Stealing Her Body For Political Purposes By People Who Didn't Know Her And Have Their Own Agendas

The outrage expressed about the murder of Asifa Bano are divisible into two categories of not easily teased out groups. 

There is the justified, non-ideological outrage over a group of men who abducted, drugged, starved and raped an eight-year-old girl as she pastured horses before they raped her one last time and brutally murdered her, in pretty much the same way they would any horrible crime committed against children by a group of adults.  Much of that doesn't try to turn the  murdered little girl, Asifa Bano into a tool for their own agendas, it is a reaction to the crime itself, respecting her identity and the identity of her parents and family, secondary victims of the crime.

Then there are those who appropriate the life and body of Asifa Bano for their own purposes, disregarding the girl and her family and their thinking about what happened.  I had my attention called to that by the use it was being put to by atheists in North America who are using the crime in their eternal campaign to use anything they can get their hands on to slam religion.   In this case,  that Asfia Bano and her family are not atheists but are reported to have been and remain Muslims, in other words, religious people, means nothing to them.  I have seen nowhere where her surviving family members have given approval to that use of their daughter, though I doubt they'd appreciate that use of her.

That the explanation being given of the crime, that the rapist-murderers were trying to terrorize a family, being called a "tribe" of Muslims, into leaving the area the rapist-murders live in is something I can't evaluate.   I've read about ten different articles about the case and I don't have any idea if that's the truth.  The inflamed politics of Hindu-Muslim conflict in India means that the criminals or their lawyers, family or allies, making that claim, it means they are trying to draw up sides in order to influence their prosecution and possible punishment.   And that as a tactic has worked for them to some extent.   I certainly doubt that anyone who isn't familiar with the area it happened in, the fact that for the supporters of those accused of the crime have turned this into something not about the guilt or innocence of those accused of a terrible crime but an ethnic-tribal conflict.  In India often, perhaps most often, Muslim-Hindu conflicts are ethnic as much as they are about religion.

If that is what this has turned into  where it happened it's not something that we should be shocked at.   Turning the victim into tool of warfare between ideological sides is exactly what is done at places like  the most ironically and dishonestly named The Friendly Atheist, in essence they are making the same use of her reported to be the motive of the men who murdered her, they wanted to use her to incite conflict in order for the side they want to win prevail.   I would like someone to explain to me how that isn't true.  I would also like to know what her family would have to say about that use of their daughter.

India has an enormous population, of well over 1.3 billion people.  It's my belief that in a population that big you are going to find pretty much every way that people can devise for being evil represented among them as well as its opposite.   It is an enormously diverse and complex country with huge differences in different regions and among different peoples.   Hinduism has often been noted to be an enormously diverse phenomenon, perhaps the most complex thing called "a religion" in the human population.   I can't imagine that there are not large numbers of Hindus who are horrified and disgusted at the crime against Asifa Bano and her family, certainly among Hindu feminists there must be many who want to see her killers punished.

And, it being India, there are lots of other issues involved, class, caste, corruption of local officials, officials who want to do their job and produce justice.   Yes, I believe there are Indian officials, police officials, prosecutors who would like that.  And being India - most anywhere in the world, really - there is how such a terrible crime becomes a cause among those who will use it for their own motives.

I have to mention another brutal rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl which hasn't become any kind of cause celebre on any ideological blog I've seen.  Four years ago at a Walmart in Jacksonville, Florida,   Cherish Perrywinkle was abducted, raped and brutally murdered, her body stuffed in a log in a swamp a 61 year old man who posed as a benefactor for the family.   It took them four years to bring him to trial, convict him and give him the death penalty.  While I'm opposed to the death penalty, I doubt I'd be too upset if they carried it out - he'll probably die in prison.  There are certainly thousands of other such cases every year that don't become news items because there is no ideological or political hook to get the attention of those unrelated to the victim or family or the accused. 

I bring this up to point something out that has not as people slam Hindus, Muslims, religion in general, ALL OF THOSE ACCUSED OF THE RAPE AND MURDER IN BOTH CASES, IN ALMOST ALL THESE CASES ARE MEN.   That is the most obvious thing they have in common and they are men who feel entitled to do that to girls and women on the basis of their genders.   Making that point isn't an ideological abduction of the identity and body of the victim and their family, it's just almost never brought up when it is the most universal character of the people who commit such crimes.  You have to ask why that is. There is a world-wide lynching campaign against girls and women, it is so common, so typical that it is a rare exception for them to even make the news past a headline of a body found.   That's as true in the United States, North America, Western Europe and rich countries around the world.  I can't believe that what happened in this case which will soon be forgotten by those who are using it to generate outrage isn't related to that campaign.

I have decided I'm going back to concentrate on the identity of the victims of such crimes, not those who attacked or raped or killed them.