Op-Ed: Taliban ban women from shopping, music in Pakistan

Self-proclaimed definers of Islamic law, the Taliban have begun giving out punishments for breaching their bizarre version of Sharia law. Four men were shaven, (a punishment indeed, when beards are a cultural symbol) for listening to music.

To clarify: The “no music” story is a weird version of an actual bit of scripture in which the damned are condemned to speak in a musical form. Some years ago, I asked a Muslim scholar about that, and apparently it actually relates to a profane (and clearly described) form of music, not music generally. The Taliban, and other fundamentalists, have chosen to consider that this refers to music of any kind. As some people have noticed over the last few thousand years of recorded history, tyranny doesn’t really need excuses to oppress anyone. Like Humpty Dumpty, religion is apparently what the Taliban say it means, not what the last 1000 years or so of devout religious practice indicate. It does make you wonder why these people who are so “conspicuously Islamic” don’t bother to learn their own laws, though. After all, is music banned in Mecca, or anywhere in the Islamic world but Taliban/fundamentalist enclaves? There may just be fewer headlines in not punishing people for listening to music. One thing’s for sure: Nobody gets a choice, under this system. Meanwhile back in Swat, a once prosperous part of Pakistan, the Taliban have been helping local commerce by their gems of economic wisdom. Explains the Daily Telegraph:

“We will take action against women who go out shopping in the markets and any shopkeeper seen dealing with women shoppers will be dealt with severely,'' read the poster from the Swat branch of Tehreek-e-Taliban.

This, taken literally, means that attending a market is a religious crime for women. There are huge shopping centers throughout the Middle East. Are they all anti Islamic? If so, it’s a very recent development. Literally. The developers of Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other super rich areas seem to find women and shopping centers an acceptable combination. This tends to underline a fact the West has been refusing to acknowledge, which is still coloring the War On Terror as a War Against Islam, despite a lot of evidence to the effect that the entire Islamic world is a visible, functioning contradiction of the Taliban/ Al Qaeda form of fundamentalism. Of the 1.4 billion Muslims on Earth, only a microscopic percentage join the Taliban and other groups. During the Taliban reign in Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan reported massive abuses of human rights, as well as human dignity by the Taliban, and opposing “jihadi”. If you check out their site, you’ll find that Pakistan, so far, is following very much the same line. It may even be worse. In Afghanistan, women were allowed to attend markets. To beat the Taliban, they're the best advertisement against themselves imaginable. If the US and its allies intends to win this war, they have to win the public information war, as well as the military and political wars. NOTE: The RAWA site contains some grim images, and RAWA isn’t particularly pro the current Kabul government, or the U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.