The following post was excerpted from an article written by one Margaret Wente, a columnist for the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.
quote:
On Fridays, the shops in Kabul close and everyone goes to the stadium. There, they watch as thieves and heretics have their hands cut off. One day, the Taliban brought in three women covered in burqas. A smuggled video shows a man with a microphone reading from the Koran. One of the women, accused of adultery, is led to the centre of the stadium. A man puts a gun to her head and shoots her dead. The video ends. "The Taliban actually sells popcorn before these events," said a young Afghan woman, in a recent interview with a reporter from the West. "Executions have become entertainment for children."
quote[quote]The women of Afghanistan are the most oppressed group of people in the world. Their country has been destroyed by wave on wave of war, and now they live under the tyranny of brutal misogynists. The Taliban believes that females are scarcely more than walking wombs, and they treat them worse than animals. If — when — the Taliban is overthrown, the women of Afghanistan will probably be better off.[/quote]quote:
After the Taliban clerics came to power, girls were forbidden to attend school. Women aren't allowed to work, even if they have starving children and no husband or male relatives to support them. A girl can be killed if her hymen is not intact at marriage. Family planning is forbidden, and women cannot be seen by male doctors. Few female doctors are left, and agonizing deaths in childbirth are common. Perhaps the cruellest rule is the one that requires women to live behind windows covered over with paint, so that no man can see them. Lack of sunlight and a wretched diet has created an epidemic of osteomalacia, a softening of the bones caused by vitamin D deficiency.quote[quote]The Taliban war against the West is also a war against its own women. There is more than one reason to pray the West will somehow prevail.[/quote]How can we punish them for the terror they inflict on us as well as the terror they inflict on their own women without causing the innocent to suffer even more? Any ideas?