The murder of seven innocent people in Mazar-i-sharif, followed by violent demonstrations in other parts of Afghanistan over the last few days that have killed at least 17 people, has put Afghanistan back in the news for all the wrong reasons.
This despicable, hate-filled behaviour on the part of protesters is heartbreaking to me not only because of the terrible loss of life that has resulted, but also because I think of all the secular, progressive, liberal-minded Afghans I know and how the outside world’s perception of their country has just plunged further into a conviction that Afghanistan is a dangerous, violent, incorrigible place. In this case, the sad truth is that all the criticism is rightfully directed at Afghanistan: the violent demonstrators in Mazar-i-sharif, Kandahar and other cities, the Afghan Government, the mullahs who incited people to murder, and everyone who excuses the barbarity that took place Friday by citing blasphemy.
By feeding right into a deranged Floridian crackpot’s attempts at provocation, the men who murdered in Mazar have made Terry Jones the disgraceful winner of this ridiculous duel. Jones should have simply been ignored, or perhaps satirized, for the fundamentalist bigot that he is. Instead,...More >>
So you're the leader of a country at war, a country that is also one of the poorest in the world, in need of everything from schools to roads to health clinics and vaccines. You're facing a vicious, hate-filled insurgency premised on radical Islam, and a citizenry increasingly disatisfied with your governance and with the pervasive corruption imploding at every turn in your government. What's the first thing you do when you show up to work in the morning?
Why, follow up on the request of some disgruntled, illiterate tribal elders who are in a tithy because they saw some womens' hair. Duh!
As the BBC reports, it wasn't the fact that the volatile and highly conservative province of Helmand managed to have a large, joyous cultural celebration featuring female performers, something that might be considered a small revolution not to mention much-needed relief from the insurgency's wreaking havoc there, that drew the attention of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Nor was it a concern about the competency or merit of the besieged province's deputy governor. It was, rather, some fussing old men and their paranoid, misogynous views about where women rightfully belong (under the shrouded cover...More >>
Mariam Sadat is one proud woman. She’s proud to be Afghan, proud of her country’s progress in the last decade, and proud of the famously good fruits and nuts that grow from Afghan soil.
That’s why she called her rapidly expanding company, the Afghan Pride Association. While it’s a profit-making enterprise, it’s also a network of 350 women across three provinces in Afghanistan. The women are farmers and they are using state-of-the-art solar technology that Mariam has acquired for them to process high quality dried fruits and nuts native to Afghanistan, like pistachios, almonds, raisins and walnuts. Mariam sells the packaged products to shops and hotels, and she regularly does the exhibitions circuits in Kabul.
Over lunch in a Kabul restaurant in February, her two daughters in tow, she tells me about how she got the idea for this line of business when she was employed with the Afghan Women’s Business Council as a trainer. Travelling around the country to train women farmers for the Council, she witnessed how women in agriculture toiled long hours but then...More >>
Farzana Hassan, former president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, set out to write a book that would, in her words, “challenge young Muslim minds”, urging a re-examination of “traditionally held views, often rooted in classical jurisprudence that have come to be part of the entrenched narrative of Islam.” Hassan has a lot of misgivings over this narrative, which she straightforwardly interrogates in her book, “Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today.”
This is probably the right moment to disclose what I suppose constitutes a bias in reviewing a book about faith, which would be my lack of it—of the Mohammedan brand or otherwise. And worse, my atheism is not just personal, but political in that I am convinced that religion is frequently ridiculous, and often dangerous. I tend to agree with Sam Harris that religion is easily “the most prolific source of violence in our history” (2004). I can’t take seriously something I’ve seen no evidence for, and I agree with those who point out that there is much in the Qu’ran that is pretty near impossible to interpret in kinder light no...More >>
With our attention still firmly fixated on evolving events in the Middle East, this month has so far seen a modest step forward for another nortorious dictatorship.
A campaign to establish a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in Burma succeeded last week in securing support for the proposed Commission from the countries of Latvia and Denmark.
The Burma Campaign UK describes the background to the campaign:
For many years the United Nations has ignored widespread and systematic crimes committed by Burma’s military junta, including the destruction of more than 3,500 villages in eastern Burma, widespread use of rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minorities, the forced displacement of over 1 million refugees and internally displaced people, tens of thousands of child soldiers, and the abundant use of forced labour in the country.
For decades the United Nations has been documenting these serious and systematic human rights abuses committed by Burma’s military dictatorship, abuses which break international law. Yet no action has been taken to end the impunity which Burma’s brutal military dictatorship enjoys.
The idea of a commission is already supported by Australia, Belgium, Canada, the...More >>
As events unfold in the Middle East, a key indicator of the prospects for post-authoritarian regimes will be how new governments opt to address the status of women going forward. The rights afforded to women in a society are intrinsically reliable indicators of both economic prosperity and of social cohesion and sustainable development.
Eminent Middle East historian Bernard Lewis recalled in a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post (February 25) the insightful words of Turkish writer Namik Kemal from around 1880: “We fell behind the West because of the way we treat our women. By the way we treat our women we deprive ourselves of the talents and services of half the population. And we submit the early education of the other half to ignorant and downtrodden mothers.” (hat tip to Terry Glavin for the JP article).
Lewis points out that at the time, the Muslim world had already been asking for over a century, “What went wrong? Why did we fall behind the West?” Yet still today, a quick scan of...More >>
It's a sort of pervasive, long-term mob behaviourism that underlies the collective legitimization of treating women and girls like deviant contaminations to be tolerated in society only for the value of their reproductive capacities. The lies that uphold a belief system that women are the property of men, to be traded like commodities with their chastity incessantly fretted over, have to be widely adopted in order to become firmly entrenched, and thus almost immovable, in a society. When the masses participate in perpetuating an idea, however fallacious, it takes a great deal of courage to go against the grain. And so it happens all too infrequently.
But that status quo changed in Birbhum, a district in India's West Bengal, where 16-year-old wage labourer Sunita Murmu took a tormenting experience of victimization and became a maverick for justice.
Sunita fell in love with a boy from outside her tribe. Her romance with the boy was discovered in June 2010 by her tribal panchayat (an unelected caste-based assembly, sometimes self-proclaiming themselves to the 'moral panchayat', distinctive from authorized, elected panchayats in India). The panchayat members sentenced Sunita to be stripped publicly and forced to walk around her village for...More >>
Earlier this week I wrote about the Afghan Government's plans to seize control of independently-founded and operated women's shelters for women and girls who have fled violence and family abuse. Now you can take action, by signing the petition that has been launched by our friends at Women for Afghan Women.
Please sign and spread the word by posting the petition link to your Facebook page, tweeting it, and asking your friends to sign.
President Karzai could sign the regulation into effect any day now, so loud international outcry is urgently needed. Thank you for signing!More >>
The first women's shelters in Afghanistan only opened in the last decade, but have proven to be critical refuges to women fleeing violence. Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. The start of a network of shelters was the first crack of light into an otherwise dark void. The availability of shelters (14 in total now) is the very early beginnings of tackling a problem so pervasive as to often seem insurmountable.
In 2008, I worked on the first ever quantitative research into the levels of domestic abuse in Afghanistan. Our findings were nothing short of horrifying: in many places, a majority of women were facing regular abuse at home, whether sexual violence, physical violence, or psychological violence. Most marriages were "forced marriages" (distinct from arranged marriages), and abuse was often perpetrated by more than one family member, including female family members (30% of instances of abuse), such as a mother-in-law or sister-in-law. You can access the report, published by Global Rights, "Living With Violence: A National Report on Domestic Violence in Afghanistan" here.
Today, these shelters, which can sometimes mean the difference between life and death for women fleeing abuse, face their...More >>
South African photographer Jodi Bieber has won the World Press Photo of the Year for her photo of Bibi Aisha, the 18-year-old Afghan woman who was mutilated by her husband by order of the Taliban. Aisha's photo appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in August 2010, igniting controversy.
Many felt that the photo courageously confronted who the Taliban really are and what the consequences of another western abandonment of Afghanistan may look like, with its headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan". The same headline infuriated stoppists, who accused the magazine of "emotional blackmail," and coined rather ridiculous terms such as "mutilation chic".
The portrait is unique in that it communicates the story of Bibi Aisha's horrific experience with great dignity; she appears as a survivor, rather than a helpless victim. Bieber managed to capture an expression of pride, resolve and a grave stare that implored viewers to acknowledgeme the crime that Aisha had endured, and not to turn away. As Terry Glavin pointed out,
Mariam Sadat is one proud woman. She’s proud to be Afghan, proud of her country’s progress in the last decade, and proud of the famously good fruits and nuts that grow from Afghan soil.
g a re-examination of “traditionally held views, often rooted in classical jurisprudence that have come to be part of the entrenched narrative of Islam.” Hassan has a lot of misgivings over this narrative, which she straightforwardly interrogates in her book, “Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today.”
As events unfold in the Middle East, a key indicator of the prospects for post-authoritarian regimes will be how new governments opt to address the status of women going forward. The rights afforded to women in a society are intrinsically reliable indicators of both economic prosperity and of social cohesion and sustainable development.
her photo of Bibi Aisha, the 18-year-old Afghan woman who was mutilated by her husband by order of the Taliban. Aisha's photo appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in August 2010, igniting controversy.
