Three Cheers for Afghan Women

[evanovitch]

April 15, 2009, 1:53 pm
Three Cheers for Afghan Women
By Nicholas Kristof

I’m awed by the courage of those 300 Afghan women who endured stones, jeers and threats to march through Kabul today demanding a measure of equal rights. As my colleague Dexter Filkins reports, the women were chased and insulted as “whores” by a mob of men and women three times as large. <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">The women were protesting a new law, applying only to Shiites, that obliges women to sleep with their husbands on demand</span> and bars them from leaving the home without their husbands’ permission.</span>

It’s particularly impressive that many of the women apparently were Shiites — from the Hazara minority — because Hazaras are poorer and less likely to school their daughters. I find Kabul a pretty scary place sometimes, and I can’t imagine the guts it would take to be a Hazara woman walking with a banner demanding equal rights through an enraged mob of stone-throwing, spitting fundamentalists. Dexter describes this scene:

The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men. “<span style="font-weight: bold">Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!” The women scattered as the men moved in. “We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality</span>!” The women ran to the bus and dove inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.

The account by the Times of London offered this nugget:

As the protesters tried to march to Parliament they were blocked and then surrounded by a second crowd of Afghan men who threatened to overwhelm police. Banners were torn to the ground, women were spat on and stones were thrown. “I am not afraid. Women have always been oppressed throughout history,” Zara, an 18-year-old student from Kabul told The Times, as men in the crowd surrounding her jostled and screamed abuse. “This law is against the dignity of women and all the international community opposes it. The US President calls it abhorrent. Don’t you see that actually we are the majority?”

Unfortunately, I’m afraid Zara is wrong: She’s not in the majority, at least in Afghanistan. Polls show that men and women alike in Afghanistan mostly don’t believe in equal rights. Women are a bit more likely to support gender equality than men, but only a bit more. The best predictor of whether someone favors women’s rights in Afghanistan isn’t whether the person is a man or woman, but whether the person lives in the city or the countryside. People in the cities are far more sympathetic to equal rights — in other words, it’s a sign of Kabul’s progress that the demonstration happened at all. It would never have been imaginable in, say, rural Zabul or Kandahar provinces, not least because the women would never have been allowed out of their homes.

I’m enormously impressed by the courage of these women, but I do worry about a backlash. Afghans are very nationalistic, and the women today were denounced as pawns of Christians and foreigners. Remember that during the first Gulf War in 1991, Saudi women held a demonstration to demand the right to drive, and the protest attracted enormous attention. Yet in the end it so antagonized and frightened men that it probably set back and delayed the cause of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. I hope that’s not the case here, because Afghanistan can’t develop economically and achieve stability so long as girls are kept home and women are mostly barred from the work force.

[evanovitch]

Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and stoned in Kabul

(Musadeq Sadeq/AP)


A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an “abhorrent” new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law <span style="font-weight: bold">passed last month by the Afghan parliament</span> which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

“Go home if your mothers and fathers are Muslims,” one Shia cleric shouted at the protesters, who were pressed into an ever-tighter huddle as the crowd surrounded them. “These people will beat you if you stay.”

Some of the women appeared cowed by the aggression, staring blankly at the ground, but one shouted back: “If you were Muslims, you wouldn’t pass this law.” As the protesters continued to chant slogans they were often drowned out by counter chants of Allahu akbar (God is greatest). “I am not afraid. Women have always been oppressed throughout history,” Zara, an 18-year-old student, told The Times as men in the crowd lunged forward and screamed abuse.

“This law is against the dignity of women and all the international community opposes it. The US President calls it abhorrent. Don’t you see that actually we are the majority?”

The baying mob tore down banners, spat on demonstrators and hurled stones. As police struggled to maintain order, at one point the women appeared to be in danger of disappearing under a sea of shaking fists.

Women police officers drafted in to help to oversee the march attempted to link arms around the female protesters and riot police eventually succeeded in separating the rival groups sufficiently for the march to continue.

The new law, which applies to the 15 per cent of the population who are Shia Muslim, has drawn widespread international condemnation. President Obama called it “abhorrent” after leaked drafts of the law showed it was reintroducing restrictions on women imposed by the Taleban during their harsh reign. Carrying banners proclaiming “We want dignity in the law” and “Islam is justice”, the women’s march was initially matched by a peaceful counter-demonstration of 300 female religious students from Khatam-ul-Nabieen Shia University in Kabul, who were supporting the new law. The university is attached to the city’s largest Shia mosque, which receives Iranian funds and is overseen by Mohammad Asif Mohseni, a leading Shia cleric who has strongly backed the new law. Most of the women protesters were ethnic Hazaras, who make up the vast majority of Shias in Afghanistan and who have historically been a systematically downtrodden minority. Many were students from Kabul University, though there were also older women and a handful of Hindus and Sikhs among the protesters.

Local sources suggested that some of the protesters were members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a secretive women’s rights organisation with Maoist origins founded in the 1970s.

Those in favour of the new law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.” At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women” — reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who took part in the women’s counter-demonstration.

“<span style="font-weight: bold">This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men</span>.” The Afghan Government has nonetheless announced a review of the legislation, which has yet to come into force.

<span style="font-weight: bold">President Karzai</span>’s political opponents have suggested that he <span style="font-weight: bold">backed the law</span> as a sop to powerful Shia religious parties before presidential elections in August.

Though the Afghan Constitution enshrines sexual equality before the law and Afghanistan is a signatory to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, conservatives argue that the Article 3 of the Constitution, which permits nothing contrary to the“beliefs and provisions of Islam”, takes precedence over all others.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Second-class citizens </span>

<span style="font-style: italic">57% of Afghan brides are under 16

87% of women are illiterate

5% of girls attend secondary school

1 in 9 dies in childbirth

1 in 3 subjected to violence </span>

Source: www.reliefweb.int

[mariane]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

I featured this story on my Mag &amp; I really dont understand what their gripe is?

Note: Considering the population of Afghan women Only 1000 or so took to the streets to protest tut!

Its clear the Majority had better things to do!

[jah_yout]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

taliban mark dem now

[kia027]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">taliban mark dem now </div></div>

how can they tell who is who unless dem did tek off dem gear

[evanovitch]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Kia</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">taliban mark dem now </div></div>

<span style="font-weight: bold">how can they tell who is who unless dem did tek off dem gear</span> </div></div>

an dere in lies the rub...indoctrination an intimidation have kept women in dem place....bravo to those who were brave enuff to stand up and be counted, knowing dat dem have in fact probably signed their death warrants....

for me, a black woman to have the freedom i have today, a one made the effort even BEFORE it was a cause celebre to denounce slavery ...

[jah_yout]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

most of the african cultures we are descended from did not have the primitive view toward women that many of those central/western asian/middle-eastern nations have;
many african societies were/are matrilineal;
adoption of islam &amp; certain other religions corrupted this

[mariane]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

Have I missed something? .. does anybody know.. since when within our so called &quot;free Society&quot; did women start having a better deal than our counterparts in the middle east?

I mean sure we have a lot more options than they have but really cant see how they are 'Better OPTIONS'
lets see -

Abortion
Single parenthood
Teenage pregnancy
Drug abuse
Prostitution
Higher levels of HIV infections / not to mention Aids
Divorce
Alcoholisum
Children in care
Broken homes
Unmarried /Unsupported Females
STDS
Ooops I'm running out of time!

Fact is women claim to be oppressed and are constantly campaining for equal rights to men .. and the real truth is 9/10 all they have done is dug themselves into a ditch!

[mountaingal]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">most of the african cultures we are descended from did not have the primitive view toward women that many of those central/western asian/middle-eastern nations have;
many african societies were/are matrilineal;
adoption of islam &amp; certain other religions corrupted this </div></div>

my daughter and i talked about this on the weekend. while african women are not always at the top of the hierarchy in a lot of traditional societies, it can be said they have been able to maintain a level of independence and respect missing from women in a lot of other places. i told my daughter that is one thing we can be thankful for in our culture.

this thing about the afghani women really bummed my daughter out, especially the story of the girls who got acid thrown in their faces because they dared to go to school.

[mountaingal]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and ston


Women in the field: what it's like to work in Afghanistan

Since The Globe and Mail began staffing its Afghanistan bureau full time in early 2006, it has sent a number of women correspondents to the country. We asked them, in light of the current controversy over Afghan women's rights, to reflect on their experiences.

<span style="font-style: italic">MG: i've quoted from two of the four reporters' stories below</span>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Globe and Mail Update

April 17, 2009 at 8:23 PM EDT

Jane Armstrong: My first impression of Kandahar City, apart from the heat and dust, was that half the population was missing, or else all the women had gone inside. There were no female faces anywhere.

Occasionally, a ghostlike figure would appear on the sidewalk, covered from head to toe in a billowing burka. I thought they looked like Halloween trick-or-treaters in ghost costumes. It was 2006. Five years after the U.S.-led ouster of the repressive Taliban, it was still taboo for women in the conservative southern city to show their faces in public.

The covered women of Kandahar had a distinctive gait. They scurried along the narrow sidewalks in a half-trot, shoulders bent. And they travelled in packs, either with a group of children or other women. If they were with men, they shuffled a couple of feet behind.

....</div></div>


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...But within minutes, I realized I'd attracted a crowd — young boys at first, grinning and pointing at this weird-looking Western woman suddenly in their midst. (To be fair, I thought to myself, they'd probably never seen a head scarf tied so badly, let alone blond bangs poking out from it.) I grinned and gestured back at them.

Then the crowd grew in size, and it grew older, too. Now there were teenagers with the little boys, then older teens, all boys. Their curiosity was turning into something else, and whatever it was wasn't nearly as friendly. Out of nowhere, boy after boy pulled plastic weapons — water pistols, mostly, but a couple had the more lethal-looking replicas that I'd seen children carry in other parts of the province — out of their tunics and began pointing them at me, then squirting me. The boys and teenagers were soon joined by men, young and old, who first stayed at the back of the crowd but began moving forward. Soon, hands of all sizes began reaching toward me, poking me, pinching; someone threw something at me.

...</div></div>

[rufian]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and

And?

[mountaingal]

Re: Women protesters against 'marital rape' law spat on and

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: sukuna</div><div class="ubbcode-body">And? </div></div>

[evanovitch]

Saudi women face gyms ban


Ian Black,
Middle East editor guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 April 2009 16.55

Saudi women could see their private sports clubs and gyms closed down <span style="font-weight: bold">because the government seems likely to agree licensing of the clubs for men only.</span>

But news of the likely shutdown of dozens of female-only gyms came as a government official suggested that women might be allowed to vote in municipal elections, although they would still be barred from running for office.

With the sexes strictly separated in public in the conservative kingdom, the two reports illustrate the slow and fitful nature of the progress made since the octogenarian King Abdullah instigated reforms three years ago.

This year the government appointed its first woman as deputy minister to run a department for female students. But women are still banned from driving and they face many other restrictions. They are required to have compulsory guardianship by a male.

Saudi Arabia's austere brand of Wahhabi Islam forbids the mixing of unrelated members of the opposite sex. In the presence of strange men, women must remain covered.

<span style="font-weight: bold">The problem that has emerged in recent months is that women's gyms are unlicensed and so illegal.</span> Female fitness fans complain of a lack of places to exercise outside the home since they cannot use men's clubs.

The general presidency for sport and youth welfare is responsible for men's gyms but it has not been allowed or prepared to regulate those for women.

Businessman Bader Al-Shibani wanted to open a women's sports club along with the one he runs for men in Jeddah. &quot;I ran into a stone wall at every turn,&quot; he said. &quot;Every department I visited denied that they had the authority to give permission to establish a women's club. In the end, I just abandoned the project.&quot;

Action has already been taken against two women's gyms, in Jeddah and in Dammam, according to al-Madinah newspaper. Clubs in Riyadh have so far been spared.

This month a group of Saudi women launched a campaign entitled Let Her Get Fat, in opposition to a decision to close down all-female wellness centres that are not under the supervision of a government hospital or clinic.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Leading Saudi clerics have condemned the gyms and clubs as &quot;shamelessness&quot; and warned that women would be tempted to leave their homes and neglect their husbands and children</span>.

However, it has been reported that Prince Mansour bin Muteb, deputy minister for municipal and rural affairs, has suggested that Saudi women be allowed to vote.

Only eligible males voted in municipal elections in 2005, which were the kingdom's first countrywide polls since the state was created in 1932.

Last month Prince Nayef, the powerful interior minister and half-brother of King Abdullah, said the kingdom had no need of either women MPs or elections. Shortly afterward he was named second deputy prime minister, boosting his chances for the succession.