Pashtun woman, a challenge to the conscience of the Humanity and human rights groups.

[Badlun]

Respect and honour for pashtun women! Its a joke and ridiculing Pashtun women. What we are doing with them , the brutalities and barbarism we call it respect and honour. Our women are just domestic servants. Look at their 24 hours schedule. Cooking and serving food, cleanliness, washing clothes, washing plates and taking care of children.

Will our male brothern accept this honour. Pashtun women dont have their own money. They always beg for their expenses. Is this the respect. They are murdered by the name of honour killing daily.

Pashtun women are cheated by the name of honour. Husbands give them money and they become happy. They dont have any decision making role in our society because they dont have any political, social and economic role in our society. Their whole life is limited to the four walls of their houses. Even at homes they work like domestic help. They dont have their own food to cook. They wait for their husbands or other male members to bring the food.

Liberating Pashtun women does not mean breaking family or love ties. If both wife and husband have the same economic, political and social status, then it does not mean the love will finish between them. Its not necessary that only a master and slave can love each other. Love can be done between two equally independent beings.

Let the Pashtun women enjoy the world out side their homes. The open air, the beaches, the parks, the jungles, the high ways, the space, the offices, the work. the management , markets every where. After all Pashtun women are human beings not animals to be tied at houses.

Pashtun women problem is in the whole Pashtun society, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has to do with Pashtunwali and Islam of Mullah not with political boundries.

[ScimitarXEdge]

dude... no matter how u dress it up pashtun women are treated like dirt... chained to the house and to be married off at their fathers whim... To progress we must throw off these "traditions" progress and not regress

There's no dressing here; you're being theatric and irrational. And it's a gross disservice for whatever alleged delusion of "Progress" you're trying to purvey. Without understanding the reality of what and why things exist, we cannot know what and how we make progress. Lacking this information just makes your argument appear to be just an emotional reaction than actually sincerely wanting to help.

[ScimitarXEdge]

Graveyardofempires

even though I like your zeal and find you to be refreshing; just as a brotherly suggestion. It's best not to be hotheaded with everything, I understand it's our Pashtoon nature to become very aggressive when we encounter all these fraudulent schemes to compromise our Ghairat and Namous. However, the strategy is not to let them make you look irrational, but to make THEM look irrational.

I used this technique well against Mazloomyar and Toramana, now they're caught in the futile realm of smear campaigning. The enemies of Islam are using new strategies, we too must use new strategies; gone are the days where we can merely Rage Out and gain victory. Now we need to beat them at their own game of words, use their words against them, when they hide behind words like Freedom, Liberty and Modernization; we snatch the power of these words and reclaim them as our own and expose the emptiness of their ideas. It is through this technique that they are left baffled and incapable of a meaningful response. Observe my responses in the thread, I have disarmed pretty much everyone here.

[Dreamer]

There's no dressing here; you're being theatric and irrational.

no your closing your eyes to the reality of what happens... A girl talking 2 a guy does not mean she is having an affair yet this is the stance that is taken because obviously girls are just full of lust and willing to throw open their legs (forgive the vulgarity) at the 1st boy they come across hence that have 2 be locked up according to pashtun rules
and men are bought up 2 believe a girl who works or studies is a **** as obviously only an immoral girl would leave her fathers house (shock horror) to do such things... naturally she must be having an illicit affair

[ScimitarXEdge]

no your closing your eyes to the reality of what happens... A girl talking 2 a guy does not mean she is having an affair yet this is the stance that is taken because obviously girls are just full of lust and willing to throw open their legs (forgive the vulgarity) at the 1st boy they come across hence that have 2 be locked up according to pashtun rules
and men are bought up 2 believe a girl who works or studies is a **** as obviously only an immoral girl would leave her fathers house (shock horror) to do such things... naturally she must be having an illicit affair

Whatever you think it means or doesn't mean; these rules were inplaced based on very nascent anthropologically established checks and balances regarding social behavior. Such stringencies were clearly intended to make certain social abberations minimalized to a certain degree. Whether those are legitimate strategies or not is another issue. But one cannot ever deny it stems from the concept regarding the Virtue of Women, not the OPPOSITE of that.

Your assessment is not "obviously" as apparent as you would like to believe. From what I can grasp based on the language and tone you used, it's merely an outside/external level of understanding of what motivates the standards. Let me be the first to tell you, you're way off and completely wrong. You're merely perceiving things from a White European mode of thinking that pervades their sociocultural understandings.

The more anthrpologically mature approach assesses that that such practices exist because they are based on fundamental evolutionary mechanisms that women and males play complimentary roles in the socio-sexual climate of a society; so as a result the society perceives things which have a potential to interrupt or interfere with this equilibrium are seen as detrimental and that which is conducive to it are seen as virtuous.

not having this deeper level of understanding is closing your eyes to reality; being conscious of it is not.

[ScimitarXEdge]

From what I can observe in this debate; there's a tendency here to merely repeat arguments made in previous posts irregardless of what was the response and refutation was. This is not countering an argument, for that argument still remains unrebutted.

Let us be clear; merely saying something doesn't in anyway make it factual or an irrefutable reality. There must be higher quality rebuttals here. There are many nuanced sociocultural understandings that are merely being ignored or pushed to the side in favor of merely blind, sloganing and emotionalism.

This is poor quality intellectual foundations for ideals and viewpoints.

With that being said.

As already stated previously which most responders have either ignored or shoved to the side without any second assessment or sufficiently meaningful rebuttal. Most of the animosity that is being portrayed here to Injustices in Pashtoon society, especially in regards to women are to do with DEVIATIONS in Pashtoon values not the ACTUAL VALUES themselves.

Pashtoon values in regard to women are to protect the virtue and dignity of women because they possess a complimentary yet tending to be more delicate quality in contrast to men; This has made it a significant priority to establish rules which protect and ensure the maintenance of this. Since males, intrinsically have the tendency to maintain and cultivate social to sustain the equilibrium of society and the human relationship to their Environment.

Practices such as seclusion are abberated attempts of trying to enact this; Female seclusion was never the originally intended feature to maintain these precepts. It is not necessary and it is counter productive. However anyone who argues that such rules are motivated by a diminished view of women or womanhood is being intellectually dishonest and is perceiving things by Manufactured Paradigms which do are not products of logic or rational enlightenment but blind cultural conditioning, mainly out of the nascent policies of Capitalist-Industrial sociocultural standard which do not have any Natural or Universal analog. It should be also recognized the practice of extreme seclusion became invogue in Pashtoon societies AFTER colonial/Imperial interference and intrusion into Asia. Such connections are not merely coincidence. This is why we can see Pashtoon women who were actively involved in Pashtoon life while at the same time endorsing the Same Strict Moral Precepts which people who have been conditioned by Eurocentric sociocultural mores are viewing loathesomely. There has to be a reason for this, and reasons can be seen in Pashtoon history specifically events of the First Anglo-Afghan War and what occurred in Kabul at the hands of the British and thensome what happened during the Early 20th century with Amanullah Khan.

Such arguments which are merely based on loathesome reactions are completely negligent and ignorant of any nuanced understanding of history, society and anthropological evolution and thus completely reflective of a juvenile mindset.

Most of the criteria being used here besides a few notable exceptions such as providing necessary health/medical care, the use of women to settle blood feuds, or stringent seclusion, which are legitimate critiques, are based on Surrogate activities; which are not legitimate critiques. It is a situation in which people are mixing Posion (invalid assessments) with milk (valid assessments). These endeavors have either little to nothing to do with human well being, insomuch as the context in which they are being described. Pashtoons denying women from going to school has less to do with not wanting educated women and more to do with a fear that such insitutions are to destablized the society. Pashtoon denial of women from careers has more to do with rejecting occupations which divert from the Natural way of life than not wanting women to contribute to society.

With that said there are injustices against women; but how those injustices are being assessed is severely flawed. A woman is not a domestic servant or a slave for taking care of the family. These are crucial and fundamental activities which are conducive to life; likewise a man's role is to protect and cultivate the environment of his people. These roles are established by how evolution has inculcated these mechanisms. Whether we are injured and can still perform such tasks or whether we're real men/women because of being unable to do so has no bearing on That. They exist for a reason. The flaw here is our understanding of Occupation and what role it was meant to play anthropologically. The principle of Occupation, from an anthropological perspective does not exist for the sake of prestige, but to sustain life. Anything that interrupts that process should be called to question, this applies both for tradition, which secludes women from doing necessary things like medical care or modernity which tries to exploit women and interferes with the nurturing of her family. In technocratic societies work primarily exists to maintain a shallow materialistic status quo, not life as most of it's features are not necessary for life, hence they are surrogate activities. Artificially manufactured protocals which are being imposed and thus become forms of exploitation and oppression, which we are negligent of due to being pacified. The very thing we accuse of Pashtoon women who are content with the stringent rules and values of her culture.


IN summary the problem isn't always the rules/laws themselves, although they can be. The problem is often The psychological assessment of these rules/ordinances. Which in such cases only reflect the inferiorities,insecurities and inadequacies of the perceiver not the perceived. Food for thought.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

i don't know about the rest of you but i would feel very bad for a man who finds the need to define himself by his ability to earn. suppose he losses his arms or legs tomorrow...is he no longer a man because he can not provide for his family???
being a mother, giving one's child enough attention, love and support to have them become the best of what they can be is one thing and dedicating your life in to raising mentally handicapped children who can't function with out you, something else...
i would be damned to hell if i was expected to stay home and raise my sons to define their gender by their income and my daughters by their ability to bear and be good cooks, period...someone who expects only that from me surely doesn't see or respects me on aspects other than just being a woman...
..you assign yourselves as personal slaves all your lives and then you wonder why you are being treated like **** in society..

First, that is your opinion that they “assign themselves” to be personal slaves. As Edge notes, some of this is sociological and biological, yet people have only decided recently that anything and everything “western” is automatically equivalent to freedom. The mere right for Ms Ahmadzai or Barakzai to be able to wear a short skirt, work 24 hours, talk to males properly or improperly is irrelevent. Those are personal preferences you want to impose on people that they may not want imposed on themselves or their families. As some of the females poined out, it is there inherent desire to not want to partake. Does that make them slaves?

Moreover, mate guarding behavior is a well known biological phenomenon. For that matter, the ability to maintain a stable society also depends to a certain regard on the birth rate, which in turn depends on when women decide is the optimal age to bear children. The slow but obvious decline of European society is somewhat linked to their inability to maintain this ~2.4 births/family. This is exactly why Russia is racing to reward families that have more children. For that matter, the rates of various cancers and the rate of various birth defects in children are directly linked to when a women bares her children and perhaps number of children. There is an inherent difference between males and females whether you prefer to admit this or not. The answer that science establishes a new equilibrium is a grossly misinformed viewpoint. You can ask any of the women at the IVF clinics I rotated in as a medical student whether "science has answered that equilibrium" and turned them into 24 year olds again or not.

As Kakargirl noted, some of this depends on the choices that females decide to make. Moreover, you are comparing apples and oranges. There is a chasm of difference between advocating versus enforcing womens rights in native Pashtun lands versus in the West. Moreover, what those rights shall extend to be is also an extremely sensitive issue. Finally, what is your opinion on our involvement as Western raised Muslims and Americans in terms of enforcing what we believe to be the proper and appropriate social model onto Afghans that simply do not agree? A certain amount of what Osho is advocating sounds like forced interventionalism as opposed to gradual evolution of thought and society. The former can result in blowback that sets the cause you want to progress in backwards motion. The latter is a far more healthy and productive way for societies to reach their own healthy equilibrium.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Respect and honour for pashtun women! Its a joke and ridiculing Pashtun women. What we are doing with them , the brutalities and barbarism we call it respect and honour. Our women are just domestic servants. Look at their 24 hours schedule. Cooking and serving food, cleanliness, washing clothes, washing plates and taking care of children.

Will our male brothern accept this honour. Pashtun women dont have their own money. They always beg for their expenses. Is this the respect. They are murdered by the name of honour killing daily.

Pashtun women are cheated by the name of honour. Husbands give them money and they become happy. They dont have any decision making role in our society because they dont have any political, social and economic role in our society. Their whole life is limited to the four walls of their houses. Even at homes they work like domestic help. They dont have their own food to cook. They wait for their husbands or other male members to bring the food.

Liberating Pashtun women does not mean breaking family or love ties. If both wife and husband have the same economic, political and social status, then it does not mean the love will finish between them. Its not necessary that only a master and slave can love each other. Love can be done between two equally independent beings.

Let the Pashtun women enjoy the world out side their homes. The open air, the beaches, the parks, the jungles, the high ways, the space, the offices, the work. the management , markets every where. After all Pashtun women are human beings not animals to be tied at houses.

Pashtun women problem is in the whole Pashtun society, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has to do with Pashtunwali and Islam of Mullah not with political boundries.

There is an excellent essay by an MD PhD female who is a freedom rights activist for the same causes as they face women in the Arabian peninsula. Her movement is actually based out of Britain, but she is generally a noninterventionalist and her "intervention" is removing Western support for autocratic regimes. She actually answers you by detailing the historical progression of female sufferage movements to vote and in general for equal rights. She notes a key admission that all feminists must make, which is that the general order of things is that there is a critical mass attained at which point the rulers of society decide that it is in the best interests of maintaining societal stability to extend such rights to those that demand them.

So her question which she raises at the end of the article was poignant one. Here in the US, you appear to have basic rights across the board (some may debate this) but let us assume this is the case. So now, the society is even talking about "animal rights" etc. Its like a trickle down effect. So how do you expect the Pashtun women to gain the modicum of Western freedom as you define it when the Afghan man is at the mercy of warlords, vegabond mullahs, rabid nationalists, corrupt politicians, and folks like Dostum that want to drive tanks over them?

While Mortensen touts figures of how the salary women workers bring in to the household when they work appears to exceed what a male contributes, he and I discussed the confounders in his study. For example, the Pashtun male also has a duty to take in his parents, which is not a measure of salary in Mortensen's work. These intangibles of how the society is set up inherently determine how the society will progress.

But nonetheless, I repeat the question, if the man in the kalaay, heck even the Maalik, has minimal rights or human dignity afforded to him, then how do you expect the less protected elements of society to prosper?

The bottom line is that we must withdraw and stop intervening. The people shall determine their own pace of change. Now you, as a Western educated man, will have many choices to make, and you will have to make decisions regarding how you raise your own family here. As a contributor to this society, you are free to discuss withyour significant other and do as you wish in terms of your household organization.

In the end though, should you decide that the rights of Afghan females must be enforced at the barrell of a gun, in their own lands, then I think you will likely see your cause pushed back by about a hundred years or so. You are now seeing the effects of Western interventionalism blossom and manifest themselves in Tunisa and Egypt where the people chafe against occupation and enforcement of enforced "norms." For that matter, Iraq appears to be going backwards according to even Western analysts, when it comes to womens rights.

I prefer to avoid commenting on such sensitive issues as I actually agree with Roshina that we men think we determine what freedom is for an Afghan women. Wrorra, I think the Afghan women will determine, in time, what her own middle ground is. To reconcile this what what I say above, I mean this in the context of what Dreamer and you talk about here in the states and the western countries. The barriers to erecting what you desire over in the native lands has many more barrries that I describe above.

[faye]

i agree, the women will work it out, if they feel the need.

[kakargirl]

dreamer fact is alot our own family women and others refuse to change we like our life the way it is sharam haya is a big thing for our women , to die a true pashtun woman is a big thing its keeping the pashtun culture alive if every one changes the culture will be wiped off which is happening already we are not slaves to no one , nor do we beg our men for money, they automatically spend generously out of the kindness of their own hearts long live these good pashtun men and women ,tradition is dieing so let the ones that choose this be ,we know about freedom ect we refuse it .

[Badlun]

This is encouraging at least we are talking on an issue which pertains to 35 Million Pashtun women.

I would like to make it clear that the purpose of discussions should not be to win or lose an argument but to propose some thing positive for the Pashtun society for further amelioration of the situation and development of Pashtun people in all fronts like social, cultural, economic, commercial, educational and political. Here we should not waste our time and energy on point to point rebuttals and puerely scholarly arguments in an apologetics style.

Yes if we make some special forums where only intelelctuals, scholars, researchers, professors are the only participants then it seems appropriate there. My approach is pragmatic and result oriented not necessarily verbose, pedantic , philosophical or scholarly otherwise I will miss my target and will waste all my energies in words and rebuttals.

My aim is reformational, educational and struggle for better changes in Pashtun society. My aim is not just to win an argument here among few friends by writing more scholarly or using terms which will pose me to be more intillegent or a winner of a battle of arguments and counter arguments. I donmt get any personal gratification that I won an dthe other lost. Lets have a win-win situation in the larger interest of the millions of Pashtun women.

[Badlun]

As earlier said in the essay, some friends think that Pashtuns as a whole, both men and women are downtrodden so talking only of women is not justified.

I agree that Pashtuns as a nation, as a race, both men and women are suffering. We don’t have a single Nobel Prize holder, a single world level scientist or technologist, or philosopher or scholar etc. Yes we have suicide bombers, terrorists, Taliban, dacoits, robbers, all negative, nothing positive.

But here the theme of this article is even the worse status of women, who don’t have the basic right of movement and expression. We have to break their chains; men at least have these rights. They are economically better than women. Women totally depend on their men partners socially and economically. Situation of Pashtun women is many times worse than Pashtun men.
One argument is that we should wait till other more important problems of Pashtun society are solved, and then we shall concentrate on gender and Pashtun women issues.

But we must realize that Pashtun women are 50% of Pashtun population. They are part of Pashto and Pashtunwali. We can’t wait till the times when everything will be all right with Pashtuns then we shall tackle the gender issue. It’s not an unimportant issue-its part and parcel of the whole reformation and development scheme for Pashtuns. It’s not a secondary issue. We have to take it up with war footings basis-it’s a burning issue. Pashtuns politics, culture, religion, society, international relations, education, all are related to Pashtun women too.

Pashtun women problems solution is concomitant with Pashtun problems in general. We have to adopt a holistic approach not a piece meal one. How can a Pashtun ignore for the time being the problems of his mother, wife, sister, and daughter-no way.

Many Pashtun women adjust themselves with the situation and accept the reality. My mother is also like that. She does not want any change, any freedom. She is happy where she is. All the time at home except when has to go hospital or any ceremony!

But should we wait that the thiings will changes automatically. Do we have the same approach to other issues. Why only with women we dont talk of reformation, education, change, development, progress, improvement. Things wont change automatically. We have to become the change catalysts. The same we do with other problems.

First lets recognize the fact that Women have problems in Pashtun society. After the diagnosis lets suggest treatment. We cant live the patient, the disease to be improved and addressed automatically. We must take remedial measures. If the women like an unwilling patient does not want the treatment, the doctor does not stop.

[ScimitarXEdge]

Progress and Peril

Women are not merely part and parcel of Pashtun culture and heritage, women are not merely part of world culture and heritage. Women are intrinsically interwoven into everything.

all the machinations of men, whether by science or technology or the lack of it have been done to relate and accord himself to the environment around him and in turn to make life more accomodatable for his womenfolk and safeguard the longevity of his species with his female partner. In other words it has been done in a large degree for the sake of women. And vice versa with women, that her efforts has been towards her offspring and her male partner; for this is the path of life. In the end what this means is that Males and Females are complimentary aspects of a Whole, so for TRUE Liberation either gender, you must not look at them as separate features but as One; for that is their fundamental character. Without acknowledging this you don't acknowledge the needs of either.

THere is no animosity against Progress, but rather false and artificial notions of progress and the warped definitions of what progress means. True progress has always been intrinsic in our natural relationships; they're apart of our pre-existing evolutionary faculties. Not some technocratically defined unnatural system.

The Pashtun is not in tyranny because he is not world recognized in scholarly circles as some meritable Physicist or Nobel Laureate or some other Fabricated nonsensical standard. The Pashtun is in tyranny because of suicide bombers and extremists, they're in tyranny because Technological Capitalism has robbed them of food, of a clean Environment of a habitat where their naturally disposed way of life can be functionally applied without artificially created impediments from Imperial interferences, they're in tyranny because the world itself, ALL OVER is in Tyranny.

When these false standards of progress stop making machinations to interfere, inhibit and detriment the lives of all things on Earth, then

No aspect of society should be ignored but must be addressed holsitically, the issues should not be based on gender definitions nor should even be ethnically constrained, if we want to help Pashtuns we must stop thinking in constructs Ethnic, Gender, geography and all sorts of false divisions. For this thinking will be fragmented and continue the cycle of disease.

To focus on gender or ethniciity IS piecemeal thinking; and it's something Imperial movements have been using to impress upon their agenda for the Planet Earth. To attain Liberation for women, we must liberate All of ourselves from the shackles of these false ideas of progress which disrupt and distort everything fundamental need of life. The Hoslistic cause must be addressed on a deeper level than just gender; it must be Sociologically and Ecologically conscious first and then proceed from there. Only then can women and men attain peace; it is incorrect views of progress which are the source of the problem. Attack the source.

[IamDZJ]

First, that is your opinion that they “assign themselves” to be personal slaves. As Edge notes, some of this is sociological and biological, yet people have only decided recently that anything and everything “western” is automatically equivalent to freedom.a) that is your opinion. b) it has nothing to do with what i said.The mere right for Ms Ahmadzai or Barakzai to be able to wear a short skirt, work 24 hours, talk to males properly or improperly is irrelevent. Those are personal preferences you want to impose on people that they may not want imposed on themselves or their families. As some of the females poined out, it is there inherent desire to not want to partake. Does that make them slaves? the women assigning themselves to others as slaves comment was in response to kakargirl definition of what proper pashtun 'principles' are. that women are to stay home and raise children and men go out and earn the money...not a woman's choice of dressing up in a particular manner or choosing to be a housewife.

Moreover, mate guarding behavior is a well known biological phenomenon. For that matter, the ability to maintain a stable society also depends to a certain regard on the birth rate, which in turn depends on when women decide is the optimal age to bear children. The slow but obvious decline of European society is somewhat linked to their inability to maintain this ~2.4 births/family. This is exactly why Russia is racing to reward families that have more children. For that matter, the rates of various cancers and the rate of various birth defects in children are directly linked to when a women bares her children and perhaps number of children. There is an inherent difference between males and females whether you prefer to admit this or not. The answer that science establishes a new equilibrium is a grossly misinformed viewpoint. You can ask any of the women at the IVF clinics I rotated in as a medical student whether "science has answered that equilibrium" and turned them into 24 year olds again or not. why does it always have to come down to this?? whenever whatever regarding a muslim woman's rights are mentioned, this point is raised. how many generations of muslim or afghan women does our society need to confirm it's remainder?? why us?? instead of expecting us to sacrifice when and how we want to get married, why don't you guys try finding some other solution to that problem??? besides, there are numerous other factors to that issue . if anything, our population could use some controlling..
As Kakargirl noted, some of this depends on the choices that females decide to make. Moreover, you are comparing apples and oranges. There is a chasm of difference between advocating versus enforcing womens rights in native Pashtun lands versus in the West. Moreover, what those rights shall extend to be is also an extremely sensitive issue. Finally, what is your opinion on our involvement as Western raised Muslims and Americans in terms of enforcing what we believe to be the proper and appropriate social model onto Afghans that simply do not agree? A certain amount of what Osho is advocating sounds like forced interventionalism as opposed to gradual evolution of thought and society. The former can result in blowback that sets the cause you want to progress in backwards motion. The latter is a far more healthy and productive way for societies to reach their own healthy equilibrium.

the reason as to why so many women are burned alive in countries like afghanistan, pakistan and india is very obvious. when 5-8 other members of a family is emotionally, financially and mentally depending on one person (the man of the family) obviously they become more than just a burden. if their rights were of any use, they wouldn't be getting barbecued as often as they do. a woman's right is a woman's right. it should be the same everywhere. so if i am comparing one to the other, it's because i want to point out their faults.

apples are apples and oranges, oranges but handled carelessly both end up rotten and rotten fruit is of no use to anyone.

[شمله ور خراساني]