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Mahesh

04/09/24 12:39 PM IST

New Morality in Afghanistan

In News
  • The Taliban last week announced a new law on the “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” which imposes its interpretation of sharia or Islamic law on the people of Afghanistan.
Major Provisions
  • Women must cover their entire bodies and faces “due to the fear of temptation”, in the presence of unrelated men, as well as non-Muslim and “immoral” women.
  • A woman’s voice — singing, chanting, or reciting aloud — is considered awrah or intimate and must not be heard.
  • “Whenever a grown woman leaves her house out of necessity, she is obliged to cover her voice, face, and body,” it said, stipulating that any violation will lead to punishment. Unrelated men and women are not allowed to even look at each other.
  • Men must grow their beards, and must not wear neckties or have Western-style haircuts.
  • All games and forms of entertainment, even traditional children’s games played with marbles or walnuts, are banned as a form of gambling.
  • Travel must be planned to avoid times of prayer, and drivers are forbidden from transporting women who are not accompanied by a related male guardian.
  • The morality police, called Muhtasib, are authorised to mete out discretionary punishment, including up to three days in prison.
  • They can compel people to revere Islamic symbols, and check phones and laptops to ensure there are no images of living beings.
  • They can also ensure that women’s voices or music do not emanate from homes or gatherings.
Background
  • Women in Afghanistan were granted the right to vote in 1919, a year before women in the U.S.
  • The early 1920s saw a rush to modernise the country with changes in dress and education opportunities, led by the royal family, which sparked a backlash from conservative forces.
  • From the 1960s to the 1980s, however, women’s rights and participation in public life expanded, first among the urban upper classes but spreading to some extent in rural areas as well.
  • Women became ministers and judges, doctors and diplomats, singers and entertainers.
  • The Taliban’s first stint, from 1996 to 2001 was a brutal shock, imposing sharia law and taking women back to the medieval era.
  • During the two decades before the Taliban came back to power, however, a new generation of young women grew up in relative freedom to study and work, and many hoped that the Taliban had also changed its stance. 
Reactions by Afghan Women
  • Some Afghan women have defied the ban on raising their voices in public, with videos being posted on social media showing them singing, even while dressed head to toe in black, with faces covered.
  • Others can be seen raising their fists. A few have even reportedly protested on the streets, which “indicates that a small number do not care about their life and death because they do not have anything left to lose.
  • Others engage in subtler forms of resistance, but with long-term effects. Pashtana Dorani, now in exile, founded a non-profit called LEARN to open underground schools for teenage girls within Afghanistan, which now has 661 students in five schools, which run clandestinely, in shifts, changing locations when they learn of Taliban surveillance.
  • In a social media post a few days after the new law was announced, Ms. Dorani showed videos of girls in full burkhas learning science, mathematics and language. “They may shut the doors but they can’t take away our dreams.
Opposition by International Community
  • There was condemnation from governments and celebrities. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticised the new laws as “almost 100 pages of misogyny”, while actress Angelina Jolie termed the regime “cowardly and oppressive”. 
  • The United Nations issued immediate denunciations of the new law, but said it would continue to “engage” with the Taliban. UN Women said the new rules were “oppressive”, while the office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights called for the “utterly intolerable” law to be immediately repealed.
Source- The Hndu

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