Opinion: Afghan women defying the Taliban through song

Opinion: Afghan women defying the Taliban through song

Opinion

In Afghanistan, they are erasing women.

The Taliban are obliterating them from view. Silencing their voices and denying them freedoms that men and boys enjoy.

Simple liberties, like walking in a park unchaperoned. Feeling the breeze in your hair, the sun on your skin. Singing along to your favourite song.

With the recent introduction of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law in Afghanistan, strictures that were seen as recommendations during the past three years of Taliban control have now been codified and are being regularly and brutally enforced.

An English translation of the law by the Afghanistan Analysts Network reads like something out of the Stone Age:

While there are dictates for men, too — they must be clothed from navel to knees — a woman is required to cover her entire body, including her face, “in order to prevent some fitna (social disorder or chaos, which can itself facilitate sin) taking place.”

“Women’s voices (in a song, a hymn, or a recital out loud in a gathering) are also something that should be concealed.”

Unrelated men are not allowed to look at a woman’s body or face, and women are not allowed to look at strange men.

Adultery and lesbianism are prohibited, as is “styling one’s hair in an un-Islamic manner” and “befriending non-Muslims.”

Taking photographs or making videos of any animate “object” on cellphones or computers is forbidden.

Then there’s this rule: banning, “The sound of a woman’s voice or any music emanating from any gathering or from the home.”

Imagine the life of an Afghan woman: not allowed to see or be seen. Not permitted to speak or sing or read aloud to their child, even inside their own homes. Forbidden from walking for exercise or relaxation without a male guardian. Banished from schools after age 12, and from many workplaces. Being unable to smile at your neighbour or friend or to say hello.

Almost like Margaret Atwood’s Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale come to life, minus its lens of twisted Christianity.

Radio Free Europe reported recently that, “The morality police can detain offenders for up to three days and hand out punishments ‘deemed appropriate’ without a trial.”

Girls and women who have been imprisoned for even minor infractions of the law have reported being beaten and sexually assaulted.

In July, the Guardian reported it had seen video evidence of an arrested protester being tortured and gang-raped by two armed men in a Taliban prison.

The United Nations said in February, even before the harsh new law was implemented, that the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, “found that the institutionalized, systematic and widespread nature of gender-based discrimination was unparalleled, rising to the level of gender persecution and justifying being characterized as ‘gender apartheid.’”

On the social media platform X, activists and advocates are speaking out for the Afghan women who cannot.

On Aug. 26, Marzieh Hamidi, the daughter of Afghan refugees and a taekwondo athlete and women’s rights activist, launched the hashtag #LetUsExist to fight for gender equality for women and girls in Afghanistan.

As Afghan women and girls carry out their severely restricted and rigidly proscribed lives, their mental health is suffering badly.

Statista.com data journalist Anna Fleck reported on Sept. 2 that, “Mental health among the women of Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating, according to a UN Women report. In April 2024, nearly seven in 10 women surveyed reported that their feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression were either bad or very bad.”

Fleck continues: “The UN stresses how the lives of women and girls are deteriorating in Afghanistan amid overlapping crises, exacerbated by deepening gender inequalities. It has been over three years since the Taliban’s takeover and over 1,000 days since girls and women have been allowed to go to school or university.”

Is the world paying attention?

Not enough, say critics.

Chekeba Hachemi, president of the organization Free Afghanistan, told news channel FRANCE 24 that women’s capacity for self-determination is practically non-existent under the Taliban.

“We no longer have the right to hear the sound of a woman’s voice, or to see even a glimpse of a woman’s body,” she said. “It’s as if we were telling them: ‘We want to kill you slowly.’”

Human rights groups, the UN, the EU and others have called for the tyrannical morality law to be repealed, but their pleas have been dismissed by the Taliban as Western arrogance.

In a gesture of defiance, Afghan women both inside and outside Afghanistan have been sharing videos of themselves singing, looking straight into the camera.

Zubaida Akbar, a human rights activist based in Washington, D.C., posted a video on X of an unidentified Afghan woman bravely singing in the streets of Kabul, her words translated as: “I stand tall and resolute; I fear no darkness.”

It’s a small act of resistance that she could pay for with her life.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s. Email [email protected] X: pam_frampton