The situation in Ukraine is getting most of the press, and rightly so, along with the slap heard around the world. But the situation for women in Afghanistan is a constant battle, especially after having a twenty year taste of relative freedom from repression.
According to Islamic theology, God has no physical body or gender (neither male nor female), although he is always referred to with masculine grammatical articles only, and there is absolutely nothing like him in any way whatsoever.
I’m thinking that the Muslim God in Afghanistan is a man as now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Younger women who enjoyed the relative freedom of the past 20 years—and have no memory of the Taliban from the 1990s—are gradually coming to grips with what it means to live under Taliban rule, often for the first time.
When and how the guardianship restrictions are applied is often left up to the whims of the Taliban’s religious morality police. Women and rights groups say these forces tend to be more aggressive outside big cities.
The article goes on to say, For some men, the imposition of the Taliban’s male guardianship rules is a nuisance. Sharif, a resident of Ghazni who didn’t want his full name used, said since the Taliban took over his district, he has had to accompany his wife whenever she goes outdoors, even grocery shopping.
“It’s difficult for both men and women,” said Sharif. “No other Muslim country has imposed restrictions like the Taliban have on us. These restrictions are a product of their own mentality. They have nothing to do with Islam.”
Under the Taliban, there is actually a Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue.
Human Rights Watch wrote that The Taliban have banned women and girls from secondary and higher education, and altered curricula to focus more on religious studies. They dictate what women must wear, how they should travel, workplace segregation by sex, and even what kind of cell phones women should have. They enforce these rules through intimidation and inspections.
The Taliban’s return to power has made members of some ethnic and religious minorities feel more vulnerable to threats even from those not affiliated with the Taliban. The healthcare worker said a colleague who is Shia, a religious minority, was threatened by a patient’s family she believed might be connected to the Taliban, who said: “‘We will kill you, terrorize you, or get you fired from your job.’ They warned my colleague that they know her address.”
This passage from Michal Gruber’s “The Good Son” has a certain resonance:
“The problem, as I say, with cultural imperialism is that it can be completely unconscious, which I believe is the case here. For example, you used the phrase knuckle under. By that you mean it is wrong or unseemly for people to submit their will – their whim, even – to a traditional authority. Yet all of Muslim society is based on submission to the will of God, and everything follows from that. You look at us and you see oppression; we see stability and harmony. You see corruption; we see tie of family, friendship, and mutual support. You see feudalism, we see mutual responsibility. You see oppression of women, we see the defense of modesty. But then you say, but look at you! See how poor and weak you are and how rich and strong we are, because of our culture, which prizes freedom above every other human value – no, that destroys every other human value to secure absolute freedom. In response to that, sir, I ask you to look at two things. First, yes, we are poor, but until sixty years ago, you Europeans owned all of us, we worked for you and not for ourselves. So of course we are poor – it took Europe eight centuries to recover from the yoke of Rome and its collapse. I say to you, sir, have a little patience! And the second thing is, for all but the last two and a half centuries, the traditional society you condemn was quite successful. A thousand years ago London was a wooden village occupied by starving barbarians and Baghdad was the greatest and richest city in the world. So perhaps it will be that way again; who can tell what God has planned?”
I, of course, am discussing this from a Western point of view, but I can’t help but think any laws that oppress people to such a degree, religious or otherwise, is not a good thing for any culture.
And now…