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Taliban treatment of women Wikipedia

cleanup-date|August 2005
Image:Talibanbeating.jpg|right|thumb|380px|A member of the Taliban's Mutaween|religious police beating a woman in Kabul on September 26, 2001; photograph taken from footage filmed by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) http://www.rawa.org/beating.htm The footage can be seen http://www.rawa.us/movies/beating.mpg here.

The treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban was often singled out for special attention by the Western world:

• Women were prohibited from getting an education, though there were some secret schools which taught girls. The education of women became public after the fall of the Taliban.

• Women were prohibited from getting a job except in healthcare (because it was Sex segregation|segregated). If a husband left his wife, she would be hard-pressed to make a living.

• Women were forced to cover up in a burqa when in public and to wear shoes that did not make noise. Violations of such laws brought on a public caning http://www.rawa.us/movies/beating.mpg (video). Also, if a house had a woman inhabitant, the front windows of that house had to be tinted or curtained.

• The Taliban were also accused of requiring women to stay at home and refusing to give women medical attention.

• A woman was to stay home, playing outside was not allowed, and meetings between her closes friends was private and limited.

The Taliban claimed that their policies were favourable to women, but they made little attempt to promote a positive image of themselves and their policies outside of Afghanistan. Inside Afghanistan, they seem to have made more of an effort; for example, by crediting the creation of the Taliban to a desire by Mullah Omar to end the rape and abuses against women that were common place in the period before the Taliban, and by appealing to the idea that women needed extra protection during the period of fighting.

Neither sex's treatment can be considered Islamic; such practises are not stipulated within the Qur'an and many rules were made up by the rulers as they went, sometimes with an out of context quote. Many were illiterate and of those who could read most had been raised with books supplied by the United States|American Central Intelligence Agency|CIA. As part of an anti-Soviet Union|Soviet drive and to prepare an Afghan resistance against the expected (some would say provoked) Russian invasion, the books emphasized the most extreme and violent teaching of Islam ever in print.

Last Modified:   2005-12-19