focused on being politically correct regarding Islam and Shari’a that it seems to be overlooking a growing malignancy in England and other of their nations.

The Karzai government is clearly corrupt and complicit in the subjugation of women and the pervasive view that they are little more than chattel in their own homeland. The Taliban has been out of power for over 10 years, and yet, very little has changed in this regard. The influence of Shari’a is everywhere and these women are no more than a few examples of its evil influence on humanity and individual rights. Clearly the phrase “unalienable rights” has no influence or manner of expression in Afghanistan or any Islamic state.

At this point it is proper from a moral perspective to remember the old expression that one should not throw stones when one lives in a glass house. How solid are the houses of the non-Islamic world in this regard? Are we truly better at ensuring that the unalienable rights we were all endowed with by the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God are self-evident? Are all persons, regardless of age, gender, color, creed, religion, station, orientation, recognized as having the equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, among others; or do we make exceptions that contradict the rationale used to break from England and King George III? Or does religion in the West have some of the same sinister outcomes and proclivities as others, including Islam [albeit not as extreme as those of Shari'a]? Are we really so free of sin that we are entitled to cast the first stone? Or, while we are casting our stones, should we, perhaps, toss a few at our own homes and start a necessary cleanup once and for all throughout our governmental structure and operation?

For the record, I feel that Islam, particularly the governing principle of Shari’a are vile, anachronistic, primitive and the very definition of evil. But, one has to ask how much worse it is when compared to the other religions of the world examined throughout their historic legacies and evolutions from the pre-biblical to the Old Testament and from the Old Testament to the New Testament. How different are all the Abrahamic religions now from what they once were, especially, when they were infused into governing through a partnership (by any definition) referred to as Christendom, or the shared rule of Church and State/Regnum and Sacerdotium?

Here are a few examples that one can compare and contrast with Christianity – the inherited and favored religious form of Western politicians and influence peddlers who profess to desire small government. You know, the very same people who have no qualms about chaining people into their warped world of mysticism and altered reality. These politicians work in tandem with religious groups, particularly evangelical Protestants, to ensure submission of the flock to the will of God. We’ve never seen God, but somehow we know he is not Allah just as Islamists have never seen Allah but know he’s not Jesus. As in any other fusion of politics and religion, one force of authority demands that you first fear God in order to receive His love; while, the other would have you fear the power of the state, unless you conform your world view to theirs.

“How then can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” (Job 25:4) or, how can a rose (a male) emerge from filth (a woman).

“Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!” (Job 14:4) Because women are impure, men are born with sin.

“These [redeemed] are they which were not defiled with women; . . .” (Revelation 14:4) Kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. . . .” (Ephesians 5:22–23) or Women must submit to men as the church submits to Christ and men must look upon women as would the Christ look upon the church. Talk about arrogant benevolence!

It’s not difficult to find other such passages in the bible, Old Testament or new, as misogyny abound everywhere in both. Here are just a few from the New Testament: Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Corinthians 11:3, 11:9, and 14:34; and 1 Timothy 2:11–12 and 5:5–6. And a few more from the Old Testament: Numbers 5:20–22 and Leviticus 12:2–5 and 15:17–33.

Then, there was Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, who wrote:

“In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die. . . . Woman, you are the gate to hell.”

Christianity’s basic references to misogyny as a fact of life have been translated throughout time into misogyny in practice. Women have been treated as chattel for nearly as long as Europe and America have existed—they had essentially no political rights, highly restricted private property rights, and little recourse in the courts to justice when they became the object of a man’s whim or rage. Even today, hardly a week goes by without reading about how a man walked right through a court order, through the front door of a woman’s home and killed her because “she was his and nobody else’s”. Many men in the 21^st century still view their spouse or girlfriends as property and the courts respond to this vile perspective with great leniency that only perpetuates the belief that when it comes to unalienable rights, men hold a definite advantage over women.

Like Islam, Christianity, at various points, had its rules or instructions on “how to beat your wife” incorporated into English Common Law. See the 2^nd paragraph of the Salvation Army Safe House link, “Rule of Thumb” again. Colonial New England expected husbands to beat their wives, not out of anger, but out of concern and charity for her soul. There is not a man alive who would tolerate someone telling him what he can or cannot do with his own body. Neither would he tolerate someone, other than himself, making a personal decision regarding his body that could affect the quality of the remainder of his life. And yet, here we are in the 21^st century still threatening to force women to back alleys in the hands of charlatans to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Men have a greater right to decide what to do with their empty beer bottles than a woman has in the self-determination of her own body – second only in value to that of a free mind. I don’t know how one goes about saying that women are not still viewed as little more than chattel in America; especially, those without means or personal power. The fact that some women are able to accumulate power and free to exercise it without the blessing of the church or of men speaks to an overall improvement in how women are viewed today in the west. However, for most women, there are signs everywhere that they are still not allowed a life of liberty and free will to the same extent as males.

Government, with the aid of both men and women, aided by misogynic church doctrine and dogma imposes a different standard of legal rights on women under the guise of protecting a nonexistent, potential life that can’t sustain itself outside of the womb, from the wishes of a very real existent who is actually in the process of living, but with a caveat on their right to self-determination; not because of medicine or science, but because of religious belief and moral whimsy.

Religion has and always be used to exclude others from a group, from equal protection under the law, from living a life where the pursuit of happiness is possible within the framework afforded by unalienable rights alone. There has been and it seems, sadly, that there will always be the intrusion of an overlay of mystic laws and expectations on governments that work to keep man from truly free expression, free will and the joy that comes with the free pursuit of happiness. We are all born alone, we all die alone and the precious time in between those seminal events should be lived by our choice alone, so long as we do not impose or restrict the free choice others alone have the right to make.