Taliban bans Afghan women from attending university

@Ynotisay Islam itself is fine it’s the way it gets interpreted by the Taliban. Any religion when taken to its extreme can be used as a weapon including Christianity.
The Taliban in their conservative extremism is killing Afghanistan one step at a time. Other countries are willing to jump in and help with humanitarian aid but only if the Taliban leaders exit Afghanistan.

@Ynotisay Currently the entire Afghanistan economy is crippled. The only think enabling citizens to survive is Doctors Without Borders. If it wasn’t for various charitable health organizations the entire Afghan population would be fucked. They are currently knocking on Fuckeds door.

@justanothername Sorry. Any religion that requires women to cover themselves will never fly in my world.

@justanothername

[quote]Islam itself is fine it’s the way it gets interpreted by the Taliban.[/quote]

The misreading/misinterpretation of texts, is def. a problem.

But, while the Taliban have made it worse, destroying non-Islamic culture was not invented by them.

And read the Qu'ran. Islam at its heart is anti-semitic, and established in war.

@Ynotisay Afghanistan, specifically the Taliban, is the only country where this happens. Nothing in Islam forbids educating women. Even in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, this does not happen. The Taliban is a cancer, but they need to get rid of it themselves, outside help was rejected.

@Northwest Doesn't matter to me. Islam is the cancer. Throughout the world. Not just the Middle East. It subjugates women and imposes restrictions to maintain control. That's the core. Everything else is manifestations. I'm not of the belief that I need to show 'respect' for dehumanization just because it's a religion. It's undeserved.

@justanothername Swearing about it won't help, but the Taliban seem genuinely incapable of seeing two things:

_ Even Saudi Arabia (where the religion was invented), Iran and Pakistan educate girls and women, so it can't really a matter of religion. I think it's more wanting an extremist form of antiquated Pashtun culture than of the Islam used as the official excuse.

- Their oppression of females is wasting the potential brain power of half the country, which, Allah knows, needs all the intellectual power it can muster.

From a strategic angle, the Taliban's drive might be a way to retain the power it has gained. Excluding, silencing and keeping ignorant, half of the population, and drastically curtailing everyone's social lives, makes it far harder for the populace to rebel as the Taliban must surely see and fear happening in Iran.

It seems the Taliban itself is divided. Many of the lot who simply waited for the West to pull out on time, having given plenty of notice it would do so, were a lot more pragmatic about women's role in society; but the real power is held by a small, shadowy clique of mullahs who basically love power and despise women - and indeed despise much else.

It is also facing an enemy far harder to deal with than any Russian or NATO army: ISIS, a para-Islamic death-cult even worse than the Taliban (whom ISIS has openly accused of not being sufficiently rigid). Harder because as was the Taliban itself, it is not a regular, uniformed army but a geurilla movement: heavily-armed civilians generally indistinguishable from everyone else among whom they hide.

@ArishMell Unfortunately, they're not capable of internalizing all this, because they think the Saudi regime veered off from true Islam. One of the reasons bin Laden was against the Saudi regime.

@Northwest I see. Thankyou.

I know Islam is divided into two main and one smaller, sects; and too many followers of either of the two main ones despises the other. That is essentially carrying on what had started as a family row between Muhammed and one of his relatives!

Something that has fallen out of the News over the past year is the wilful destruction of the Chinese Uyghur culture, which is largely Muslim, by the government of the People's Republic of China.

I do not know the Uyghurs' sect of Islam, but I don't recall much public condemnation of the Beijing government, by any of the Islamic theocracies. They have left the exposing and condemning of the pogrom ([i]not[/i] "genocide"), ironically, to the nominally-Christian "West". Not that it makes much difference. China denies what it is doing, but anyway could not care less about humanity and other nation's opinions.

@ArishMell [quote]I know Islam is divided into two main and one smaller, sects; and too many followers of either of the two main ones despises the other. That is essentially carrying on what had started as a family row between Muhammed and one of his relatives![/quote]

Not really. Islam's two main branches are Sunni (majority) and Shiaa (minority). The split as over succession following the death of Mohamad, with the Shiaa insisting on blood line and Sunnis insisting on a somewhat democratic process. Then a war of extermination followed, causing a sometime deadly rift that carries on until current time.

China is trying to erase the Uyghur Muslim identity. There's a better than fair chance a person on the streets of Pakistan, or Iraq, would not be able to tell you who the Uyghur are. You're assuming dissemination of information familiar to you, is available everywhere. It is not.

Islam did not evolve, since Ghenkis Khan invaded, and the extremists are only relying on hearsay to promote their savagery. When it was started, and in many ways, it gave women rights they did not have anywhere else (inheritance, spousal support, custody, fulfilling women's sexual needs else a woman is entitled to a divorce, right to equal treatment, etc.), and then it never evolved.

@Northwest Thank you for clarifying that.

I take your point about dissemination of information but some Chinese have been brave enough to let others know what is happening; and since it has been reported openly in the West it is hard to see how the governments of Pakistan, Iraq etc. can be ignorant of it. Their ordinary citizens, yes, as you say, but not politicians and security-services.

So I cannot help wonder if politics plays a major part here, with international alliances or feuds between major dictatorships, and threats to them from groups like the Taliban and ISIS, more important than what they might discreetly and conveniently see as China's own business.

@ArishMell [quote]it is hard to see how the governments of Pakistan, Iraq etc. can be ignorant of it. [/quote]

I did not say the governments aren't aware. I said[b][i][u] "a person on the streets of Pakistan, or Iraq"[/u][/i][/b]. How many people do you think are aware of this issue in the US? Western Europe?

Why is the government of Saudi Arabia giving Xi Jinping a royal welcome?

@Northwest Ah.OK.

Your question... I'd not known that it had, but it does seem strange. I suspect big trade advantages to both countries, especially as Saudi Arabia does know its petroleum reserves will not last for ever, and is already considering its future beyond that.

The Saudi rulers are not know for humanity and the Uyghurs probably do not matter a jot to them. Might the answer lie in looking at the complicated relationships between Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and the USA?

Surprisingly perhaps, China and Russia are friendlier than when [i]both[/i] were Communist, with their armies watching each other warily across the River Amur.

Iran is friends with Russia but not Saudi Arabia.

SA is friends, sort of, with the USA which is hated by both Iran and Russia but trades heavily with China whilst also "unofficially" supporting Taiwan, to China's dismay...

It is a tangle, and if not so serious would resemble the sort of shifting relationships that arise in a primary-school playground. Only the leaders of all these are supposedly all grown-ups. I think all we can say safely is that the world is becoming less, not more, stable as all these powers ally or spar with each other.

@ArishMell My question was hypothetical. The current US administration is not on friendly terms with the Saudis. Same with the Obama administration.

It stems from the rise of Mohamad Bin Salman (MBS) to top of the pyramid. MBS is an authoritarian, and a narcissist. Much like Putin and Trump. Obama and Biden did not want to give him a pass, in return for arms sales. Trump did.

The Saudis spent big on PR campaigns in the US, to defeat Hillary. Iran is part of the reason. Saudi Arabia now sees China as a potential arms supplier, and China will not question how many Yemeni kids get killed. And they joined the China-Russia axis, and used their OPEC clout, to make sure oil prices do not drop, and Russia has enough money to conduct its murderous war against the Ukraine.

So, for Saudi Arabia to look the other way, when it comes to the Uyghurs is no surprise.

@Northwest True.

@Northwest I think the US - Saudi relationship is one of convenience. They can't really be close allies because their cultures and political systems differ too much; but the Saudis still see the USA (and UK) as militarily allies and of course oil buyers.

Unfortunately we have here a collection of authoritarian rulers, all narcissists at heart; but I doubt if any are really all that closely allied to each other except where and when it suits them. It would not surprise me if in ten years time those notional alliances will have moved again.

Chian is trying to be the World's Number One, and on her way to success; so everyone else is jockeying to obtain the best advantage and least damage. Human lives don't count here.

China has also been making friendly noises to Afghanistan, but to what purpose and effect so far I don't know. They do share a short border along a mountain ridge in the Himalayas, with an interesting-looking installation (mine? army base? prison?) and supporting village at the bottom of the hill on the Chinese side. Whether Beijing has ideas of a road or railway across the border, linking very remote areas of both countries, I have no idea; but it would make far more strategic sense to China than to Afghanistan.