Muslim women are passed – often while they are still children – by their fathers to their husbands, whose religion teaches them: “Your wives are a tilth unto you; so go to your tilth when or how you will.”(Koran 2.223)

The wives are exploited in every way imaginable. Their lives could not be more wretched. And on top of it all – the bride’s family has to pay her exploiters and tormentors to subject her to unending misery.  

The husbands not only  get slaves, they also get money to enslave them. If they don’t think they’re paid enough, they burn the wife.

This report,  which tells a common story, comes from yesterday’s issue of the Pakistani paper the Tribune:

Seventeen-year-old Fauzia, a resident of 72 NP, was taken to Shaikh Zayed Hospital where doctors described her condition as critical. They said she had suffered severe burns on more than 60 per cent of her body and that she was unlikely to survive.

Police …  had registered a case against Zeeshan Ahmed, Fauzia’s husband, and his brother Imran Ahmed.

Fauzia’s parents said she had been complaining about her in-laws’ behaviour ever since she got married to Zeeshan a year ago. They said her in-laws were not satisfied with the dowry and insisted that she ask her parents for more. They said her in-laws also beat her up a couple of times.

On Tuesday, they said, a neighbour called them and informed them that Fauzia had been burnt…. He had heard a woman crying for help and rushed to the house next door along with his other family members.

He said they found Fauzia rolling on the floor trying to put out the flames. “We poured several buckets of water and later took her to the hospital,” he said. He said there was no one else in the house and suggested that her in-laws had fled.

Fauzia’s brother Sajid Ali said he and his father were both daily-wage workers and that they could not afford to purchase more items for her dowry. He said both he and his father made between Rs400 and Rs500 a day which was just enough to provide two meals to their family.

Our special source, who speaks on condition of anonymity in order to avoid being tortured to death, tells us that the voice of Allah Muhammad replied to that outburst, sneering down from Paradise: “Excuses, excuses! You should have made do with one meal a day and paid the men more to use your daughter and sister how they will. Now reimburse them the cost of the fuel and matches, or else!”