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The
Taliban, a name that translates into English as religious students,
gained control of almost all of Afghanistan in 1996. As the Taliban
consolidated their power they forged their militant brand of Islam into
national law. Their dystopian vision had clear rules restricting
membership and participation in the national life of the country. While
many around the world were shocked when the Taliban ordered the
destruction of ancient Buddhist monuments and people were disturbed by
the law which required Hindus living in Afghanistan to identify
themselves by wearing yellow patches on their clothing, reminiscent of
the yellow star Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis and their
collaborators, it was the Taliban's treatment of women that became an
international human rights issue. Semeen Issa and Laila Al-Marayati of
the Muslim Women's League explain that "many Muslim men and women alike
are subjugated by despotic, dictatorial regimes. Their lot in life is
worsened by extreme poverty and illiteracy, two conditions that are not
caused by Islam but are sometimes exploited in the name of religion."
In the Western press the symbol of that exploitation has been the
burka, a head-to-toe covering that the Taliban required women to wear.
Under the pretense of religious law, women were subject to numerous
discriminatory regulations. Women were forbidden from attending school.
They were forbidden to work or even leave the house unaccompanied. They
were denied proper medical treatment, which often lead to starvation
and disease. Law commanded that windows of houses that had female
occupants be painted over. Punishment for those that disobeyed these
regulations ranged from random physical beatings to execution.
An open letter from an anonymous Afghani
woman appeared in the reader's section of the Pakistani newspaperThe
Frontier on December 3, 1998. In the letter she describes the
"ferocious atrocities" of the Taliban regime and cries out for justice.
This is
an open letter for all Pakistanis and Muslim world. I want to expose
certain criminals and unveil their ferocious atrocities, to all of my
Muslim brethren. I am an Afghan Muslim woman of Hazara origin. My age
is 44 and I am reasonably educated as compared to most of the women in
Afghanistan. I was living in Mazar-e-Sharif with my husband and two
children, a son and a daughter. My husband had a leather shop in
Mazar-e-Sharif. Two days after the fall of city, persons belonging to
the Taliban regime forcefully entered my house, six in number. They
asked my husband about our religious background, when my husband
couldn't answer them, they started beating him with their rifle butts.
I started calling for mercy but all in vain. My son couldn't resist and
tried to stop them, one of those cruel persons shot my son twice. My
son died on the spot. He was just 19. Seeing this, my husband tried to
kick the person who shot my son, they immediately shot my husband as
well. This all was so much shocking for me that I started shouting and
crying. Seeing this, two of the persons came to me and slapped me and
my daughter and then kicked us. After that they left. When I turn
towards my husband, he was already dead. They annihilated my innocent
family for nothing. We kept on crying and shouting for two days, there
was no one to help us. There was no one to bury them. A day later, I
got another shock of my life, the cruel Taliban brutally killed my
father and two brothers. My mother couldn't bear this butchery of her
family members, she too died a week later. For few days I lost my
senses. I might have died too after such a big tragedy but perhaps for
the sake of my daughter I am still alive. There was no one to listen to
us and give us justice in Mazar. I have to beg in the streets of Mazar
for food. I used to tell the tragedy to every passerby but I was
usually asked to keep quiet otherwise we will meet the same fate as of
my family. One day while I was begging I came across a foreign
journalist. I told him the story. He was a kind person. After some days
he took me and my daughter to Peshawar. My host in Peshawar is a nice
person. He is taking care of us. I was told that Pakistan is an
independent country and unlike Afghanistan, press and media here are
free and there is no need to fear, therefore I am sending my tragic
story to you. I know that like me, there are thousands of Afghan women
who met the same fate. My question to the Muslim world is, Is there no
one in the Muslim world to stop the cruel Taliban from killing innocent
people? Who will give me the justice? Is the conscious of all Muslims
around the world dead, that they are deliberately ignoring the
atrocities of the Taliban. Is the blood of my and other thousands of
families gone to waste? There are no sons left who can listen to their
mother's voice? No fathers who console his daughter? Is there no
Mohammad bin Qasim left in the Muslim world to liberate my people from
savage clutches of the Taliban and give us justice?1
As journalists began to broadcast the
voices of the women of Afghanistan to the world many Muslims and
non-Muslims alike began to take notice. Filmmakers, like the Afghan
refugee Saira Shah, took huge risks to depict the violence of the
Taliban's treatment of women and the courage of women who resisted.
Iranian filmmaker, Moshen Makhmalbaf, wrote and directed two films
starring Afghan refugees to highlight the plight of the Afghan people.
In addition, activists in the United States and Europe used magazines
and the Internet to educate and advocate for action.
One of those who took notice was the
Moroccan scholar Fatema Mernissi. In her book, Scheherazade Goes West,
Fatema Mernissi emphasizes that battles over the role of women, in both
the Muslim world and in the West, are often reflective of larger
struggles over human rights, democracy, and pluralism. She writes:
All the
passionate if not hysterical debates about women's rights taking place
today in Muslim parliaments from Indonesia to Dakar are actually
debates about pluralism. These debates relentlessly focus on women
because women represent the stranger within the Umma, the Muslim
community.
Laila Al-Marayati of the Muslim Women's
League believes that change will come when people recognize that human
rights and democracy are not inconsistent with religious beliefs. She
argues that "the extreme position taken by the Taliban hardly deserves
to be considered an ‘interpretation' of Islam. That implies the
position has some degree of validity, when it is really an aberration
in violation of the most basic tenets of the faith." She explains:
To the
Taliban and other extremists, Western - and especially feminist - views
on women are often blamed for many of the social ills that plague
society today, including exploitation of female sexuality, rape,
high-risk sexual behavior, the disintegration of the family, and moral
decadence in general.
Given this view, the Taliban believe their own policies are more protective of women - and, therefore, more enlightened.
Changing the situation will require
the Taliban and other Muslim leaders to look within Islam itself,
rather than through a cultural lens not their own. In so doing, they
would find that promoting women's rights does not mean compromising and
capitulating to the "West." Rather, it means they are being consistent
with their commitment to the message of Islam they seek to uphold.
Any government that professes to
enforce shari'a (Islamic law) must be aware that the essential purpose
of shari'a is to guarantee for every citizen five broad rights
encompassing all aspects of human endeavor. These are the rights to
life, intellect, family, property and religion. These rights mirror
fundamental freedoms as they have been articulated in the major human
rights documents of this century. 2
After the fall of the Taliban, women have
begun to re-enter public and political life in Afghanistan. They face
serious challenges, but their success may be a barometer with which to
measure the relative strength of democracy and human rights in
Afghanistan.
CONNECTIONS
- Guaranteeing women's rights remains a central challenge in the struggle to balance human rights against local customs.
- Why is confronting
patriarchy so difficult? What happens when patriarchal customs come
into conflict with notions of human rights in a society?
- Writing in The
Frontier the Afghani woman called out for help from within the Muslim
world. Whose responsibility is it to respond to the brutality she
describes? What are consequences of letting human rights violations go
unchecked?
- How does the Moroccan
scholar Fatima Mernissi explain the connection between the treatment of
women, democracy, and pluralism in predominantly Muslim countries? How
do women's choices get taken away in the name of clarifying the rules
of membership?
- What patterns do you
see in the restrictions that controlled women's lives under the
Taliban? How would you explain these patterns?
- For many across the
world, the symbol of the struggle for women's equality in Afghanistan
has become the burka, a head-to-toe covering that women in Afghanistan
were required to wear under the Taliban. According to many Muslim
women's rights advocates, the symbol became a distraction, distracting
those concerned by the status of women from the more immediate
challenges. Do advocates need symbols to focus attention on a struggle?
In which ways can they be helpful? How can they hinder the cause?
- The documentary film
Beneath the Veil, directed by Saira Shah, alerted the world community
to the abuse of women by the Taliban. Kandahar, an Iranian film about
women in Afghanistan, was released in the United States shortly after
the fall of the Taliban. Before the September attacks the filmmaker,
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, nearly changed the name fearing American audiences
would not know where Kandahar was located. To learn more about the both
films and the issues of women, human rights and the Taliban visit the
web site.
- Research the lives of women since the fall of the Taliban. What changes are most evident? What challenges remain?
- Fatima Mernissi
believes that the treatment of women offers insight into nations'
commitment to democracy, pluralism, human rights. What barometer would
you use to measure democracy in the United States? In the world?
1 From
http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/cry.htm
2 From
http://www.mwlusa.org/news_afghan2.html
Note: The media selections posted in Facing Today do not necessarily represent the views of Facing History and Ourselves.
