Afghan woman forced to marry rapist to avoid societal punishment

Gulnaz has three children with attacker

It is undeniable that the Islamic world is backwards and barbaric, following ancient and outdated, brutal, oppressive and misogynistic laws which often result in the deaths of women guilty only of being too weak to prevent men from raping them.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Gulnaz is one woman who is a victim of this tribal and backwards system, raped by her cousin's husband in Afghanistan and jailed for adultery because her rapist was married.

Stand up for Christians all over the world who suffer unjustly.

Pressure from the global community saw Gulnaz receive a presidential pardon, but the worst had yet to come. The, then, 16-year-old had to marry her attacker to save face, and now carries her third child with the attacker, Asadullah.

Gulnaz now lives as the second wife of Asadullah, who had married her cousin, with the child of the rape, named Smile.

This outcome is considered desirable by what passes for Afghanistan's moral code, saving face for Gulnaz and being the proper thing for Asadullah to do.

"If I hadn't married her, (but) according to our traditions, she couldn't have lived back in society," he said during an interview with CNN. "Her brother didn't want to accept her back. Now, she doesn't have any of those problems."

Gulnaz apparently chose this marriage only for the sake of her children. "I didn't want to ruin the life of my daughter or leave myself helpless so I agreed to marry him," she said. "We are traditional people. When we get a bad name, we prefer death to living with that name in society."

Gulnaz lives with seven other children, five of them from her husband's first wife.

Just after being pardoned the international community attempted to get Gulnaz asylum abroad, but domestic pressure forced her to marry her rapist said Kimberley Motley, Gulnaz's attorney and a U.S. citizen.

"Unfortunately, Gulnaz was pressured to marry her attacker by various people within the government which, in and of itself, was immensely disappointing," Motley said.

"Gulnaz was constantly told that neither she nor her daughter would be protected if she did not succumb to their pressure to marry.

She "became a prisoner of her environment."

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