The Burn Convention

Life in backwater communities – sometimes in even perceived sophisticated urban centers – in the Middle East and Central and South Asia can be brutal, mired in tribalism and unforgiving codes of conduct. Westerners shudder at governmentally-imposed executions by stoning for adulterous couples, at police officials who “look the other way” when a brother or a father implements an “honor” killing when a sister or daughter has in some way shamed the family and defied the father’s edicts.

Indeed, as often as we hear women defend their clearly second-class role in Islamic society, we wince at the thought of lives without choice, cloistered within walls and veils, unable to drive or appear in public without a sanctioned male’s escort, denied legal rights to property, forced marriages, denied educational opportunities and subject to accepted levels of physical abuse at the hands of male members of their family. This is not the way for all Muslim women, but those who are indeed subject to such restrictions are legion.

For Muslims who see piety and charity as solid pillars of Islamic teaching, their practice of kindness can be profound and overwhelming, quite the opposite of Western expectations; I was indeed the beneficiary of such kindness and warm hospitality in my youth, as the son of a U.S. diplomat stationed in the Middle East. My entire family, mother included, were treated consistently wonderfully by our Muslim friends and acquaintances. But for less enlightened segments of Muslim society, life for women was and continues to be painfully difficult. Sometimes, the psychological toll is simply too much to bear.

The November 8^th New York Times did a story about the growing practice of depressed Afghan women choosing to take their own lives by one of the most painful endings possible: self-emollition. Kerosene or cooking oil, the story is the same. And if statistics are any indicator, life in Afghanistan is hardly improving for women in this war-torn nation: “The hospital [in Herat is] the only medical center in Afghanistan that specifically treats victims of burning, a common form of suicide in this region, partly because the tools to do it are so readily available. Through early October, 75 women arrived with burns — most self-inflicted, others only made to look that way. That is up nearly 30 percent from last year.” It is sad and desperate, an anomaly in the modern world.

There literally is no way out for these women: “The choices for Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted: Their family is their fate. There is little chance for education, little choice about whom a woman marries, no choice at all about her role in her own house. Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. Outside that world, she is an outcast.

“‘If you run away from home, you may be raped or put in jail and then sent home and then what will happen to you?’ asked Rachel Reid, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who tracks violence against women… Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man. Women and girls are still stoned to death. Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.” The Times.

By no means is self-emollition a uniquely Muslim experience; the practice of Hindu widows throwing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands (often many, many years older) as a sign of piety and fealty… even has a name: Sati (pictured above). Widows didn’t fare particularly well in traditional Indian society, but the practice is increasingly rare. In Afghanistan, the story is compounded by the fact that daughters are often commoditized – traded for debt or exchanged for a bright dowry. With 45% of Afghan women married before 18, most of these young brides face a lifetime of servitude in the abusive homes of their husbands. Many of these women show no outward signs of torment from within; then, one day, they light the fire.

Why fire? The Times tries to answer that question: “Poverty is one reason, said [Dr. Arif Jalali, the hospital’s senior surgeon]. Many women mistakenly think death will be instant. Halima, 20, a patient in the hospital in August, said she considered jumping from a roof but worried she would only break her leg. If she set herself on fire, she said, ‘It would all be over.’ … Self-immolation is more common in Herat and western Afghanistan than other parts of the country. The area’s closeness to Iran may partly explain why; Iran shares in the culture of suicide by burning.” Whatever may happen in the Afghan war, we can never forget the lives of pain foisted on so many people on this planet, and we must never stop trying to help them.

And if we think that kind of abuse of women and girls doesn’t take place here in the U.S., try this little story from AOLNews.com (November 8^th) on for size: “Twenty-nine people have been indicted in a sex trafficking ring in which Somali gangs in Minneapolis and St. Paul allegedly forced girls under age 14 into prostitution in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio, according to an indictment unsealed [November 8^th]… The indictment says the sex trafficking ring operated for 10 years, with the defendants recruiting young girls to engage in sex acts.” And they call that America’s heartland.

I’m Peter Dekom, and “human rights” are not abstract philosophical words; they reflect real pain, experienced in the extreme by hundreds and hundreds of millions of people every day.