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T  A  L  I  B  A  N

 TREATMENT OF WOMEN                                       

        The Muslim world, like no other religious region, abounds in controversies.  On the one hand, passion for righteousness burning within every serious Islam follower cannot be compared to that of many other spiritually oriented people.  On the other one, however, that same justice, so gloriously sought by Muslims, emerges as the embodiment of evil in the light of the non-Muslim value system.  The approach to women by the Afghan ex-government Taliban belongs to such controversial issues.  Women in the Muslim world traditionally rarely received the same treatment as they did in the western society.  Men always enjoyed a superior position there.  However, the Afghan female population during the reign of the Taliban experienced especially harsh life.  According to its leaders, the form of life they instructed the women to live was in the exact accordance with the guidelines of Allah.  Nothing they imposed on women, they claimed, stood in contradiction with the Islamic law, Shari’a.  Or did it?  This essay will argue that the Taliban’s determination to control women did not reflect the pious obedience to the Qu’ran.  Theirs was NOT necessarily the proper application of Shari’a.  Instead, the Taliban’s drive to restrain women was the manifestation of the weakened sense of the national religious identity and order.  Their desire to control women, the “reproducers” [1] of that identity, was the reflection of the Taliban’s desperate longing to restore it.  The goal of the essay is to first present the circumstances of the Taliban’s rise to power and their drastic measures in the approach to women.  The paper will then have a brief look at the Islamic law to try to determine whether it might have been truly the source of the Taliban’s worldview.  Finally it will conclude that the factual dynamic behind their extreme treatment of women was the desperate yearning to recover the lost religious identity. 

        To begin this analysis, a brief introduction into the phenomenon of the Taliban movement needs to be undertaken.  In 1979 Afghanistan experienced the Soviet invasion.  The occupation lasted 10 years.  In 1989 Afghanistan became free of the Soviet army; the civil war and internal conflicts, however, persisted.  In 1994, the Taliban army emerged with the goal to bring in order and within few years managed to capture most of the country. [2]

        The word Taliban comes from an Arabic talib, which means ‘seeker’. [3]   Taliban is the plural form and pertains to the groups of students attending various religious schools (madresah) along the Afghan border in Pakistan where they obtained Islamic as well as military training.  Many of them were the young refugees located at the Pakistani camps. [4]   Outraged at the constant fights and corruption happening all over their country, they organized themselves under the leadership of one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar [5] whose religious title was Amir Al-Mu’minin (Leader of the Faithful). [6]   The restoration of order as well as the enforcement of the Islamic law represented the immediate goals of the Taliban movement. [7]   As Omar stated himself, the Taliban emerged “to end the mischief in this country, to establish peace and security, to protect life, wealth and honor and to enforce the sharei’ah, do jihad against the leaders who were devoted to power…” [8]

        Despite their weak administration structure as well as a very unclear decision-making process [9] the Taliban managed to conquer very swiftly most of the country.  Within two years they succeeded in capturing Afghanistan major cities:  Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul. [10]   Mysterious as their rapid growth and victory appear to some, [11] the difficult political situation in the country prior to their arrival justifies greatly their success.  Exhausted with the years of constant fighting, corruption, and disorder, people of Afghanistan welcomed with the hopeful hearts the new movement that promised them peace. [12]   The soldiers of the Taliban, having witnessed the harshness and misery of life at refugee camps, connected with the local Afghan people in the common desire to begin comfortable and calm existence.  Everyone wished for the conflicts to finally end.  Disappointed with the current leaders, the Afghans looked to the Taliban forces that captured their cities with the eyes full of visions of the brighter future.

        Did the Taliban deliver its promises for the better life?  Did women of Afghanistan could finally breathe at ease after years of molestation, rapes and insecure existence?  Anyone even slightly familiar with the situation in Afghanistan will agree the answer is far from yes.  Upon the analysis of the Taliban reign, one cannot help but shed tears at the quality of life that the Afghan people, women in particular, had to endure following the victory of this “salvation army”; life that, as Taliban passionately believed, represented a mere application of guidelines prescribed by God himself.

        Omar and other Taliban leaders, in their drive to restore Shari’a, enforced numerous laws regarding the appropriate behavior in every aspect of life.  In order to assure the people of Afghanistan observed the regulations, they set up a religious police and organized the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and the Elimination of Vice, special unit with “thousands of informers in the army, government ministries and hospitals” who monitored everyone’s activities. [13]

        The decrees the Taliban enforced on both men and women varied.  Most of them represented a very extreme interpretation of the Islamic law.  As the Mohammad Moose declared,

          In the areas under the Taliban government every kind of wickedness and

          immorality, cruelty,…, songs and music, TV, VCR, satellite dish, immodesty,

          …, shaving of-or trimming the beard, pictures and photographs, have all

          been totally banned. [14]

        Capital punishment for manslaughter had to be executed by the member of the criminal’s family. [15]   During sport tournaments, the audience was not allowed to clap.  Instead they were instructed to shout Allah-o-akbar (God is great). [16]   Men were forced to wear turbans, beards, and short hair. [17]   Punishment for theft was amputation of hands and stoning to death for adultery. [18]   Furthermore, it was the Taliban’s goal that all influences of alien lifestyle and value system be entirely abandoned. [19]   No western outfits, entertainment, or hairstyles was ever permitted.  Cinemas were closed, video shops destroyed, kite and chess playing banned, and birds killed.  The popular so far Radio Kabul became new Voice of Radio Shariat. [20]

        Harsh as all the Taliban’s regulations were to the population of Afghanistan, the guidelines concerning women’s proper conduct constituted the most drastic change.  These regulations, perceived by the western society as the sheer violation of basic human rights, represented for the Taliban forces the righteous application of Islamic law.  The Taliban foreign minister Stanakzai said this in defense of the changes:

          We have not introduced this law.  This is the law that was revealed by God to

          Muhammad.  Those who consider the imposition of the law to be against the

          human rights are insulting all Muslims and their beliefs. [21]

        Before the analysis of whether the Taliban’s application of decrees concerning women represented truly the expression of Shari’a, the treatment of the female population of Afghanistan under their reign must be presented.

        In their attempt to control women, the Taliban desperately wished to return to the Islamic purity and cleanse the country of the corruption it experienced during various events after 1960s:  Daoud’s reforms, the PDPA coup, the long Soviet occupation, as well as of the western influences. [22]   Stylish clothing, make up, high heels, and any other form of decoration were entirely prohibited. [23]   The most harsh policies referred to women’ education and employment.  All females were sent home and not allowed to work except for, in limited ways, in certain sectors in the health department. [24]   As a result, many schools had to be shut given the large number of teachers were women. [25]   A significant segment of government administration broke down under the absence of female workers that constituted 25% of the whole staff. [26]   Disregarding women’ ambition to work, the Taliban’s interpretation of Shari’a stated that the only proper location for Muslim women was home where they could devote themselves entirely to raising the new generation of Muslims in purity and seclusion.  “It is a matter of pride for all Afghanistan that we have kept our women at home…The Shari’a has described everyone’s way of conduct…The fact is that no other country has given women the rights we have given them,… that is to say…the rights to stay in their homes and to gain religious instruction in hejab” (seclusion), [27] declared the Taliban governor.

        The Taliban guidelines regarding women’ education did not differ.  All schooling was entirely banned.   Vocational programs for younger girls shut down as well. [28]   Some leaders mentioned that education for girls would be reopened at a later time on the arrangement of gender specific facilities and new curriculum. [29]   Generally, however, the education institution represented to them a “tool to impart particular ideologies” [30] and they wished to keep their women away from any external influences.

        A little time that the Taliban permitted the women to walk outside of their homes, they still had to abide by extremely strict dress codes.  The government enforced wearing burquas, specially designed outfits covering the whole body including the face, [31] the cost of which additionally burdened the deteriorating already life economy.  The reason for such extreme measures was to separate women totally from the society so they could observe hejab (seclusion) in purity, [32] as well as to keep their “lure” away from men.  Among other rules was the prohibition of driving in the same car with foreigners or sitting next to the driver. [33]   Finally, by no means lastly, they were instructed not to get involved with any foreign aid agency. [34]

        The punishments that women had to suffer for breaking even slightly any of the Taliban’s new regulation were severe.  In 1996, the Taliban owned Radio announced that 225 women were sentenced to beating for dress code violations.  The also continued to die after being stoned to death. [35]

        Learning of instances of such extreme actions taken by the Taliban to return Afghanistan to the Islamic purity, one cannot help but wonder how many of these so-called sacred decrees Shari’a actually commands.  In view of the fact that so many other Muslim ideologies throughout the ages lowered somewhat the position of women in relation to men and shunned away from external influences, one starts to ponder that maybe the Taliban’s claim that it is Shari’a that speaks through them is indeed justifiable?  Quite a number of Muslim thinkers called for the return to the purity of the Qu’ran and the need to recover from “westoxication.” [36]   The Muslim Brotherhood, Maududi, as well as Qutb advocated strongly for the Shari’a as the sole source of all the laws [37] and none of them seemed particularly lenient toward the concept of women enjoying higher status.  The Wahhabi movement, in their puritanical approach to life, [38] might further point to some inherent in the Qu’ran strict regulations regarding the proper female behaviour.  And what about the Saudi Arabia’s harsh treatment of women, or Iran’s tradition of stoning them to death; both countries claiming to follow Shari’a? [39]   Could they all be possibly wrong?  Or is there something in Shari’a itself that justifies harsh treatment of women?

                This last part of the essay will argue that it is not Shari’a that dictated the extreme control the Taliban exterted over women.  Upon the study of the Qu’ran one discovers that some suras might indeed indicate the inferiority of women (2-282, 4-11).  However, as the Orr-Ewings point out, nowhere does the Qu’ran prohibit women’ employment or education. [40]   Furthermore, various verses indicate that, with the exception of physical strength and possessions, the female and males are to be equal. [41]   Seclusion of the women, Amin further explains, pertained solely to the Prophet’s wives and in no way should be required of other Muslim women. [42]   In regards to the issue of covering the women’ faces, the Qu’ran does not command to wear the veil by force.  It does give indications to it (33:59) but nowhere in the Qu’ran is the veil specifically enforced. [43]   Sura 24:30 belongs to the famous Qu’ran passages numerously interpreted as the command to wear the veil.  However, as Mutahhari translates, the instruction for women here is to ‘cast down’ their look, as in ‘be modest’ and not by any means ‘cover your look’. [44]   The Taliban’s robbery of women’ freedoms was the extreme interpretation of Islamic instructions on modesty.  “Nothing in the laws of Islam or in its intentions can account for the low status of Muslim women”, [45] affirms Amin.  Nu’mani further advices that all the reports and traditions “that threaten severe punishment for a minor fault” should be discredited. [46]   The Qu’ran reads, after all: 

          Allah desireth for you ease; He desires not hardship for you.

and

          He…hath not laid upon you in religion any hardship. [47]

        Consciously and, in a way, innocently (because truly and passionately) the Taliban regarded their decisions to represent obedience to the Qu’ran. Unconsciously, however, they tightened the grip on their women out of the growing sense of loss of the beloved religious purity.  As Marsden rightly noted, “countries affected by chronic civil conflict” often produce extreme puritanical movements. [48]   Years of political and social disarray, Soviet interference, and never-ending struggles for power left everyone in Afghanistan hungry for peace.  The Taliban cannot be blamed for desiring to regain the lost connection with their national religious identity as Muslims.  Afghanistan never had religious leaders; [49] this was the Taliban’s chance to try to bring back some of the true Afghan Muslim values. 

        Their extreme treatment of women reflected the level of mistrust and fear they had about the country falling back into the ‘corrupt’ state again.  The Taliban rulers admitted themselves that shari’a does not enforce the veil.  They added, however, the urgency of the situation demanded it.

          Sharia allows women to have their faces unveiled as long as there is no sign of

          agitation or lust on their faces.  However we are in an emergency situation… [50]

        The similar situation concerned young girls.  The Islamic Law states girls turn adults at the age of 14.  Taliban, on the other hand, decided girls cease to be children at 7, after which separation between sexes must begin. [51] From only these two instances it appears that the Taliban’s drastic measures to limit the outside influence on women resulted from their desperate strive to maintain their “purity”.  Women devoted to raising the young generation of Muslims at homes had the power to impart on them either pure ideology of Islam or corrupt ideas of the western civilization.  Hence, it was important to assure that women, shapers of future Afghan Muslims’ minds, lived in the complete purity themselves.  The Taliban did not trust the strength of the Islamic values after long period of being exposed to criminal acts, occupants’ ideologies, and the complete disorder.  They did not rule through fear but rather out of fear. [52]   The tightened grip on women as molders of the future generation reflected the Taliban’s anxiety that the chance to restore the lost Islamic identity would slip from their country away again.  Women represented the future Afghanistan; precious hope that the Afghanistan would become whole again in its Islamic purity.  The Taliban leaders could not take chances allowing women to “roam astray”.

        The status of women always reflects the status of the nation, observed Amin. [53]   In the case of Afghanistan under the reign of the Taliban, this certainly seems to be true.  Years of destruction, suffering, and wars left the country with the broken sense of national identity.  Disorder and insecurity of the next day saturated the entire existence of the Afghan population.  The Taliban forces with their promises to bring in peace ignited a spark of hope in the minds and hearts of people tired with misery.  However, little did they know what lied ahead.  Their situation did not in any way improve.  Women in particular suffered tremendously as a result of the Taliban’s drastic regulation.  They were prohibited from working or obtaining any form of education.  They had to conform to very strict dress codes and remain at homes.  The Taliban leaders were clear that it was Shari’a they abided by when implementing the rules.  Upon the analysis of the Islamic law, however, it remains doubtful that the Qu’ran truly commands such extreme living guidelines.  Nothing in this holy book seems to imply women should be exposed to beating or stoning.  Nevertheless, the Taliban did not hesitate to resort to such measures.  It was not Shari’a that demanded it.  Rather, it was the Taliban’s frantic anxiety to raise the future generation of Muslims in Islamic purity.  The years of conflicts deprived the country a strong sense of identity.  According to the Qu’ran, women are the family bearers.  As such, they have the power to shape the minds of the young Muslims and restore the lost religious values.  In order for this to happen, they had to be kept pure themselves.  The Taliban’s only desire was to see Afghanistan as a pure Islamic land.  Women represented the avenue to achieve this.  They held the key to the future.  They had to be kept pure.  It did not matter at what cost.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Edwards, D. B., Before Taliban; Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002

Gohari, M. J., The Taliban; Ascent to Power, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000

Griffin, M., Reaping the Whirlwind; The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, Pluto Press, London, 2001

Marsden, P., The Taliban: War, religion and the new order in Afghanistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1998

Matinuddin, K., The Taliban Phenomenon; Afghanistan 1994-1997, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999

Ed. by Moaddel, M. and Talattof, K., Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam; A Reader, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2000

Nojumi, N., The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; Mass Mobilization, Civil War, and The Future of the Region, Palgrave, New York, 2002

Orr-Ewing, F. and A., Holy Warriors; A Fresh Look at the Face of Extreme Islam, Authentic Lifestyle, Carlisle, 2002

Rashis, A., Taliban; Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Yale  Nota Bene, New Haven, 2000

Fukamachi, H. and Oda, H., ‘Crisis of Statehood? Afghanistan and Pakistan’ in

          IDE Spot Survey, IDE-JETRO, Chiba, 2002

ALSO CONSULTED:

Brentjes, B. and Brentjes, H., Taliban; A Shadow over Afghanistan, Rishi

          Publications, Varanasi, 2000

Maley, W. and Saikal, F. H., Political Order in Post-Communist Afghanistan, Lynne

          Rienner Publishers, Boulder & London, 1992

THE FOLLOWING TALIBAN SUMMARY WAS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED TO BE ACCOMPANIED WITH THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION

 TALIBAN
TREATMENT OF WOMEN

GOALS:

 * to present the Taliban movement and their approach to women

*  To argue that:

            The Taliban’s drive to restrain women was NOT the proper application of Shar’ia but the manifestation of the weakened sense of national religious identity. Their desire to control women, the “reproducers” of that identity, was the reflection of the Taliban’s desperate strive to restore it.

TALIBAN’S RISE TO POWER

•   1978-Socialist Revolution

•   1979- Soviet occupation begins

•   1989- Soviets withdraw

•   1991-Soviet Union disintegrates

•      1992-anti-Soviet Mujahideen guerillas enter Kabul

•      Jan 1994-civil war intensifies

•      Late 1994-the Taliban emerge

•      1996-the Taliban capture Kabul

Kabul-capital of Afghanistan

TALIBAN-WHO ARE THEY?

•    Talib-religious seeker

•    Students attending religious schools (madresah) along the Pakistani border

•    Refugees seeking peace

•    Leader-Mullah Mohammed Omar-”Amir Al-Mu’minin”(Leader of the Faithful)

 TALIBAN’S GOALS:

•      Restoration of order and peace

•      Enforcement of Islamic Law

“…To end the mischief in this country, to establish peace and security, to protect life, wealth and honor and to enforce the Share’iah, do jihad against the leaders who were devoted to power.”  Mullah Mohammed Omar                       

TALIBAN’S SUCCESS-WHY?

* The Afghanistan people exhausted
* Invisibility of the leader
  *No parties-unity
    * Common goal

The TALIBAN REIGN

 *Religious police-General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Elimination of Vice

 *Capital and other extreme punishments

 *Strict dress code   

 *“De-westernization”

 *Radio Kabul transformed into Voice of Radio Shar’ia

 *No pets allowed, birds killed

 *Ban on all forms of entertainment

In the areas under the Taliban government every kind of wickedness and immorality, cruelty, songs and music, TV, VCR, Satellite dish, immodesty, shaving or trimming the beard, pictures and photographs, have all been totally banned.

No one can commit theft or crimes.  We have not introduced this law.  This is the law that was revealed by God to Muhammad.  Those who consider the imposition of this law to be against human rights are insulting all Muslims and their beliefs.            

                                                                                             Taliban Foreign Minister

The TALIBAN LAWS RELATING TO WOMEN

•    No decoration

•    Ban on employment and education-places of external influence

•    Very strict dress code-burqas

•    Restraints of movement and transportation

•    Ban on outside contact with men and foreign aid agencies

•    Severe punishment-beating and stoning

?

    There no longer exists any cruelty, oppression, savagery, or selfishness in the framework of the Islamic Government.  Instead, there is legality and fulfillment of the lofty Shari’a of Muhammed, both in words and action.                    

                                                    Taliban Minister of Information and Culture

TALIBAN REGIME-
What do others think?

•   OTHER GROUPS:

 - Maududi, Qu’tb, Libyan leaders, Muslim Brotherhood-not in favour or raising women status

 -Wahhabi Movement-strong puritanism, women inferior

 -Saudi Arabia, Iran-severe inferiority of women

                  ALL CLAIM TO BE BASED ON SHAR’IA

BRIEF LOOK AT THE QU’RAN

   SHAR’IA DOES NOT DICTATE EXTREME TREATMENT OF WOMEN

-it does not prohibit women education and employment

-physical strength and wealth excluded, women and men are to be equal (228-36)

-seclusion of women pertained to Prophet’s wives (XXXIII, 32)

-no enforcement of veils (modesty instruction only) (24:30)

-inferiority of women common before Islam

Nothing in the laws of Islam or in its intentions can account for the low status of women.
                                                      Qasim Amin

 All reports and traditions that threaten severe punishment for a minor fault should be discredited.
                                                   Nu’mani

Allah…desireth for you ease; He desires not hardship for you.
                                             (11, 185)

He…hath not laid upon you in religion any hardship.
                                          (XXXII, 78)

SHARI’A or FEAR?

•   Lost sense of identity-years of struggles

•   Never before had a religious leadership-chance to restore Islamic purity

•   Fear of falling back into corrupt state

•   Taliban admitted Shar’ia not that drastic-”the emergency situation”demanded it

•   Necessity to keep women in purity as they are the bearers of future Muslims 

 *  Not through fear but out of fear

•   Women-their desperate chance to assure the future of pure Muslim Afghanistan.