Rumana Monzur Attack Sparks Dialogue in Bangladesh

New Abortion Procedures

Abortions via ‘telemedicine’ are safe, effective, Iowa study finds MSNBC

A new report that followed 578 Iowa women who came to Planned Parentood in Iowa to terminate a pregnancy confirms that ninety-four perent of the women who chose a controversial telemedicine abortion reported being “very satisfied” with the procedure. Women who received “virtual” counseling had no more complications than those who had office visits.

So far, five states — Arizona, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska and Tennessee — have passed laws limiting telemedicine abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Behind the Veil

A Bangladesh Family Stands Up for a Daughter

Muslim ‘Honor Crimes: Rumana Monzur Allegedly Mauled by Her Husband The Daily Beast

Human rights activists protest honor killings in Islamabad in 2008Asra Q. Nomani writes an in-depth account of the response of Rumana Monzur’s family to her alleged honour attack by her husband when she returned home to Bangladesh to write her dissertation.

Studying in Vancouver on a Fulbright scholarship, Monzur showed her husband her Facebook page, allegedly causing him to go into a rage, accusing his wife of having an affair with a FB friend. 

Lying blinded in a hospital with her eyes gouged out, Rumana told her story — posted by us in World’s Women. This new monthly blog honors Erica Jong and expresses our revulsion to her daughter’s widely-distributed assertions that the women of the world aren’t that oppressed any more.

This new story by The Daily Beast explains how Rumana Monzur’s family and her colleagues encouraged her to speak out, making this horrific episode a condemnation of honor attacks and murder a public issue.

That night, Monzur’s older first cousin, Rashed Maqsood, 43, returned to town from a business trip. He was 10 when Monzur was born and remembered her as a newborn. Now a bank executive in Bangladesh, he wasn’t captive to tradition to keep silent. He urged Monzur’s father to go to the media, as did an uncle of Monzur’s living in the Netherlands. “Unless you go to the press, the police will not act quickly,” the cousin told the father. Monzur’s father was worried that “a lot of bad names” would be hurled at his daughter when the case became public, the cousin says. The husband would surely “do some nasty things” to defend himself. But the professor, uncle, and cousin prevailed.

This entire story is worth the read, with its many details of how men and women around the world wrote testimonials in support of Rumania Monzur’s character and devotion to her family. Male bloggers within Pakistan — countless people young and old, of both genders — have asked penetrating questions about the role of honor violence in Bangladesh, Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

It will not end, of course, but Rumana Monzur’s permanent blindless and her family’s willingness to expose the truth about her attack has generated the most conversation ever on the terrible reality of honor violence against women in Bangladesh and around the world.