Religious zest and the plight of women

Today as we stand looking at significant scientific, economic and technological advances that had been made in the last fifty years, you can’t help wondering how come the situation of women has improved so little or in parts of the world got worst. The reality is that millions of women are suffering and being oppressed under religious laws and Islamic cultures in many different parts of the world. The past fifty years have been some of the darkest in women’s lives. With the anti-secularist backlash, the rise of political Islam, and efforts over the past two decades to impose religion on the people, thousands have been executed - decapitated or stoned to death - and medieval laws to suppress women have been revived.

Islam is the ideology in power in most Muslim countries. In all of these, society has suffered serious setbacks in civil rights in general, and women’s rights in particular. Yet many voices seek to justify Islam: western academics, the mainstream western media, so-called moderate Muslims and some Eastern intellectuals all try to justify the operation and rationalize brutality. They tell us that what we are seeing is not the real Islam; they divide Islam into good and bad, moderate and fundamentalist. They tell us it’s their culture and that’s how they live. The British imams going on media to keep reminding us that all Muslims are not terrorists.  Outrageous and racist but because they are Imams or religious leaders their remarks are tolerable. They fail to address in any constructive way cultural, social, political and economic factors that has bedeviled Muslims across the world. Here are a few cultural issues that the Muslim leaders need to address.

1.     Equality of rights for women

Women are deemed to be inferior to men. Women are men’s belongings and women can have no authority over men. That a woman counts as only half a man in legal and financial matters; this is enforced widely and those Muslims who justify this rely on Islamic script. “And call into witness two men; or if two be not men, then one man and two women” (Koran, The Cow. Verse 282) and “ God charges you concerning your children: to the male the like of the portion of two female” (Koran, Women, verse 11)

2.     Sexual oppression of Women

Women earn God’s grace by obeying their husbands. The message is clear: men dominate, women obey. From a religious perspective, women are there merely for the sexual enjoyment of men and for purposes of reproduction. In Islam female sexuality is acknowledged, but limits and confines women to their sexual and reproductive roles. Most muslim has taken this too far by considering women as a potential danger by distracting men from their duties and corrupting the community. Orthodox interpretation place restriction on women’s sexuality, whilst men are given the right to marry up to four wives and the right to temporary marriage as many times as they wish. Free male–female sexual relations are considered a sin in Islam. This is justified by literal interpretation of Koranic verses that define which sexual relations are permitted under Islam, and the punishment for any transgression (called zena) outside these limits. Zena is punishable by flogging, imprisonment and stoning to death.

3.     Legal practice and women

Despite modernisation and reform, family law and the penal code have remained largely untouched, on the contrary in the last three decades fundamentalists have inserted their interpretation. Polygamy, men’s unconditional right to divorce their wives, the law regarding sex outside of marriage, men’s decision making over their wives’ employment and travel, and a woman’s lack of right to custody of her children are among them. Hijab is the definitive form of clothing for women. According to widely practice Islamic law, the legal age for a girl to wed is nine – an obvious case of sexual abuse and rape.

Conclusion

The state is a prerequisite for women’s liberation from religious oppression. A strong social movement and international support is needed with long-term commitment to build modern and stable states across the Muslim world.

Is it all Afghans fault?

Western online media coverage on the NATO exit is coloured with remarks on the western experience of Afghans and the benefits Afghans could have reaped from western presence.

I believe such remarks are counter productive bordering racism. The failure to stabilise Afghanistan is not a fault of Afghans but a letdown by institutions, if anything the Afghans are the victims; Afghans are resilient and honourable people, kind hearted, welcoming, and brave warriors. They are not the childlike brutes stereotyped in western media.  

NATO did not go to Afghanistan to improve Afghan lives but part of a US led alliance for getting revenge. It was very much a debt the allies paid to the US for the Marshall aid, democracy and saving them from communism.

Here are a few things NATO could have done to help Afghanistan:

1.     Train and equip a national army.

2.     Economic development

3.     Integrate Afghanistan into international political and economic system.

4.     Foster national leadership.

Here is what happened instead

1.     Arm and fund militia with history of human rights abuse and atrocities to fight the Taliban. Waging war against a part of the population under the labels of terrorist and Taliban by arming an extremist wing of another part of population under the guise of ‘state’. This labelling fails to capture the political and economic subjectivities and diversities of actors. The boundaries between these groups may be more about the subjective act of naming than any real practical separation between them. The US wanted blood and the allies tagged along by radicalising a section of Afghan people to settle old scores against another. This revenge policy led to antagonising the Afghan people and have blow in coalition face while costing tens of thousands of Afghan lives.

2.     The core strategy of international community was aid which only delivers assistance to very few and leaves out the majority to fend for themselves. Treating the symptom of poverty while ignoring the dysfunction of the state, which should be tasked to look after the welfare of the people. 

3.     No significant trade treaty, no long term strategic partnership, relationship at its low of all time with neighbours and antagonised the very leadership the west appointed to rule over Afghan people.

4.     Warlords, drug lords and criminals were bundled together by giving them a share in ruling over Afghan people.

Whether this war was a good thing or a bad thing was the decision of Westerns and as such their leaders should be held accountable.

The Reason a woman is brutally murdered by a mob in Kabul

An angry mob lynched a woman in Kabul on Thursday, beating her to death and then setting her body on fire.  The incident happened in the centre of Kabul and under the watch of Afghan police. At the time she was accused of burning the Quran but it is unclear whether she had actually burned it or not. A government statement from ministry of Haj and religious affairs dismissed the account and added she was an attendant at the shrine, according to Tolo News. It has also become apparent that the victim later identified as Farkhunda suffered mental illness, “Farkhunda had a mental malady, and we have been seeing many mullahs and doctors to seek a cure for her mental illness,” her mother told reporters.The last couple of days I have been thinking why such a barbaric and anti-Islamic travesty happens yet a large number, but not all, Afghans support it. The New york times in a story reflects on Afghans Reaction reporting approval. Reuters Report of support from cleric who in a sermon broadcast by loudspeaker told devotees that the crowd had a right to defend their Muslim beliefs at all costs.

Before we lose perspective and infer bile stereotypes of Afghans and slash any hope for this nation where a mob of angry men bludgeon to death an innocent woman, lets remind ourselves of murder and death in the state of nature. No other word depicts the human condition than the visionary masterwork of Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel, The Triumph of Death, it is not of course a work of realism, but Breugel certainly did not have to rely entirely on his imagination to depict a scene of stomach wrenching death and destruction. In a land ruled by an army of skeletons, a king lies dying, his treasure of no avail, while a dog gnaws on a nearby corpse. In the background two hanged men on gibbets, four men broken on wheels, a man about to be beheaded. Armies clash, houses burn, men and women young and old soldier and civilians are all driven pell-mell into a narrow tunnel. No one is spared. The artist himself died in his early forties. The portray.

Much of human history is some version of agony depicted by Bruegel in the state of nature. Islam as cultural framework lifts the state of nature by creating an individual value system conducive to peaceful coexistence and as subjects of a legitimate Islamic state that is tasked to be a vessel of collective decision-making and enforcement. The laws of Islamic State of Afghanistan is based on Islamic values and principles. The basis for a judgment in Islamic law is the jurist’s ability to carefully apply knowledge to theory and practice. In order to be qualified to interpret the sources of law, a jurist should master many branches of knowledge such as logic, Quran, Hadith, history and general knowledge as well as specialised areas like commerce or international relations. This approach adopted by Islamic law to reach judgement through Fiqh, Ijma, Qiyas, Urf and Istisahan is to ensure due processes and streamline justice. Mob justice undermines due process of Islamic justice and is a manifestation of Jaliyat, it undermines Islamic foundations of Afghan society. It also shows obsession and compulsion with icons and symbols of religion that is only valued for its physical material. From the onset Islam opposed Icons and Statues in Kaba that were worshiped by the pagans. Islam is world-affirming by construing the created world as fundamentally a good place and placing responsibility on individual action. For such a system of belief conduct and laws are fundamental than icons and symbols.

I believe for such barbarism is a failure of state policy and structures. The state should create a monopoly on the means of violence. In practice, this criterion has often been reduced; first to a simple monopoly on violence and then to little more than control of capital city. However, it is the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence as perceived by the citizens of the state that is the key to using this monopoly as a criterion of statehood. If the polity rejects the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence, then that monopoly is inherently unstable. Hence the state’s monopoly on the means of violence must be balanced by the presence or creation of credible institutions that provide checks and balances on the use of force; that the state itself must be constituted through, and accountable under, the rule of law. The rule of law is undermined by the very same leaders and clerics who are high-level functionaries of the state. The powerful men and the current patronage system of state power distribution are impediments to rule of law and the real reason for the troubles that ravage Afghanistan. The violence of gangs and mobs are unnerving but they are nothing more than symptoms of an ailing system.

The Lesson From Afghanistan

Western military presence in Afghanistan was dominated by an ideological paradigm with the mission to establish democracy and spread freedom. The insurgency was labelled as terrorism and to be militarily defeated, until the very end of the military mission little effort was made to understand the nature and context of the war in Afghanistan. The development industry, media, the Afghan state and western political and military institutions broadly subscribed to some version of such mission, not necessarily following the same narrative but the same general framework. The failure of the west in stabilising Afghanistan is not an Afghan specific issue but points to a general shortcoming of Western conduct in international relations.

The shortcoming of the Western governments that has contributed to global instability and violence is the fragility of its international discourse, while Western institutions are robust for national governance the foreign policy is not conducted in accordance with the same scrutiny, accountability, oversight and rule based approach. Instead the media and elites have created a myth about the role of the Western democracy in the world that they have now fallen for it themselves. Western diplomacy is spearheaded strongly by a subjective moral approach at the cost of consistency in international law, which has contributed to problems from tension with Russia, spread of violent religious extremism and instability in the Middle East, Africa, south and east Europe. 

Many Westerners, particularly the elites, are convinced that Western democracy is moral and superior and should actively be spread around the world; all who oppose it are evil. A narrative reinforced by retrospective view after collapse of Soviet Block as well as massive economic developments of the last few decades. Western diplomacy is conducted from the position that the future belonged to them as a result those who resist are not (and were not) just rivals, but reactionary forces resisting progress and freedom, even evil. Working from this position of righteousness Western governments shape international relationship in whatever way they deem fit because by virtue of their nature it is only going to be moral and just. As a result we have seen a spate of military interventions in the last few decades that in most cases overruled national sovereignty and/or international law.  

There is a good reason for the international democracy mission that could be explained by understanding the current state of modern Western nations. Nation states are cultural and political entities that have successfully unified the population for progress, unconstrained by their class, race or religion. When governments are unable to exploit all human resources it will result in social fragmentation and reduced social solidarity the symptoms of which are the strengthening of regional identity and anti-political far right or far left movements. This is obvious in the debate around immigration where natives and the government respond to them are anxious about the allegiance of new comers. The crisis of the Nation State in the post-industrial information age is the diversification of culture, the total liberation of individual from traditional bonds, globalisation and market powers resulting in the erosion of the role of the nation state and its legitimacy. The leaders of nation states have been reduced to mere Managers of public life jiggling regulations and clauses that are laid out in the big rulebook, which is scientifically proven to work.

The only area of real decision-making is the international arena where western leaders are effectively members of a club. The short term and direct outcome of aggressive international military intervention is to demonstrate leadership toughness to the voters which incidental is very important. Secondly and more importantly it gives the nation a sense of purpose and solidarity by emphasising a cultural framework that is distinct and superior.

Lets take France for an example where polls show it’s becoming ever more socially fragmented, pessimistic, xenophobic and economically under pressure and experiencing a rise in far-right politics where Marine Le Pen has emerged as a key figure for the 2017 presidential election race. In 2013 France launched Operation Serval in Northern Mali to uproot Islamists threatening the region. President Hollande’s approval ratings doubled, which had plummeted for several reasons since he was elected to office in May 2012. A poll in January 2013 showed that 75 percent of people questioned in France supported the intervention in Mali, there is not a single other issue that can command that kind of public support hence legitimacy.

Western leadership is nurturing a religiously belief in the gods of liberty and democracy, worshipped in flag rituals, national days and a godly mission to save the less fortunate by bombing them to civilisation. The soldiers of the nation are for the sacred duty, but unlike the religious duty of dying for God they are to kill for the nation, what Benedict Anderson called the “imagined community”, inadvertently nevertheless very well depicted in the Hollywood movie American Sniper. The problem with such an ideological approach to international problem in the modern day is that it exacerbates the situation for which it purports to be the cure.  A qualified argument can be made that western military action in Afghanistan intensified extremism, the same is true for Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The ideology of international democracy mission produces a perverse solidary that gives the nation its purpose at the cost of capacity to reason and apply rational solutions to international relations. The NATO military mission had little respect for Afghan life or decision-making, most key decisions were made by Westerners; some of this can be attributed to lack of sound Afghan leadership. The argument still holds by studying the dysfunctional relation of NATO members who were preoccupied by pity squabbles and showed little appetite for collaboration and coordination.

In the course of Afghan war we came to witness Westerners committing torture, illegal detentions, killing civilians and in some cases targeting civilians, large scale corruption, propping up warlords and drug lords and general abuse of power. This does not reconcile with the high moral stance the West take and only comes to show not only that the assessment and solution applied to Afghanistan was ill-suited but also the moral principles that the west pride to is conditional and only applies to some people. This is while the conflict was of low intensity in comparison to other wars fought in the last three decades that means the destruction and distress caused by the war should have been manageable especially given the tremendous military and economic capacity of the west. Afghanistan and any other country have its own context and challenges that are unique to it.  The structural injustice of agrarian state and the impediments to intellectual and political liberty created by poverty will not allow the creation of an environment in Afghanistan that is free and democratic but as experience showed it can neither be created by the military and economic power of the west unless structural issues are addressed. This includes promoting international law, funding for education, promoting regional collaboration and facilitation of free trade.