News & Comment
Treated Like an Animal, Kept Like a Slave

News

The story starts from the south-eastern province of Afghanistan, Paktika. Based on the reports recently published by Tolo-news, local Afghan news agency on the 11th of October 2016, so-called criminal women should not be detained in jail. Thus, they are kept in a high-walled house of a tribal elder as prisoners. These prisoners must work as unpaid domestic servants. They are mistreated and even tortured by the residents.

The report points out that there could be thousands of other women kept in unofficial places across the country in the absence of proper jails and the government tolerated the situation. The human’s rights and the women’s rights organizations try hard to highlight this unfairness. (Source: Tolo News)

Comment

The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner insists on freedom and equality and the human rights organizations claim to care for all human beings, whatever their nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status.

There is no doubt that the abuse of any woman needs to be addressed and prevented. However, it is noteworthy and ironic that the UN and these human rights organizations highlight the mistreatment and violation of the rights of a small number of Muslim women in a village in Afghanistan and attempt to liberate them from the oppression of some local Afghan men, and search for hidden topics like this one, but don’t expose and highlight the even greater oppression and injustice that Afghan women face under the secular regime and system of the country and as a result of the actions of secular Western governments due to their relentless colonial war on the country.

According to a report by the Nobel Prize-winning organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, there were more than 220,000 Afghans killed in the first 12 years of the US led-war on the country. Today, Afghans continue to die at record-high levels. Many rural women in Afghanistan are killed and maimed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) airstrikes. Other women are killed by the forces of the Western-imposed government. The United Nation Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that in the first quarter of 2016, 195 women were killed or injured. And more than a million displaced Afghans endure circumstances where women are excluded, and children are being exploited and not educated. Furthermore, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 169 out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index. More than 1.5 million people in Afghanistan are severely food insecure. Female-headed households are almost 50 percent more likely to be severely food insecure than other households in Afghanistan. Women who head their household are also twice as likely to use emergency coping strategies, such as begging. This huge tragedy affecting millions of Afghan women is due largely to the indifferent and unscrupulously war of the secular colonialists.

The selective coverage and outrage towards crimes, oppression and injustices against Afghan and other women under secular systems is evidence of the sheer hypocrisy of the UN and various secular human rights organizations. Infact it is the secular system being implemented in Afghanistan currently that has also failed dismally to prevent the mistreatment of female prisoners as described in the above story.

Indeed, the aim of many of these organizations is to accuse Islam of being the main if not sole reason of the suppression of women by Afghan men. However, the fact is that the basic rights of women are also oppressed in secular Western societies which allow them to be used as a tool for profit generation and sexual exploitation.

Meanwhile, Muslim women in Western societies are verbally abused, attacked, discriminated against and even prevented from wearing their Islamic dress. Isn’t all of this oppression? So why are the voices of feminist organizations silent when it comes to condemning the injustices that the secular system has inflicted on women or when it comes to fighting for the right of Muslim women to abide by their Islamic beliefs and dress in Western societies? It is because they are driven by secular political agendas, which exposes the fact that they do not have a genuine concern for the welfare of women but rather work hand in hand with secular governments in imposing secular beliefs onto Muslim women and communities and demonizing Islam.

The miserable situation facing Afghan women in many different aspects of society and life can only be changed when the secular way of life and materialistic outlook to the world and society is replaced by the correct system to govern over human beings and which carries the correct outlook on women - an outlook that respects women, values their deserved status as mothers and sisters, and does not accept their economic or sexual exploitation. That is the Islamic Way of Life, which is implemented by the Khilafah "Caliphate" State (Caliphate) upon the method of the Prophethood.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Amanah Abed