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got as much projection as Mukhtar
Mai’s,” even though over a thousand women
were abducted, injured or murdered in southern Punjab
in roughly the same time period.
But media attention is exactly
what Mukhtar Mai wants, and for all the right reasons.
She knows that if she had kept quiet about what happened
to her, or even worse, convenienced her rapists by killing
herself, these crimes would be allowed to go on in perpetuity.
Instead, she has decided to take up the fight against
“outdated and unIslamic customs and traditions”
as she stated on International Woman’s Day this
year. Mukhtar Mai is showing here that she is no victim,
but a woman who has been forced to become educated herself
in the ways of the world. She has chosen to fight fire
with fire, as the saying goes, and she is not afraid
of getting burned. If the media, and foreign governments,
and money, will help her get her message across, so
be it. There are few women in Pakistan amongst the many
victims of rape who are willing to let their lives and
personal dignity be an open book to the rest of the
world; fewer still who are displaying the kind of ferocious
courage that Mukhtar possesses.
For this reason, Mukhtar Mai matters.
She matters to every man, woman, and child of Pakistan,
because she is proving herself to be the kind of role
model that we need: someone from the underprivileged,
downtrodden rural areas of Pakistan, a woman who was
trying to live her life peacefully before this senseless
attack transformed it forever and turned her into someone
with a cause, albeit one that is never voluntarily adopted.
Like all worthy role models, she is not afraid to give
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