Whoops! Another freedom-loving Muslim turns out to be … a sharia-loving Muslim

The Daily Mail reports:

Afghan ‘Woman of Courage’ hailed by Michelle Obama for defending women’s rights has actually JAILED 100 wives for ‘adultery’
More than 50% of women jailed for adultery in Afghanistan come from province prosecuted by Ms Bashir—which holds just 20% of the population

Last year she was hailed as one of the most influential people in the world—a defender of women’s rights as Afghanistan’s only female head prosecutor.

Ms Bashir has been lauded by both Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton—and she was one of ten women to receive a ‘Women of Courage’ Award in Washington last year.

But Maria Bashir’s reputation is now in doubt after the Times revealed that Ms Bashir is also the most prolific prosecutor of women for Afghanistan’s so-called ‘moral’ crimes, such as adultery.

Defender or jailer? Maria Bashir, pictured with First Lady
Michelle Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
has jailed more than 100 women for adultery in Afghanistan

While Ms Bashir campaigns against abuse husbands, more than half of the 172 women jailed in Afghanistan for sex outside of marriage (known as ‘zina’) have come from her province.

The Herat province’s population stands at an estimated 1.7million, and Afghanistan as a whole has a population of 35 million.

Last week Ms Bashir, who became lead prosecutor in 2006, and has prosecuted nearly a thord of the 78 women jailed for murder in Afghanistan, was promoted to become Herat’s attorney-general.

The Times said diplomats are ‘shocked’ by the extraordinary tally of women imprisoned for adultery.

It further says that 101 out of 136 women serving in Herat’s women jail are there for adultery, one of the moral crimes which campaigners for women’s rights are trying to remove from Afghanistan.

When she received her award, the two presidential wives said: ‘Ms Bashir has waged a determined campaign against crime and corruption.

‘She stands out as a champion of judicial transparency and women’s rights, and exemplifies the resilience of Afghan women.’

When the Times contacted Ms Bashir, she said she was unaware that her prosecution rate was so much higher than other provinces, but blamed it on her province’s closeness to the border with Iran.

She said: ‘If it is higher it’s because we are bordered with Iran, which culturally influences Afghans.’

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Mark Eugenikos writes:

You’ve said it countless times that the quality of writing (and thinking) in contemporary journalism is abysmal. Still we can’t help noticing it and getting annoyed by it. In this example it is also an example of innumeracy in addition to illiteracy.

From the subtitle to the article: “More than 50% of women jailed for adultery in Afghanistan come from province prosecuted by Ms Bashir—which holds just 20% of the population”

From the text several paragraphs below: “The Herat province’s population stands at an estimated 1.7million, and Afghanistan as a whole has a population of 35million.”

From their own numbers, 1.7 million is about 5 percent of 35 million, not 20 percent But they didn’t even get their numbers right; according to Wikipedia, the population of Herat is 1.8 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her%C4%81t_Province) and the population of Afghanistan is 30.4 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan). So the population of Herat is 5.8 percent of the population of Afghanistan. Meaning that the per capita incarceration ration for adultery in Herat is over 10 times larger than for the whole Afghanistan.

However, we should also notice that prosecution of women for adultery in Afghanistan and Herat seems relatively rare in absolute numbers; around one in 5,000 adult women in Herat is in jail for adultery, and around one in 50,000 in all of Afghanistan. So either there isn’t much adultery in Afghanistan, or families just deal with it themselves, or prosecution is mostly symbolic. The article doesn’t say.

Apparently being able to do math at the elementary school level is not a requirement to be a journalist.

LA replies:

The Daily Mail over the last year has become much, much sloppier. Every article I read has gross spelling and other errors in it.

Also, what’s this thing I’m seeing in the British press recently of eliminating the space between a number and the following word, like “1.7million”, “35million”?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 22, 2012 02:38 PM | Send