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

[Catya Sher]

Yeah, the men have been indoctrinated that they must be "feminists" too -
and who started or furthered the entire feminist movement?
One has to look carefully for the real roots. It wasn't necessarily a spontaneous
revolution in thought; there is evidence that the same New World Order people are the ones who sponsor and push it on Americans, so that they will
become robotized into thinking they are 'modern' and 'cool' but in fact
ARE DESTROYING THE AMERICAN FAMILY and TRADiTIONAL MORAL VALUES by all this "feminism".

I read a blog by a VERY VERY ANGRY Iraqi woman who says over and over how much she and other Arab women HATE American feminists coming over and
snippily telling Iraqi women how to live and how to handle their lives.

She said in worse words than this that they can get out of the country and stop
RUDELY INTERFERING in the lives of Iraqis.

These Americans and/or European feminists all think they are the Savioresses
sent to "rescue" oppressed Iraqi women.
In fact, she tartly yelled, "We don't NEED RESCUING! Our civilization of Mesopotamia has been around for many thousands of years and is highly advanced. Yours is young, brash and unqualified to hand out ANY HELP WHATSOEVER to Iraqi women, who are wise and are in control of their families and lives."

It was great to read this affirmation of exactly what I would expect women to feel in these countries at being pushed around by Western so-called women's liberation exponents.

Just noticing the arrogant, condescending tone of so many of these supposed "do-gooders" to women in the Islamic world reveals everything about who they are and why they are so inappropriate to preach at much older cultures.

So, just the same with the Afghan women.
I think those proponents of "liberation" need a good shouting at, like this fiery Iraqi woman has done very effectively.

[شمله ور خراساني]

I iz a Jihadi feminizt. Do I get lots of women now, please?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

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.

Well, I challenge you to think about what Pashtunwali and Pashto culture are. You can tout controversial figures like Mina, Police Woman Kakar of Qandahar who was killed, Shukria Barakzai etc as being "just as Pashtun" as any other Pashtun female, but you would be wrong, and that is hardly opinion. They truly do not define Pashtun culture and stand apart from it. In fact, recall that the twist in the famous story of Malalai she raised the banner of war after the men had taken their stab at it. How much of the rural of FATA pashtun females, where Pashto culture is preserved to the utmost, do they represent? In fact, isn't that what this thread was about in the first place? You can then go on to claim that every culture is a culture in flux and that Pashtun women do not live as their ancestors did 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. That is hardly a response either and is a cliche.

However, what Kakargirl details in regard to the seperate spheres identity in Pashtun culture is a fact of life. What you decided to impose on what she said was that she agreed to A) Slavery B) subservience or C) to be walked on. Furthermore, you made the assumption that her life "is like ****." Where is your empirical evidence for that statement? She appears to endorse nothing of the sort. Her mindset is hardly different than what I encountered in the rural southern USA where "mama bakes appple pies" because she wants to. In no way is that southern Baptist female seen as a slave or subservient. In fact, she revels in her role. Moreover, similar to those that you criticise, you made a series of assumptions about someone who said that she enjoyed certain aspects of her day to day life. She appeared to indicate that her father plays a paternalistic role and that her mother appreciates this. Moreover, the local culture responded to societal pressures and came up with internal ways to resolve that "1 individual providing for all" passing away, etc.

Once again, as Laila and others can detail, I am a big advocate of females entering the workforce in any capacity they so choose. However, you never responded to the facet of interventionalism you appear to be promoting. You certainly cannot provide change with insulting conservatism, nor can you instigate it with imperialism and at the barrell of a gun. With the fruit comparison a more apt example is that if you eat the fruit too early, its meat tastes sour. With the forced interventionalism from Western parties (including a Pashtun diaspora that is ever convinced that it knows best and shall force what is best on a whole mass of people), you will undo the gains you seek to acquire ala Baghdad.

[faye]

i dispute that the feminist movement is a conspiracy. women wanted more rights within society and they fought for them. during the middle ages, in the middle east, women in the muslim societies actually had more rights than in europe, they were a couple of centuries ahead in some fields apparently. do you think catya sher, that women were not capable of initiating such a movement? and do you think that it is a joke for a man to support his sisters for equal rights?
well, muhommad was responsible for some of the equal rights of your women so do you laugh at him too?
most groups and religions appear to have an element of extremism, same with feminism ie; i saw european,lesbian feminists kissing in public in india, in the seventies and then they were complaining about being hassled
by indians! today we have women who think it is a liberated act to be a porn star and so on.
feminism is women claiming their rights as equals in society. what women do with it after that is not the fault of the women who worked so hard in such a movement and the men who supported them.
in kabul you have RAWA which has been operating in afghan society since the seventies.
i despise many things that women are doing in my society today.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

i dispute that the feminist movement is a conspiracy. women wanted more rights within society and they fought for them. during the middle ages, in the middle east, women in the muslim societies actually had more rights than in europe, they were a couple of centuries ahead in some fields apparently. do you think catya sher, that women were not capable of initiating such a movement? and do you think that it is a joke for a man to support his sisters for equal rights?
well, muhommad was responsible for some of the equal rights of your women so do you laugh at him too?
most groups and religions appear to have an element of extremism, same with feminism ie; i saw european,lesbian feminists kissing in public in india, in the seventies and then they were complaining about being hassled
by indians! today we have women who think it is a liberated act to be a porn star and so on.
feminism is women claiming their rights as equals in society. what women do with it after that is not the fault of the women who worked so hard in such a movement and the men who supported them.
in kabul you have RAWA which has been operating in afghan society since the seventies.
i despise many things that women are doing in my society today.

Agree with you. Never said it was. In fact, the progression of intellectual rights within USA proper was gradual and undoubtedly was home grown. No soldiers from France or from Russia came in and told American men like Teddy Roosevelt that he must allow a woman to fun for vice president or to vote.

My point is that RAWA, etc. is just fine if they sustain themselves as the US movement did as an internal movement. A US soldier, white skinned, blue eyed, blond haired, Christian possibly, holding a gun to a rural pashtuns head and telling him that he must divorce himself of all cultural practices pertaining to his women folk is likely to be counterproductive. In fact, the occupied begin to associate generally good things (like womens rights) with occupation and oppression, setting the cause back. Anything that "reeks of Americanism" becomes suspect in the mind of the occupied.

My belief is that you will allow for the creation of Oshos and other good people by permitting the Pashtuns to find their own middle ground. Take a cue by reading up on the wife of Amanullah, Queen Soraya. She unveiled herself in Qandahar and the jirga was on fire, instigating rebellion across the whole of the Pashtun belt. That was an internal move inspired by Amanullah, an Afghan raised in Afghanistan, per studying his hero, Kamal Ataturk, a British enforced Turkish leader. So even that indirect interventionalism of the West into Turkish affairs set off a chain of events in Afghanistan that were counter productive. Subsequently Nadir Shah father of Zahir, rolled back some of the more endorsed gradual reforms Amanullah had in place.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

i dispute that the feminist movement is a conspiracy. women wanted more rights within society and they fought for them. during the middle ages, in the middle east, women in the muslim societies actually had more rights than in europe, they were a couple of centuries ahead in some fields apparently. do you think catya sher, that women were not capable of initiating such a movement? and do you think that it is a joke for a man to support his sisters for equal rights?
well, muhommad was responsible for some of the equal rights of your women so do you laugh at him too?
most groups and religions appear to have an element of extremism, same with feminism ie; i saw european,lesbian feminists kissing in public in india, in the seventies and then they were complaining about being hassled
by indians! today we have women who think it is a liberated act to be a porn star and so on.
feminism is women claiming their rights as equals in society. what women do with it after that is not the fault of the women who worked so hard in such a movement and the men who supported them.
in kabul you have RAWA which has been operating in afghan society since the seventies.
i despise many things that women are doing in my society today.

The caveat is that womens sufferage movements did have links across continents. Prominent European feminists motivated American feminists etc. However the key was the lack of forced imposition.

[Abeille]

Who is the author of the article?

[faye]

i wasn't specifically replying to you, b.a. and i don't need your cues. you tangent too much for my liking. i like things more direct and to the point.
i am not very well educated so, to me most of your posts are too long.
your last comment you will have to translate into commoners english for me, please.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

i wasn't specifically replying to you, b.a. and i don't need your cues. you tangent too much for my liking. i like things more direct and to the point.
i am not very well educated so, to me most of your posts are too long.
your last comment you will have to translate into commoners english for me, please.

OK, here is something shorter:
The whole post boils down to: You can't force a society to change by having someone who is completely on the outside of it put a gun to someones head to do it.

An example: Osho's request to change Quranic precepts: In rural Afghanistan, the call to change the Quran or its Hanafi interpretations has an inflammatory equal affect as you saw in the Bible belt as when John Lennon said the Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ.

[IamDZJ]

Well, I challenge you to think about what Pashtunwali and Pashto culture are. You can tout controversial figures like Mina, Police Woman Kakar of Qandahar who was killed who were they killed by and please do tell me why, Shukria Barakzai etc as being "just as Pashtun" as any other Pashtun female, but you would be wrong, and that is hardly opinion. They truly do not define Pashtun culture and stand apart from it. In fact, recall that the twist in the famous story of Malalai she raised the banner of war after the men had taken their stab at it. How much of the rural of FATA pashtun females, where Pashto culture is preserved to the utmost, do they represent? In fact, isn't that what this thread was about in the first place? You can then go on to claim that every culture is a culture in flux and that Pashtun women do not live as their ancestors did 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. That is hardly a response either and is a cliche.
how noble of you to justify the way women are being treated in afghanistan by comparing (one) malaalai of maiwand to them. that just makes everything alright...because they have a lot in common, right?? one gets beaten up twice in a day and the other walked away victorious from a battle fought by men..
afghan women of today's generation need to redeem themselves on their own. not by some woman who raised a flag in a war that took place 100 years ago. please don't justify anything.

However, what Kakargirl details in regard to the seperate spheres identity in Pashtun culture is a fact of life. What you decided to impose on what she said was that she agreed to A) Slavery B) subservience or C) to be walked on. Furthermore, you made the assumption that her life "is like ****." where did i say that kakargirl's life was ****??Where is your empirical evidence for that statement? She appears to endorse nothing of the sort. Her mindset is hardly different than what I encountered in the rural southern USA where "mama bakes appple pies" because she wants to. read the last sentence in that paragraph again. I MADE THAT COMMENT REFERRING TO WHAT KAKARGIRL'S DEFINITION OF WHAT PROPER PASHTUN PRINCIPLES[women raise children while men do the earning] ARE. i don't consider women who choose to stay home as subservient but i don't agree with the perception of women who choose to have a career as being less of pashtunas either. it doesn't sound like much of a "choice" to me when you say you believe in that and then compare being a baker to expecting your husband to support you and you 2 dozen children while you continue staying home and watching daytime tv. In no way is that southern Baptist female seen as a slave or subservient. In fact, she revels in her role. Moreover, similar to those that you criticise, you made a series of assumptions about someone who said that she enjoyed certain aspects of her day to day life. those "assumptions" were not even about her. i was talking about women of the native pashtun land..She appeared to indicate that her father plays a paternalistic role and that her mother appreciates this. Moreover, the local culture responded to societal pressures and came up with internal ways to resolve that "1 individual providing for all" passing away, etc.

Once again, as Laila and others can detail, I am a big advocate of females entering the workforce in any capacity they so choose. However, you never responded to the facet of interventionalism you appear to be promoting. You certainly cannot provide change with insulting conservatism, nor can you instigate it with imperialism and at the barrell of a gun. With the fruit comparison a more apt example is that if you eat he fruit early, its meat tastes sour. With the forced interventionalism from Western parties (including a Pashtun diaspora that is ever convinced that it knows best and shall force what is best on a whole mass of people), you will undo the gains you seek to acquire ala Baghdad. <--what is this??

[faye]

i don't understand why you inserted my comment, to say that. that is not what i was talking about. if you want to say that to someone else then bracket their comment.
"my belief is that you will allow for the creation of oshos...." you talking to me there?

[kakargirl]

just one question osho , in all this liberating women why do 20, 000 english women get murdered every year , in uk alot couples fight over money even though the woman is earning to keep her self , domestic violence is so high that the police makes arrests now,the women are binge drinking due to depression , trying so hard to find a partener , who derserts them because with in a week hes with someone else and the woman ends up pregnant and raising a kid too then the pressure to look good most women in uk are in debt due to fashion and salons is this what liberation so tell me are these women in better position if so explain even our priminister has called it broken britain due to the fact that so many disfunctional families this is what happens when culture and values are removed.

[Roshina]

good for your women , our women are educated too but some arent like my mother, my mother went to hsbc bank with my father, he was putting a large amount of money on her name and the english clerk at the bank asked my mum where she got the money from she said her husband so she turns to my father did she work , he said no she dosnt she runs the house thats too much work too so the lady said to my mum your so lucky i wish my husband would give me a break and provide so i can spend time with my kids and relax alittle.

Guley, you have repeated like a parrot in all of your posts in this thread that "our women" are "happy" and they "do not want to be free." Some questions and comments for you.

1. No Pukhtun woman represents another Pukhtun woman because every single one's situation is different. I don't represent them, you don't represent them, the illiterate girl who longs to learn to read doesn't represent them, the girl who had to stop her school at the age of 15 to get married doesn't represent them, the bold woman who gives public lectures on social issues doesn't represent them -- but all of these women, and many, many more, exist among Pukhtuns. And none of us have a right to say whether the other is happy or not, whether she likes her life this way or not. Who are we to decide this? And why are we even deciding it? You are doing exactly what others I can't stand do: You use YOUR personal experiences and observations and argue that they apply to all Pukhtun women!

2. What does "freedom" mean? What if I tell you that I know many, many Pukhtun women who long to be "free" according to their individual concepts of freedom, whatever they might be? (This is not to suggest that "Pukhtun women" want freedom. I don't know that because I have not studied enough of them to make this claim.)

3. What does "haya and sharam" mean? You have repeatedly said that our women are happy at home and they don't wanna give up on their sharam and haya. What does that mean? Are you suggesting that women who work, for example, have no sharam and haya? In that case, I look forward to your definition of these subjective terms.

4. You keep talking about Pukhtunwali and Islam, as if they are one - but shall I remind you of the many contradictions between mainstream Islam and the Pukhtunwali you so enthusiastically champion, khaperai?

5. Most importantly, you are a privileged girl, and so am I - as are all those who live in the west or in other countries where they are safe and free to make their own choices. And since we are privileged, we of all the Pukhtun women in the world have NO right whatsoever to define happiness and freedom and rights for our women.

6. Going back to your claim that Pukhtun women are happy the way they are, how many have you talked to? How many are you intimate enough with that they'll willingly share the personal details of their lives with you? You don't appear old enough to know what a married woman goes through, and what makes you think that we should believe a young unmarried girl who makes it seem as though she knows exactly what married women go through and feel like and what their desires are? By no means am I suggesting that our women are unhappy. Again, I don't know this. I of course know plenty who are unhappy, but I also know plenty who are very happy. But I am most certainly stating that you and I are in no position to decide who's happy and who's not -- what IS happiness, anyway? It's a subjective term, different for each person. Nonetheless, I must continue asking ye: How many women's lives have you studied? I assume it's a fairly few number and not even close to more than a hundred. In such a case, please be honest with yourself and with everyone else by being more specific in your conclusions. For example, you should say, "The women I know" or "the women I interact with" or "from what I have witnessed" instead of "our women" or "Pukhtun women." Pukhtun women come in millions, as does "our women."

I still find it amusing that folks who have barely any intimate connections with the women about whom they are talking are deciding whether others are happy or not. Like, seriously?

Oh, and SXEdge wrora, actually, nothing in my earlier post suggested anything about feminism; neither did anything in it claim that you, a man, cannot have an opinion on women's issues. Why are some of us so quick to make assumptions and don't know how to read deeply enough to entertain an intellectual discussion? Everything I said in that post holds true right now as well, and I still stand by it: It's historically ALWAYS been men who decided which "rights" women can and should have, what they can and should do, what they can't and shouldn't do, what theyir capabilities and inabilities are, and, hell, even whether they are full human like men! I point this out in a poem called "Freedom from the Forbidden" -- in addition to many other things like this. And it all has always held true, no matter where women are.

And so, I was saying then and I say right now, it's always entertaining when a group of men (at that time, it was only male voices; female voices, as has been the historical deal, were absent at that time) gather to discuss what women's needs are. It's funniest when they use religion to support their stance. They say, "I might not know women too well, but this is what God (or the Prophet) said." LOL It's half funniest when they say, "These are women's natural roles and rights." Um. LOL again!

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Well, I challenge you to think about what Pashtunwali and Pashto culture are. You can tout controversial figures like Mina, Police Woman Kakar of Qandahar who was killed who were they killed by and please do tell me why, Shukria Barakzai etc as being "just as Pashtun" as any other Pashtun female, but you would be wrong, and that is hardly opinion. They truly do not define Pashtun culture and stand apart from it. In fact, recall that the twist in the famous story of Malalai she raised the banner of war after the men had taken their stab at it. How much of the rural of FATA pashtun females, where Pashto culture is preserved to the utmost, do they represent? In fact, isn't that what this thread was about in the first place? You can then go on to claim that every culture is a culture in flux and that Pashtun women do not live as their ancestors did 100 years ago or even 20 years ago. That is hardly a response either and is a cliche.
how noble of you to justify the way women are being treated in afghanistan by comparing (one) malaalai of maiwand to them. that just makes everything alright...because they have a lot in common, right?? one gets beaten up twice in a day and the other fought in a battle against men..
afghan women of today's generation need to redeem themselves on their own. not by some woman who raised a flag in a war that took place 100 years ago. please don't justify anything.

However, what Kakargirl details in regard to the seperate spheres identity in Pashtun culture is a fact of life. What you decided to impose on what she said was that she agreed to A) Slavery B) subservience or C) to be walked on. Furthermore, you made the assumption that her life "is like ****." where did i say that kakargirl's life was ****??Where is your empirical evidence for that statement? She appears to endorse nothing of the sort. Her mindset is hardly different than what I encountered in the rural southern USA where "mama bakes appple pies" because she wants to. read the last sentence in that paragraph again. I MADE THAT COMMENT REFERRING TO WHAT KAKARGIRL'S DEFINITION OF WHAT PROPER PASHTUN PRINCIPLES[women raise children while men do the earning] ARE. i don't consider women who choose to stay home as subservient but i don't agree with the perception of women who choose to have a career as being less of pashtunas either. it doesn't sound like much of a "choice" to me when you say you believe in that and then compare being a baker to expecting your husband to support you and you 2 dozen children while you continue staying home and watching daytime tv. In no way is that southern Baptist female seen as a slave or subservient. In fact, she revels in her role. Moreover, similar to those that you criticise, you made a series of assumptions about someone who said that she enjoyed certain aspects of her day to day life. those "assumptions" were not even about her. i was talking about women of the native pashtun land..She appeared to indicate that her father plays a paternalistic role and that her mother appreciates this. Moreover, the local culture responded to societal pressures and came up with internal ways to resolve that "1 individual providing for all" passing away, etc.

Once again, as Laila and others can detail, I am a big advocate of females entering the workforce in any capacity they so choose. However, you never responded to the facet of interventionalism you appear to be promoting. You certainly cannot provide change with insulting conservatism, nor can you instigate it with imperialism and at the barrell of a gun. With the fruit comparison a more apt example is that if you eat he fruit early, its meat tastes sour. With the forced interventionalism from Western parties (including a Pashtun diaspora that is ever convinced that it knows best and shall force what is best on a whole mass of people), you will undo the gains you seek to acquire ala Baghdad. <--what is this??

Various stories pass around regarding who killed them. Police woman Kakar, being a woman that carried a Kalashnikov accepted the equality of the battle field. She, like other killed police chiefs was killed by insurgents most likely. Mina's death remains a mystery. The initial accusations were against Hekmetyaar, but he vehemently denied this. Others suspected the Khad.

I do not understand where our signals are crossing. I never praised nor defamed Malalai nor did I endorse the mistreatment you entail. I merely pointed out the general characteristic of Pashtun culture that appears to transcend region. Regarding what is proper in Pashtun culture, my usage of Malalai is to personify a cultural expectation. It is similar to Ahmad Shah Abdali personifies the cultural stereotype that Pashtun men are judged by (the warrior poet persona).

Once again, regarding Kakargirls comments, you take exception to them, but I am pointing out that her commentary is generally what embodies propriety back home. Its like the way that American society views the absentee father or the idea of marrying at 14 years old. One can say that these acts cause some ill in society hence their natural lack of acceptance. However, an American male could say: "I hate being judged by the fact that I want to sow my oats and just live free the I way I was meant to be."

By that same token, traditional Pashtuns view certain social mores as unacceptable. With time, these ideals may change and they appear to be. There are Pashtuns of all kinds of different mindsets, from Pan Islamists to nationalists to communists to capitalists etc. She never appeared to say that a woman who works or is a doctor is less of a Pashtun. Moreover, many in America still expect men to earn. It may all go back to that primordial hunter gatherer mindset ingrained in our survival instinct. I mean on the flip side, the Nationalists/Secularists refer to the Islamists as backwards etc. However, both are a part of the fabric of the society.

The Baghdad example was to show how interventionalism has backfired. Interestingly enough, during the Saddam era, more women physicians were educated than ever before. Women appeared to prosper even in Baghdad proper. However, post our interventionalism, Iraqi women are noting that their rights have been tremendously curbed in the new shia theocratic state. Baghdad has become an especially affected area with militias enforcing various things. So this is my warning that the change has to come from within as opposed to us enforcing it or us telling FATA women that because they do not all collectively rise up that they have earned themselves misery.

As a comparison to the self immolation, take a look at that young man that burned himself to death in Tunisia, sparking this wave of revolution we are now witnessing. A society that "buries its daughters" shall balance itself at some point. The self immolation of a human being is a powerful message to any human being. Those that choose to ignore the suffering of their own females shall do so at their own peril. The change shall happen without forcing out verses of the Quran or without telling women where they should and should not work and without worrying about whether you are more or less Pashtun.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Guley, you have repeated like a parrot in all of your posts in this thread that "our women" are "happy" and they "do not want to be free." Some questions and comments for you.

1. No Pukhtun woman represents another Pukhtun woman because every single one's situation is different. I don't represent them, you don't represent them, the illiterate girl who longs to learn to read doesn't represent them, the girl who had to stop her school at the age of 15 to get married doesn't represent them, the bold woman who gives public lectures on social issues doesn't represent them -- but all of these women, and many, many more, exist among Pukhtuns. And none of us have a right to say whether the other is happy or not, whether she likes her life this way or not. Who are we to decide this? And why are we even deciding it? You are doing exactly what others I can't stand do: You use YOUR personal experiences and observations and argue that they apply to all Pukhtun women!

2. What does "freedom" mean? What if I tell you that I know many, many Pukhtun women who long to be "free" according to their individual concepts of freedom, whatever they might be? (This is not to suggest that "Pukhtun women" want freedom. I don't know that because I have not studied enough of them to make this claim.)

3. What does "haya and sharam" mean? You have repeatedly said that our women are happy at home and they don't wanna give up on their sharam and haya. What does that mean? Are you suggesting that women who work, for example, have no sharam and haya? In that case, I look forward to your definition of these subjective terms.

4. You keep talking about Pukhtunwali and Islam, as if they are one - but shall I remind you of the many contradictions between mainstream Islam and the Pukhtunwali you so enthusiastically champion, khaperai?

5. Most importantly, you are a privileged girl, and so am I - as are all those who live in the west or in other countries where they are safe and free to make their own choices. And since we are privileged, we of all the Pukhtun women in the world have NO right whatsoever to define happiness and freedom and rights for our women.

6. Going back to your claim that Pukhtun women are happy the way they are, how many have you talked to? How many are you intimate enough with that they'll willingly share the personal details of their lives with you? You don't appear old enough to know what a married woman goes through, and what makes you think that we should believe a young unmarried girl who makes it seem as though she knows exactly what married women go through and feel like and what their desires are? By no means am I suggesting that our women are unhappy. Again, I don't know this. I of course know plenty who are unhappy, but I also know plenty who are very happy. But I am most certainly stating that you and I are in no position to decide who's happy and who's not -- what IS happiness, anyway? It's a subjective term, different for each person. Nonetheless, I must continue asking ye: How many women's lives have you studied? I assume it's a fairly few number and not even close to more than a hundred. In such a case, please be honest with yourself and with everyone else by being more specific in your conclusions. For example, you should say, "The women I know" or "the women I interact with" or "from what I have witnessed" instead of "our women" or "Pukhtun women." Pukhtun women come in millions, as does "our women."

I still find it amusing that folks who have barely any intimate connections with the women about whom they are talking are deciding whether others are happy or not. Like, seriously?

Oh, and SXEdge wrora, actually, nothing in my earlier post suggested anything about feminism; neither did anything in it claim that you, a man, cannot have an opinion on women's issues. Why are some of us so quick to make assumptions and don't know how to read deeply enough to entertain an intellectual discussion? Everything I said in that post holds true right now as well, and I still stand by it: It's historically ALWAYS been men who decided which "rights" women can and should have, what they can and should do, what they can't and shouldn't do, what theyir capabilities and inabilities are, and, hell, even whether they are full human like men! I point this out in a poem called "Freedom from the Forbidden" -- in addition to many other things like this. And it all has always held true, no matter where women are.

And so, I was saying then and I say right now, it's always entertaining when a group of men (at that time, it was only male voices; female voices, as has been the historical deal, were absent at that time) gather to discuss what women's needs are. It's funniest when they use religion to support their stance. They say, "I might not know women too well, but this is what God (or the Prophet) said." LOL It's half funniest when they say, "These are women's natural roles and rights." Um. LOL again!

Well once again, similar to how Secularists and Islamists both represent large chunks of opinion amongst Pashtuns, who is to say that kakargirl's opinion does not represent a large chunk of opinion on the ground in Qandahar? From my travels there, despite our family being more privileged, her views appear to be more typical. I refer you to the rebellion against Soraya and Amanullah. It appears that that jirga that rose up in violent rebellion against that unveiling event views Soraya Tarzai has having done something both bey sharmaa and without hayaa. For that matter, why is that the American military claims that it teaches its soldiers cultural mores? Do they not exist? Should the soldiers be taught about encountering Barakzai's sisters who are physicians and Roshina who is a college graduate student in one of the homes they raid? What I mean is would it not be absurd for them to say to the soldiers: "hey you might encounter a Roshina or a Dr. Barakzai when you raid this house and you can likely talk to them about a good Belushi movie like Animal House."

Finally, regarding your last two paragraphs, if what you affirm is true, that men have traditionally determined these mores, what does that say about interventionalism and attempting to alter the natural progression toward what you are able to do and seize the initiative in interprating these mores? Moreover it appears that Edge is attempting to explain and not endorse what culture views as appropriate. For example, is it far fetched to say that biology underlies our actions in terms of land grabs, warfare, etc? If this is the case, why is it so off limits to explain mate gaurding behavior that is seen in Pashto culture?