Women's Rights Under The Taliban Essay

In the cities most women wear a burqa that completely covers them. The fact that girls live with their husband’s extended family often results in them being treated like servants or slaves, compounding their isolation.

She started to talk to assemblies, than to journalists, giving interviews on TV, then a journalist followed her in her everyday life and made a documentary of it. She gave as many interviews that she could and even wrote under the name of Gul Makai in the journal about the life of a young girl under Taliban regime. More and more people started to notice her, her diary and listen to what she had to say, which draw attention on her. Talibans shot her in the head and she was remove to England. Where she met many powerful people to listen to her, like the president of the United States, she spoke at the United Nations and got the Nobel prize for peace. she wrote a book and started a foundation to help people around the world, have better access

Being born and raised in America, I and many other Americans have been taught that we live in a country of freedom. Women and men are treated equally; every human being has rights, and you have the freedom to move at will and without restrictions. Women have come a long way in our country, gaining rights ever since the dawn of patriarchy and proving that they are just as good as men with the ability to think, speak, and act for themselves. However, discrimination of women still exists in America and many other countries, but women are taking a stand and trying to eliminate the inequality between genders, such as the difference in salaries, and the bad representation of and portrayal of women in the media.

In Afghanistan, Women’s rights were very denied and completely dismissed. Women were treated horribly. They were beaten, abused verbally, and even killed. Under the rule of the Taliban, women were better off staying in the safety of their own homes.

“I am woman hear me roar”! A song written by Helen Reddy in 1972 is not often a phrase chanted by Afghan women. The plight of the women of Afghanistan to obtain rights began early in history and continues today. Religion and culture have affected Afghanistan throughout time. Today in Afghanistan, ninety-nine percent are Muslims ("Religion in Afghanistan - Islam”). Muslim is the term used to define a person that participates in the act of obedience, acceptance, or surrender. Therefore a “Muslim is a person who submits to the will of God, or a follower of Islam” (Manisha) and can be seen in their lifestyle and choice of dress, the burqa which is outerwear that covers the entire body, except the eyes and hands, in addition to their religious

The Civil War split the nation in half. It tore apart families, and Union soldiers against Confederate soldiers for four miserable years. From the first shots fired at Fort Sumter 1861, and ending with a unanimous Confederate victory in 1865. All in all 630,000 people died and many thousands wounded. The deaths in the Civil War totally surpassed the death totals from any other war (1). For those managed to survive the up hill battle just began, they faced many unknowns in a world moving in an uncertain direction. With the north beating the succeeded south in the war, politicians faced a hard task of reuniting the divided country. With reconstruction now in affect, both northern workers, and southern farmers now face many new obstacles and

“Life is full of unhappiness and most of it caused by women (Harik and Marston 11)”. For women in the Middle East life is faced with great and unequal odds, as their human rights are limited, due to Islamic beliefs and that of patriarchy. From their daily actions at home to their physical appearance, Middle Eastern women are portrayed as quiet, faceless women veiled from head to toe. While this image is just another stereotype, women in the middle do face many obstacles and challenges of creating their own identity as they are frequently denied a voice in their rights. Living in a society dominated by men life is not, but regardless women in the Middle East, predominantly Muslims, continue to fight for

From April 12, 1861, to May 9, 1865, the United States had one of its bloodiest conflicts that it was ever involved in. The Civil War was a war between the North and the South of the United States. During this war, there were around 620,000 men that were killed. This war ended after Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered his troops. At this point the fighting had ceased, however, the tensions between the North and the South were still present. There were still disagreements on the rights of the now freed blacks.

In Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s, “The Rights of Women”, she introduces the idea of how developed countries, like England, believe that both men and women receive equal treatment, yet it’s evident that this is not true. Thinking back to any point in time one can come up with a multitude of ways women’s rights differ from men’s. For instance, in many cultures women exist only as the child bearers, homemakers, and wives/servants of their husbands, nothing more. Why? Because many men rationalize their ideas about women by enlisting physical and mental explanations as to why women are less superior than men. The idea that men hold more intelligence and strength, while women assert a more passive and caring nature, accounts for much of this inequality. Khan paints a picture of this inequality proclaiming, “A women is like the left hand and a man the right hand.” Essentially, women are less valuable than men, they are only to do simple tasks and help the man with the things he cannot find the time to do. This, in turn, creates a hierarchy of sex with men always inhabiting the top rung of the hierarchy ladder.

     A lot of attention has been drawn to the plight of women in Afghanistan. Many people understand what has been going on with the treatment of women in Afghanistan but very few understand. There should be more understanding of how women were treated before, during, and after the Taliban regime.

In an age when mankind has the ability to completely annihilate itself through nuclear combat, war can be a more terrifying and powerful thought than ever before. Unfortunately, because of the extent of the actions that the Taliban has committed against both America and its own followers, the United States’ war against terrorism seems to be a necessity. I do feel, however, as if there are many things that can be done by the American government in the near future to peacefully approach a more civil and politically involved Afghanistan. Although my feelings on a war against terrorism are mixed, I do feel that significant actions must be taken in order to restrict the spread of

The Taliban became responsible for punishing those who committed crimes by killing the criminals. These acts started a small fear in the Afghanistan people. Soon, the Taliban group became a well armed and well funded militia with the support of a province in Pakistan. As soon as fear stirred among the Afghani people, the president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, tried to create an alliance against the Taliban in Kabul, the capitol. This alliance fell through, and the president eventually fled Afghanistan. In December of 1995, the Taliban took hold of Afghanistan as a result.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” It means that without equality, there is no real end to a conflict. Equality is one of the many human rights every person is entitled to. It is never acceptable to deny people their basic human rights; however, this has occurred frequently throughout history. A wide variety of groups have been discriminated against through violations of human rights, but women have faced this hardship the most. Times have changed, and many women now possess their deserved human rights, but others are less fortunate. In the book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, human rights violations

“Feminism isn’t about making women strong. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength” (G.D. Anderson).

Although Western feminism started in the 1900s, yet, it didn’t reach the Islamic world until most recently, a couple of hundred years later than the West. Despite the fact that both of the feminism movements come from totally different back grounds, and they are affected by different history and culture, still, both of them aimed for women’s best interests. Muslim women were profoundly feeling aggrieved by the discrimination they have against them. They stereotypical reputation about them in the West, and their presentation in the Western media didn’t help either. They started and supported a new fight to regain themselves the equal status they were granted by Islam centuries ago. Muslim women didn’t like to be looked at as being backward and oppressed by men in a male-dominant world. According to the feminist historian Margot Badran, “Islamic feminism is a feminist discourse and practice articulated within an Islamic paradigm. Islamic feminism, which derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur 'an, seeks rights and justice for women, and for men, in the totality of their existence.” (Badran, 2001)