Afghanistan - My Life's Work is the Taliban's Greatest Need : Shabana Basij- Rasikh / Washington Post
Opinion: I am an educator of Afghan girls. My life’s work is the Taliban’s greatest need.
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Young Afghan girls attending class in Kandahar on Sept. 26. The Taliban has announced that boys, but not girls, in grades seven to 12 may return to school. (Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
In the photo, shared on Twitter, the Afghan boy faces the camera, his expression calm, his eyes upon us. He holds a hand-lettered sign written in Dari, one of the national languages of Afghanistan. It reads: “I am not going to school without my sister. I support my sister. #WeAreEqual.”
Other boys, other families, and the pictures circulate: Afghan brothers making their stand on social media, affirming their sisters’ right to attend school now that the Taliban has announced that boys in grades seven to 12 — boys, but not girls — may return to their classes.
Saturday will mark two weeks since the reopening of those boys’ schools. To my knowledge, during that time, not a single girl has openly attended her middle or high school in any city or village in Afghanistan.
If you want to see the Taliban’s plan for my country, look at these two weeks. To see our possible future, look at our recent past.
Look at the men who pulled down the sign at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul and replaced it with one announcing the reestablishment, in the very same building, of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The ministry that, in the 1990s, sent its “morality police” into our nation’s streets to beat women for such crimes as being outdoors without a male chaperone.
Look at the senior Taliban commander who points to Islamic law as the reason, in this new Afghanistan, “men and women cannot work together.” As the reason women “are not allowed to come to our offices or work in our ministries.” Look at the new chancellor of Kabul University, who says that “as long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”
And then look again at the boys in those photos. Take a moment to look at the courage in their eyes.
I am a proud Muslim woman. I am an educator of Afghan girls. And my life’s work is the Taliban’s greatest need.
Educated girls are the foundation of our country’s future, and to the Taliban, I say: Your treatment of these girls, and all Afghan women, will be the key that unlocks international legitimacy of your government.
The Taliban has held power only since August, and in the evocative words of one journalist, they have made Afghanistan “the only country on earth to bar half its population from getting a secondary education.” There is no future in this.
I am a proud Muslim woman, and I hear the Taliban’s pronouncements about the role of Afghan women in the workplace, and I think about the example set by Khadija, the wife of prophet Muhammad and a successful businesswoman. I watch women beaten in the streets as they demand the rights Islam grants them, and I remember the bravery of other women, such as Malalai of Maiwand, who rallied men in battle and who Afghans revere as a folk hero. And I think of her namesake, the fearless journalist Malalai Maiwand, murdered in Afghanistan not even a year ago.
I see my fellow Afghan women striding unafraid in public protest, and I see Afghan boys refusing to attend school without their sisters, and I hear the heartbeat of a different future for our country.
In this future, the rhetoric of doing jihad against an international enemy is finally gone, replaced by the message of prophet Muhammad, who said the quest for knowledge and self-betterment in the service of others is the greater jihad.
In this future, the girls who’ve performed the greater jihad by responding to the bombing of their school and the murder of their classmates by vowing to continue their studies are seated proudly in their classrooms. In this future, the fearless women who march beneath a banner bearing the word “freedom,” who call on their nation’s new leaders to embrace that greater jihad — in this future, these women are heard.
Am I a dreamer? Perhaps, but what I speak of must become an immediate reality for Afghan women — and whether they’ll admit it or not, for the Taliban’s leadership, too.
They know that the permanent threat to their legitimacy is the way they choose to control women and girls. We are the ones they must talk to, and we always have been. We are the ones who must be shown proof that it is possible to continue to educate girls in their new Afghanistan. A nation cannot be built upon a foundation of empty classrooms and ashes. The Taliban — and more crucially Afghanistan — needs us now.
In the photo, shared on Twitter, the Afghan boy faces the camera, his expression calm, his eyes upon us. He holds a hand-lettered sign written in Dari, one of the national languages of Afghanistan. It reads: “I am not going to school without my sister. I support my sister. #WeAreEqual.”
Other boys, other families, and the pictures circulate: Afghan brothers making their stand on social media, affirming their sisters’ right to attend school now that the Taliban has announced that boys in grades seven to 12 — boys, but not girls — may return to their classes.
Saturday will mark two weeks since the reopening of those boys’ schools. To my knowledge, during that time, not a single girl has openly attended her middle or high school in any city or village in Afghanistan.
If you want to see the Taliban’s plan for my country, look at these two weeks. To see our possible future, look at our recent past.
Look at the men who pulled down the sign at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul and replaced it with one announcing the reestablishment, in the very same building, of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The ministry that, in the 1990s, sent its “morality police” into our nation’s streets to beat women for such crimes as being outdoors without a male chaperone.
Look at the senior Taliban commander who points to Islamic law as the reason, in this new Afghanistan, “men and women cannot work together.” As the reason women “are not allowed to come to our offices or work in our ministries.” Look at the new chancellor of Kabul University, who says that “as long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”
And then look again at the boys in those photos. Take a moment to look at the courage in their eyes.
I am a proud Muslim woman. I am an educator of Afghan girls. And my life’s work is the Taliban’s greatest need.
Educated girls are the foundation of our country’s future, and to the Taliban, I say: Your treatment of these girls, and all Afghan women, will be the key that unlocks international legitimacy of your government.
The Taliban has held power only since August, and in the evocative words of one journalist, they have made Afghanistan “the only country on earth to bar half its population from getting a secondary education.” There is no future in this.
I am a proud Muslim woman, and I hear the Taliban’s pronouncements about the role of Afghan women in the workplace, and I think about the example set by Khadija, the wife of prophet Muhammad and a successful businesswoman. I watch women beaten in the streets as they demand the rights Islam grants them, and I remember the bravery of other women, such as Malalai of Maiwand, who rallied men in battle and who Afghans revere as a folk hero. And I think of her namesake, the fearless journalist Malalai Maiwand, murdered in Afghanistan not even a year ago.
I see my fellow Afghan women striding unafraid in public protest, and I see Afghan boys refusing to attend school without their sisters, and I hear the heartbeat of a different future for our country.
In this future, the rhetoric of doing jihad against an international enemy is finally gone, replaced by the message of prophet Muhammad, who said the quest for knowledge and self-betterment in the service of others is the greater jihad.
In this future, the girls who’ve performed the greater jihad by responding to the bombing of their school and the murder of their classmates by vowing to continue their studies are seated proudly in their classrooms. In this future, the fearless women who march beneath a banner bearing the word “freedom,” who call on their nation’s new leaders to embrace that greater jihad — in this future, these women are heard.
Am I a dreamer? Perhaps, but what I speak of must become an immediate reality for Afghan women — and whether they’ll admit it or not, for the Taliban’s leadership, too.
They know that the permanent threat to their legitimacy is the way they choose to control women and girls. We are the ones they must talk to, and we always have been. We are the ones who must be shown proof that it is possible to continue to educate girls in their new Afghanistan. A nation cannot be built upon a foundation of empty classrooms and ashes. The Taliban — and more crucially Afghanistan — needs us now.
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