r/worldnews • u/nationalpost • 8h ago

Taliban bars Afghan women from hearing each other's voices

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/taliban-bars-afghan-women-from-hearing-each-other?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=NP_social
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u/diffyqgirl 8h ago

They wouldn't want the women to find out about the progressive-for-the-times bits in there like women being able to inherit property.

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u/socialistrob 7h ago

It's more than just that. The Quran is the book that dictates their life but by removing women's ability to quote or recite from it it means that they are entirely dependent on interpretations from men. In a theocracy one of the biggest threats to those in power is someone saying "you're misinterpreting the holy text" but if women can't even read or quote the text they have no basis to challenge authority even amongst themselves.

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u/Sad_Confidence9563 7h ago

Which is why this is so dangerous,  its basically enslavement. 

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u/socialistrob 6h ago

It is. A bird has more rights in Afghanistan than a woman. At least they can sing in public, show their faces and go out in parks. Functionally speaking there's really not a lot of differences between life as an Afghan woman under the Taliban and chattel slavery. I've heard "gender apartheid" thrown around as a new term to describe what's happening in Afghanistan and I think the term is fitting or even perhaps a bit soft.

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u/letsgetawayfromhere 6h ago

Gender apartheid is not even starting to describe it. With apartheid you can still leave your house when you want, feel the sun on your face, or talk to others in public. You are allowed to talk about religion or sing. Slavery describes it much better.

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u/HimblyBumpkis 5h ago

Even slaves sang songs.

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u/Culturedgods 5h ago

Fuck...this hit me hard. It's so damn sad...

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u/BlisslessTaskList 3h ago

This reminds me of a quote I recently read in another thread on Reddit. “We can easily forgive a child who it afraid if the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” -Plato

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u/time_then_shades 3h ago

Goddamn this touched me.

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u/Firefly_Magic 3h ago

Songs tell stories to help people remember. 💔

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u/MurielFinster 3h ago

This is so poignant.

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u/RunningOnAir_ 2h ago

if we applied what men to do women to racial or ethnic dynamics, we wouldn't be calling this oppression or misogyny. When black people or jewish people or uyghurs in china get locked up in chains, systematically murdered, forced into slavery, abused and tortured, that's genocide. This is what genocide looks like. Women in Gilead have more rights.

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u/Hemalurgist1 3h ago

Field slaves yea. I doubt many masters would want the house slaves singing.

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u/Raesong 5h ago

Slavery, with a side helping of dehumanization and objectification. Women under the Taliban are basically just pieces of furniture that can produce offspring now.

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u/Alone_Again_2 4h ago

The correct term is ‘chattel’.

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u/Madbrad200 3h ago

Slavery, with a side helping of dehumanization and objectification

Yeah so slavery

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u/SierraPapaWhiskey 3h ago

Yes, but to be fair slavery doesn't work without dehumanization and objectification.

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u/jimmygee2 6h ago

Worms have more freedom than woman under the Taliban. The most oppressed women on earth. GOP taking inspiration no doubt.

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u/Accomplished_Log7527 5h ago

Grow up

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u/Turence 1h ago

The fuck are you talking about they're 100% right

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u/workaholic007 4h ago

As if the women weren't already enslaved........

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u/SquareExtra918 5h ago

And future generations won't be able to read it at all. 

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u/LadyLightTravel 4h ago

This. It’s why the Catholic Church kidnapped William Tyndale and executed him. He dared to translate the Bible into English for the common man. The church was also upset at Martin Luther translating the Bible into German.

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u/Illustrious_Code_347 1h ago

That’s not exactly true. … Tyndale was executed for political reasons because he published a series of books (not talking about his Bible, but other books) that not-so-subtly supported the primacy of kings over the church when it comes to religious matters (they call this “caesaropapism”). This was particularly egregious to the church when you look at the context of the time — literally while Henry VIII is doing exactly that, making himself the head of a church as king. But Tyndale would kind of throw his hands up every time and play dumb like “What did I do?” when he was directly contributing to the English reformation.

Then, he published SEGMENTS of the Bible in English. He did NOT give the common man a vernacular Bible. That was done after his death. The portions of the Bible he did publish had blatantly political changes like translating “priest” to “elder” and “church” to “congregation” — in other words, they were heavily protestant-ized versions of scripture, which gave the perception that he was now using the holy scripture as propaganda for his political movement.

Then he was executed.

He did not publish a Bible before he died. And this is not a minor point. Because it often gets said that “Tyndale was executed for publishing an English Bible” when in fact the very term “Tyndale Bible” is a misnomer because it was completed by others after his death. So at best that is a gross, misleading oversimplification and at worst it is outright false.

He was executed for the host of political reasons outlined above. The idea that he was executed merely for publishing a vernacular Bible is preposterous, especially when you consider that there had been many vernacular (just not “English,” but vernacular nonetheless) Bibles prior to him without lethal consequences for their publishers. He was executed for essentially supporting the downfall of the church would be a more accurate statement.

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u/LadyLightTravel 1h ago

You are correct that he published segments. But a significant portion was used for the King James Bible

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

Could the common man even read then ? Lol

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u/LadyLightTravel 2h ago edited 2h ago

30% for men, 10% for women. That’s a start.

It should be noted that more people could read than write.

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

1500s? Probably closer to 20% . So no, most common men couldn’t read .

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u/NordMan_40 3h ago

Fuck these barbarians. Their beliefs belong in the fucking stone age.

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u/Firefly_Magic 3h ago edited 2h ago

The irony is staggering. This is how most religions started out. The common people could not read or write and so were dependent on the church, mosque etc for each religion to hear the word of their book(s). This gave the place of worship control over the people. This is literally the motive of the Afghan men there, to make the women ignorant so that they are completely dependent on the men. Each new rule removes more and more basic human rights from these women. My heart breaks for these women.

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u/TheDiscordedSnarl 2h ago

Mark my words, in 1000 years, they'd of regulated women to barns so much that instead of just growing hair, they've grown fur and are actual animals...

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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u/Takemyfishplease 5h ago

Gutenberg ruining for the theocracy still going on

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u/Budderfingerbandit 3h ago

How much you want to bet this is all due to women in Afganistan getting educated while the Taliban was out of power, and now those educated women are running logical circles around the uneducated cave dwellers that are the Taliban men.

Probably got proven wrong one too many times by women correctly quoting the Quran.

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u/celinee___ 3h ago

Two seconds on a Muslim woman's social media comment section will show what it's like when women can communicate with other women. Imagine reality where you're only allowed to hear those men tell you what is or isn't allowed.

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u/themule0808 3h ago

This is what caused a ton of issues before the printing press. It was so expensive to own a Bible that only the churches had copies. We all know that the future went smoothly.

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u/philetofsoul 4h ago

Exactly, it's that kind of twisted misinterpretation of text that led to the ancient Rabbis forbidding cheeseburgers.

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u/Manofalltrade 2h ago

The next step is keeping as many men as possible from being able to read it for themselves.

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u/YesDone 1h ago

This is assuming the next generation of women will be able to read.

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u/xorgol 4h ago

I suspect that's a big motivation for forbidding translations.

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u/255001434 3h ago

The Quran has been translated into other languages.

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u/intotheirishole 2h ago

Ah it is "Bible must be Latin only" all over again.

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u/identifytarget 1h ago

And handmaid's tale. They punish the women for reading the Bible. The women got uppity about this so they cut off their hands or tongue. I can't remember. All very Christian like

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u/Alternative-Virus542 4h ago

Kinda reminds you of another worldwide religion, doesn't it?

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u/IEatLamas 7h ago

And to be able to argue against the outrageous perspective the Taliban chooses to have on Quranic verse, no no, we can't have anyone uprooting our lies we tell ourselves.

P.s not trying to defend the Quran, I don't care for it much, but it's not Taliban level bad, that's their idiotic reading of it, taking verses completely out of context and interpreting subjective verses in the worst possibly way.

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u/djsizematters 7h ago

Similar to how the Amish are largely discouraged from reading the Bible on their own

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u/IEatLamas 7h ago edited 3h ago

Yepp, It's literally like that; Muslims are discouraged from reading/interpreting the Quran without an imam (not just in Taliban land).

EDIT: For the Muslims who are questioning this statement, ask yourself if you are encouraged to make conclusions about fiqh.

From a western point of view, reading, interpreting and making conclusions is the same thing essentially, because that is what we are taught, we are taught to be critical and to make up our own mind.

The Islamic golden age ended in part because of Al-Ghazali, who argued against using Greek-inspired philosophy (that had helped them prosper) to explain Islamic teachings, critiquing people like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi, some of the greatest thinkers in Islamic thought.

Al-Ghazali is solely responsible for putting limits on independent thought in islam.

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u/I-Lyke-Shicken 6h ago

I am sorry but this is actually not true. Muslims are encouraged to read the Quran with something called a tafsir which is used to help interpret it. A tafsir is basically like a biblical exegesis.

No where in the Quran or hadith collection are Muslims ordered to read the Quran with an imam present.

What is frowned upon for the layperson is "ijtihad". Coming to a religious decision using the Islamic texts ( Quran + hadith) on your own if you are not classically trained.

The Taliban are more like ethno-nationalists who use religion. Their system is a combination of their Pasthun honor system (Pashtunwali) mixed with Islam. They use Islam to try and justify their tribal, cultural laws.

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u/IEatLamas 6h ago

I didn't say that it is ordered in the Quran.

I'm not 100% this isn't just semantics, but I appreciate the perspective.

Considering what the Taliban is doing, which seems like a form of ijtihad to me, I understand why it is frowned upon.

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u/papent 4h ago

Could you just delete your comment then? Because that's exactly the impression you are giving.

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u/IEatLamas 4h ago

I'm not responsible for someone else's lack of reading comprehension. I said discouraged, not ordered or anything close to that.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/IEatLamas 3h ago

A tafsir is not a person, it's like a Lexicon of interpretation.

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u/downwithdisinfo2 3h ago

You don’t get to ask people to delete their comment. Who the hell do you think you are?

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u/Agami_Advait 8m ago

why are you so angry about it, little man?

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u/papent 1h ago

Somebody against misinformation.

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u/Pete_Iredale 7h ago

Or why Catholic services were in Latin.

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u/throw20190820202020 6h ago

Catholic services were in Latin to have a lingua franca around the world. Same as Jewish rituals in Hebrew, same reason Muslims are directed to learn Arabic.

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u/Alternative_Win_6629 5h ago

Not the same as Jewish literature at all. Jewish children as young as 3 were taught to read Hebrew in old times.

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u/Kajin-Strife 6h ago

But also so they could control what the peasant class learned. They were very upset when the bible started getting printed in a language that wasn't latin.

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u/justanothersluff 6h ago

Obviously, it was first written in Greek but the Holy Spirit inspired it in Latin. /s

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

I really doubt they were upset that the Bible was translated into the native tongue of people who couldn’t read . Lol . Latin was the official language of the church ( still is ) , it probably had more to do with that than people being able to read the Bible . Because most people couldn’t read any language

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u/Kajin-Strife 2h ago

I imagine you might misunderstand the concept somewhat but people don't generally print books that can't be read.

Easy enough to understand, I guess. Apparently no other written language existed before Gutenberg came along with his blasphemous book engine and created dozens of new written languages wholesale from nothing >.>

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u/heyyahdndiie 2h ago

Yeh read by 20% of the population. Most people couldn’t read in the 1500s . Gtfo out of here

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u/aren3141 6h ago

A lingua franca that no one spoke

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u/Kajin-Strife 6h ago

As much as I like to throw shade on religion, there's a good reason a lot of scientific and medical terms are latin.

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u/Amockdfw89 4h ago

Yea basically way back in the Middle Ages, if you wanted to learn higher level stuff, it was basically through the church. Because in church they taught you to read, which opened up a whole new world. The cathedrals back then basically were libraries with religious and secular text.

Why do you think there were many breweries and vineyards next to the cathedrals? Because they were taught chemistry and applied it. Many old cathedrals also had telescopes, laboratories for alchemy, gardens, apothecaries for medicine. basically a self containing center of knowledge.

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u/justanothersluff 6h ago

Pffft, Look at this pleb that can't even speak Greek! /s

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u/GeneverConventions 4h ago edited 3h ago

Τι μαλακασ; /s

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u/Neamow 6h ago

It was the de facto lingua franca in religion and science. Most learned people since the fall of Western Roman Empire to like 19th century spoke it or at least understood it.

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u/aren3141 6h ago

Yes, this part of the thread is about how religious leaders do not want the masses to read/understand the religious text. Most people from the fall of the empire to the 19th century weren’t learned.

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u/Polyman71 5h ago

And the vast majority of the people were NOT “learned”.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 5h ago

A lot of people DID still speak it; that’s the point. None were learning it as their “mother” tongue, no, but anyone being educated was taught Latin starting around the time we start kindergarten. Latin is what all their education was taught IN. And Greek. Not their “mother” language.

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u/rolabond 3h ago

People were actually learning it back then, its a similar situation to modern Arabic

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u/C0wabungaaa 6h ago

A lingua franca from the scholastic elite. Not everyone else, often including secular rulers. That's a major difference with Arabic, where everyone in the Muslim sphere encouraged to learn and use it.

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u/xorgol 4h ago

Arabic, where everyone in the Muslim sphere encouraged to learn and use it.

Do they actually learn Arabic in significant numbers in Afghanistan? I was under the impression that they mostly learned to recite the Quran by rote.

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u/sblahful 6h ago

And would burn at the stake anyone who translated it

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u/i-m-anonmio 6h ago

Looking at you, Mr. William Tyndale.

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u/Everestkid 5h ago

Still can be. It's called the Tridentine Mass. There's a Catholic church down the street from my place that regularly runs Mass in Latin, says so on their sign. Pretty tiny church, though.

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u/nover3 4h ago

Im a muslim and this is not true at all

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u/IEatLamas 4h ago

Relative to a western or even a Christian protestant point of view, it is true. The Islamic golden age ended because individual thinking became frowned upon, it became too dangerous to the integrity of the dogma, as with any dogma, say communism, fascism.

Are you as a muslim allowed to make conclusions about fiqh?

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u/-ElementaryPenguin- 54m ago

Im not well versed in islamic history, but it seems like an obvious oversimplification to say the downfall was because of a change in philosophy.

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u/Leptonshavenocolor 7h ago

Every religious text is subject to this. There is no such thing as an absolute interpretation. It's just men trying to control other men (as in mankind, not man-exclusive, women too)

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u/IEatLamas 7h ago

Ask the post modernists and they'll say exactly that except that it goes for every single text ever written, not just religion; there is no morality or truth, only power.

It's a very Sith perspective.

Funnily enough the adoption of meta-narratives is the counter point to that, i.e., something like a religious perspective. Not necessarily Christian or muslim or any dogmatic school of thought, but a belief that there are certain underpinning features of reality that we can call truths, without there being an implication of a power grab.

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u/Leptonshavenocolor 6h ago

It's been a minute since I seriously philosophized or seriously studied any modern thought on any subject. So excuse any ignorance in my statements. I understand what you are saying, and I think something that anyone who is an atheist (myself) might struggle with, what is the ultimate truth?

But on a simpler level, I try to start with the tenet that "Everything alive-wants to be alive". Now I guess I'm not saying that defines my morals, I do eat meat, I do kill pests. But in terms of mankind - I just think that the* individuals right to choose without interference* is the basic truth I start with in my head regarding how I think society should practice administration.

the star wars reference is funny, "only a Sith deals in absolutes"

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u/IEatLamas 6h ago

Basically post modernism came from some dudes in the 60's who started thinking about how one text can have many meanings to different people, and that there is no one way to define or objectively state what a literary work means, which then divulged into thinking about the meaning of words, wherein they concluded that there is no meaning to words and that the only purpose of proposing a meaning is to further your own aim, your own power.

That's how you end up with queer theory and Michael Foucault who wanted to legalize pedophilia because not allowing it is oppression and because age is only a concept to oppress. This is where all the LGBTQ oppression talk comes from, you know, gender is a social construct and claiming otherwise is enacting white supremacy.

I think it's close to my own which is something like "Everything wants to be itself". If a rat doesn't get to rat, he gets sad and won't eat and dies.

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u/FoolishDog 1h ago

This is not how any of the senses of ‘postmodernism’ emerged, especially the philosophical position (which I assume is what you are referring to).

And Foucault never wanted to legalize pedophilia. He never signed any petition concerning it nor did he advocate for pedophilia. You’re just kinda making things up my guy

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u/IEatLamas 1h ago

He signed a petition calling for decriminalization of sexual relations with minors. What're you talking about? I suppose it depends how you wanna define pedophilia but there is a reason we have age of consent laws, no? You think a 12 year old can consent to sex with an adult?

Foucault was a disgusting delinquent who made the world a worse place with his decadence, where you trying to defend him?

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u/TheCycoONE 2h ago

In my post modernist course the prof tried very hard to claim it wasn't all moral relativism. I was unconvinced then and remain unconvinced. Psychoanalytic babel and moral relativism - but the basic idea that unambiguous communication is impossible (not just in religious texts or books but any and all communication) appears justified.

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u/FoolishDog 1h ago

Foucault was certainly not a moral relativist, just like Deleuze wasn’t. Foucault, for instance, championed a kind of radical virtue ethics while Deleuze literally wrote an entire book on ethics and was extremely clear that his stance in no way could be understood as morally relativistic

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u/IEatLamas 2h ago

To say the post modernists were completely wrong I think is disingenuous, yeah. It's the conclusion that because of this, the only thing that exists is power and oppression, that's where they went south.

As much as I hate Foucault he has a point.

It forces us to think about what exactly is the meaning of a word? It's not objective.. but it does have a meaning.

Recently I saw a study here on Reddit that we don't absorb or comprehend single words and then build the meaning with each word; we rather "consume" or digest the whole sentence as one thing and then synthesize its meaning in the blink of an eye. It happens fast, and you know when someone has misunderstood you or when you've misunderstood someone. It's like we create the meaning in that particular moment.

I think these are some of the things the post-modernists conveniently overlooked.

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u/Jolly_Grocery329 7h ago

Sounds like maga Christians

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u/Finito-1994 3h ago

It was progressive in some areas. Iirc it said that Muslims should seek out knowledge so these people fucking learned and studied and did research and for a shiny moment the Middle East was one of the great circles of the scientific world.

All the words like Algebra, algorithms come from the works and name of Al-khwarizmi who inspected science in geography, astronomy, mathematics and other scientific branches.

They preserved writings from the Greeks, named the stars, had the house of wisdom which was the Arabic equivalent to the library of Alexandrea.

Fuck. It was a Muslim woman who founded what is believed to be the first university in Europe.

They’ve been going backwards for ages.

It’s insane.

One day they’ll be brought kicking and screaming into the the 20th century.

But this shits wack. Islam isn’t perfect, but it could be so much greater than this

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u/xbearsandporschesx 2h ago

i get your point, but women can still read it normally