While I’m still struggling to put my reaction to the cartoon row into appropriate writing, today’s Spiegel Online’s English edition features an interesting and important article about a different kind of culture clash. It’s a timely story about the fact that Islam the religion and Islam the cultural practice are often quite distinct. It’s a story about the slow and violent death of traditional hiearchies during modernisation, particularly if modernisation is perceived as imperialist. But above all, it’s a story about allegedly legalised crime against a young woman and her incredible courage to resist what would have been her traditional duty: suicide. Her faith, she states, gave her the strength to keep telling her story. As Uwe Buse writes on Spiegel Online –

“Mukhtar Mai, the daughter of a Pakistani farmer, thought she was apologizing for the misdeeds of her brother. Instead, she was gang raped by men in her village. After the rape, Mai contemplated suicide. Today she is likened to Martin Luther King, Jr.”