The Plight of the Muslim Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban
Islam means the submission of humankind to the will of God, not the submission of women to the will of men.

The four thumbnail photos above are taken from a video filmed using a hidden camera in Kabul on August 26, 2001 by RAWA, an all-female Afghan underground movement. It shows two Taliban from the department of Amro bil mahroof (Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Taliban religious police) beating a woman because she dared to remove her burqa in public.

"Treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers."
From the last sermon of Prophet Mohammed

"None but a noble man treats women in an honorable manner. And none but an ignoble treats women disgracefully".
Prophet Mohammed (At-Tirmithy).

According to Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the Prophet is reported to have said:

If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her a good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hell-fire.
(Kanz al-Ummal).
quoted in Women in Islam by M. Mazheruddin Siddiqi

How praiseworthy are the women of Ansar that their modesty does not prevent them from attempts at learning and the acquisition of knowledge.
(Sahih Muslim, Kitab al Tahrat).

A person who has a female slave in charge and takes steps to give her a sound education and trains her in arts and culture, and then frees her and marries her, he will be doubly rewarded.
(Sahih Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah).

Some Muslim callers preach a false and ugly version of Islam and then complain because people do not accept it.  I think that those ignorant preachers should be imprisoned or lashed because they divert people from the way of Allah and the truth that Muhammad, the final Messenger, declared.
Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazaly.

Muslims who advance conservative views on female affairs...are normally very literal in their understanding of texts; but they tendentiously opt for an understanding that suits their prejudice.
Dr Hassan Al-Turabi

Women have clearly defined rights in Islam.  These have been set out in the Quran and Sunnah and also have been made explicit by scholars such as Dr Hassan Al-Turabi of Sudan in his seminal 1973 pamphlet, On the Position of Women in Islam and in Islamic Society and by the famous English convert to Islam and Quran translator, Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall. Yet much as Pickthall lamented and condemned the non-Islamic treatment and "pitiful condition of Muslim womanhood"  in India as long ago as 1925 in his lecture The Relation of the Sexes, today in 2001 we find the Muslim women of Afghanistan being treated much worse by the Taleban regime, who serve up a grotesque caricature of Islam and  bring the good name of our beloved religion into such disrepute.

Islam means the submission of humankind to the will of God, not the submission of women to the will of men.  Please find below links to web pages and sites detailing the plight of the Muslim women of Afghanistan.

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"The Taliban must be overthrown and this is an opportunity to overthrow them."
Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Conference on the restoration of women's and children's rights in Afghanistan
"By ousting the Taliban, women's rights will be restored and they will have the right to work and vote." - Afghan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Afghan women find new freedom
The Northern Alliance has announced that women in Afghanistan can now go back to work, and girls can go to school - activities that were banned by the Taleban.
BBC News, Tuesday, 13 November, 2001.

Release of Kandahar film in London
Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar, winner of the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes this year, was put on release at the ICA cinema in London Friday. The illuminating and timely release, given four-star ratings by the BBC and Guardian film guides, charts a woman's perilous journey from Iran to Afghanistan to find her sister.

Film-maker lifts veil on Afghan tragedy
A film based on a young woman’s desperate attempt to rescue a friend trapped by the Taleban is to receive a special screening at the White House. It may not sound like typical viewing for President Bush, but even he has fallen under the spell of Kandahar, a film that lifts the veil on Afghanistan and exposes its human tragedy.
The Times (London), November 10, 2001.

RAWA - The Taliban's bravest opponents
The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan is an all-female underground resistance of Afghan women who risk torture and execution to alert the world to the Taliban regime's atrocities. Here Janelle Brown tells of RAWA's activities and interviews one of their volunteers.

Risking All to Expose the Taliban
Julia Scheeres reports on the heroines of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan
Wired News, August 10, 2001

We Muslims must decry the Taliban
'If Muslims really believe that Islam can be a force for good, why do they choose to ignore those who corrupt this potential?' Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent (London), 10 September 2001

Taliban have "hurt Islam and distorted the reputation of Muslims throughout the world".  
Full text of the Saudi Arabian Government's statement on the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Taleban
IslamForToday.com Tuesday, 25 September, 2001

The Taleban: Believers or Enemies?
English Muslim lawyer Aisha Harris contrasts the Taleban's treatment of women with the Islamic ideal.

Afghanistan's Taliban: Not a valid interpretation of Islam
"The extreme position taken by the Taliban hardly deserves to be considered an 'interpretation' of Islam... It is really an aberration in violation of the most basic tenets of the faith."  Dr. Laila Al-Marayati calls for a fuller understanding among Muslims of Islam as "a religion that embraces the value of women without subjecting them to sequestration."

Perspective on Women's Plight in Afghanistan
We hoped it was just another example of the fabricated lies against Islam and Muslims. Reports sprinted through the airwaves that the Afghan Taliban ordered women out of school and out of their jobs. More distressing was the news that this was announced as a fulfillment of the teaching of Islam...
By Hassan Hathout, M.D., Ph.D.

Focusing on the Tragedy of Afghan Women
"The women of Afghanistan are suffering under one of the most viciously anti-female regimes ever to grip a country.  Women who have been forced into virtual house arrest while much of the world has looked the other way."
By Judy Mann, Washington Post, October 30, 1998

Women and the Taliban
"As victims of the Taliban, they wanted the world to help them, but as good Muslims they did not want to be used by Western media to defame Islam."
By Azizah Y. al-Hibri, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2001

The Taleban's other outrage
The Taleban have wrecked irreplaceable antiquities.  This destruction has drawn worldwide attention--and worldwide outrage. And, yes, it is a tragedy that such priceless art would be destroyed.  But there is a far greater outrage, one that, inexplicably, has received less attention  than the Taliban's treatment of statues.  That is the Taliban's treatment of women.
Chicago Tribune editorial, March 8, 2001

Fear is their Religion
Peggy Elliot speaks out against the Taliban treatment of women in Afghanistan.

Cry of an Afghan Woman
An Afghan Muslimah tells of the un-Islamic tyranny she and her family have suffered at the hands of the Taliban and pleads to the Ummah for liberation and justice.

The Rights of Women in Islam

Muslim Women Between Backward Traditions and Modern Innovations
by Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazaly

Risking death to expose the Taliban
Matt Bean of Court TV reports on RAWA an underground Afghan Women's group whose members run clandestine schools for girls and capture Taliban brutality on hidden cameras.

Restrictions Placed on Women by the Taliban
compiled by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights.

Afghanistan - Beneath the Veil
Companion web site to TV documentary by Britain's Channel 4
Saira Shah's journey into the heart of Afghanistan reveals a country of desperate poverty, much of it brought about by the deliberate policies of its fundamentalist Islamic government, the Taliban. Women are deprived not only of education, medicine and freedom, but often of the very means of survival.  Saira, the daughter of Afghan scholar Idries Shah, took a dangerous journey into the heart of her father's country. Starting in the vast refugee camps of Pakistan, she made her way into Afghanistan itself, where she found unimaginable brutality but also extraordinary bravery.

Life in Afghanistan under the Taliban
Transcript of a CNN online chat with journalist Saira Shah, August 27, 2001
Saira Shah is a freelance journalist. She was born in Britain, of an Afghan family. She first visited Afghanistan at age 21 and worked there three years as a freelance journalist, covering the guerilla war against the Soviet occupiers. Later, working for Britain's Channel Four News, she covered some of the world's worst trouble spots.

The Taliban's War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan
This report documents the results of a three-month study of women's health and human rights concerns and conditions in Afghanistan by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The extent to which the Taliban regime has threatened the freedoms and needs of Afghan women is unparalleled in recent history. Taliban policies of systematic discrimination against women seriously undermine the health and well-being of Afghan women. Such discrimination and the suffering it causes constitute an affront to the dignity and worth of Afghan women, and humanity as a whole.

Behind the burka
We should make the Northern Alliance sign a contract on human rights - especially women's rights
Polly Toynbee The Guardian (London) September 28, 2001 

Perspective on Women's Plight in Afghanistan
From the Muslim Women's League Homepage

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan RAWA is a political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan.

Women and Girls in Afghanistan
Fact sheet released by the Senior Coordinator for International Women's Issues, US State Department,  March 10, 1998.

 'Liberty' for Afghan women
"We have schools, higher education, we can work".  Kate Clark reports from opposition-controlled north-eastern Afghanistan
BBC News, May 17, 2001

"I pray night and day that America will destroy the Taleban"
Fatima Syed, widow of Taliban massacre victim.

Women in Afghanistan - A human rights catastrophe
1995/6 report from Amnesty International.

Remember the Women
of Afghanistan webring

Donate to RAWA