There’s more at stake in Afghanistan than U.S. prestige or the future of Joe Biden’s presidency. Millions of women in Afghanistan who were just starting to assert their rights as females are now condemned to being sent back to the Middle Ages under the Taliban’s notion of “women’s rights.”
Admittedly, the Afghanistan version of women’s liberation, even with the presence of thousands of American troops, was unrecognizable to most western women. Strictures placed on female behavior as well as opportunities for employment had been dictated by the Islamic religion. And there are other Muslim countries with almost as severe rules and regulations women must abide by as they will be forced to in Taliban Afghanistan.
But freedom of any kind must be nurtured and encouraged. The Taliban would destroy any hope of a future for Afghan women and girls.
Related: Former British PM Tony Blair Says Biden’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan Is ‘Imbecilic’
As an illustration of what Afghan women are in for, one activist tells what happened to a woman forced to cook for the Taliban.
Taliban fighters allegedly set a woman on fire for “bad cooking,” as other women in Afghanistan go into hiding and reportedly being forced into sex slavery.
“They are forcing people to give them food and cook them food. A woman was put on fire because she was accused of bad cooking for Taliban fighters,” activist and former Afghan judge Najla Ayoubi told Sky News.
Former Afghan judge Najla Ayoubi says she had to "flee" for her life from the Taliban after speaking in favour of women and women's rights.
She says she's spoken to hundreds of her fellow activists in Afghanistan and many of them are "in hiding".https://t.co/L3t5CE65aD pic.twitter.com/btj45ANiDm
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 20, 2021
Ayoubi fled the country when the Taliban began taking more control of Afghanistan, and said she has since received multiple reports of violence against women. She added that she has also heard many female activists are in hiding due to fear of violence.
“There are so many young women are being in the past few weeks being shipped into neighboring countries in coffins to be used as sex slaves,” she said.
“They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters. I don‘t see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities.”
The Taliban had announced with much fanfare after the fall of Kabul that they would respect all women’s rights granted by the Koran. Needless to say, few believed that was a good omen for women in Afghanistan.
Across multiple media networks, there have been countless reports and pictures of people, including women and children, being beaten by the ultra-conservative Muslim militants.
There’s a “major disconnect” between what is said to the media and what happens in reality, Heather Barr, interim co-director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
In an article on HRW’s site, she said Taliban militants have closed entire schools for girls in recent months and years.
“The Taliban spokesman has continued to pledge respect for women’s rights, but his claims ring more hollow than ever,” she said.
The Taliban — and ISIS — claim they represent Islam in its “purest” form. More mainstream Muslims strongly disagree with that, but their opposition to the Taliban has been muted largely because they are advancing the cause of Islam — imperfectly, in their eyes, but advancing it nonetheless.
Now, this pure form of Islam — that countenances the burning of a woman because she supposedly can’t cook — is getting the light and oxygen to thrive when it should have been driven off with a stick. Ultimately, radical Islam will lose because they refuse to utilize 50 percent of the brainpower, creativity, courage, and energy found in the female members of the species.
We can only hope they remain as stupid about women in the future as they are today.
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