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Archive for the Afghanistan Category

It’s the Sharia, Stupid!

By Asma Marwan on May 28, 2013

A proposed law to protect Afghan women and girls from abuses such as child marriage, bride barter and spousal abuse has created a furor in the past week, exposing a generational and religious struggle that persists in this traditional Muslim society despite a decade of Western-backed democracy and a constitution that enshrines women’s rights.

The drama erupted when a female legislator brought the bill before parliament May 16 and a group of conservative male lawmakers vehemently objected, saying it was contrary to Islam and Afghan culture. The backlash grew this past week, with protests at Kabul University by students of Islamic law, and some women activists now say it was a fatal mistake to bring the sensitive issue to parliament’s attention.

Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Afghan women have made substantial gains in access to jobs, education and public life. But the position of girls and women in family life has remained weak and subservient, and they are vulnerable to abuse. Now, with NATO forces preparing to withdraw in 2014 and Taliban influence on the rise, there are growing concerns that the gains could be reversed.

Read the rest: Fight to Protect Afghan Women Meets Sharia Backlash

This WaPo article doesn’t mention the reason that the oppression must continue whereas the Chicago Tribune and onislam.net news does.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Sharia.

Majorities in Iraq and Afghanistan Agree Women Should Be Killed for Adultery

By Asma Marwan on May 7, 2013

As the U.S. military winds down more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, there are growing concerns about what will happen to the fragile progress of women’s rights in those countries.

Those fears are underscored by the findings of a new Pew Survey of the social and political attitudes of Muslims worldwide. According to the report, of the 23 countries surveyed, Iraq and Afghanistan are the only two countries where majorities of Muslims surveyed said that honor killings of women are justified as punishment for alleged pre- or extra-marital sex.

Interestingly, Pew also found that, across the countries surveyed, attitudes toward honor killings were not consistently linked to religious observance; Muslims who pray several times a day are just as likely to oppose honor killings as those who do not.

Together, those findings indicate a pervasive disregard for women’s rights in both countries — one that is only likely to get worse as the U.S. troop presence and related human rights work diminishes.

The report also found that, as in many of the countries surveyed, support for making Islamic sharia the official “law of the land” is overwhelming among Muslims in Afghanistan (99 percent) and Iraq (91 percent).

Read more here.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Honor Killing, Iraq.

Afghan Schoolgirls Poisoned by Taliban

By Asma Marwan on May 7, 2013

The girls became ill after smelling gas at their school, Bibi Maryam, in Takhar province’s capital, Taluqan. Many of the children remained in a critical condition in hospital last night.

The Ministry of Public Health is investigating and samples of the victims’ blood have been sent for testing.

Sulaiman Moradi, Takhar governor’s spokesman, said the attack was to try to prevent girls from going to school. He said ‘enemies of the government and the country’ were to blame for the mass illness.

There have been numerous substantiated cases of mass poisonings of schoolgirls in Afghanistan by ultra-conservatives who oppose giving women access to education.

The girls in Takhar, about 155 miles north of Kabul, were taken to a provincial hospital.

Most were released after being treated but Dr Jamil Frotan, head of the hospital, said several victims remained in a critical condition yesterday.

Read the rest: Afghan Girls Poisoned by Taliban.

RAWA is an Afghan women’s group fighting for rights and freedom that we women in the west take for granted. For awhile, the plight of these women was the cause d’jour of the rad feminist groups but many opted out when the western nations went to war in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.

It is sad but true, Afghan women will never stand a chance of gaining any basic human rights until the jackboot of Islam is taken off their necks.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Education. | 1 Comment

Muslim Rapist Appeal of “Cultural Differences” Rejected

By Asma Marwan on May 5, 2013

An Afghan man who fled from the Taliban to begin a new life in Australia will spend the next 14 years behind bars after a judge rejected his claim that cultural differences had led to him raping a woman.

Esmatullah Sharifi, 30, was told by Judge Mark Dean in Melbourne that his background as a traumatised Muslim refugee was no excuse for the rape of a drunken and vulnerable teenager.

The judge noted that a psychologist had told the Victoria County Court in Melbourne that Sharifi, who arrived in Australia in 2001, had an ‘unclear concept of what constitutes consent in sexual relationships’.

Rejecting that argument, the judge said Sharifi’s background and flight from the Taliban was not an excuse for violence, telling the Afghan: ‘You well knew the victim was not consenting to the act of sexual penetration you performed.’

It was not the first time that Sharifi had appeared in court on a rape charge – in 2009 he was jailed for a minimum of seven years for the abduction and sexual assault of a woman on Christmas Eve, 2008 – five days after he had raped the teenager.

Read the rest: Afghan rapist appeal of cultural differences rejected.

How many times does this have to happen before Kafir girls and women understand that they are “fair game” for rape in those places that have not submitted to Islam called Dar al Harb, the “house” or territory of war?

The cultural differences are in the doctrine of Islam, its gender apartheid and specific instructions on rape as a tactic of jihad.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Australia, Rape and Abuse.

Abused Muslim Wife Survives Attempted Honor Killing

By Asma Marwan on April 8, 2013

It’s cold and raining in Kabul and the pothole-filled dirt roads have turned into a sea of mud. We drive up to the gateway of a high-walled compound. A soldier brandishing an AK-47 stands guard outside the building. We’ve come to a women’s shelter to meet Gul Meena — a 17-year-old girl from Pakistan who shouldn’t be alive.

My crew and I are ushered into a room and sitting on a wooden chair slouched over is small, fragile Gul Meena. Her sullen eyes turn from the raindrops streaming down the window outside and towards us as we enter the room.

Gul’s bright coloured headscarf is embroidered with blue, red and green flowers and covers most of her face. She nervously plays with it and gives us a glimpse of a frightened smile from underneath the fabric. Her guardian Anisa, from the shelter run by Women for Afghan Women, touches her head and gently moves the headscarf back. That’s when we see the scars etched deeply into her face.

This Pakistani girl’s life of misery and suffering began at the tender age of 12, when instead of going to school she was married to a man old enough to be her grandfather. She says: “My family married me off when I was 12 years old. My husband was 60. Every day he would beat me. I would cry and beg him stop. But he just kept on beating me.”

When Gul told her family what was happening, they responded in a way that shocked her. “My family would hit me when I complained. They told me you belong in your husband’s house — that is your life.”

Read the rest: Afghan Girl Survives Attempted Honor Killing.

And go here for more information about Islamic rape doctrine.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Honor Killing, Honor Violence.

Rape or Only “Cultural Differences”?

By Asma Marwan on April 8, 2013

Bit by bit, Western nations are adopting Muslim legal standards on blasphemy and on the treatment of women.

The excuses are manifold. Racism, cultural differences, Islamophobia, relativism… but it all ends the same way, with Western writers, artists and thinkers being censored and Western women being subject to Taliban treatment.

Read the rest of Daniel Greenfield’s excellent article about an Afghan Muslim who raped a woman in Australia.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Australia, Rape and Abuse.

Afghan Men Won’t End Violence Against Women – It’s Allah’s Law

By Asma Marwan on March 17, 2013

A draft law that would end violence against women is being debated in the Afghan Parliament. But it is finding little support among MPs, who feel that it violates traditional values.

It has been three years since Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a decree to end violence against women. The draft law, which is supposed to allow women more freedom and protect them from violence, has yet to be adopted in parliament. But courts can use it as a basis for their work.

Opponents of the decree say it contradicts Sharia – the moral code and religious law of Islam. Most of the proponents, however, are among the 68 women in parliament, for whom a quarter of the seats are reserved. They are trying to reconcile a modern interpretation of Islam with the law.

Read the rest: Afghan MP’s Think Law Protecting Women Violates Islamic Law.

Over and over again in Islamic countries, women try and fail to end the oppression and violence against them. But they can never succeed for the oppression and violence is sacred law, ordained by their god. It is so sad.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Countries, Violence Against Women. | 3 Comments

Teenaged Girl Beheaded for Turning Down Marriage Proposal

By Asma Marwan on December 1, 2012

A teenage girl was beheaded by a relative in northern Afghanistan after she turned down his marriage proposals, according to reports.

The victim, named as Gisa, was decapitated with a knife in the Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province on Tuesday, local police said. She is believed to be around 15-years-old.

A police spokesman said two men, named as Sadeq and Massoud, had been arrested following the teenage girl’s murder.

The two men are understood to be close relatives of the victim that live in the same village.

Local police sources have said the men behind the attack wanted to marry the girl, but their advances had been turned down by victim’s father.

Gisa is understood to have been attacked as she returned to her home in Kulkul village after going out to collect water from a nearby well.

Her father told a local news agency he had not wanted his daughter to get married because she was too young.

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime – notorious for its oppression of women in the country – was ousted in 2001, but extreme violence against women is still rife.

Read more: Afghan Girl Beheaded for Refusing Marriage Proposal

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Child Marriage, Honor Violence.

Australian Journalist Says Feminists Betray Islamic Women

By Asma Marwan on November 18, 2012

Afghan girl Mah Gul was beheaded on the instruction of family because she rejected prostitution. Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was shot in the head by Pakistani Taliban gunmen in the Swat Valley because she campaigned for women’s secular education. Absence of outrage by Muslim leaders is shameful, but why are so many Western feminists silent?

In Swat, the Pakistani Taliban systematically restricted girls’ education. During 2008, they destroyed about 150 private schools and converted others into madrassas, or religious seminaries. Government schools were closed down, teachers murdered, acid was thrown on to the faces of schoolgirls and several officials were beheaded.

A local Islamist leader explained: “Female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society.”

The attack on Malala and two companions on a school bus has shocked Pakistan, especially in view of the bloody war in Swat fought by the army in 2009 to unseat the Taliban and enforce national law. In Pakistan, more than half the adult population is illiterate and in rural Sindh and Balochistan, female literacy rates are less than 2 percent. “Honor killings,” bartering of women for land and animals, domestic violence and rape are endemic.

Many intellectual feminists value cultural practice, but as Afghan women’s rights activist Sima Samar asserted, this respect does not apply to traditions that oppress women and violate human rights. Some feminists have joined an unholy alliance with political Islam, disregarding the oppression of women and homosexuals in favor of overarching aims to rid the world of colonialism, neo-colonialism and capitalism.

[ . . . ]

Pressing for basic women’s rights in Pakistan and Afghanistan is part of a regional challenge and should be a priority for Western feminists. Instead, many tolerate sexist violence in the area and subjugation of women through customary law and religious legislation mandated by the state. While they continue to ignore Islamist misogyny, feminists are dallying while their Muslim sisters burn.

Read more of this excellent article: Feminists Betray Islamic Women.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Pakistan, Western Feminism.

Afghan Man Kills His Wife To Prevent Her from Taking a Job

By Asma Marwan on October 27, 2012

A man in a western Afghan city has confessed to stabbing his wife to death to prevent her from taking a job outside the home, police said Monday.

Mohammad Anwar, who was arrested in the provincial capital for the murder, said he killed his wife during an argument over whether she should work at private company in the city, Herat province police spokesman Noor Khan Nekzad said.

The woman’s relatives disputed the account, saying her husband was a drug addict who killed his wife because she refused to give him money.

The killing comes less than two weeks after a woman was beheaded in the same city for refusing alleged demands by her in-laws to engage in prostitution.

Read the rest: Afghan Man Kills His Wife For Wanting Job.

This entry is filed under Afghanistan, Honor Killing.

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