Posted on 10/12/2001 8:30:00 AM PDT by vannrox
SHE is speaking up for a regime which would deny her a public voice. Rashida Zafar leads an all-female group which campaigns in favour of the Taleban - and its extraordinary restrictions on the lives of women.
The educated housewife believes that a Taleban-style regime should be introduced in her home country of Pakistan and says she is willing to fight to defend the Taleban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Under Taleban rule, girls are refused the right to go to school and women are not allowed to go to work other than in health-care roles.
A woman found strolling in the company of a man who is not her relative can expect 100 lashes as a punishment, and the only public entertainment allowed is Friday afternoon executions, which take place in Kabul’s football stadium.
Criminals are shot or hanged and thieves’ hands are cut off. One woman had her thumb amputated for wearing nail varnish.
The Taleban also bans heeled shoes, neck-ties, playing chess, playing music, surfing the internet, having a "US or British hairstyle" and laughing when one is not meant to.
All females are ordered to observe the satar - the Islamic code for women requiring them to wear a traditional borqa, a head-to-toe dress which conceals every part of their body and has only a lace grille to allow them to see the outside world.
Those who do not comply face beatings in the street for showing as much as an ankle in public.
To Western eyes, it appears to be state-sponsored misogyny, but to Mrs Zafar, it is only under this strict Islamic law that women are truly free.
"We are happy to wear the borqa," she said. "The so-called freedom of women in the West is an illusion and is an insult to women.
"It is only under Islamic law, which has been given by God, that people are free."
Mrs Zafar is the leader of the women’s branch of Jamat-i-Islami Quazi Hussain Ahmed group in Pakistan’s north-west frontier province. The Islamic party is among the most active in organising protests against the government of the president, General Pervez Musharraf, and its policy of co-operating with the US and British air strikes on Afghanistan.
Its women’s branch organised a 70-strong demonstration in Peshawar yesterday, calling for an end to the suffering inflicted on innocent women and children by the conflict. The Peshawar protest was repeated across the powderkeg country yesterday, with troops in the Bajur area near the Afghan border opening fire on a crowd trying to storm a jail to free pro-Taleban activists. Eleven people were wounded, three critically.
Other Pakistani troops were deployed to patrol the streets in the troubled south-western city of Quetta on the eve of a general strike called by religious parties to protest against military strikes in Afghanistan.
The protesters in Peshawar were all dressed in borqas, their mouths covered as they shouted along to slogans led by a male party member.
Two sisters in white robes and head-dresses carried anti-American banners, accusing the US and its allies of bringing terrorism to the people of Afghanistan.
One said: "America wants to rule the world and impose its immoral values on everybody else. We are proud to be Muslims and will defend our faith against all attackers."
Her sister said women would take up the fight alongside their husbands and brothers if they were required.
"There is a lot we can do to help in the struggle, and we are prepared to do anything to defend the people of Afghanistan."
When the Taleban came to power in Afghanistan seven years ago, all female government workers were immediately ordered to leave their jobs. More than 7,500 women teachers were told they could not carry on their careers, despite the fact that the ban virtually crippled the country’s education system.
About 8,000 female undergraduates at Kabul University were told their lectures were over. Although Pakistan has no formal laws governing female dress and behaviour, it is rare to see women in public and rarer to hear them speaking out.
Under the Taleban - which takes its name from the Persian word for students - television is banned, as is listening to anything other than the Taleban’s own Shariat radio station, which broadcasts fanatical religious teachings.
Eight Christian aid workers are currently on trial in Kabul charged with propagating Christianity. If found guilty they could face the death sentence.
No women have been present at the angry protests held daily outside the mosque in Peshawar’s ancient bazaar since the attacks on Afghanistan began on Sunday night.
But the women at the protest yesterday said they would be happy to live under the further restrictions on their lives which would be imposed under a formal Islamic system of justice.
"The women of the West are only concerned with their rights and not at all concerned with their duties and responsibilities as wives and mothers," said another demonstrator.
"We want to live in a society where we are free to observe those duties."
A woman found strolling in the company of a man who is not her relative can expect 100 lashes as a punishment, and the only public entertainment allowed is Friday afternoon executions, which take place in Kabul’s football stadium.
Criminals are shot or hanged and thieves’ hands are cut off. One woman had her thumb amputated for wearing nail varnish.
The Taleban also bans heeled shoes, neck-ties, playing chess, playing music, surfing the internet, having a "US or British hairstyle" and laughing when one is not meant to.
All females are ordered to observe the satar - the Islamic code for women requiring them to wear a traditional borqa, a head-to-toe dress which conceals every part of their body and has only a lace grille to allow them to see the outside world.
Those who do not comply face beatings in the street for showing as much as an ankle in public.
If there actually were anarchy those same hippies would be the first people to get beaten, killed or robbed since these drug-addled sissies are such easy targets.
1."The so-called freedom of women in the West is an illusion and is an insult to women".
2."The women of the West are only concerned with their rights and not at all concerned with their duties and responsibilities as wives and mothers,"
Flame suit on!
I'm no anarchist, but I could think of a lot more fitting analogies for the Taliban. Such as Nazism and Communism.
The Taliban want to impose a totalitarian government with zero freedom for women and very limited freedom for men. I'd compare them to a repressive dictatorship long before the thought would occur to me that they're just like anarchists.
If anything, they probably do what they do with the belief that they're 'saving' society from anarchy.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
I think I understand.
That about covers it. Sounds like most liberals' definition of Christianity. They ought to go the Afghanistan and experience the real thing.
Yep. I think it would be interesting to do a policy-by-policy comparison between the three.
Actually, this is incorrect. There is no mention made of this, or any other, "dress code" in the Koran. It is not a religious imperative but rather a societal quirk. This is why women in Iran simply cover their hair with scarves, Muslim women in Turkey and Bosnia observe no dress standard whatsoever, and women in Saudi Arabia observe the head-to-toe "rule."
When was it that women in western cultures stopped adhering to the unwritten "covered head" rule? If you think about it, women of pretty much any social class always covered their heads, some with bonnets, some with hats, some with kerchiefs...eventually, it became soemthing that women did only when in church. You don't really see it in church any more.
The so called "freedom" that most conservative women (such as most of the women you would find in this forum) find insulting is the "freedom of choice." Most conservative women know that our real choice comes when we decide to have sex. The question of butchering an inconvenient life never comes up for most conservative women. We know that "freedom of choice" really means "freedom from responsibility."
"The women of the West are only concerned with their rights and not at all concerned with their duties and responsibilities as wives and mothers."
You agree with this? Keep in mind that this is a conservative forum. You should be posting comments like this over on Salon or DU. All you are doing here is insulting conservative women.
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