Ugh. The BBC are covering this in depth before the election and have a documentary on tomorrow night that I plan to watch. It's shocking, disappointing, but not surprising. It appears that President Karzai has no lofty ideals when it comes to women's rights (what a shock). Heartbreaking to think of all those little girls in Afghanistan, catching glimpses of the rest of the world, seeing women everywhere else, in many Muslim countries as well as beyond, getting chances they can't have.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It may be worth pointing out that such laws (holding that a wife cannot refuse her husband sex), or at any rate court cases amounting to the same thing, have existed in the US well within living memory. Perhaps the Afghanis can reasonably be given a little bit of time to bring their consciousnesses up to the full standard that the liberal parts of the West expect? In the past six years they have been brought, by force of arms and through rivers of blood, from the thirteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. If they are not yet quite ready to join the twenty-first, they can perhaps be forgiven for that, and not tsk-tsked at.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: It may be worth pointing out that such laws (holding that a wife cannot refuse her husband sex), or at any rate court cases amounting to the same thing, have existed in the US well within living memory. Perhaps the Afghanis can reasonably be given a little bit of time to bring their consciousnesses up to the full standard that the liberal parts of the West expect? In the past six years they have been brought, by force of arms and through rivers of blood, from the thirteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. If they are not yet quite ready to join the twenty-first, they can perhaps be forgiven for that, and not tsk-tsked at.
I don't think you understand the extent to which women are mistreated in the Muslim world. It is not quite like Europe in the Middle Ages and an amazingly far cry from the questions brought up here in the u.S. which amount to: Can marital rape exist or does a woman automatically consent when she says "I do?" The Afghans are suggesting that it is ok to STARVE your wife if she does not submit to sex. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In Muslim countries, women can be stoned to death for being raped. Female genital mutilation is commonplace. Women are treated as property...throwing acid on a woman is essentially considered vandalism.
I'm not tsk tsking anyone. I'm flat out saying it's a travesty that this goes on anywhere in the world in this day and age.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Perhaps the Afghanis can reasonably be given a little bit of time to bring their consciousnesses up to the full standard that the liberal parts of the West expect? In the past six years they have been brought, by force of arms and through rivers of blood, from the thirteenth century to the middle of the twentieth.
I thought in the past they were one of the most liberal of the Middle Eastern nations and were only plunged back into the dark ages by the Taliban?
From Wiki:
quote: [In 1978] the PDPA moved to permit freedom of religion and carried out an ambitious land reform, waiving farmers' debts countrywide. They also made a number of statements on women’s rights and introduced women to political life...Many people in the cities including Kabul either welcomed or were ambivalent to these policies. However, the secular nature of the government made it unpopular with religiously conservative Afghans in the villages and the countryside, who favoured traditionalist 'Islamic' law.
quote: [Beginning in 1994] much of the population experienced restrictions on their freedom and violations of their human rights. Women were banned from jobs, girls forbidden to attend schools or universities.
I suppose having lived under harsh restrictions almost as long as they lived without them, it's not too surprising that Afghanistan isn't ready to get rid of them. Especially if the President needs the rural religious vote.
The fact that the religious leaders aren't standing up denouncing that particular interpretation of Islam is what bothers me most. I'd like to see it denounced as heresy, assuming that call it that in Islam. Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
A bit of a further twist in that history given that the Islamist Mujahideen, which (more or less) gave birth to a radical splinter group that became the Taliban, was organized to fight the Soviets in the early 80's, and was backed by none other than the Unites States of America.
I'm not one to state that therefore "America created the Taliban," but it was our global struggle against the Soviets and communism that led us to train and supply the people who did create the Taliban, and we have often failed to properly acknowledge that rather painful lesson. Given that our upstanding egalitarian and free market sensibilities led to us helping to establish extremist rule in Afghanistan, I think we ought to at least not overestimate our ability to, or more importantly the wisdom of trying to alter the course of local events. As it is said, one often meets his destiny on the road to avoiding it.
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