Kidney Sale Underscores State of Muslim Women

There has been a lot of attention about how women in the Muslim world are treated. The main icon of this state is the skin covering Burka. You can see an entertaining sample of burkas in a video posted over at Malott's Blog here. We have all heard stories of women being stoned for fornication or adultery - though we never hear about what happens to the man. We hear about women being raped, then being punished or "honor killed" for it. There are the horror stories of genital mutilation that robs Muslim women of any sexual pleasure. There are claims this is limited to Africa, but this story states otherwise:

But at the village level, those who commit the practice believe it to be religiously mandated. Religion is not only theology but also practice. And the practice is widespread throughout the Middle East. Many diplomats, international organization workers, and Arabists argue that the problem is localized to North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa,[4] but they are wrong. The problem is pervasive throughout the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, and the Arabian Peninsula, and among many immigrants to the West from these countries. Silence on the issue is less reflective of the absence of the problem than insufficient freedom for feminists and independent civil society to raise the issue.

As we hear all of these stories, we are commonly told that they are lies, or it is limited or that we are misinterpreting things. We are told that the woman is lifted up in honor in Islam. While this may be the case in some instances, I do not see any evidence it is the norm. There is a recent story that shows how pervasive the lowliness of women is in Muslim countries. It involves multiple players at different levels of society. A man conspired with a hospital to arrange for his wife's kidney to be removed without her knowledge or consent. He then sold the kidney in order to buy a tractor. The story in the UK Telegraph states:

A farmer persuaded doctors to remove one of his wife's kidneys so that he could sell it for money to buy a tractor, she has told police.

Safia Thaheem Bibi discovered the organ was missing only when she sought treatment for an unrelated complaint.

She told Pakistani police that she confronted her husband who confessed he had used the 70,000 rupees (about £600) he got for the kidney to buy a second-hand tractor for his rice fields.

She goes to a local council of elders so her husband can be punished:

She told her parents, who called a local jirga, or council of elders. He confessed to them, she said. "The jirga asked him to apologise to me and did not order any punishment to him. We did not agree to the decision and went to the police to lodge a criminal case against my husband."

The husband is given no punishment and is told to say he is "sorry". That is supposed to balance justice. If this were in the U.S. they might have told him to check himself into rehab. So we have the husband, the conspiring doctors and now a group of elders who view women so lowly that they all think this act is fine or no big deal. This lowly view of women obviously permeates the society and the stories keep coming in.

If this husband wanted to raise the money, he could have sold one of his own kidneys to get the tractor. In the U.S. we might see this as extreme. In other countries that do not share the great opportunities to financial success, it is understandable that one might want to go to extreme measures to get ahead. To say he treated his wife like a second class citizen would be too kind. in his eyes she was like an animal in the barn to be used. She was lower than a slave. The society around him supported and agreed with that view of women.

As with suicide bombers and insurgents who indiscriminately murder innocents, the Muslim world responds with the sound of chirping crickets. They stay silent when they can. If they must speak to it they deny, minimize and justify. My question is "what does it take for the world body to get angry with the Muslim world?" When such acts occur with no world response while the world so easily conjurs up anger at the United States it becomes clear that such selective anger is an agenda and a tool.