Women and the Taliban

Posted on November 26, 2008
Filed Under Afghanistan, Burqa, International, Kandahar, Muslims, Religion, Taliban, abusing women, basic human freedoms, basic human rights, girls, islam, men, misogynism, misogyny, morality, violence, violence against women, women, women's rights | 2 Comments

Today’s MailOnline.co.uk reports:

Taliban gang arrested over acid attack on schoolgirls

Afghan police have arrested 10 Taliban militants allegedly involved in an acid attack against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Tuesday.

‘Several’ of the arrested militants have confessed to taking part in the attack earlier this month, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi. He declined to say exactly how many had confessed.

High-ranking Taliban fighters paid the militants a total of $2,000 to carry out the attack, Raufi said.

The attackers came from Pakistan but were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.

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Shamsia, 17, victim of an acid attack by the Taliban, lies on a bed at a hospital in Kabul last week

The attackers squirted acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar city on November 12.

Several girls suffered burns to the face and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn’t open her eyes days after the attack, which sparked condemnation from around the world.

Afghanistan’s government called the attack ‘un-Islamic,’ while the U.N. labeled it ‘a hideous crime.’ U.S. first lady Laura Bush decried it as cowardly.

Raufi said the suspects will be tried in open court after the investigation is completed.
One of the victims of the attack, a teacher named Nuskaal who was burned through her burqa, called Tuesday for harsh punishment.

‘If these people are found guilty, the government should throw the same acid on these criminals. After that they should be hanged,’ said Nuskaal, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

I agree with Nuskaal, that would be justice, but I have a strong feeling these cowardly cretins may feel too much pain. They might even consider it cruel and unusual punishment. And… if the pain becomes too much they might even die before being hanged No! I want them hanged, hanged by their manhood!!! And left to die a slow painful bleeding death as the sun beats down upon them.

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Men on a motorbike squirted acid from a water bottle onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school

President Hamid Karzai earlier this month called for a public execution of the perpetrators.

Kandahar is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban regime, the hard-line Islamists who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and one of Afghanistan’s most conservative regions, a place where women rarely venture far from home.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi on Tuesday denied that Taliban militants were involved in the attack.

Girls were banned from schools under Taliban rule, and women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.

Ah, the valiant men of the Taliban, those courageous fighters! They had to get some youths to do what they themselves were too scared to do. It is obvious the brave high-ranking Taliban fighters preferred to hide behind the Kamise of other fighters. I guess if they can’t hide behind a woman’s skirt, a man’s skirt will do… hmnnn…

Girls were banned from schools under Taliban rule, and women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member. I can understand them, I really can! It’s obvious they – the Taliban “men” – are so lacking in confidence about being real men they fear an educated woman might leave them. Even uneducated ones can only leave home accompanied by a male. What a flagrant example of insecurity! A man, a real man, is more than just his genitals… even if these cretins do not understand that!

I realize that as a Westerner my mind, my values, my understanding is very different but I always wanted a woman I loved to be my intellectual equal. So that these morons, these mistakes of nature in the guise of physical men, these cowardly Taliban can understand I’ll explain… If a free, unshackled, educated thinking woman wants to stay with you in spite of your foibles, if she believes you are worth it, then and only then, can you begin to consider yourself a man. Someone who stays with you out of fear, or lack of understanding, or because of a lack of viable choices does in no way validate your manhood. But I’m wasting my breath, talking to the Taliban and like minded cretins whose only proof of masculinity lies in their ability to terrorize women.

The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban’s ouster.

Fewer than 1 million Afghan children – mostly boys – attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly 6 million Afghan children, including 2 million girls, attend school today.

But many conservative families still keep their girls at home.

Raufi said girls attending Mirwais Mena girls’ school didn’t attend class for three days after the attack, but have since returned.

Kandahar province’s schools serve 110,000 students at 232 schools, Raufi said. But only 10 of the 232 are for girls. Some 26,000 girls go to school, he said.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls’ schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls’ school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007.

The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the country’s intelligence agency said it has arrested four people, including three religious leaders and a youth, for alleged involvement in suicide and other bomb attacks in northern Kunduz province.

The ring was broken up after a failed bombing mission in the province earlier this year when the would-be bomber failed to properly detonate his explosives, the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls’ schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls’ school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. As a parent I always strove to give my sons and my daughters the best possible education without discriminating by gender. True, as a devout Orthodox Jew I sent them to separate schools. The education they received, however, was sufficient for them to reach the highest ranks of their chosen professions. My pride as a parent, my heart brim with joy equally when either one of my sons or one of my daughters reaches a new professional milestone. But that’s because unlike the Taliban and their ilk I’m not threatened by women simply by virtue of their being women.

Each of these fighting Taliban, dreams of being worthy of seventy two beautiful doe eyed virgin houries in the afterlife. Considering how unsure they act about their true gender I must wonder if they expect to give supernatural performances to these virgins or if they rather expect the virgins to perform wonders unto them…

Meanwhile, I’m puzzled gentle reader. I’m puzzled because I do not hear a single sound of protest from feminist organizations. No single feminist, with the exception of Andrea Dworkin, ever said anything about Muslim misogyny… Could it be that western feminists do not believe a single word they utter and that all their pronouncements are only meant to advance a hidden agenda of a new class order, far remote from women or men’s rights?!?!? I wonder…

Chaim

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