Saving Afghan women: a Western instrumentalization

Last month, the American President, Joe Biden, announced the complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by August 31, 2021. On August 15, 2021, Kabul, the capital, fell into the hands of the Taliban, who now control the country. Since then, the issue of defending Afghan women has become omnipresent. Faced with this reality, Afghan women shared their concerns and experiences with us.

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Stubborn and harmful stereotypes

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“We, the women of Afghanistan, are capable of a lot of things. I don't want what's happening in my country right now to define me as a person,” says Safia Hashimi, who has lived in Montreal for five and a half years. “The way the media talks about Afghan women affects me, because it reflects a bad image of Afghanistan,” she adds about how their situation under a Taliban regime is presented. She is outraged by Western media coverage of events in her country of origin, which she sometimes finds stigmatizing and dehumanizing. “A journalist said that the Taliban asked her to stay with women, separate from men.

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The way she presented it made me uncomfortable,” Ms. Hashimi explains about a report broadcast on a major American channel. “Elsewhere, there may be discomfort in separating the genders, but in Afghanistan, that's normal. In my opinion, this cultural difference has been exaggerated,” she says. She is also tired of the stereotypes that portray her country as a land of refugees, wars and violence. With regard to media coverage and discourse centered around the urgency of “saving Afghan women”, which are so common in the West, Ms. Hashimi noted that several Afghan women are already mobilized around this issue.

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She cites several of them, often overlooked, who fought for justice: there are, for example, Queen Soraya Tarzi, who, together with her husband, fought for women's rights, and Rula Ghani, the wife of the last president, who fought for the rights of women, children and refugees. “Women are going to stand up to fight the injustices of the current government. We will try to silence them, but it will never work, she says firmly. We have hope for a free future and will never give in to tyranny! ”

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Underestimated resilience

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Mari Nazari, who also lives in Montreal, agrees. “Being one myself, I fundamentally believe that Afghan women are very strong. So, speeches like “We have to save the Afghan woman” make me uncomfortable, says the master's student in career counseling. Unfortunately, the society and the government of the Taliban do not allow women to express their strength. I would also like us to give some credit to our dear Afghan women.” She is proud to be an Afghan, but that pride comes with its share of concerns.

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“It must not be easy, I am told,” she reports, describing the microaggressions she is experiencing. Drawing on her experiences, Ms. Nazari uses her voice to inform the issues facing the Afghan population through social networks. Awareness is becoming more and more important. However, for the student, empathy is insufficient. “I find it really frustrating that people are not asking me any questions about the causes of the current situation in Afghanistan. Because my country hasn't always been like that,” she adds with frustration. “I don't see any reaction other than empathy. Action is needed as well. I want more real awareness,” she insists.

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An impact on Muslim women

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The current discourse about Afghan women affects Muslim women of various origins. These concerns led Hiba J. to publish a video on Instagram that discusses these issues. She hesitated a lot before doing so. “I did not want to overimpose myself on what is happening in Afghanistan and on the efforts of Afghan activists,” explains the activist of Moroccan origin. “The discourse took a simplistic turn by presenting these women as oppressed women who cover up against their will, when the problem is much wider, with many other nuances that we forget to mention”, regrets the activist from Béliers Solidaires, a collective formed by students and former students of École Henri-Bourassa in order to denounce hate. This type of speech stings the young woman, who is wearing the veil.

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She hears parallels with the words surrounding Bill 21. “The same rhetoric was used, even though I am not Afghan,” she explains. The argument that always comes up in defense of this law is that these women are oppressed. And that it is up to Quebec to save them by taking off their veil. It's as if we had no choice.” Rukaya Achhal, a history student at the University of Montreal, finds the discourse on Afghan women's clothing particularly troubling.

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“We associate the image of more clothed women with a regression in women's rights. And there is this unhealthy obsession with Afghani women in the 1970s, who wore very Western skirts, says the Moroccan student. There are dubious parallels that are made, for example, as I said, the idea that a more clothed woman, who wears traditional clothes associated with Islam, means a step back.” “In the media, we leave little room for Muslim women to express themselves on this kind of issue, when they are the main ones concerned”, laments Ms. Achhal. She feels that Law 21 depicts her as a submissive person. “I chose to wear the veil to keep my limits with my body, and I chose to have a relationship with my spirituality that I consider healthy by putting on these clothes,” she says with firmness and conviction. Ms. Achhal believes that it is hypocritical for governments like that of Quebec and France to criticize the fact that the rights of Muslim women are violated by other regimes insofar as these governments may themselves be subject to similar criticisms.

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“When Muslim women are forbidden to wear the veil, they are indirectly cutting off their access to many opportunities. They are asked to choose between their faith and their access to work and education. And we don't talk about that,” notes the student. She recognizes that there is a real danger to the rights of Afghan women under the Taliban regime, which threatens their access to education and the job market, but that this danger is also real here.

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Amira Bennani*, spokesperson for Quebec Muslim Women (FMQ), a group of decolonial Muslim feminists, has the same position. According to her, the fight against the Taliban does not prevent the fight against the Islamophobia from which Afghanistan is suffering. “Westerners are exploiting Afghan women and their religion to justify their interventions, believes Mr.Me Bennani.

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She also believes in trusting the people to fight these problems, because they know their reality best.

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Afghan feminism

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Amina Jamal, a professor at Ryerson University, is a sociologist specializing in South Asian feminism. The researcher insists that it is important to understand the context in which the latest developments have taken place in Afghanistan. It thus returns to 1979, at the start of the American-Soviet War. “Under the Soviet-backed government at the time, Afghan women had more rights than before, and much more than elsewhere in South Asia,” recalls the professor.

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She explains that at that time, the United States intervened to fight Soviet communism, supporting conservative groups such as the Taliban. “There are photos of meetings between the American president at the time, Ronald Reagan, and the Taliban, as well as photos of the Taliban with representatives of American oil companies. These facts are usually not widely discussed today,” explains the Ryerson University researcher. For the professor, the feminist humanitarian justification for interventions in Afghanistan stems from colonial logic. “Researchers call this kind of discourse the “colonizing discourse” because its aim is to show that the West is the territory of freedom and that Islam is the territory of the oppressed,” explains the researcher. “Foreign interventions are not really about freeing Afghan women, but rather about making them clones of Western women.

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And we know it's not working,” she said. She believes that the Islamophobia surrounding the issue of Afghan women comes from a misunderstanding of Sharia law, which is often misinterpreted by those who are not Muslims. Sharia is not a legal code, but a series of principles that govern justice, equality, and benevolence.

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Different societies are free to practice these principles according to their own interpretations and circumstances. “The Taliban sharia is a particular version based on Wahhabism and Salafism, which is integrated into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is wrong to say that the Sharia of the Taliban is Islam”, nuances M.Me Jamal, who states that the Koran contains numerous feminist teachings.

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Raise your voice

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On the evening of August 20, 2021, at the call of the Montreal Afghan Women's Center, many of them testified to the strength they show in the face of extremist regimes. Gathered in Dorchester Square, several took the floor to assert their perspectives to the sound of the Afghan national anthem, which thundered through the speakers, and in front of the tricolor flag raised high. Queenm Malika, wearing makeup in the colors of her country, took the stage. “My childhood in Afghanistan is for me among the best moments of my life,” she later told us.

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It was the political situation that forced her family to leave the country. “After immigrating, I quickly realized that systemic racism was very present. You can see it.”

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Ms. Malika is particularly critical of the motivations of foreign nations that intervene in her country of origin. Like many, she does not believe in the reason for theHumanitarian intervention in Afghanistan for women's rights, citing the important feminist reforms introduced by the Afghan queen Soraya Tarzi in the 1920s, long before similar reforms were carried out in several Western countries. “And to say that they want to come to us to teach us how to be Muslims! ” she exclaims.

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The activist asks foreign nations to leave her country alone, a request that was also made by many other Afghan women present at the event. While she condemns the Taliban regime, she is just as critical of the previous government, which she says was imposed on the Afghan people by external forces. And this imposition, she believes, is part of the long series of colonialist interventions that Afghanistan has undergone throughout history, whether by the Greeks, the Persians, the Mongols or even the English, the Soviets and the Americans. “They took all the rights of women to subdue them.

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Because Afghan women are fighting,” she believes. She is extremely worried that the situation will happen again. She is a firm believer in the ability of her own people to rebuild their country. “We need others to stop poking their noses at us and give us time to build our country. And then we will be working with them on our own terms.”

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A few years ago, Queenm Malika took part in this reconstruction project. She has returned to her country several times as an independent journalist with the mission of combating disinformation about Afghan geopolitics. There, she conducted interviews with several political actors, including the Taliban, and members of several of the ethnic groups that make up the Afghan people.

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Today, the mother of the family wants to go back to university to study political science and change things for immigrants like her, here in Quebec. Twenty years after the start of their military intervention in Afghanistan, American troops bowed out on Monday. However, the discourse surrounding the fate of Afghan women continues, and the control of the Taliban extends over the country. For many Afghan and Muslim women, once again, there is a big absence in all of this: the context.