American Women Are Humiliated More Than Afghan Women

http://www.memri.org/sd/SP31201.html

intresting article in response to Condelezza rice comments on women in muslim world/

Former Chairman of the Jordanian Physicians’ Association Criticizes U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s Comments on Treatment of Women in the Muslim World

The London Arabic-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi recently published an article by the former chairman of the Jordanian Physicians’ Association, Dr. Tareq Tahboub

“What pushed me to write this article was the interview with U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on CNN. Asked by Wolf Blitzer about the situation of women in Afghanistan, the advisor spoke powerfully and in great detail about the situation of women in Islamic countries, primarily Saudi Arabia, and about how America cannot agree to the humiliation of women in the Islamic world.”

“The advisor forgot that the living example of humiliation of women in the twenty-first century is Hillary Clinton, whose husband fed her all kinds of degradation and humiliation, to the point where she was forced to lie in front of television cameras in order to defend him and his perverted relationships. She testified that he was ‘innocent’ of Monica and Paula – as the wolf is innocent of the blood of [Joseph], the son of Jacob [whose brothers threw him into a pit to be rid of him and claimed that an ‘evil beast’ had devoured him].”

“The advisor also forgot to mention that the White House files proved that Nixon’s wife suffered a tear in her retina as a result of a severe blow she received from her husband.”

“What humiliation could be greater for women than the systematic rape of a freshman university female student [in America], as was proven in documentary and feature films telling true stories. The last of these films, broadcast a month ago on Jordanian television, presented the true story of a student and her friends who were raped by members of a fraternity headed by her brother. The epilogue said that most young American women are raped at university. Eighty-seven percent of rapes are carried out during freshman year, by their classmates, at student parties. They get the girls drunk with a drink said to be fruit juice (punch) but which is actually mixed with alcohol. The exacerbation of this problem led to the establishment of legal and psychiatric departments at the universities to handle this phenomenon, which has reached epidemic proportions.”

“Where are women’s rights, when their statistics show that one in every three American women is raped – in addition to sexual harassment in the workplace, and even on the part of generals in the military, during their hours of rest from bombing Iraq and Afghanistan?”

“What humiliation could be greater for women than the fashion shows [catwalks] or beauty pageants, in which the so-called beauty queens are stripped before the hungry eyes of men so that their internal measurements around the bust and hips can be taken, as if they were calves at a cattle auction?”

“What humiliation – and I quote from the article of Mr. Muwfaq Mahaddin, the leftist journalist from the [Jordanian paper] Al-Arab Al-Youm, who demanded that the labor unions and parties [in Jordan] donate money for oppressed British women – could be greater than the results of a poll conducted recently by one of the papers, that showed that the British man has an average of five extramarital lovers? [Not to mention] what Alan Clark, defense secretary in the Thatcher government, did – he admitted that he had slept with three generations – a girl, her mother, and her grandmother – in his office in the British Defense Ministry, as published in the Daily Mirror.”

Violence Against Women in the U.S.

“What domestic violence are they talking about, when British police statistics show more than a million incidents of domestic violence annually? What children’s rights are they demanding, when in America alone, a quarter of a million children are killed every year by aborting unwanted fetuses – something that has pushed Americans with a conscience to blow up some of the clinics in which they carry out this kind of murder and kill some of the doctors working in this area? What children’s rights are they talking about, when pedophilia is legal on the Internet and the networks of this perversion reach from Thailand to Australia – a general epidemic from which not even the Church was spared.”

“Our advice to the advisor is to look at herself before she tries to force her principles and opinions on others. We have suffered enough from the American way of life forced upon us by the media and marketing of the American model.”

“The Greatest Damage is Western Television”

“The damages [caused by] the American model are not limited to burgers, cola, and Marlboro, which most cannot buy as a result of widespread poverty in the Islamic world. The gravest damage is television, something that almost no home, rich or poor, lives without. When dinnertime comes (which is the Arab/Muslim family’s traditional hour for meeting in the Islamic world), everyone eats in front of the television, with no conversation developing among the members of the family. When Mickey Mouse comes on, the children throw their food on the floor. Children are also influenced by depictions of violence in cartoons. Thus, family life is being abolished… Nevertheless, Islam and even the Muslims are accused of terrorism, although they make up 82% of the exiles and refugees in the world…”

Now that Taliban have done fixing all such problems in Afghanistan, Americans should overthrow Bush and transport Talibans over here to fix the rape problems at campus...well..they fixed that problem in Afghanistan..did anyone hear a girl getting raped at University in Afghanistan? I have not.
or may be Jordanians should try it first.

Yeah right,

Kabul’s Lost Women
Many Abducted by Taliban Still Missing

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 19, 2001; Page A01

KABUL, Afghanistan – Eight Taliban fighters kicked in the front door at dinnertime. They beat Shabnam’s mother and grandmother, according to her relatives. Then they hustled the 9-year-old girl into a pickup truck, loot for their commanding officer.

That was August 1997. Shabnam, who would be 13 now, is still not home.

Her sister saw her once, about two years ago. She heard that Shabnam had become the property of Col. Shawali, a top Taliban security officer. So she went to his house and demanded to see her little sister. She was allowed to talk to her for five minutes, surrounded by Taliban gunmen, just long enough to see the fear in her eyes.

“Every time she sees someone who looks like Shabnam, she cries,” said Islamodin, the sister’s husband. Shabnam lived with the couple; her mother and grandmother were visiting at the time of the abduction.

“Her clothes are still in the house, and so are her dolls; everything reminds us of her,” said Islamodin, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “When the Taliban were forced out of Kabul [last month], we should have been happy. But we could only cry because she was not with us.”

Taliban soldiers abducted many women and girls, perhaps hundreds or more, during their five-year rule of Afghanistan, according to Afghan families, officials of the incoming government and humanitarian aid groups. Many are still missing, and their stories are only now beginning to emerge in the wake of the Taliban’s defeat.

It is impossible to calculate the number kidnapped. Many families have never spoken out because of the stigma, especially strong in this conservative Muslim society, of having a daughter or sister sold for sex. Others fear that protesting could jeopardize the life of their missing loved ones. Islamodin and others interviewed spoke reluctantly, and they declined to be photographed or provide pictures of the kidnapped girls.

But as a new government prepares to take office Saturday, and the climate of fear created by the Taliban begins to fade, more and more families are stepping forward to tell their stories publicly for the first time.

The abductions highlight a central hypocrisy of the Taliban regime. Their official policy was to revere women as jewels to be guarded by the men in their family. To the Taliban, that meant stripping women of virtually all rights, including education, and forcing them to stay either out of sight at home or covered head to toe by a burqa in public.

One of the most frequently told stories about Mohammad Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader, is how in the spring of 1994 he led a small band of followers to a warlord’s base near the city of Kandahar to free two girls who had been abducted and repeatedly raped. Omar reportedly freed the girls, then hanged the warlord from the barrel of a tank to avenge his violent treatment of the girls.

But according to interviews with families and officials in Afghanistan and abroad, the Taliban was essentially a militia of illiterate young men who often abused their power in violent ways. That reportedly included claiming women and girls as sexual prizes.

Gen. Mohammed Qasim, chief military prosecutor for the Northern Alliance, the collection of forces that led the fight to overthrow the Taliban, said in an interview that he believed at least 1,000 Afghan women were abducted by the Taliban.

“This is not what the Afghan people are like,” said Qasim, who will be a top justice ministry official in the new government. He promised that the new government would investigate as many cases as possible.

“It will be difficult to find many of them,” he said. “We think many of these girls are no longer in Afghanistan. We think many of them may have been killed by the Taliban. But the parents want us to find them, and we will try.”

Qasim said that many of the girls were used as concubines by Taliban officers, some of whom kept a dozen or more. He said many others were sold as sexual slaves to wealthy Arabs through contacts arranged by the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. Proceeds helped keep the cash-strapped Taliban afloat, he said.

Farhat Bokhari, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in New York, which recently released a report on the plight of Afghan women, said in a telephone interview that “whispers” about large numbers of abductions under the Taliban have emerged recently.

Bokhari said that in interviews with Afghan women in refugee camps in Pakistan late last summer, “A few women said they had heard of more than 20 abductions; others gave estimates in the hundreds, so there’s really no good accounting.”

Bokhari said abductions have been underreported because of “the whole issue of dishonor.” She said Afghan people would not talk about sexual abuse, because it could harm a woman’s chances of marriage. And, she said, families feared for their lives if they complained to the Taliban.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62604-2001Dec18.html

OhioGuy, that is from WP…it does not count. all fake and made up

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif

. Even if true, Taliban considered these girls as their sisters and just took them for safe keeping…when they reach the marrying age…which BTW is 12 or is it 11?.. they will be married off respectfully.

Sorry,

In the future, I will only post articles from sources you agree with, and support the prevailing view, so that there is no dissent. And to think, I have been reading the Washington Post all these years, and it is all made up! I will have to renew my subsription to Jang, as a better source of journalism.

My apologies......

Ohio,interesting story,just shows,its always the same,power corrupts.How many people have attained positions of power,without becoming corrupted?

Maybe Ghandi,i cant think of many,not mullah Omar or the taliban anyway.

[This message has been edited by Braveheart (edited December 19, 2001).]

Abducting girls…Yeah and the proof of that will be those 2 western
returning back home while getting away with brain washing poor Afghans so they could be “saved by the Lord”?

“One of the most frequently told stories about Mohammad Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader, is how in the spring of 1994 he led a small band of followers to a warlord’s base near the city of Kandahar to free two girls who had been abducted and repeatedly raped. Omar reportedly freed the girls, then hanged the warlord from the barrel of a tank to avenge his violent treatment of the girls.”

About four years ago the very sources reported that story as a fact and true heroic event. I guess that time the oil pipe line was in mind that’s why. After all it was Washington’s hypocrites that took the Taliban on a tour of the Capital.

If this held any bit of truth, then why will the Candian reporter, Japanese doctor, American aid workers, and Austrialian Muslim converts lie about them and not report any of this when they lived amongst these people for years? Oh of course, they were brained washed by Osama special trained Al-Qeada members trained in caves who are specialists in that field.

There is a new low every time for these absurd western propagandas.

“Ohio,interesting story,just shows,its always the same,power corrupts.How many people have attained positions of power,without becoming corrupted?”

Arrogance hit termites, why is Mullah Omar so bad when so many of the American presidents have been caught with cigars in places where they don’t belong and stains on their office workers black dresses?

Read this clearly H Y P O C R I S Y

Channay, you would have enjoyed hearing about the thousands of Sikhani rapped by NA huh? Stop it already with your stereotypical comments against Muslims and Afghans.

Please no need for explanation now. Read your own statements ( "when they reach the marrying age…which BTW is 12 or is it 11?.. " ) for clearance.

Sala, tu channay kah…q tension layta hai?

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif

warna tu muwada moo khoolinga na. Tu pir achi baat na hoingi. :wink:


We are the Taleban-Resistance is Futile

Yeah, right!

Mullah Omar, man of the people:

Taliban chief had a secret life of luxury
Afghans bothered by 1st visits to Omar’s compound

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 18, 2001

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Five years ago Mullah Mohammed Omar began building a compound for himself against the backdrop of four towering mountain ranges, in perhaps the most picturesque part of the city.

This wasn’t just any compound. It had air conditioning units in every room, a mosque, a fountain with benches, a sculpture of a mountaintop, custom-designed wall units and a Western-style kitchen complete with a dishwasher.

Painted in pastel shades, the mullah’s home was decorated with murals of mountains, rivers and flowers. Concrete ceilings were painted to look like wooden beams, and poles were sculpted into tree trunks.

It was a far cry from the mud bungalow where Omar began his Kandahar career as Amir-ul-Mumineen, or leader of the faithful.

By the end of his iron-fisted reign, he had not only acquired three wives and nine children, but a fabulous compound and six Toyota Land Cruisers with cruise control, tinted windows and built-in refrigerators. Not bad for a man who saw himself as the upholder of an Islamic way of life compromised by corruption and excess.

“It really bothers me,” said Janan Muhammad, 40, a Kandahar resident. “We kept saying for three years, `Make our roads for us,’ but he kept saying he couldn’t do it. He just built a big house for himself the likes of which have never been seen in Kandahar. He didn’t do anything for us.”
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0112180236dec18.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsnationworld%2Dhed

intresting article in response to Condelezza rice comments on women in muslim world/

Sure it is interesting if you care to listen to a fanatic spew forth lies and propaganda.

Here is a very interesting article in response to Dr. Tareq Tahboub’s insane commentary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46635-2001Dec14.html

Of course I very much find it offensive when a supposedly educated person baldly lies, especially in regards to statistical information. There can be no reason or logic in the world if people create fictional statistics to suit their illogical agendas.

The rest of this was just this man’s opinion - which in my opinion was a load of something unpleasant. American women have freedom of choice. In most situations they choose to exploit themselves or not. There are many Americans who do not buy into the beauty industies psychotic rantings and standards. There are many college females who do not attend frat parties and become inebriated leaving themselves in a vulnerable postition. There are many families in America who rarely watch television, and certainly never at the dinner table.

It is all a matter of perspective. But this man’s perspective is severly distorted by propaganda and hype.

People just assume that fraternity houses are some kind of rapists-R-us centers. Although more rapes occur on college campuses than dorms.

I know this is slightly off topic but tristan's comments about girls getting drunk and getting in dangerous positions in fraternity houses is a rather disturbing stereotype.

Fraternal organizations provide more social service and raise more funds than any other student group. They also provide more industry, civic and government leaders than any other group.

as far as humiliation of women in USA. I agree that it is present in some way shape or form. whether it is their depiction in ghetto culture or other expectations which drive girls to anorexia and bulimia, but you can pick up any artticle by that Penn professor and feminist rights activist. She gets a bit overboard at times though

Fraternal organizations provide more social service and raise more funds than any other student group. They also provide more industry, civic and government leaders than any other group.

Okay Mr. Fraudia - maybe on your campus, but not mine!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Unless you are saying that these guys I see drinking until they vomit and streaking around campus - are actually tomorow’s future leaders. Of course this goes a long way in explaining some puzzling aspects of behavior demonstrated by both former and current US leaders.

[quote]
Originally posted by Braveheart:
**Ohio,interesting story,just shows,its always the same,power corrupts.How many people have attained positions of power,without becoming corrupted?

Maybe Ghandi,i cant think of many,not mullah Omar or the taliban anyway.

[This message has been edited by Braveheart (edited December 19, 2001).]**
[/quote]

Maybe they should screen and do background checks to make sure these guys don't have a history of sexual problems and beating of their women, etc., before allowing them to even run for President.

[This message has been edited by GoodHeartedChic (edited December 20, 2001).]

Nice Post Saif

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif

, but you left out 1 little thing.. the WRESTLING - It has nothing to do with wrestling, not only have they degraded women, but now they are degrading men as well. The past few weeks on wrestling they show the naked behinds of men in womens and men faces as some sort of payback or something. Then if that isn’t enough to draw little kids into the wrestling, they sale toy dolls of the wrestlers in Wal-Mart and other stores. Anything that sales, they are for it. Just DISGUISTING!

[This message has been edited by GoodHeartedChic (edited December 20, 2001).]

its the american public opinion that matters you and me reading this makes no difference the american people must realise this

Tristan

I am not sure what university you go to so I cant comment if any leaders have emerged from there period.

Fraternities have their share of problems, but they get pointed out more than other groups. The crime rate in university residences is higher than in fraternity and sorority houses, but we dont hear much about that.

People cling on to movies like animal house or revenge of the nerds etc to believe what fraternities are all about. Great sources eh..

Let me share some facts with you. If you want to discuss more maybe we can open a separate thread

85% of upper-level executives in the Fortune 500 Companies are Fraternity or sorority members.
75% of the members of the US Congress are fraternity of sorority members
76 percent of all Congressmen and Senators belong to a fraternity or sorority
All but three US Presidents since 1825 have belonged to a fraternity
Greek undergraduates raise approximately $7 million per year for charities?

Human dignity is something very special and very rare - anywhere in the world.

Where there is poverty women and children - the weaker sections - are the first whose dignity is trampled on. But in Afghanistan even the men have lost their dignity.

Imposing one's own cultural values cannot lead to a solution. Burkhas and beards are also a question that should not be considered out of context from all the other factors.

Pointing fingers doesn't help to solve the problem. Dignity cannot be imposed if the society is lacking in real values. It has to come from within. Unfortunately by comparing Afghanistan and the USA we have two societies that call out loudly to God without understanding what the religious message is and where the real God is something else - in Afghanistan its a tribal mentality that is closed and blind, where tribal values are supreme; in the USA the real God is money and political power. I know, that's a sweeping generalisation, and that in both places there are honest good people but the situation is such that they will not be able to come to the fore.

I think the aim of the original article was to show that there is indeed something very wrong with the way women are treated in some parts of the US. It's not just Afghanistan where women suffer! I would extend this to say that even in the most prosperous societies, there is always a part where the weak (not just women, witness the situation with ethnic minorities) are taken advantage of in some way and the powerful are more attached to power than morals. Social sanction for many practices which are legally or otherwise considered wrong pushes people to behave this way. Religions have always tried to change this but "God" has become a political slogan all over the world, and has very little to do with the spirit behind the message of the world's religions.

Some time ago a cousin of mine who lives in teh US sent me an e-mail which compared Miss America to Miss Afghanistan - Miss America in a bikini and Miss Afghanistan in a burkha, and text comparing the two: education, oppotunities, life exopectancy etc. This is what I wrote to him:

I think this article is typical of the thinking of the average american. What's wrong with it, you say? Well think a minute.

This perpetuates some typical american myths. It also make out that things are simple. They aren't.

Is the bikini the normal dress of the american women? Are beauty contests a
measure of freedom or of beauty? of intelligence? of happiness? are there
cultural parameters involved in these evaluations and how do they influence
your idea of what is good or right? Is it necessarily good to be able to decide thinking only of one's own personal preference about marriage, divorce, education etc. etc.?

If this girl is studying bioethics she will realise, I hope that just because USA says so it ain't necessarily so. You know about america's foreign policy, about their use of world resources, about their perspective on their responsibility for their actions. You
also know about this because there are socially responsible americans who have written about these themes.

Why is the Afghan woman dressed like that? why do they live in such absolutely appalling circumstances? why do they have to suffer so much? do the americans have anything to do with it? do they really care? do they really want to change it? is it right? do americans live in an ethical way?
have they a right to do and say what they do and impose certain ideas because they are big and powerful?

And after all that, what are we going to do about it?

God bless America. Really. I can see no other solution.

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/biggthumb.gif

BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/biggthumb.gif

Ohio guy

There are 40 million sex worker in India ,4 millon tested hiv pos+ and more than thatUNTESTED aids patient due to immoral sexual permisiveness of devdasni society .

NeSecrets w Film About One Of India’s Ugliest

http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2001/dec/1204uglysecret.html

New Film About One Of India’s Ugliest Secrets
India-West, By Lisa Tsering, December 4, 2001

Los Angeles–The ritualistic sexual abuse of young girls in India is the topic of Maya, a devastating new film from first-time director Dijvijay Singh.

Maya screened last week at the Regus London Film Festival, and the film has gotten raves at film festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, Chicago and Toronto for its unsparing depiction of India’s little-understood devadasi tradition.

Twelve-year-old Maya (Nitya Shetty) lives on the outskirts of Hyderabad with her middle class family - her father, Arun (Anand Nag); mother Lakshmi (Mita Vashist); and 11-year-old cousin Sanjay (Nikhil Yadav), her constant companion for nonstop childish pranks and mischief.

The day that Maya reaches puberty, though, her childish fun comes to an abrupt end as relatives start planning for the biggest event of the young girl’s life: a feast and ceremony to dedicate her to the goddess Yellamma.

Maya doesn’t understand why the grownups seem to be talking in code, and why such care is being taken to choose just the right sari and the most astrologically auspicious date for her ceremony - although the village women shoot each other a few pained glances. Like a good, obedient daughter, she silently complies, up to the moment she is led into a dark room in the temple where a group of waiting priests awaits as a huge, wooden door is closed behind her.

Digvijay Singh and Maya’s producers, Dileep Singh Rathode and Emmanuel Pappas, have been working on the film for the past five years and are finally getting the attention and rewards they so rightly deserve. The subject matter is never made titillating, nor is it glossed over.

“The character of Maya is not based on any one girl’s story,” Rathode told India-West after a recent screening of the film. “Reports from nongovernmental organizations state that until recently, as many as 15,000 girls were believed to be used as devadasis” in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka.

In villages deep in rural India, young girls are still “dedicated to God,” namely, given to temple priests, as brides as part of the devadasi tradition. Although outlawed in India, the devadasi tradition persists, primarily among the dalit community.

A report quoted by Human Rights Watch states that “Thousands of untouchable female children (between 6 and 8 years) are forced to become maidens of God, (Devadasis or Jogins) … They are taken from their families, never to see them again. They are later raped by the temple priest and finally auctioned secretly into prostitution and ultimately die from AIDS.” In the film’s press materials, the filmmakers include links to NGO Web sites documenting the reach of this specialized type of abuse.

Rathode, a cousin of Singh’s, worked as a coordinator in Mumbai for numerous Kapoor family productions before working as an independent line producer for a number of foreign films in India, including City of Joy and The Deceivers (a 1988 film starring Pierce Brosnan).

Singh, too, had worked as an assistant director on Indian film and television productions and TV commercials before moving to Los Angeles to enter the filmmaking program at UCLA. The two teamed up with Emmanuel Pappas, also a filmmaking student at UCLA, to form Kundalini Pictures, their production company based in Los Angeles.

The film was shot in locations in the Telangana district of Andhra Pradesh, and some scenes were even shot in a temple where the ritual is said to have taken place.

Actress Nitya Shetty, at age 10 already a veteran of 16 films, has acted since she was five in Telugu films, TV commercials and serials. In 1999, the state of Andhra Pradesh honored her with an award for Best Child Actor for her work in the film Channi Channi Asa, and she appears in the recent hit film Devadu.

Mita Vashisht has appeared in more than 20 films, including Taal and Dil Se; and Anand Nag was worked with Shashi Kapoor, Rekha and Shabana Azmi in a career spanning 30 years and 150 films.

The producers of Maya are currently working with a distributor to bring the film to a wider audience; till now, it has only been seen at festivals.

By setting the story in a middle class household, it makes it easier for viewers to relate to the characters and harder for them to dismiss what happens as some obscure Third World ritual, said Rathode.

The sheer ordinariness of Maya’s ritual - its unquestioned acceptance in the community and the casual attitude with which the villagers feast while she screams from inside the temple - give the film a terrifying edge.

But the film goes deeper than simply chronicling a crime of exploitation. Cinematographer Mark Lapwood uses long, languid shots that draw out the day-to-day tedium of small town life, and Manesh Judge’s haunting music enhances the entire work. Maya presents an ugly scenario with surprising beauty and subtlety.

Some viewers have criticized Maya for promoting an unflattering image of India, but Rathode disagrees. “I don’t think that is the case,” he told India-West. "Our film does not describe the whole population of the country.

"This is a practice which has been banned by the Indian government. It’s not appreciated by anyone in India.

“Nevertheless, it is a practice that still happens.”


Main Akela he chalaa thaa janib-e-manzil magar
Log saath aatey rahey aur Carvaan Badhta gaya