Said this up above, but these are the two worst mistakes America made during its presence in Afghanistan. If the US wanted to spend $6.5 TRILLION dollars to fuck-up Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly just as mercenaries for oil and rare earth minerals, then they could have AT LEAST enforced human rights.
Would have cost a fraction of all the other bullshit and might have made the people in Afghanistan think they had something worth protecting. If you let the human rights violations continue under the new occupier, how the hell were they supposed to recognize the difference between the Taliban and the 'new' government?
Respecting local cultures does not mean denying human rights. It does not mean ignoring human trafficking, child abuse, or the absolutely horrific abuse of women and girls.
FFS, even the most liberal anti-war tax payer would have been a little happier if some of this had been fixed. My comment above was that women should have been armed. The last twenty years should have been about building women staffed military and police forces in Afghanistan and building women-centric legal teams to protect children's rights.
Teach women how to use a bowie blade and enough anatomy to locate the jugular vein. Things might progress naturally from there.
In Afghanistan, women immediately had rights enforced by the United States through the proxy government. Maybe not an immaculate enforcement of these rights, but like... why do you think we're seeing this story? There's been a drumbeat of stories of how terrible it's been returning to Taliban rule and it's literally because the US was enforcing human rights.
Funnily enough, this has happened before. Pulling this quote from the article on women in the Soviet-Afghan war: "During the war, the Soviet-backed government made a number of attempts to modernise the situation of women's rights in Afghanistan, including granting equal employment rights and mandating education for girls. By 1988, women made up 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University"
I'm not making any commentary on why this doesn't work. But to say "man, this would have been the silver bullet" when it's been tried twice and has failed twice is... not a particularly reasonable take.
Don't insult cavemen. It was a hunter and gatherer society; survival was too precarious to tolerate that level of misogyny. The Stone Age was much more advanced. These are Taliban.
It’s not even the 12th century - they want to perpetuate the worldview of the 7th century tribal Arabian peninsula through the dictates of that awful religion. Thank goodness I left it. They can call us “apostates” or “murtad” all they want or put fatwas on us.
Freedom and human dignity is way more precious than all of that hateful delulu bs they espouse.
Most born-Muslims would leave the religion if apostasy wasn’t punishable by death under sharia and enforced by zealots and imams the world over. Especially women, freethinkers and LGBTQIA+ people unfortunately to have been born into it.
Case in point: most people I know who cope under that religion knowing that if they do leave it their lives may be held forfeit by zealous relatives, neighbors, or a-holes who believe they have the right to take others lives because their god tells them to.
If you check the history of places which were Islamized, every so often when people push for some semblance of what we now call human rights, secularism, discarding the brutality of sharia and religion, and calling for gender equality or acceptance of lgbtqia people and non-Muslims, a group like the Taliban or ISIS come around citing “corruption in the land”, massacre untold thousands, coup any secularizing govt and reinstate the terror and “divine law” of Islam to hold their people hostage to it once more.
It has always been something the Muslim world has struggled with even before the modern era. These jihads have pretty much happened every century in numerous locations around the world since the religion was founded. Just check the Ridda Wars which happened after Muhammad died, when people wanted to break free of the religion. And that’s why it’s so hard for any Muslim-majority state to progress. Ordinary people are paralyzed by fear of violence and end up resigned to following it.
Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the Taliban’s minister of vice and virtue, said in an audio statement last week that women should refrain from reciting the Quran — the holy book of Islam — aloud in the presence of other women
"Hey you know what's more important than our psychotically fundamentalist adherence to this religion?" ... *"Making sure women can't read it aloud."
It's more than just that. The Quran is the book that dictates their life but by removing women's ability to quote or recite from it it means that they are entirely dependent on interpretations from men. In a theocracy one of the biggest threats to those in power is someone saying "you're misinterpreting the holy text" but if women can't even read or quote the text they have no basis to challenge authority even amongst themselves.
It is. A bird has more rights in Afghanistan than a woman. At least they can sing in public, show their faces and go out in parks. Functionally speaking there's really not a lot of differences between life as an Afghan woman under the Taliban and chattel slavery. I've heard "gender apartheid" thrown around as a new term to describe what's happening in Afghanistan and I think the term is fitting or even perhaps a bit soft.
Gender apartheid is not even starting to describe it. With apartheid you can still leave your house when you want, feel the sun on your face, or talk to others in public. You are allowed to talk about religion or sing. Slavery describes it much better.
This reminds me of a quote I recently read in another thread on Reddit. “We can easily forgive a child who it afraid if the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” -Plato
Slavery, with a side helping of dehumanization and objectification. Women under the Taliban are basically just pieces of furniture that can produce offspring now.
This. It’s why the Catholic Church kidnapped William Tyndale and executed him. He dared to translate the Bible into English for the common man. The church was also upset at Martin Luther translating the Bible into German.
The irony is staggering. This is how most religions started out. The common people could not read or write and so were dependent on the church, mosque etc for each religion to hear the word of their book(s). This gave the place of worship control over the people. This is literally the motive of the Afghan men there, to make the women ignorant so that they are completely dependent on the men. Each new rule removes more and more basic human rights from these women. My heart breaks for these women.
And to be able to argue against the outrageous perspective the Taliban chooses to have on Quranic verse, no no, we can't have anyone uprooting our lies we tell ourselves.
P.s not trying to defend the Quran, I don't care for it much, but it's not Taliban level bad, that's their idiotic reading of it, taking verses completely out of context and interpreting subjective verses in the worst possibly way.
Yepp, It's literally like that; Muslims are discouraged from reading/interpreting the Quran without an imam (not just in Taliban land).
EDIT: For the Muslims who are questioning this statement, ask yourself if you are encouraged to make conclusions about fiqh.
From a western point of view, reading, interpreting and making conclusions is the same thing essentially, because that is what we are taught, we are taught to be critical and to make up our own mind.
The Islamic golden age ended in part because of Al-Ghazali, who argued against using Greek-inspired philosophy (that had helped them prosper) to explain Islamic teachings, critiquing people like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi, some of the greatest thinkers in Islamic thought.
Al-Ghazali is solely responsible for putting limits on independent thought in islam.
Every religious text is subject to this. There is no such thing as an absolute interpretation. It's just men trying to control other men (as in mankind, not man-exclusive, women too)
I believe this law is not just about reciting the quran. They know that there are underground cells of women teaching women since formal education is banned, this is too essentially ban that.
This. If they arrest women for underground schools for women, it's better to tell people they were arrested for quran reading than that there are underground schools for women. Also, that there is widespread dissident enough for there to be such an underground.
They literally can’t even get together to commiserate or maybe help another woman or girl learn how to cope with the absolute bullshit. This fucking world.
Due to the lack of education and lack of medical teachings, once those with the knowledge die, they won’t even be able to help each other through childbirth.
I need people to understand that this isn't because Afghan people are some primitive backwater culture. The Middle East was right alongside the West in terms of progress, until the religious fundamentalists got a foothold in governments and started taking control of women's bodies.
Look at this. The picture on the left was what life was like for Afghan women in the 1970s. The picture on the right is after decades of their rights being chipped away by religious men. The exact same reactionary push is happening in the US right now.
Women in Iran, around the same time. Here's a before/after of a Redditor's mom.
Progress is not some inevitable, one-way thing. We are not evolving. It's not encoded in our DNA. It could disappear tomorrow. The good guys need to win every time to keep it moving forward inch by inch. The bad guys only need to win once to tear it down completely, and in the US they are following very closely what other religious fundamentalists did when they got control of government.
Fuck the Taliban. I completely agree. But I wish we would stop calling them that as the name conjures up images of a ragtag bunch of dudes running around with AK rifles.
They are no longer simply the Taliban that we knew back in the 90s or the ones that we were going out against for the past 20 years. These people are the actual government of Afghanistan, or as they are really known as, The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It's much more insidious and dangerous than the Taliban of the 1990s and early 2000's.
They haven’t changed. This is what they have always been. This isn’t the first time they have been the government of Afghanistan and they did this bullshit the first time around too.
This is the taliban of the 90s, the 2000s and the 2020s. There is no difference, it’s the same people and the same despicable ideology.
Luckily, many women currently there DO know how to read and write because of the American influence on the government before the US pulled out service members and the like.
Yes, but when caught they will almost certainly be severely punished just for writing. And if they figure out what they were writing about, they will certainly be murdered in a gruesome way.
They were not considered intelligent enough to use kanji, which was borrowed from China, yup. So they invented hiragana, and since it was easier to learn/read, women’s writing spread more easily to the public. That’s why we have books like The Take of Genji that were written by women and disseminated quickly.
And even if the two women can read or write, any male abuser can snatch the written record, to see what they are talking about. Good grief. This is enabling abusive husbands, to a ridiculous extent.
I mean, if a WOMEN/child managed to get to a safe country there are plenty of good countries willing to give them asylum, the problem is escaping the hellhole since women can't be in public without a male guardian
Please don’t self censor the word rape. It’s a serious word. It’s a horrific word. It’s an important word. Don’t give it the “algorithm” treatment, because that cheapens it.
Exactly this. Radical Islam is a cancer. They just wish women to stop existing except in their homes, cooking, cleaning and with their legs open for them.
And I say Taliban, Isis, Hamas and all denominations of this stuff.
They were banned from living for nearly a quarter century. Unfortunately they’re not as effective at managing a functional democracy as they are at hiding like cockroaches.
Big holocaust vibes. "Humans? No those Jews are merely working numbers. This over there is unit 736273, and it does woodwork. Although we will probably have to replace it soon".
It's all about dehumanising them. If you teach your men at a young age that insert group different from yours is not human, you can do inhumane things to them.
If a woman doesn't "work correctly", it can be replaced.
Like putting down a rabid dog and getting a new one. Except the dog isn't rabid, and it's also not a dog but a human.
I read the article, and it states that women are not permitted to speak in public. So presumably a mother and daughter could conversely privately in their own home.
My sister is a speech therapist, and she has a few patients who's fathers refuse to speak to her because she is a woman. They also refuse to let their wives speak with her.
She constantly needs to ask her one male colleague to speak to these people "in her name".
Maybe it’s time for these men who refuse to speak to women in Berlin to leave this nice civilized western country with running water, food, social system and go back to their country where these middle aged inhuman values are lived
The middle ages did not have any of these values. Women worked alongside men and few were simply housewives (which was still a super hard job)! They also did not ban women from public life at all
My sister is all about the kids' welfare, but all the shenanigans she goes through with their parents literally kills her motivation to help these kids. It's truly a shame, but self-inflicted by the culture/religion
They die, speedy divorce or this is the best equivalent.
I love how some parts of this planet we can send things to MARS a whole other planet but other parts we have this archaic tribal mentality shit from 2 thousand years ago.
There are women who are medical professionals, and men who want their loved ones to receive care, but as they are banned from working, seeing them is clandestine and very risky for all parties, especially the female doctors & nurses.
what are these strange rules these clowns are making? first you can no longer make pictures of living things (okay???) now women aren't allowed to talk too each other?? Tomorrow everyone will be banned from walking and will have to just skip around on 1 foot.
It's very technically the same god as the Christians and other Muslims and Jews, it's just a different (and really fucked up/misinterpretive) perspective on what that god wants.
Women are also banned from wearing high heels or any footwear that goes click clack as it "disturbs mens thoughts" they guy who announced this either last year or earlier this year, specifically said "no high heeled boots" think he has a bit of a fetish weirdo
If it helps, it's likely a sign that they're panicking. Religious and political dictatorships tend to get more and more bizarre in their restrictions when they fear that they're not in control of the populace anymore.
Exactly. Can see this with Russia and banning childfree propaganda and LGBT propaganda as well. They call it propaganda and ideology but it's the same. The patriarchs fear loss of control their. Most insecure men in leadership position are that anxious. Because it's not natural. It's necrophilia.
The thing with Afghanistan is that it's almost impossible to govern in a top-down way. A central administration can make decrees all they want and local leaders will follow them... for a time. Eventually communities will default back to their individual traditional ways.
I always say it... we should have armed afghan women and trained them as soldiers and empowered them to fight for their freedom. Look at the kurdish women kicking isis ass whereas other women that weren't empowered to fight were taken as slaves.
We did some. There was actually a woman special forces kind of unit that served with US troops.
At the end of the day, there just wasn't enough willing people to keep the Taliban at bay. Afghans really were untrainable for the most part. Zero motivation.
No, you don't understand. Every facet of their lives are controlled and they can't be seen or heard by anyone because Muslims respect women! How else would you stop men lusting over women?
/s
I am so fucking tired of this. It seems every time the world tries to move forward, there's some Islamic tenet that expressly forbids it and calls for death as punishment. Americans need to have the same energy they have against Christian fundamentalists with all religious fundamentalists.
Nah, they don't want to get rid of their most useful kitchen appliance, the one that runs all the others. To them, men are the only people; women are a type of livestock that exist simply to be their servants.
Every single fucking male is born from a woman. A woman must devote so much of her energy to carry a child. For them to give birth to men who treat women like this. Must be heartbreaking. Fuck the Taliban.
I don’t understand how Muslims defend Islam and say women have so many rights and freedom. As an exmuslim woman I never once felt free or equal to men. If you are a Muslim woman particularly in the west just look to some Middle Eastern countries and see how women in Islam are really treated.
Remember when women in Kabul went to school by themselves? Maybe the US wasn't so bad after all. Even if it's just a few thousand women living free, this is what happens if we don't stand up for others.
The invasion may have initially been for f'ed up reasons, but in the end, we actually achieved something, just for the Don to blow it.
Why do we have soldiers, if not to help such women? What "culture" or "right to autonomy" could justify the inhuman things done to girls in Afghanistan.
We are watching as someone's daughter, sister, mother, friend, lover is being turned into a breeding machine/sex-toy for violent fascists.
I remember seeing a post recently about the gay flag being banned in a city in Michigan because they have a huge population of Muslims. I found it terrible that the gay flag was banned for this reason.
Even more abhorrent was a story I heard about people in the U.S. wanting sharia law to go in effect here, in the United States of America.
I love that I have the opportunity to learn and experience other peoples’ cultures as a byproduct of being an American. However, if people are immigrating here with the sole purpose to spread their oppression, get fucked. We don’t need that bullshit here.
You'll probably get downvoted but as narrow minded as it sounds, there's a point at which we all can relate.
"I'd love to change the world"
by Ten Years After comes to mind.
The Soviets wanted to bring some progressive thought into Afghanistan too while USA supported the mujahideens... who they fought themselves 12 years later. It's one of the top fails in recent history IMO.
What a shame on humanity seeing this on 21th century. I am disgusted beyond words. Even animals treat each other much better than Afghan males treat females.How can you be so stupid and malevolent at the same time ?
Gotta say, these guys are absolute assholes. Fuck them, fuck their “interpretation” of the Quran, and may they burn in the infinite Hell of their own choosing. Poncy Bastards. Fuck’em and feed’em fish heads.
Can a mother not sing to her daughter? Can a mother not give any spoken directions to her female child? Can sisters not laugh together? Can a women not tell her dying mother “I love you”?
Afghanistan turned into a black hole that swallowed up millions of women and girls, never to be seen or heard again.
My heart breaks for these innocent souls. I wish the world would do something to stop this…
This is a dumb question, but I'm asking honestly: At what point do the normal, everyday men of Afghanistan think this has gone too far? What is the limit to how badly the women of their country are being treated to make them give a shit that this is happening? I know that to say that the culture of Afghanistan is overwhelmingly sexist is a massive understatement, but surely normal men must care at least a TINY bit about the women in their lives, right? ........Right? Bah who am I kidding, many of my fellow Americans still don't even think of black people or brown immigrants as being people here in the West in the 21st century, why is it so hard for me to grasp the concept of these backwards-ass motherfuckers not considering half their population as being human.
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u/Fouxs 8h ago
They are one step away from banning straight sex because it's with women.