Afghanistan And Sri Lanka: Whither Liberative Islam?

A world without women may be a good title for a socio-fiction movie or book. But under Taliban rulers, Afghanistan has become a country without women. You may ask where all the women have gone. They are there, but they are virtually dead.

- Ameen Izzadeen

With no representation in the interim government which the Taliban, in their preludes to the government formation, had advertised as an inclusive government, the Afghan woman has come virtually under the writ of men who decide on her behalf as to what job she could do, what dress she should wear and what courses she could follow in universities. In this male chauvinistic milieu, the women are stripped of empowerment and their views count nothing. It comes as no surprise, given the pre-modern patriarchic nature of Afghan society, within which even Islam has been transformed into a patriarchal force.

In recent weeks in the capital, Kabul, there have been protests by women against Taliban decrees with regard to matters concerning women. Shots were fired in the air and participants were baton-charged by the Taliban. The women took to social media to express their anger, for the waiting mainstream western media to turn their tweets and posts into trending stories. This week, in a mark of protest against the Taliban’s imposition of a full-body-covering dress code on women, Afghan women living in Western capitals posted on social media pictures of themselves in colourful traditional attires.

But again, theirs is a minority viewpoint. Stripped of their identity, most Afghan women, it appears, have in a submissive manner resigned to their fate that they have no option but to follow the dictates of men. There is little space in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan for women to claim their rights as guaranteed by Islam.

Enlightened Islamic scholars would say what is happening in Afghanistan is far from the liberative Islam which the Prophet Muhammad preached with the aim of breaking the shackles of socio-economic injustices. Education is seen in Islam as a path to empowerment for both men and women.