In Pakistan, You Can't Fix Crazy

The news coming out of Pakistan lately has all the makings of a new Discovery Channel reality show. It has adultery, murder, incest, possible pedophilia; did we mention murder? As the plot unfolds on the tragic story of a woman stoned to death by her own father and brothers in Pakistan for marrying a man more than double her age, the story becomes crazier and crazier.

The so-called 'honor killing' has the entire world, well maybe not the part of the world that sees honor killings as something normal, but the rest of the world, scratching its collective head over this one.

Peeling back the layers of what we now know is an all-too typical story about the stoning of a pregnant woman for running off with a man she loved instead of marrying the man picked for her by her family, it is now being reported that the husband of the pregnant woman stoned to death, Mohammad Iqbal, was himself an adulterer, who killed his first wife so that he could marry his pregnant mistress, i.e. the stonee.

Iqbal, it seems, had been living with the young woman's family, and was 20 years her senior. He even admitted to being attracted to the woman as she was a young girl growing up. With several families sharing small, cramped living spaces, one can only surmise that the stonee was not a virgin when she was ultimately married to the murderer and subsequent widower.

If that isn't enough of a twist for you, it appears that the woman was stoned to death because she refused her family's wishes to marry her cousin and instead ran off with the adulterer. Talk about keeping it all in the family.

Is it just me, or does this sound like Deliverance Meets Osama?

If the facts, as they are coming in, are true in this case, then it is a pretty safe bet that the rules governing marriage in Pakistan are extremely different than those here in the United States. Seems the Pakistanis can't get even straight marriage right. Can you imagine if you threw same-sex marriage into the mix for them? We would surely see some self-imploding of Biblical (or Quaranian in this case) proportions in that part of the world.

With tribal laws like these running rampant in Pakistan, most people will agree "You can't fix crazy."

If ever there was an upside to this woman's death, it is that, considering all the crazy people in her life, she's more than likely better off dead, and the same is true for her unborn child, who had a 50/50 chance of being born female.