Standard for Legitimacy

     I was recently reading an article (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-pakistan-shooting-20110130,0,2032633.story) about a man employed by the United States Embassy in Pakistan who was implicated in a shooting on the streets of Lahore.  Embassy officials were demanding the release of the diplomat, who was being held by Pakistani police and charged with murder, on the basis of diplomatic immunity.  Pakistani law enforcement however, contended that the suspect's immunity (or lack thereof) was a matter for the courts to decide.
     The suspect claims that he shot the armed men in self-defense, after they attempted to rob him, while friends and family of the victims claim that he murdered them in cold blood--I am in complete agreement with the Pakistani sentiment that it is the province of a court of law to determine the suspect's guilt or innocence, but our sensibilities diverge in the questions of whose court, and on what basis?
     I submit first that the question of diplomatic immunity is irrelevant, if the diplomat has committed cold-blooded murder, he should be held accountable for it regardless of what status or documentation he might possess.  But before the question of guilt can be addressed, there is a question of judicial legitimacy that must be answered:  should Pakistani laws/legal institutions be recognized by American entities?
 
     I submit that no government is legitimate which codifies into law the enslavement of a people, women specifically in the case of Pakistan.  Is this view ethnocentric? Absolutely, but not on the basis of any illusions of American cultural superiority--our own legal system certainly has its problems and our human rights record is far from unblemished--but in the conviction that every culture is bound to get some things right, and that our own 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) is America's greatest contribution to humanity's cumulative understanding of inalienable rights.

     Convictions being what they are, I have no intention of attempting to research that which is more a matter of conscience and ideology than one of factual information, but the supporting arguments do raise a quantifiable question.  I remember reading in Time Magazine about the horrors inflicted with impunity upon Pakistani women by Pakistani men: fathers, brothers, and sons murdering (on the basis of adultery) their wives, sisters, and mothers who had been sexually assaulted--without due process and in full compliance of the law, which recognizes a woman's testimony as worth half that of a man's.  There is no question for me, that the government which condones such practices is invalid, the question is this:  Does the government condone such practices?

     I can't even remember when exactly I read that article, 10 years ago? 15?  Information has a funny way of becoming out of date and frankly, once I enrolled in an institute of higher education, I no longer had much time or opportunity to learn.  This one is going to be much trickier to answer, as there will be competing ideologies presenting what data is available in a light which most effectively supports the preconceived notions attached to them.  Statistics and figures originating in this region will be difficult to determine with any certainty because personal expression and the press is tightly controlled by a government which determines its own transparency must submit to no oversight other than its own, as such I will be limiting my research to those gender inequities which can either be found in written law or are reliably demonstrated to be de facto law.

     Entering "women in Pakistani law" into google, the first link that appears is published by "marxist.com", though I have no quarrel with Marxists in principle, the name carries the promise of an overt political agenda catering to a specific niche demographic.  Such openly branded sources are excellent for purposes of reading that which one knows in advance will support the views she already held (I use "Women Now" publications for this sort of thing), they are not, however promising sources for the task at hand--I'll come back to it if I have to.
     The next hit is more interesting, if not quite what I'm looking for--an article published by an organization called "Islam For Today" (http://www.islamfortoday.com/pakistanwomen.htm).  This source is also overtly politically motivated and I cannot verify any of the information on Pakistani law printed therein, but the article is a good reference for comparison in that it is published by a Muslim organization and is thereby highly unlikely to be colored by anti-Islamic sentiment which might skew facts elsewhere. . . . .unless Islam For Today is an anti-Islamic organization posing as an Islamic organization in order to discredit actual Islamic organizations, but there isn't really anything defamatory in the site's content and paranoia is premature at this stage of inquiry.
     20 domains which utterly lack cited sources later (and a fruitless search of the New York Times) , I have no choice other than to commit a cardinal sin; goodbye pride, hello Wikipedia. This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan) appeared in a Google search of the parameters "women's rights in Pakistan".  Though it confirms most of what I originally believed about the status of women in Pakistan (with the caveat that women's rights vary greatly across class and region), I am entirely unfamiliar with many of the sources included, and the citations from sources that I do recognize are at least 5 years old and many of them originate with politically activist organizations (Amnesty International, for example).

I'm going to have to regroup on this one, I still believe what I originally believed but I have no definitive proof that what I believe is true.  This adventure in research was a somewhat epic failure.