It’s sad that in 2014, a young woman could be hanged for abandoning her Islamic faith, never mind that she has been Christian all her life. But even if she had indeed abandoned the faith, a death sentence is uncalled for. It’s not like she murdered someone or committed a heinous crime. Meriam Ibrahim’s story is one of those that make me want to scream at the top of my lungs because that’s just about all I can do. Why would anyone send a pregnant woman to jail and refuse to even let her out to have her baby? What if something had gone wrong and she say, needed an emergency C-section? Would she have been operated on right there in her cell? Raising children is hard enough and God knows how much harder it must be for this poor woman to take care of her child behind bars. They probably don’t have proper baths or meals. No toys or other children to play with. Basically, it’s not the kind of life anyone would want for their child. Meriam’s fate hasn’t been the only one that has shocked us in recent days. There are those two Indian cousins who were gang-raped and then murdered. They were only 14 and 15. And in Pakistan, another young woman, Farzana Parveen, was stoned to death by members of her own family for rejecting an arranged marriage and marrying someone she loved. Hundreds of women are killed each year in what’s dubbed honour killings in many conservative communities and, like I mentioned earlier, there’s little we can do to stop them because the perpetrators believe they are doing the right thing. Reading about these victims makes me appreciate our open society even more. Many of us have dated several people, which is not to say we are promiscuous. We’re just trying different options to see what’s best for us and that shouldn’t be regarded a crime. Everybody needs to have the freedom to choose what they want, the same way we go to a supermarket and pick out what we want in whatever colour, size or quantity. I have Christian friends who married non Christians and Muslims who are happily married to non Muslims. Admittedly, not all parents jumped for joy on learning that their children were settling with people of different faith but eventually, they came to realise that their children’s happiness was all that mattered. I wish all parents were as understanding. I said earlier that there isn’t much we can do about the plight of women in countries like Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan but on second thought, I think there is. The UN and other humanitarian bodies can arrange for girls and women who are likely to be subjected to these honour killings to be resettled elsewhere. I think it would give the orchestrators of violence against women an opportunity to reflect on their conduct. Radical actions call for radical solutions and at the moment, we don’t have a better way to ensure that these women stay alive.
