Veil and four walls: a state of terror in Pakistan¹

1. This is a translation of the Urdu saying ‘chadar aur char diwari’, which means that the proper place for a woman is veiled and within the four walls of her home.

Abstract

The understanding of terrorism should be expanded to encompass the types of violence most often experienced by women, such as rape. Pakistani men, soldiers and civilians have used rape as a strategy of terrorism against Pakistan's women, particularly those who dare to transgress existing social hierarchies or who belong to stigmatized social groups. Moreover, the complex and sometimes contradictory set of criminal, Islamic, and tribal laws on rape and ‘honour killings’ give women little recourse against gender violence and even permit their re-victimization.

Keywords:

• women and terrorism
• gender violence in Pakistan
• honour killings

Acknowledgements

Thanks for comments on, or assistance with, this research are due to: Jeannette Money, Howard and Jo Ann Sharlach, Yvonne Sims, Richard Williams, Colin Davis, Wendy Gunther-Canada, Kamna Lal, Pauline Kamau, and Alexis McLean. Funding came from the University of California, Davis Pro Femina Research Consortium, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, and NSF's ADVANCE grant to the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Notes

1. This is a translation of the Urdu saying ‘chadar aur char diwari’, which means that the proper place for a woman is veiled and within the four walls of her home.

2. The author does not include here the trafficking in girls and women as the intention is to study the state's handling of this problem in a subsequent paper.

3. Davis (1985) questions the assumption found in Brownmiller and other feminist treaties of the era that being a rapist is somehow inherently part of being a man. Moreover, Davis indicates that ‘rape bears a direct relationship to all of the existing power structures in a given society’ (p. 9), including class and race.

4. MacKinnon (1994, p. 8) uses the phrase ‘everyday rape’ to refer to rape that occurs in times other than war.