Farrukh K. Pitafi

BURIED ALIVE, AGAIN I wrote Buried Alive for The Nation days before Rabia Ahsan died. I wrote it about this ailment in our society , the ailment that teaches a woman to stay silent in a troubled marriage, to smile through bruises, to call endurance to injustice , sabar l Today, we are mourning Rabia again. A Rabia Ahsan was not a statistic. She was, in her colleagues’ words, a complete woman through and through. An anchor at 92 News. An entrepreneur who ran her own salon in Islamabad. Intelligent, business-savvy, street-savvy. A daughter looking after her mother. A mother of two little girls, aged 11 and 13. A wife. A professional who showed up, day after day, and ran the show. Self-made. Persistent. Beautiful inside out. On Sunday, 8 November, in her own bedroom in Gulshanabad, Rawalpindi, she died in a pool of blood, in her own home, in front of the people who loved her. Her husband, Ahsan Tahir Khan, a Grade-18 officer at the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, is in police custody. A murder case under Section 302 PPC has been registered on the complaint of her brother Khurram. Police say the husband initially claimed the firing was accidental that an unlicensed .30-bore pistol found among clothes went off while he was handling it. Police say the investigation is ongoing. I am writing this guarded, because the law must take its course. But I am also writing this furious, because we have seen this before. Many who knew her at work suggest she had been battling a toxic marriage and had often shown up at work with bruises. Her immediate family, in initial statements to police, told investigators there was no dispute. Both versions are now in the public domain, and that contradiction itself is the story of Pakistan: what a woman tells the world, what her family tells the police, and what her body tells the post-mortem are often three different truths. Hina Javed is still echoing How can I write about Rabia without writing about Hina Javed? Hina, 45, a digital designer and media executive, was found tortured and murdered in the bathroom of her apartment in Lal Kurti, Rawalpindi, on 20 August. Her hands allegedly tied, a cloth stuffed in her mouth, a wire around her neck. Her brother Fahad’s voice still echoes in my ears: “I wish her husband had thrown her out of the house, kicked her in the stomach and left her. Why did he kill her?” That is what a brother is reduced to wishing for in this country that his sister had only been beaten and thrown out, not murdered. That is the bar we have set for mercy. In Hina’s case, the family named the husband, father-in-law and domestic worker in the FIR. A high-level investigation later said forensic evidence implicated the domestic worker, Zeeshan Arshad, and found no incriminating evidence against the husband. The family rejected those findings, demanded the complete DNA reports, pointed to the husband’s DNA found at multiple locations, and demanded a judicial commission. A parliamentary committee has now recommended a fresh inquiry. The trial has not even begun. I am not the judge in Hina’s case, nor in Rabia’s. I am the witness to a pattern: a professional woman dies at home, a family begs not to be dismissed, an investigation becomes a second trial. Should we do this to our daughters? What is a wife in Islam? What is a working woman? In Islam, a wife is not a possession. She is libas a garment for her husband, and he is a garment for her. A partner. A trust. A human being whose life is sacred: “Whoever kills a soul... it is as if he had slain mankind entirely.” [5:32] The Prophet SW said the best of you are the best to their wives. And what is the pedestal of a woman who works and supports her family? Khadija (RA) was a businesswoman. She employed the Prophet ﷺ. She was his first supporter, his first believer, his first refuge. Islam did not begin with a woman locked inside. It began with a woman who traded, who earned, who chose. So who are we to judge? If a doctor fails an exam, we say it is a failure. If a woman leaves her house because her husband is not supporting her, we say she must be doing it for “open-minded career orientation” our polite code for promiscuity. In reality, it is necessity. No, not every woman has a city of family supporting her financially if her husband is not doing his job. And in many cases, even if support is available, they are too proud to take it and rightly so. If they want to work and earn for their children, who the hell are we to judge them for that choice? Why is divorce not a sane exit? Why must women suffer in silence? Divorce is disliked in Islam, yes. It is not haram. It is not shameful. It is a door Allah left open so a woman does not have to be buried alive inside a marriage. A divorced daughter is better than a dead daughter. Say it in your drawing rooms. Say it in your classes and sermons. Say it to your sons. Times have changed. We will have to call a spade a spade. The numbers are not poetry. They are corpses. We live in a pathetic by-product system, neither the rights of Western society nor the rights of Islamic women. We have taken the restrictions of both and the protections of neither, wrapped it in misplaced moral ground, and called it culture. Look at the numbers, and then tell me I am exaggerating: • Between 2021 and 2024, over 7,500 women were murdered in Pakistan, including 1,553 in the name of ‘honour’, according to data presented by the Minister for Human Rights in the National Assembly from National Police Bureau records. In the same period, 173,367 cases of violence against women were reported, and 17,771 cases of rape and gang-rape. • In the first six months of this year alone, Sahil’s Cruel Numbers report recorded 3,172 cases of violence against women and girls: 644 murders, 514 cases of torture, 462 abductions, 280 rapes and 132 ‘honour’ killings. • The Peace and Justice Network’s National Gender-Based Violence Report 2021–2025 counts 237,216 crimes against women and girls reported to police over five years. • In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, of 2,334 domestic violence cases reported, 1,197 ended in murder. By the time the complaint reached the police, the woman was already dead. • The conviction rate for honour killings still hovers around 0.5 per cent. For rape in 2025, briefings put it at 4% in Punjab, 6% in KP, 12% in Balochistan and 22% in Sindh. And 60% of gender crimes, Sahil notes, happen inside the victim’s home the place supposed to be safest. Globally, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women estimate around 50,000 women and girls are killed in the private sphere every year an average of 137 a day by someone in their own family. These are not “family matters.” This is femicide. Pakistan still does not even recognise femicide as a distinct legal category. Noor Mukadam. Qandeel Baloch. Sarah Inam, the 37-year-old economist murdered by her husband in Islamabad. Sana Yousaf, 17, killed after refusing a marriage proposal. Samia Sarwar, murdered by her own family in 1999 for seeking a divorce. Now Hina. Now Rabia. How many more names before we stop calling this a tragedy and start calling it what it is, a system? We shun every woman who speaks It is this despicable tendency that we shun every woman who, God forbid, speaks out. Women raising voices for the whole world can’t do it for themselves because when they do, we eat them alive. I remember covering the motorway rape case. A survivor, terrified, begged me to hide her identity. I did. And a so-called adviser to the prime minister called and bad-mouthed that woman so heartlessly, so maliciously, that I still hear it. That is Pakistan. The abuser becomes the preacher. The survivor becomes the shame. The Surah named after a woman who argued In the Quran there is a Surah called Al-Mujadila — The Woman Who Disputed. Khawla bint Tha’laba came to the Prophet ﷺ because her husband, Aws ibn al-Samit, had pronounced zihar upon her — “You are to me like the back of my mother” a pre-Islamic formula that left her neither married nor divorced, neither free nor held. Suspended. She did not stay silent. She argued. She debated. She pleaded. She complained to Allah. And Allah heard her. The Surah opens: “Indeed, Allah has heard the words of the woman who was arguing with you concerning her husband, and laying her complaint to Allah.” [58:1] She was not told to be patient and go home. He did not tell her she was damaging the family’s honour. If Allah named an entire Surah after a woman who debated her husband’s injustice, who are we to tell our daughters to stop debating? We need to stop fearing and start debating. All the rights given by Allah are our divine rights. And none stops us from debating. None but the ones who are scared of our voice. Start speaking up So let me say it punchy, dramatic, and plain: If your daughter is being beaten, take her back. If your sister is being threatened, believe her. If your colleague shows up with bruises, do not look away and call it a “personal matter.” If your son raises his hand, do not call it mardangi. Call it what it is: a crime. A marriage that requires a woman’s silence to survive is not a marriage. It is a grave with a roof. Rabia did everything right. She worked. She earned. She mothered. She cared. She built. And still, she is gone. Hina did everything right. She worked. She earned. She built a life. And still, she is gone. So do not ask, after the next funeral, “But what happened?” Ask, before the next funeral, “Why did we tell her to stay silent?” A divorced daughter is better than a dead daughter. A speaking woman is better than a silenced one. A society that crushes its women will never rise no matter how many mosques it builds, how many dramas it airs, how many speeches it gives about honour. Honour is not in burying women alive. Honour is in letting them live.