Life under the Taliban

Friday, May 01, 2009

This is in response to Danielle Ali Riaz's letter printed on April 30. I was both shocked and amused as to how with her limited knowledge of our culture and past, Mrs Riaz has jumped to her conclusions. Let me take you 20-30 years back when the Taliban were created. I was a young girl at that time. For us it was hard to even go to a bazaar without being pinched at the back, elbowed at the front, hearing lewd remarks and that too when we were fully covered with our head and face in chadars. This was the level of decency and education of our general illiterate public.
I would like Mrs Riaz to know that I have friends who have suffered from the so-called Islamic laws of the Taliban. Women were forced to stay indoors no matter what happened to them and men were forced to grow beards. Barber shops were burned if they shaved clients. One of my friend's aunts was stoned to death along with her unborn child, her husband and a doctor as she needed a c-section and she had gone to a male doctor because no female doctors were allowed to work.
Dear Mrs Riaz, at least in the last decade Pakistan has been progressing in the sense that if a woman goes to a bazaar in one of the major cities she will not be harassed. This can all change if the Taliban come and the issue will not be one related to purdah but oppression. Women in Pakistan in general dress modestly and will continue to do so. As for other freedoms which women take for granted, consider me driving my car -- which I often do because I have to run errands when my husband is away. What will happen to women like me when the Taliban are in power given that they won't allow women to even leave their homes?
Also, I wonder how Mrs Riaz can say that the Taliban haven't strayed from Islam given that they have killed people for not following their edicts. I think when the Taliban come, people like her will be the first to complain because their freedoms will be curtailed and they will not be able to go out of their homes to do something as essential and necessary as picking up one's child from his or her school.
I am a Muslim woman, I cover myself up, I dress modestly, I don't commit any cardinal sins and I want my rights, to go out to work, to enjoy myself, to drive, to progress in the world and no one can deny me my rights or force me to be imprisoned in the confines of my four walls! I want Islam to thrive in our country but I totally reject the version that the Taliban want to force on all of us.

Amna Ahmad
Lahore

*****

I was quite disturbed to read a rather odd letter by Danielle Ali Riaz (April 30). She says she is an 'independent' woman who had a love marriage with a man of a different religion, converted to another faith and migrated to a foreign country. How many women under the Taliban and their version of Sharia will have that independence? She cannot see the Taliban's hand in suicide bombings, terrorism and fanaticism. She says girls have gone back to school in Swat. Really? Why were they stopped in the first place?
She asks how hard it is to wear an all-covering veil. Very, very hard with a knife to the throat, a gun to the head and a whip to the back! She says her mother-in-law has never gone out alone. Is that a good thing? I am a 54-year-old mother of two sons and a daughter. My sons and husband are busy people and would be extremely irritated to accompany me to the dhobi, tailor, dyer, the bank, groceries etc. She has the nerve to tell us Pakistani women to go live in the US or England! She wants the Taliban to first take over the country and if they 'stray outside the true religious Sharia' (whatever that is) then we should protest!
Madame Danielle, you are totally confused, irrational, absurd and illogical in your thinking. Why don't you go live in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan? We do not want your advice on how to live, what to wear, whom to go out with and at what time!

Sarah Amjad
Islamabad