Either every girl in the world is a born saint or they simply have no other choice but to like men
Indian actress Afshan Azad, 22, who appeared in a Harry Potter movie as Padma Patil, was attacked in 2011 and branded a ‘slag’ when Muslim relatives found out about her Hindu boyfriend, the British Daily Mail reported at the time.
British police were called and her father, Abul Azad, 54, and brother, Ashraf, 28, were arrested and charged with making threats to kill her. The actress’s brother was also charged with assault.
The title of the story was “Harry Potter actress was beaten and branded a prostitute by her brother after dating man ‘who was not a Muslim”, a typical title by the typical newspaper, viewed by some as the usual news garbage against Islam not worthy of comments since a story of a Hindu girl falling in love with a Muslim boy and threatened by her parents would not have attracted the same prime exposure or maybe not at all. A much better story by the newspaper is of a man whose penis was cut off ‘in revenge for sleeping with gipsy’s girlfriend.
It was opined by a British Arabist in a recent private conversation that a campaign of incitement in part of the British press continues against Islam for a number of reasons the most obvious of which appears to be the urgency for more buyers of the newspapers, most of which are losing both money and readership faster than they can cope with.
The British police are efficient and the legal system is very capable of dealing with such threats, which, in this case, appears to be confined and not a major threat to British society. In similar incidents involving Christians, most Muslims would not drag Christianity into the front pages of their newspapers.
Another incident involved Indian actress and TV presenter Gauhar Khan said to have been slapped for wearing ‘skimpy dress’ by a member of the audience during the filming of the grand finale of singing competition Raw Star in a Mumbai studio.
The attacker, Mohammad Akil Malik, took offence to her cutaway dress and ran up to the stage to hit her across the face and threaten her. The assailant was pinned down by security staff and handed over to local police.
If I were still an editor, the story would definitely be a front page story only because Ms Khan is a known celebrity, but is it a story about Islam?
Ms Khan is a pretty girl and the motive of the attacker could be his feelings for her. If that’s the case it is jealousy. If it is not, it is a story about an actress attacked by a member of the audience surged to the front pages of some newspapers because she’s an actress.
But consider this:
• Over 22 million women in the United States have been raped in their lifetime. (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010);
• Of the 18.3% of women who have survived rape or attempted rape, 12.3% were younger than age 12 when they were first raped, and 29.9% were between the ages of 11 and 17. (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010);
• Every 90 seconds, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. (Calculation based on 2012 National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice);
• Nearly 1 in 5 Women in 2010 U.S. Survey claim they have been sexually assaulted.
http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women-in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html?_r=0
Statistics compiled by the UN Women indicate attacks on women worldwide are even grimmer:
• Between 15 and 76 percent of women are targeted for physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, according to the available country data. Most of this violence takes place within intimate relationships, with many women (ranging from 9 to 70 percent) reporting their husbands or partners as the perpetrator. Across the 28 States of the European Union, a little over one in five women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a partner (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014).
• In Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day.
• In India, 8,093 cases of dowry-related death were reported in 2007; an unknown number of murders of women and young girls were falsely labelled ‘suicides’ or ‘accidents’.
• In Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States, between 40 and 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their intimate partners.
• In the State of Chihuahua, Mexico, 66 percent of murders of women were committed by husbands, boyfriends or other family members.
• Worldwide, up to 50 percent of sexual assaults are committed against girls under 16.
• An estimated 150 million girls under the age of 18 suffered some form of sexual violence in 2002 alone.
• The first sexual experience of some 30 percent of women was forced. The percentage is even higher among those who were under 15 at the time of their sexual initiation, with up to 45 percent reporting that the experience was forced.
It does look the attention by newspapers and TV on the two attacks cited above may have helped conceal the far greater threats targeting tens of millions of women everywhere.
Most people believe in one type of religion or another. The statistics produced here are global involving people of most races and religions. To identify an assailant by his religion looks pathetic and negative. A positive reporting would put such single attacks in perspective and branch out to deal with universal attacks on women, the mothers of current and future generations.
It would be reasonable to assume attacks on women are as ancient as the relatively short history of the human race, but how widespread was it?
If an estimated 150 million girls under the age of 18 suffered some form of sexual violence in 2002 alone what is the total number of girls sexually assaulted or raped?
Could it be that all, or most, of us are children of raped mums from the Stone Age?
If the story told by Plutarch about the rape of the Sabine women is true, most children of the Roman Empire were the illegitimate children of raped women and most of the fathers of he nation were rapists.
Primary Applied Etymology may help in identifying specific words that express sexual attacks and try to identify their roots in an attempt to suggest how old are such attacks. The more roots that can be identified the older and more widespread the attacks.
In Akkadian:
►ḫamāṣu: [Moral life → Fault] G: to take off, to strip by force, to rob; Š: to despoil, to rape, to ravish, to assault sexually.
The root of this word appears to be MṢ. The original meaning is “to suck” or “take away”. From this root is MṢʻ “to hit, to strike, to throw away”. There is some type of conformity between the meanings of the root and the meanings of its extensions. This may mean attacks on women were known in the Stone Age, the age of the linguistic roots.
►ḫasā ‘ u: to mistreat, to molest, to insult, to assault, to bully, to browbeat.
The root of this extension is *ḪS with a number of meanings including “to contract, to belittle, to insult”, so it is a general root that may include attacks on women as well as attacks on men by other men.
►mazā ‘ u: [Moral life → Fault] G: to squeeze, to press, to compress, to press out, to wring, to wrest (?); D: to rape, to ravish, to assault sexually.
The root of this extension is *MZ with the general meaning of “tear off, unravel, release”. The closest extension to it is the one extant in Arabic *MZq (mazaq): “tearing; to make an opening, incision; separate; remove from something larger; divide or separate into two; to slit open; split”.
So it looks this is a general act involving tearing something, like paper, but also tearing off clothes before rape. The verb does not specify tearing all clothes as known in later millennia, but any clothes worn by girls or women including the primeval G-String.
►šaḫāṭu (2) : 1) to jump (on), to attack, to assault; 2) to escape, to run away, headdress: to fall off ; 3) sexually: to mount, to cover, to have sex / fuck ; 4) part of the body: heart … : to pulse, to throb, to twitch, to jerk ; 5) heavenly bodies: to rise, to be on the rise; 6) copying, writing: to skip, to omit; 7): to jump about, to jump in succession, to hop, to bounce, to continually attack, fire, lightning; to spring up continually; Š: to jump over a river; N : to be attacked / under assault;
►šiḫṭu (1): [Army] 1) an incursion, an attack, an assault, a surprise attack, a foray, an inroad, a raid, a razzia, a sudden onslaught; 2) a scurry, scampering (?) / rushing (?) / hurrying (?).
These two words are from the same root *ŠḪ. The word is in Palestinian and Damascene (Damascus) dialects but not in classical Arabic. The meaning is “to move across something, to scream at somebody”. However, the original meaning of the root is the trace left by a slithering snake on sand, and by linguistic extension and expansion “marching, attacking, springing” because this is how an aggressive snake may behave. The two Akkadian words are general and the word extant in vernacular does not express rape.
►nēku: [Legal] raped, ravished, violated;
►niāku: [Science → Natural sciences] to rape, to have sexual intercourse, to fornicate; G: [muruṣ nâki]: venereal disease; (Gtn) to sleep around; Š: to permit intercourse;
►nīku (2): [Moral life] fornication, sexual intercourse, coition / coitus, making love / fucking, adultery, rape;
►nīku: [Legal] a rape.
The four words are from same root *NK “screw” but noted in the last word a single meaning is provided “rape”. This means that modern Akkadian linguists identified texts with the word specifically meaning “rape”.
In extant Arabic there is a single word that means “rape”, Ġṣb, but it combines other meanings including “force, coerce, without consent”.
Conclusion?
Akkadian is the oldest attested language in the world and the roots are many thousands of years earlier. While no root has been identified with the specific meaning of “rape” extensions are clear in stating the rape was not just known but widely known because the act is expressed in several words.
In a phobia list, the ultimate fear of women is claimed to be of spiders affecting women four times than men (48%/12%). Surprisingly, it is listed way ahead of the fear of death. Probably more surprising is that women’s fear of men is listed nowhere.
Either all girls are born saints, forgiving beyond reason, suffer from the shortest memory of all other mammals, or they have no other choice but to like men despite millennia of rape and assaults. Come what may, some girls are telling themselves, they will continue to love men and provide them with all year sex. Others may prefer the come not what may cases to be as few as possible as a condition.
In all cases men owe to women to say sorry for past sins. Criminal as it is, the fact that could be considered is that women have something men can’t offer. They are valuable and not least for their bodies. Conquerors and savages alike knew this and hundreds of millions of women throughout the ages may have been spared the culling of men.
Last modified: December 30, 2022
