It was the United Nations along with many individual nations that tried to present the Taliban as a group that might relax its core principles and be willing to negotiate its harsh stance on women’s rights and human rights in general. The Taliban is a jihad group with one goal in mind: imposing and enforcing the Sharia. It is a puritanical Islamic movement that believes in the letter of the Quran and Hadiths, in which women are inferiors and infidels are to be killed or subjugated in the way of Allah.
Afghanistan is suffering a humanitarian crisis as the Taliban systematically destroys any past progress made, and will use funds coming in to advance its initiatives. It is certainly no surprise that the Taliban is “erasing women from public life.” It should have been expected. Such news is consistent with their history and is something they deem to be religious duty, as Robert Spencer writes:
The Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you, so go to your tilth as you will” (2:223).
It declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as you choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).
The Islamic holy book also allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls: “If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly, then only one, or one that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).
In September, the Taliban replaced Afghanistan’s women’s ministry with its Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
“Taliban erasing Afghan women from public life, say UN experts,” by Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, January 19, 2022:
UNITED NATIONS: Taliban leaders in Afghanistan are institutionalising large scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls, says a UN report released this week.
The report was released on Monday by the Special Procedures group, which is the largest body of human rights experts in the UN system.
In a tweet posted on the group’s official site, the experts claimed that Taliban leaders were “attempting to erase women and girls from public life through systematic gender-based discrimination & violence.”
The international community “must step up humanitarian assistance responsive to women’s needs,” they added.
The experts reiterated the alarm — sounded on several occasions since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, warning that the situation needed immediate attention.
“Taken together, these policies constitute a collective punishment of women and girls, grounded on gender-based bias and harmful practices,” the experts said.
“We are concerned about the continuous and systematic efforts to exclude women from the social, economic, and political spheres across the country.”
The experts warned that these concerns were “exacerbated in the cases of women from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities such as the Hazara, Tajik, Hindu and other communities whose differences or visibility make them even more vulnerable in Afghanistan.”
They also noted the increased risk of exploitation of women and girls including of trafficking for the purposes of child and forced marriage as well as sexual exploitation and forced labor.
The report claimed that these exclusionary and discriminatory policies were enforced through a wave of measures such as barring women from returning to their jobs, requiring a male relative to accompany them in public spaces, prohibiting women from using public transport on their own, as well as imposing a strict dress code on women and girls.
“In addition to severely limiting their freedom of movement, expression and association, and their participation in public and political affairs, these policies have also affected the ability of women to work and to make a living, pushing them further into poverty,” the experts said.
“Women heads of households are especially hard hit, with their suffering compounded by the devastating consequences of the humanitarian crisis in the country.”
The experts warned that the continued denial of the fundamental right of women and girls to secondary and tertiary education was “of particular and grave concern.”
The report shows that such restrictions stigmatise women and force a vast majority of girls — who should be attending grades 7-12 — to stay out of schools, solely because of their gender.
“Today, we are witnessing the attempt to steadily erase women and girls from public life in Afghanistan including in institutions and mechanisms that had been previously set up to assist and protect them,” the experts wrote.
Commenting on the decision to close the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the physical occupation of the premises of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, the experts warned that such measures have the worst impact on those “women and girls who are most at risk.”…
Check Burry says
What a waste of our taxes. Our leaders are nuts.
mortimer says
The Taliban tiger will not change his misogynistic stripes. They are hunting for uppity women and they will CRUSH them.
Meanwhile, Western feminists remain COMPLICITLY in silence while their Afghan sisters are destroyed.
gravenimage says
Too often the case, Mortimer. “Feminists” in the West are often silent about Islamic abuse of women, even though it is the worst in the world.
revereridesagain says
Women are lesser beings, second in worth to fertilized eggs, who must “pay for their fun” if that “sin” is committed for any purpose but pregnancy! Just as any Good Christian in Texas, Mississippi or New Hampshire. Rather hypocritical to be concerned about the “rights” of creatures only here to serve the Plan of the Great Male God? I always have to laugh at these “Rights of the Unborn!!!” marchers suddenly turning so solicitous about the “rights” of us Sinful Daughters of Eve. Let a woman in much of the West seek an abortion and the insults and threats will turn as vile and violent, as filled with hatred, as anything to come out of Islam.
Proceed to rant and rave about how I’m “godless” and “don’t understand”>
But it is true that in the West our rights are respected as long as we are not “with child”, while Islam considers ALL women inferior and expands the rationale for restriction and punishment to just about everything. And given that so many member of the UN are Slaves of Allah, how did they find that many “experts” who actually care what happens to women?
gravenimage says
revereridesagain, I have never heard anyone here talk like that. Citations, please. Then, you do not actually say what it is a good thing that feminists are not speaking out against Islamic crushing of women’s rights. I believe in equal rights for women, and I am not silent about this.
Walter Sieruk says
The Taliban do this because Islam is a religion of brutal cruel ,harsh and oppressive misogyny.
As Brigitte Gabriel had written in they book entitled THEY MUST BE STOPPED .which reads “In Islam women are deemed unclean , inferior even to dirt..”
GFF says
Experts write a report……………
UN bean counters and the world yawns.
What a surprise (JW contributors are not ‘shocked’).
GFF says
That last sentence doesn’t read the way I intended. The world of the experts will be surprised but thankfully JW is not. What is the point of these ‘reports’? More money to pay for more bean counters?
gravenimage says
I knew what you meant, GFF.
tim gallagher says
Well, duh. This was obviously going to happen with the knuckle draggers from the Taliban. I suppose reports do have to be done to say definitively that this is happening, but there has never been any doubt that these scum from the Taliban were going to crush women and girls. It’s back to the 7th century lifestyle in Arabia for these scum who believe that that is the way people should always live, event though it is 2022, No doubt they will use modern technology, but when it comes to human relationships, that primitive crap, straight out of Koran, is the way to live life according to these barely human throwbacks who compose the Taliban..
gravenimage says
UN experts warn Taliban erasing women from public life
……………….
All orthodox Islam. So much for “Taliban 2.0”.
Wellington says
You know whom I now fault for this Afghanistan debacle as least as much as any other Westerner? George W. Bush.
Bush had the opportunity back in 2001 to realize what the West has realized from the Early Middle Ages onward, i.e., that Islam was inimical to Western Civilization and to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Instead, he remained in willful ignorant mode (N.B., he still does).
If Bush had rallied the West to the many iniquities which are replete in Islam, including death for apostasy, the sanctioning of rape, eternal hostility to true liberty, eternal hostility to real equality under the law, et al., he would have done the West and truth a great deed. Instead, this mediocre man, whom I voted for twice, caved into abysmal ignorance and began the wasting of trillions of dollars and so many American military lives, on the false premise that Islam is a fine religion and that, yada, yada, yada, it’s just been hijacked by a few Islamic zealots here and there. This constitutes one of the most expensive lies in all of history and George W. Bush is at the center of it.
I am so sick of the Bush family. All of it. When Trump called out the fake MSM for lying, Bush 43 said a monumentally stupid statement to the effect that how can we promote freedom of the press abroad when we don’t have it here. He foolishly equated criticism of the press with repressing the press—and Trump never had a single MSM “monitored,” even though Obama had even very friendly AP journalists monitored.
N.B. The Bush family remains friends with the Obamas and Bush 43 foolishly voted for Condoleezza Rice for President in 2020 by his own admission rather than for the man who did so much to rectify the many wrongs people like Bush 43 engaged in in the first place. And Lara Bush criticized Trump for his “inhumanity” for trying to secure the southern border. Et al. Utterly done with the Bushes. Forever. Sick or them all as I am of Kasich, Whitman, Kinzinger, Cheney and a whole host of other RINOs.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
An excellent post, my compliments.
Just wondering, what’s your opinion of Bush 41 – Pres. George H. W. Bush?
Wellington says
Not very high, James. Bush 41, whose staff actually made fun of the ex-President Reagan (my first true clue that the Bush family were RINOs) stupidly went back on his pledge about not raising taxes (and which did no good in any case). Bush 41 also gave us the mindless and unnecessary 1990 Civil Rights Act (which led, among other idiocies, to handicap parking spaces galore which are almost always overwhelmingly empty as well as street curb after curb in America having to be changed for the very rare wheelchair—but, ah, I must be too harsh and without a heart, surely).
And once Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 it was Margaret Thatcher, a far stronger leader than any Bush has ever been, who had to tell both Bush 41 and his Secretary of State, James Baker, someone Thatcher to her credit never liked—she called him a “fixer” and it was not meant as a compliment—that this was not the time to go “wobbly.”
But Bush 41 and his ilk did exactly this, i.e., on the eve of total victory in the 1991 war they called off the assault, a mindless calling off of total victory if ever there were one and and which kept SH in power for another dozen years. And then Bush 41 blew the 1992 election much as McCain did in 2008 and the ultimate RINO, Mittens, did in 2012.
In brief, my opinion of Bush 41 is essentially the same as that of Bush 43, i.e., in the final analysis wasted opportunities. And which is why I am done with ALL the Bushes.
Infidel says
In addition to what Wellington wrote above, President Bush XLI was also responsible for forcing on Israel a peace treaty that put Judea, Samaria and Gaza under the PLO’s leadership. Until then, the PLO had been a squatter in Tunis, and while they were there, Israel was most at peace, and did not have the daily rocket attacks. President Bush, in order to appease the Arab leaders – who didn’t have a choice but to be pro-US for defending them against Saddam Hussein – totally changed US policy to actively force Israel to hand all that over to the PLO. Yitzhak Shamir wisely resisted, but Yitzhak Rabin folded, and Israel has never been the same since
In addition to that, while hindsight may well be 20/20, I don’t see what we gained by liberating Kuwait: I disagree w/ Wellington above on this issue. One of the major reasons Saddam occupied Kuwait was to flip Iraq itself from a shi’a majority to a sunni Arab majority – something he could have done by just adding Kuwait’s population to Iraq’s sunni population. It wasn’t for oil, which Iraq had plenty. If we weren’t obsessed w/ restoring Kuwait to the al Sabahs (who today are the most islamic of all the Gulf countries, including Qatar) but had cut a deal w/ Saddam to recognize his annexation in lieu of his dropping support to the Palis and anti-Israel, we would have been better off. Saddam was a bulwork against Iran, and overthrowing him just made Iran dominant in the region, until Turkey re-discovered its inner muslim self
And a part of President Bush XLI’s legacy is also the replete failures of the CIA, which missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nuclearization of Pakistan, the 9/11 plots and so on. Along w/ the FBI, this is another very worthless organization which in 2016 diversified into interfering in US domestic politics
Wellington says
Well. Infidel, letting Kuwait being taken over the by the thug SH would have sent a signal of great weakness to the rest of the world about American resolve and strength—much as letting Hitler get away with bullying his way through Eastern Europe, never mind militarizing the Rhineland and ignoring proscriptions against military build-up via the Versailles Treaty.
Sometimes, you know, even though you don’t like the status quo, the alternative is even worse. Besides, do you think SH would have stopped at Kuwait anymore than Hitler’s “last territorial demand” would have been the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia?
SH would have moved on to SA and the Gulf states. And just imagine what such indecision by the US this would have meant for the markets of the world. No, I still support thwarting SH’s takeover of Kuwait, disgusting little country though it be, but what I do not support is how it was handled. Another classis example, a la Viscount Montgomery, of America winning the war but losing the peace.
Infidel says
Except that none of the countries that we were defending were either free themselves, nor defenders of freedom. Just look at the list – the al Sabahs of Kuwait, the Sauds, the al Thanis of Qatar, the Hanafas of Bahrein… Even if Saddam had overrun the entire Arabian peninsula, would it have been such a loss, given that the Soviet Union was starting to disintegrate, but Iran was still strong? All that was needed was an arrangement w/ Saddam that we’d be fine w/ him overrunning the rest of the region, as long as he left Israel alone.
The analogies w/ Europe are not equivalent: Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, et al were democratic, which none of the countries that Saddam would have tried to conquer were. In fact, not only were they not democratic: they were exporting either jihad/dawa using their oil money, or enriching their own rulers and making all their citizens welfare queens. Saddam’s difference was that he was buying the most advanced weaponry from both us and the Soviets, and w/ what was left over, state-of-the-art palaces and monuments to himself
The world markets would have been fine: we would have continued to buy oil from Saddam, and sold him military gear (like we indirectly did during the 8-year Ira* war). I happen to believe that he’d happily have left Israel alone as long as he got what he wanted re: the Gulf.
revereridesagain says
+1
Wellington says
Infidel: I understand your points but I am very wary about trusting a megalomaniac such as Saddam Hussein was. And I’m not at all convinced that a) he would have left Israel alone; and 2) that the markets of the world would have been OK with such a nut-job in charge of so much oil. SH wouldn’t nave known when to stop, just like Hitler, and he certainly would have done all he could to have become a nuclear power. Perhaps it was a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation with SH but having gone in in 1991 we should have finished him off and put some kind of Mubarak type in charge right up front with Iraq still in tact under such a “reasonable” authoritarian.
James Lincoln says
Wellington and Infidel,
Thank you for your replies.
Very interesting discussion.
Infidel says
Wellington
Completely agree w/ you. I had my reservations about Bush even in 2004, but it took Trump to help me realize how wrong he was. In fact, today, as far as foreign policy goes, aside from Trump, Rand Paul is the only guy that I agree w/ on foreign policy
I do hope that the Freedom Caucus at least develops the right ideas and policies about islam, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene has done. That’s one of the few ways I can see the GOP becoming more islam-aware than it is now
James Lincoln says
Infidel says,
“I had my reservations about Bush even in 2004, but it took Trump to help me realize how wrong he was.”
Agreed.
Pres. Trump made us aware of things that the fake mainstream media didn’t want us to know. (The deepness of the swamp, etc.)
And Democrats and RINOs can’t have that…
gravenimage says
Very interesting exchange. Thank you.
Larry says
The UN is a fig leaf, behind which the World hides it’s impotence, in the face of Islamic barbarians. Anyone surprised?
OLD GUY says
Sadly many people still recognize Islam as a RELIGION. When they should see it for what it is, a brutal DICTATORSHIP that recognizes no-human rights and will turn women into property that can be tossed out with the trash. Ladies when you are considered property you are nothing but a slave, that can be traded or disposed of at will. Islam is brutality at its worst.
revereridesagain says
Is is a religion. It proffers a “god” and a “prophet” and a whole host of imaginary supernatural all-powerful beings, claims its rules to be god-given, dictates virtually every aspect of life, etc. etc. All systems allegedly run by all-powerful supernatural dictators meet that definition.
And believe me, we know that when we are considered “property” of some autocratic supernatural “male” being we are just as vulnerable as when we are owned by a mortal male here in the real world, because it is the latter who invents and makes up the rules and dictates the punishments, not the other way around.
Like it or not.
gravenimage says
Not all religions are benignant.
somehistory says
the taliban of old times….back before the *election* of karzai and the purple thumbs shown on tv.,
dictated life for all in afghanistan. It’s easy to recall Diane Sawyer and Ashleigh Banfield walking about with hushed whispers, wearing their taliban-approved coverings, and speaking about the lack of schooling for little girls, and the stonings for claimed adultery…the young woman in a pit and all the males gathered around her…the women and children not allowed out on the streets without total coverings and a male along to prevent whippings, and watching as some women were attacked by the taliban with their long sticks…
Who, in a logical brain, would have expected anything different? Many of the current taliban *ministers* were in Gitmo until released by “bo” so they could again dictate life through terror.
It goes with that definition of insanity…expecting something different. mozlums like the taliban members do not change, they don’t leave islam, they don’t even slightly modify their evil behavior.
After all, they are following satan and the so-called “prophet” who supposedly commanded their behavior. And they are psychopaths, enjoying the torture of the women and children.
Kepha says
We shouldn’t worry. A socialist jurist from Belgium waving the appropriate writs will get the Taliban to comply. They are a long-oppressed Third World people recovering their dignity and authenticity after a long struggle for justice, aren’t they? Surely they will heed other members of their grand coalition for global justice and peace!