WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, UCADI @188 - What's new - With Afghan women (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On August 22, the Taliban in the Government of Afghanistan promulgated a

law prepared by the ministry for "the propagation of virtue and the
prevention of vice" of 35 articles that is mainly aimed at further
limiting women's rights, their ability to express themselves, their
actions in public. The new law is clearly inspired by the ISIS-Khorasan
faction, although the precepts it contains were already in force in the
country and with the text they were only formally defined. In doing so,
they are failing to comply with the commitments that the Taliban had
made in the Doha negotiations during which they had negotiated with the
United States the withdrawal of Westerners from the country and
reiterated after the capture of Kabul, when they had declared that their
government would not put women's rights at risk. It took only a few
months to demonstrate that it was a merely formal commitment, there
being no instrument in the agreement that would allow them to commit to
respecting what was established.
The stated purpose of the measure is to ensure that Afghan society
adheres to the moral and religious principles established by the
Taliban, Isis-Khorasan version of their vision of society and
relationships between people of different sexes. It dictates rules
relating to some public behaviors, including those of men. The approval
of the law was preceded by the closure of schools for women who were
expelled from the entire school system, while at the same time providing
for the dismissal of women engaged in any activity in contact with the
public and the closure of all those businesses, including commercial
ones, managed by women even if they are aimed at providing services to
the same women. Among the most significant provisions of the new measure
is the one that requires women to cover their bodies and faces when they
are in public and limits the possibility of leaving the house only to
cases of necessity. Furthermore, women cannot wear tight or short
clothes, nor can they sing, recite or read aloud in public. The
restrictions also extend to their freedom of movement, as they cannot
travel without being accompanied by a male relative and cannot meet men
to whom they are not related. The law also prohibits the production and
distribution of images of living beings on electronic devices, listening
to music and the use of musical instruments and therefore any form of art.
Some of these restrictions also extend to men who are required to wear
trousers that cover their knees, maintain a medium or long beard, and
wear traditional clothing.
The law then deals with so-called relationships, prohibiting homosexual
ones, condemning adultery, sanctioning betting and gambling, and the use
of drugs. It is also prohibited to organize or take part in animal
fights and above all to establish friendly relations with non-Muslims.
The measures adopted reflect an extremely conservative and bigoted
vision of society: the aim is to rigorously control individual and
collective behavior, conforming it to an extremely closed vision of
social and human relationships, which reproduces the narrow and
homophobic world of the most conservative masses and is based on the
cultural models of the Pashtuns. The Afghan Mullahs are obsessed not
only with Western culture and its values, but they also look with
extreme concern at the ever-increasing emancipation of women in
neighboring Iran, where the female component of the population has
become the engine of political and social change. Fearing contagion,
they have established a ferocious regime of repression that has the task
of eradicating the spread of these values and any contamination. In this
strategic plan, the reported suppression of schooling for women is of
extreme importance, which is total and aims to leave them in the most
absolute ignorance, so much so that clandestine educational activities
are organized by women clandestinely, in an attempt to resist, with
obvious dangers for their safety, because these activities are repressed
in the most brutal way. In the face of what is happening, the concerns
about these new restrictions expressed by the international community
are useless since there is no doubt that this is such a radical retreat
in the protection of human rights that it must induce all civilized
States to erect a sanitary cordon around the country while at the same
time practicing an effective policy of welcome towards all those who,
persecuted and oppressed in their rights, leave the country with immense
sacrifice.

In our opinion, only the growth of awareness of women and their rights
in countries with a Muslim majority or predominantly Islamic culture can
serve as an antidote to this enslavement of women who, with the example
that comes from their struggles and their awareness, can transmit an
intelligible message for the Afghan populations that does not appear to
be the fruit of cultural, ethical and religious choices foreign to the
Islamic cultural environment and respectful of the most enlightened and
open experiences of Islam, which also exist and have characterized great
and significant eras of Arab-Islamic civilization.

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/09/01/cosa-ce-di-nuovo-con-le-donne-afgane/
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