By Aisha Geissinger
[Crescent International, May 1-15, 2000.]
News from Afghanistan in the ‘international’ media revolves around reported bans on marbles, kite-flying and toilet paper, and the forcible imposition of the beard and burqa. It seems that the vocabulary of the average Talib has shrunk to two words: haram (forbidden) and fardh (obligatory). Reports of draconian restrictions on women take centre stage, because of western audiences’ fascination with what lies ‘behind the veil’. Men responsible for enforcing public decency are said to beat women in the street who show their faces or ankles. Most women are ‘not allowed to work’. They are forbidden to see male doctors, yet there are few female doctors available. Most girls’ schools have been closed, and the only education available is religious instruction for girls who have not reached puberty.
What are we to make of all this? Some Muslims agree with these policies and publicly support the Taliban. Others violently disagree, advocate shaving the beard in order to demonstrate their disagreement, and are willing to appear on television along with secular human rights and feminist groups in order to denounce these policies. But most Muslims maintain an embarrassed silence, taking refuge behind the excuse that "we don’t really know what’s going on there." It might be more honest to say that we don’t want to know what is happening, much less deal with it.
To most Muslims, the Afghans are the heroic people who defeated the former Soviet Union despite overwhelming odds. The subsequent civil war in Afghanistan deeply disappointed most people and has led them to turn their faces from the on-going conflict as much as possible. The majority of Muslims worldwide cherish visions of a just Islamic state emerging somewhere, if not in their own country. This hope sustains many people in the face of what appear to be hopeless odds. To see the dream become a nightmare, and the phrase "Islamic justice" used as a synonym for tyranny, is painful.
Finally, criticism of the Taliban, whether it comes from non-Muslims or Muslims, is often heavily overlaid with prejudices or political interests. Muslims often show their partisan, class, ethnic and madhhabi interests in their criticism, deriding the Taliban as "peasants", "ignorant Pakhtun", or "Wahhabis". Muslim criticisms tell at best a partial tale: who does the ban on toilet paper primarily affect? Pity the poor foreign correspondents who are forced to use a lota (water jug)! If any non-Muslim country banned toilet paper, environmental groups would be applauding it for its ecologically progressive decision.
Western complicity in and responsibility for the Taliban’s excesses is usually ignored; if the economy is based on opium, what can anyone expect after 22 years of war and upheaval, to say nothing of the recent imposition of economic sanctions? These criticisms of the Taliban are clearly a way of attacking Islamic movements in general and ‘proving’ that any attempt to actualise Islam’s socio-political dimensions in this age is doomed to failure—in fact, that nothing could be worse than a society based on Islam. Other Afghan factions have been making political mileage out of such western media attacks, but in the long term all Muslims, in and outside of Afghanistan, will pay a high price for such coverage in years to come. It is being used as a weapon against any Muslim self-assertion anywhere, even of the most peaceable and innocuous sort.
While the media deride the Taliban as ‘mediaeval’, in fact such groups are thoroughly modern and emerge as a result of the unsettled conditions of the modern world. Similar movements can be found in other countries and among many of the world’s religions. American Christians who bomb abortion clinics, Hindus who demolished the Babri Masjid and have their eyes on a number of other masajid throughout India, ultra-orthodox Jews who throw stones at women who walk through their neighbourhoods wearing trousers or short sleeves, all have more in common with the Taliban than they (or the Taliban) realise. All such movements, despite their outward differences, are a reaction to the dramatic social, political and economic changes which have taken place in the last hundred and fifty years. The world is being swamped by lahw (vain pursuits), and much of it is beyond the control of ordinary people. Many Muslims realise that their cultures are in retreat before the advance of the technologically advanced and aggressive ‘global’ secular civilisation.
The modern world focuses primarily on material things. Development is measured by material indicators, not by intangible things such as God-consciousness, brotherhood and sisterhood, or neighbourliness. Taliban-style movements also focus on the material, the tangible aspects of faith—rules and outward behaviour. Unlike beliefs, intentions and feelings, these can be controlled and imposed upon people. Taliban violence against those who break the rules is an application of the modern view that state interference in the lives of individuals is the answer to most social problems. An over-literal focus on individual Qur’anic ayaat and ahadith obscures the larger picture, and makes laws the centre of attention while ethical conduct remains at best optional.
This focus on rules also ignores the prerequisites for establishing an Islamic system in the modern world. Since the 1975 drafting of CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women), the UN and various NGOs have been trying to discourage single-sex education and medical care when possible. Muslims by and large have ignored this, with some communities quibbling over whether and to what degree women should be educated. As a result, there is still a marked shortage of women doctors, nurses, other medical personnel, and educators in most Muslim communities, including Afghanistan.
Some women pursue degrees in medicine or education with the intention of enhancing their marriageability rather than practising after graduation. Others prefer (or are compelled by circumstances) to work in the west. The twisted ideas that a married woman has no responsibility to the ummah as a whole, and that it is shameful if she has concerns beyond her immediate family circle, are also alive and well. In addition, some Muslim women, even those who observe purdah, prefer to be seen by male doctors because they do not have confidence in the competence of women. This is based partly on cultural beliefs in female inferiority, but also on the sad fact that female doctors are often restricted from receiving comparable training to men, and are often are not able to pursue specialisations outside of obstetrics and gynaecology.
In these circumstances, the separation of medical and educational facilities for women and men becomes blatantly unjust. It harms individual women, infants and children, men, the family and the ummah as a whole. It is also profoundly destabilising: people who have the means to leave such a society will do so in search of medical treatment, education and opportunity. Those who stay will tend to be suffocated, and their ability to deal with the challenges posed by the modern world will be decreased.
The Taliban are having to deal with international condemnation and financial arm-twisting by donor countries. As a result, they have to go through the motions of improving their position on women. On March 8, they held a celebration of International Women’s Day in Kabul for 700 hand-picked women, formerly employed as medical workers. The Taliban have forbidden the celebration of Nawruz (the pre-Islamic Persian new year’s day) as a bid’ah (innovation), but apparently International Women’s Day, which commemorates a strike by American female garment workers, is acceptable. This is an indication of their helplessness in the face of western condemnation—because the ‘women’s problem’ won’t go away by casting a veil over it, western solutions are being used as window-dressing. Those Afghans who might have proposed constructive and creative Islamic solutions have been killed or driven into exile.
The situation in Afghanistan cannot continue as it is, and when things fall apart one wonders who will be there to pick up the pieces. Christian and secular aid organisations are eager to build on the disillusionment of Afghans with Islam, and missionaries are actively converting Afghan refugees to Christianity. Twenty years from now, what will be the result of the Taliban experiment? A generation of embittered, violently anti-Islamic ‘intellectuals’, authors and artists? Will anyone dare to walk in the streets of Kabul wearing a beard or a burqa?
The Islamic movement needs to look honestly at the situation in Afghanistan (and places such as northern Iraq and Pakistan, where Taliban-style ideas have following), consider the origins and consequences of such groups, and develop responses which will solve the problems that they create within an Islamic framework. Averting our faces from painful realities is an option we cannot afford, both because it betrays the suffering of many in Afghanistan –men and women–and because of the long-term consequences for the Ummah as a whole.