"... a pair of local Islamic scholars banned music after consulting their sacred texts; this rule was added to their list of severe prohibitions, which included death for adulterers and the amputation of hands for thieves. In a court, set up in the middle of a battlefield, the two judges explained their sentencing system and told me how many murderers and adulterers they had put to death, after which one of them said, 'We adhere to the Sharia in all cases.' Patting a pile of holy tracts next to him, he added, 'All the answers are here.'... Within a couple years, they controlled most of Afghanistan, and Kabul fell to them in 1996.... Afghan women were all but excluded from public life, with many girls prohibited from attending school; the freedom to work for female teachers, doctors, and nurses was drastically circumscribed. The Taliban zealotry grew so great that children were forbidden to play with dolls or to fly kites, in favor of prayer sessions, while ethnic minorities and members of religious sects other than the extreme Sunni version of Islam that the Taliban espoused were persecuted. In one incident, it is estimated that the Taliban killed at least two thousand ethnic Hazaras, who are Shiite. Public executions became a norm, as well, often of women accused of various moral offenses. The killings were often carried out on sports fields or in stadiums, with the condemned sometimes stoned to death, or summarily shot in the head, or hanged, or, in the case of homosexuals, crushed and suffocated by mud walls toppled onto them by tanks.... The Taliban have rendered Afghanistan unworkable as a country; unworkable, that is, without them. And the truth is that they were never really beaten....."
Writes Jon Lee Anderson in "The Return of the Taliban Their comeback has taken twenty years, but it is a classic example of a successful guerrilla war of attrition" (The New Yorker).
Posts
11 comments:
Taliban means "students"
remember back at the Turn of the Century?
back when students were tearing down statues? and trying to control thought?
as opposed to NOW
when students are tearing down statues? and trying to control thought?
I knew an Iranian woman whose family was well-off enough to get out early. She stressed to me that the revolution that brought the mullahs to power in her country was instigated by educated, liberated, elite youths who believed toppling the Shah and installing socialism and upending social norms would bring more freedom, not less. And so they partnered with the mullahs, who had other plans.
And were catapulted into slavery by the Islamic Mullahs when the Shah was deposed. This woman’s sister bravely returned from America to care for women and adolescent girls, who could only see female doctors. In despair, she set herself on fire in front of the palace of the former Shah, to tell the world about the torture of females under Mullah rule.
Here's an interesting take, arguing that the Afghanistan mission was always doomed to fail.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/12/the-betrayal-of-afghanistan/
Whether driven by religion or by an atheist ideology like communism, totalitarian regimes are frightful to read about, let alone live under. It reminds me that free, open, humane societies are probably not the norm in human history.
Mullahs, Antifa, democraticals with sons named Hunter. All the same crap.
It is a disgrace to us that we are not ready to offer assistance to help those who supported us and the women who will be reduced to slavery emigrate here. Meanwhile any gang banger who can walk across the border with a woman and children gets a bus ride to the interior.
The latest regarding Snopes brings two concepts to mind. First, Gell-Mann Amnesia, the brilliant Crichton construct that reminds us how easily we still believe sources that have proven themselves unreliable. The second is one of my most-relied upon Jury Instructions: Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus. When you KNOW someone has lied to you, simple prudence informs you that you have good reason to distrust what ever else they have to say.
-- Darryl Thomas
If American feminists couldn’t be bothered to work to improve the lot of the Afghani women then why should anyone else? They had two whole decades to try to improve basic living conditions for their sisters, but never lifted a finger.
Meanwhile, in the US, if you forget to use someone's preferred pronouns you are literally a Nazi.
Big Mike. Problem for the feminists was that they had to acknowledge George Bush's efforts gave them the opportunity. What's an honest feminist to do?
I lifted a finger, Big Mike. So did Phyllis Chesler and Feminist Majority Organization. Did you? For my efforts I was followed around town and then home by Iranian secret police, walking stereotypes with $5,000 suits, sunglasses, and black-windowed limousines.
I called my redneck friends who threw full PBR cans at them, dropped their drawers, and threw skateboards at them until they never came back.
But you're right. The mainstream feminists did squat, which is why it fell to me to sponsor the Dissident Iranian Women at the opening ceremonies at the Atlanta Olympic games.
But again, I didn't see you there either.
Gee, didn't Netflix make some movie about this...in fact, when Margaret Atwood still had a sliver of an honest bone in her shriveled body, she once admitted she based Handmaid's Tale on what was being done to women in the Middle East. But since that one slip, she's insisted the bad guys are based on American Christians. A few years later, she called the Hijab "liberating." So did glossy-haired Naomi Wolf, who said the Hijab "set her free" and made her feel as if her sexuality was even more steamy while wearing one because it was private.
If things are private, then why tell us about it in a major magazine?
Once a glossy-haired dolt, always a glossy-haired dolt. I suspect her handlers will consider putting her down if she ever breaks an ankle.
Post a Comment