Pakistan's Bhutto Plays the Gender Card

Nov. 11, 2007— -- While Hillary Clinton denies every charge that she is using her gender to give her an advantage over her male opponents, another aspiring world leader embraces it.

Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is fighting to take charge of a Muslim country now run by a military ruler. And she's playing the gender card for all its worth.

So far, though, it doesn't appear to be working.

Bhutto was warned last month that if she returned to Pakistan after an 8-year exile, her life would be in danger. She went, anyway.

"I do not believe that any true Muslim will make an attack on me, because Islam forbids attacks on women," she said. "And Muslims know that if they attack a woman, they will burn in hell."

Hellfire apparently did not discourage two suicide bombers from attacking the motorcade that met her arrival. Bhutto survived, but 139 others were killed, and hundreds more injured.

She used the gender card again on Friday, when her house was surrounded by policemen, barbed wire and armed vehicles, in an effort to keep her from holding an anti-government rally. Bhutto called out to her captors, "Do not raise hands on women. You are Muslims. This is un-Islamic." Her spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, pointed to the show of force and lamented to reporters, "All this, for one unarmed woman."

But does Bhutto really believe being a woman will protect her from political violence?

"It's hard not to think of it as just wishful thinking," said Elora Shehabuddin, assistant professor at Rice University, who studies women, gender and politics. "I think she's hoping she'll be spared direct attacks because she's a woman. But for the people who commit these attacks, the fact that she's allied herself with one group or another is more important."

"I'm sure she's using [the gender card] as a political tool," Imam Yahya Hendi, Georgetown University's Muslim chaplain asserted. "And people on the other side who don't like her will use it as a political weapon against her."

Both Shehabuddin and Hendi said there's nothing in Islam that especially protects or targets a female leader.