A story about the rape of an Afghan woman prompts Tom Matlack to ask more questions about the nature of goodness.
On the front page of the New York Times this morning I read about the plight of a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after being raped. Her case had become a national news item after it was made part of a documentary commissioned and then blocked by the European Union. It seemed that the grassroots movement to win justice had prevailed, only to find out that the terms of release were indeed barbaric.
“When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them.”
The story stirred more questions than answers for me:
What did we spend a trillion dollars on in Afghanistan if this treatment of women still goes on?
Do we as Americans have the right to judge another completely different culture when it comes to the treatment of women?
Why did the documentary film get black-balled instead of used as way to win the freedom this innocent woman?
Does the treatment of women as property in Afghanistan in any way provide a mirror for lingering attitudes here in American?
As a guy who likes to think about manhood and goodness what can I possibly make of this story?
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photo: isafmedia / flickr
Some good news, and one explanation of why the documentary was blocked by the EU:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/features/news/jailed-afghan-rape-victim-freed-with-no-pre-conditions
Original BBC story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16003305
This legal ruling is a horrible horrible crime against humanity. But if you aren’t willing to look at the society surrounding it you’re missing the point. Life in afghanistan is horrible, for women. Its also horrible for men. Look at the life expectancy statistics, women can expect to live until just over 40, men, about a year less. Its true that men don’t have to wear bourkas, but they are they ones who are expected to wear bombs. Men don’t get raped, they get killed worked to death instead. Cherrypicking instances of violence and using them as a rallying call… Read more »
Peter Said – “Cherrypicking instances of violence and using them as a rallying call for subsection of humanity X is reprehensible and ignores half of the problem.” I think it’s far more that half of the problem – more like 99%. I also don’t agree with your caricaturisation that all Afghan men are suicide bombers! Most – the vast majority are Good Men, living in a culture they have been raised in and where they work and take home what they make to sustain their families. Subsistence Rural Framing leaves very little time for anything else. It’s also worth considering… Read more »
Ten years there and they still are able to imprison women for having the audacity to be raped and stone them in the town square. Maybe they should stop blowing up military outposts and blow up a few jails instead – let the women out.
The majority of the American workforce is female, which means that women are the majority of people paying income taxes. Thus, the majority of the taxpayers paying for the war in Afghanistan are women. If the war is failing to improve the lives of women, it is a war that American women have to examine as much as American men do, because they’re both paying the bill. Even if you don’t identify with the U.S. military, it is supposedly fighting in your name and is definitely fighting using your money. (Okay, so men’s taxes still add up to more than… Read more »
“The majority of the American workforce is female, which means that women are the majority of people paying income taxes. Thus, the majority of the taxpayers paying for the war in Afghanistan are women.”
As you said, men are still paying most of the taxes. But its completely irrelevant, democracy is based on citizenship, not how many roads you paid to get fixed.
I’m not an american citizen, but if I were I wouldn’t expect my tax money to change everything in one of the most downtrodden countries on earth overnight.
Maybe now we can at least put to rest that idiotic idea that women get raped because of what they wear. Does anyone think Afghan women are dressed provocatively?
@Tom -What did we spend a trillion dollars on in Afghanistan if this treatment of women still goes on? Afghanistan was the 1st step in the Arab Spring so it WAS worth it.. -Do we as Americans have the right to judge another completely different culture when it comes to the treatment of women? YES…YES WE DO..JUDGE AND PREPARE FOR JUDGEMENT that is the only rational standard. -Why did the documentary film get black-balled instead of used as way to win the freedom this innocent woman? lack of Moral Fortitude but I suspect you knew the answer before you asked… Read more »
Tom, I think we must trust the cultures of the Islamic world to arrive at their own solutions to these issues. There is hope. I can cite three films of recent years that point in this direction. “Kandahar” was a real eye-opener for me. It shows Afghan women buying cosmetics and applying them under their burkas — a way of asserting their identity and independence. “The Stoning of Soraya M.” (Iran) is merciless in its depiction of stoning for adultery (to make room for a younger bride). But it shows the victim’s friend getting the news to the outside world.… Read more »
Hi Paul, I enjoyed reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and watching Kandahar. I think each work highlights that change will likely be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Revolutions of destruction, dogma & destabilization are simpler than those of free thought, compassion and humanity. I guess it’s why insurgency is so effective and counter-insurgency so tricky. I appreciate that there was a tone of “white man’s burden” to my comment and it wasn’t intended specifically as such. While we can argue about minutia, universal right and wrong exist. The film Kandahar went out of its way to illustrate that men were pinched… Read more »
I read the pull quote this morning from the NY Times morning email and am almost numb to it. This is a pre-medieval culture. The money we spend there isn’t going to break anyone out of millennia-old behaviors in a single generation. Yes, let’s build schools and try to keep a Taliban-ruled government from rolling back progress to pre-assembly line days. I may be channeling Adam Carolla but cultural relativism has its limits. Maybe there is unfairness, lack of justice and an abundance of prejudice at home but we hew substantially closer to the golden rule and the rest of… Read more »
“What did we spend a trillion dollars on in Afghanistan if this treatment of women still goes on? ” Look at Kazakhstan and the oil reserves along with one of the worlds larges gas reservoirs in Turkmenistan – and the shortest pipeline route to get the gas to the Indian market goes right across Afghanistan – with the pipeline proposal on the table for over 30 years. Then look at the pipelines that have been built in the last 20 tears – one to China, and the other terminating in Turkey, via the Caspian basin – finished only last year.… Read more »
We can fix this by taking over Afghanistan, replacing its locals in the government with westerners, changing the law code and having swarms of cops chasing every son of a bitch who performs FGM on his daughter, does honor killing, throws acid, rapes, keeps his girls from school, etc. After we get that placed fixed up, there’s Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, large parts of India, Egypt (90% of adult women there have had FGM), and, increasingly, some insular communities in the west. In the meantime, we can be active in insisting that anybody who complains about such things is showing Islamophobia.… Read more »
Pieces like this are so profoundly complicated that I rarely know how to comment. -There’s so much wrapped up in western hegemony about how people should or shouldn’t be doing (though Maria’s post on Universal Human Rights certainly applies here). -what did we spend money on in Afghanistan? Control of a region? Are people ever the focus of war? I don’t think so. I think it’s usually resources or power wars are after. -how can anyone hate women so much? I can’t get past that, even though I know that it sounds man-angry, but I just don’t fathom the violence.… Read more »
Soraya that is truly amazing, insane and sad. Did not know that.
Film was stopped because of fears that women appearing in it would be harmed or killed. According to a HuffPost article, about half of the 300 to 400 women currently jailed in Afghanistan are imprisoned for “moral crimes” (such as sex outside marriage, or running away from their husbands, according to reports by the United Nations and research organizations). Tip of the iceberg I imagine in terms of trauma, violence, fear and death.
Tom, lots of good questions. I was reminded repeatedly, while following this case, of something that prompted me to write about violence against women as pandemic by this quote in the Washington Pos earlier this year in reference to a change of direction for US policy in Afghanistant: ” Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations. “There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in… Read more »
All of us people of the Book trace our value systems to texts in which women quite literally do not count–as in the census taken in Numbers–and are regarded as property: to be sold, taken as spoils of war, and destroyed with impunity. People of faith in G-d are challenged to remember that we are all created in the image of a creative, merciful, and sometimes vengeful consciousness, men and women alike. A technological marvel like the vagina dentata given to women at a soccer game, where the presumption is that they will be the targets of rape, is not… Read more »
We also trace our value system to texts which place men on the front lines to protect the rest of society (women and children). This doesn’t just go for abrahmaic culture, its applicable to any culture which was under threat.
If women were merely property why were men expected to give their lives to defend them?
Afghanistan has been a horror story from the very beginning (a decade-plus involvement). Since then we’ve been unsuccessful politically, militarily and culturally. While not condoning this latest example of sexist violence and lunacy, I do feel that those of us who enjoy the benefits of Western culture—limited though they sometimes may seem—are unfortunately in no position to judge or alter any parallel culture or practice. We have not been able to alter the way women are treated and regarded in parts of Africa, and we’ve obviously made no impact in changing the plight of women in Afghanistan. We can continue… Read more »
Problem is, to fix this we need to take over the country, replace the Afghans running the place with Americans, replace their law code, and have swarms of western cops chasing every son of a bitch who rapes, throws acid, commits honor killings, does FGM on his daughter, locks up his wife, keeps his daughters from schooling, etc. Once we get that taken care of, we can go to Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, large parts of India, and, increasingly, certain insular communities in the West. At the same time, we have to keep saying we have no right to judge… Read more »
I’m seeing alot of “He” doing the bad stuff and “She” being the victim. I assume while you’re at it you intend to liberate men too? Or is second wave the way to go.
A system that considers itself well-intentioned values its conception of honor over dignity and its understanding of decency over empathy. As all of our individual interpretations of ‘goodness’ are different, so one nation’s general sense of what is good is dissimilar from what we consider to be ours. I think we always have the right to our judgments regardless of culture, as long as we’re open to other judgments and revising our own judgments. That said, we can have a fundamental belief in human liberty that doesn’t impinge on other people’s liberty. I think the inhuman treatment of all people… Read more »
Very interesting.
“Do we as Americans have the right to judge another completely different culture when it comes to the treatment of women?” Well, I’m not an American, but I guess I fall within the “Western/rich North” value sphere and I have a pretty strong opinion on this. We shouldn’t judge treatment of women in other cultures if it’s not cruel and degrading. The Universal Deceleration of Human Rights is a pretty good guide (hint hint: the word “universal”). Violence is wrong, cruelty is wrong, humiliation is wrong, physical abuse and psychological is wrong – it shouldn’t matter where you live for… Read more »
* sorry not marital – just rape.
“This is beyond wrong and I wish those politicians who were so worried about non-existent WMD and are now hell bent on eroding reproductive rights actually started worrying about real issues.”
Hear, hear. And I’m not holding my breath, because they never have, and it doesn’t even seem to be on their radar screen because zygotes are. “Personhood” begins with living, breathing adult women. Everything is bass ackwards.
Its a horrible horrible thing, but I don’t think we are in a position to judge a culture that technically far behind out own. They still live in a world where marriage is an absolute practical necessity and fornication actually threatens the fabric of society.
I can’t and won’t defend a law like that, but I haven’t lived through what they have.
John 8 Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing… Read more »
The most critical difference, Jeremy, is that Gulnaz didn’t sin.
Tom, did you see this? http://gizmodo.com/5569537/condoms-with-teeth-fight-rape-in-south-africa This is what it’s coming to. This is our world. As GMP writer Soraya Schemaly wrote in her HuffPo piece http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/violence-against-women-is_1_b_1121001.html, violence against women is a global pandemic. I am so heartbroken by this story, but even more so by the knowledge that there are so many other women going through the same thing or worse, without the publicity, all around the world. Such barbaric behavior and laws still in abundance. And this… Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere… Read more »
I think quoting WB Yeats in the name of women’s victimhood is a bit rich!
I don’t think Gulnaz would agree. If she could read, that is. Most Afghan women are illiterate.
global pandemic? Violence Human Upon Human is not a pandemic. It has been about for a long time. I think if you look at recorded history which covers about 3500 years, Violence in all forms has been recorded and known about. This subverting of language is most worrying. The term Pandemic was hardly ever used until a few years ago when Bird Flu H5N1 hit the headlines and there was a panic. Now everything that people see as wrong is suddenly pandemic in nature! Violence has been ongoing for some time – and with the advent of the Internet, and… Read more »
Media Hound wrote: “global pandemic? Violence Human Upon Human is not a pandemic. It has been about for a long time. I think if you look at recorded history which covers about 3500 years, Violence in all forms has been recorded and known about. This subverting of language is most worrying. The term Pandemic was hardly ever used until a few years ago when Bird Flu H5N1 hit the headlines and there was a panic. Now everything that people see as wrong is suddenly pandemic in nature! ” I think I understand the point you want to make. Human violence… Read more »
“there are huge ideological differences between our society and the Afghan community. ”
There is in deed a huge difference. Especially when the they are seen only as a community!
When did The Afghan Nation (The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) stop being a society and get reduced to a community?
It is odd how Cultural and National Differences create barriers that imprison people.
you spend money to make better situation,changing ins not easy that you think,we should be patient.