Taliban’s travesty of Islamic thought and Women
Recently the Taliban authorities have barred Afghan women from long-distance travelling on road transport if they are not accompanied by a male guardian.
Now, as in the past, the Taliban’s oppressive laws continue to deprive women of several of their most basic and essential civil rights.
These occasions of betrayal and adversity, considering what had been promised to the Afghan women are now becoming a source of visceral disgust for them.
As 2021 is coming to an end, it marks the year of a radical transmogrification of Afghanistan, despite all the deceptive rhetoric of a changed attitude towards women notwithstanding the haunting oppressive past they have seen under the Taliban rule, Women rights became a coveted badge for all that the Afghan women lived for.
Nevertheless, this rhetoric of providing women their rights according to the Shari’ahby the Taliban yet again boiled down to the core issue of analysis and interpretation that was to fundamentally lay on the ecclesiastics, Ulema and clerics who were the first ones to have put them in this situation.
The most evident notion that was seen after the Taliban came to power was the fear of a bleak future for the women of Afghanistan, the lives of women were ostensibly in some sort of custody and their existence was presumably in detention.
The subjugation has escalated to the point where the women of Afghanistan have stopped irrationally fantasizing like the international community, that the Taliban have their best or least interest in mind and that the international community might help in providing them an ounce of justice. One of the most powerful drivers of hostility in Afghanistan is the country’s ingrained old cultural and ultra-orthodox traditions.
These misogynistic attitudes and inflexible chauvinism created by the fundamental interpretation of religion and society develop a bond of reliance between men and women, which has substantial ramifications for women’s well-being.
One that compels women to follow rules that pertain to intrusion in their social, educational, personal lives.
Women who are inclined to disobey these rules are dealt with degradingly. Those who are seen protesting and triumphing for their rights are seen as being in possession of a westernized version of rights, one’s that involve the image of a deviant, scantily dressed, indecent woman parading and flaunting herself in the streets asking for the right to be open about all that is ostensibly kept private in Islamic religion.
In all other terms, a woman’s socioeconomic security in Afghanistan relies on her acquiescence to the patriarchal power system inside the home.
They claimed to have treated women under the light of the law of Shari’ah. Nevertheless, their version is one that restricts women’s lives and leave them at the mercy of their male guardians.
It is all left to the interpretations that are far less accommodating. The Taliban’s documented attitudes towards women runs counter to Islam’s normative precepts.This interpretation of Islam by the Taliban might just count as travesty to the actual Islamic thought and a tampered version, one that speaks only for men and their rights and dominance completely foregoing women rights.
Though Islam and the Quran is not a feminist ideology or text, but it has an equal perspective on women and dismisses the maltreatment of women.
The forceful exploitation of Islam only with final objective of establishing a patriarchal or man-centred religion was successful over time, but a deeper understanding and examination of religion questions this concept. This cultural interpretation has been giving out false notions to the world that these norms are acting as obstacles to the woman’s attainment of progression in the society.
There is also a fundamental flaw in the Afghan society with regards to the understanding of Gender roles and complete disregard of experiences of women in general.
As Fawad Chaudhry eloquently stated while addressing a ceremony on 27 December and termed the thinking of the Taliban “retrogressive”.
Afghanistan has been at war for too long and even today it is under structural changes along with being inclusive of repressive and fundamental individuals that harm the progression of the country and hamper state building. Usually, men have the most authority over the means of production along with having the autonomy to take decisions.
Islam isn’t really intrinsically patriarchal, but it is developed and established in communities that are largely oppressive to women, so therefore it is constrained by something like this. The state building and processes leading to it in Afghanistan have never favoured women neither mitigated the already misogynistic nature of the society.
When the mindsets and perceptions of the individuals of the society are at par with what a democratic state should be like, progress in this realm seems far from achievable.
Afghanistan is in dire need of neutralizing the situation for their women hence having all individuals on board, men, and women for Afghanistan’s continuous development, peacekeeping, and developing a thriving economy capable of recovering from any catastrophe women of Afghanistan have to have an affective involvement and participation in social and political life.
The lack of education, state of being in conflict, illiteracy and poor economy fans the flame of the patriarchal system in Afghanistan.
The original interpretation and principles followed in Islam that are supportive of women rights and call for equality is the need of the hour that might be a gradual process considering the current situation of Afghanistan, yet a nuanced development of understanding and analysis might pave the way for a better future for Afghan women.
—The writer is Research Assistant at National Defence University.
