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Speaking of Islamic Feminism…

In Afghanistan, it’s a crime for women to leave home without permission.

“Running away” is not an offense found in the Afghan Penal Code. However, women and girls in Afghanistan have long faced punishment from family and local governing bodies for leaving home without permission.

In response to challenges to the practice of charging women and girls with the crime of“running away,” in 2010 and 2011 the Afghan Supreme Court issued an instruction to courts that “running away” is a crime…

The authorities typically bring “running away”charges when family members file a complaint after women or girls have fled from spouses and family, often in the context of domestic abuse or forced marriage. There is no prohibition on men leaving their homes without permission. When men face charges related to “running away” it is due to their having assisted a woman in doing so.

In 2010 and 2011 the Supreme Court issued statements that“running away” should be treated as a crime whenever a woman flees to a “stranger” as opposed to a “relative” or “legal intimate.” In the 2010 statement, the court stated that running away from family or spouses, even in cases of abuse, “could cause crimes like adultery and prostitution and is against Sharia principles” and determined that the act is “prohibited and prosecutable based on discretionary punishment.”

Ah it’s against Sharia principles – well that’s all there is to be said then.

The court called for women and girls facing abuse to “refer their cases to judicial institutions and to the government…and solve their problems via government channels rather than resorting to personal actions” such as running away. The Supreme Court concluded that “running away” is not a legitimate response to abuse: “For resorting to personal actions may create various crimes and violence rather than eliminating the violence.”

So by the same token, if a stranger kidnaps you and rapes and beats you, you should refer your case to the government rather than running away?

It makes every bit as much sense. Have you ever read anything so brutally stupid? If a woman or girl is being abused and beaten, how is she supposed to refer her case to the government without running away first? Men who abuse girls and women aren’t going to stand back and politely wait while they call the police, now are they.

Human Rights Watch has case studies.

Comments

  1. julian says

    The Supreme Court concluded that “running away” is not a legitimate response to abuse

    Says it all.

  2. sailor1031 says

    Another successful transplant of western-style democracy. Is it time to come now?

  3. JohnnieCanuck says

    So if she wants to file a complaint with the authorities, all she has to do is present herself at their offices and fill out some papers?

    What about the part where she cannot be in public without a responsible male relative escorting her?

  4. Hamilton Jacobi says

    I think they are probably not unaware of the catch-22. It is built in by design.

  5. says

    Yes. The same applies to my whole post – the futility is the whole point. Women and girls have to be kept completely helpless and rightless; period. They’re for fucking and childbearing and domestic labor; period. You don’t let your goats run away, now do you.

  6. Aliasalpha says

    if a stranger kidnaps you and rapes and beats you, you should refer your case to the government rather than running away?

    Well naturally, if you don’t report it how else are they going to know you were raped & thereby force you to marry your rapist?

  7. Riptide says

    But if you *don’t* report it, it wasn’t an “honest rape”. Just ask Ron Paul.

  8. says

    You’d think after a decade of occupation we could at least manage to establish a government that doesn’t think women are property. Can we accomplish anything in Afghanistan?

  9. Sunny says

    You don’t let your goats run away, now do you.

    Precisely Ophelia. I have often thought that in such societies women should simply be tied up and kept in a shed with the other animals. After all this is precisely the conception of women that they have in mind. Stop the pretense and the legalistic balderdash based on Sharia principles.

    In any case, following is a story where the exploitation of women is a little more “sophisticated.”

    When Home Is No Refuge for Women
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/world/asia/28iht-letter28.html?_r=1&ref=india

  10. Sili says

    If I had the courage, I’d like to take a leaf out of the glitterbombers’ book and start doing bacon bombing.

  11. Brian M says

    Remember…we’ve spent a trillion dollars and killed tens of thousands of people to enable this.

    Not saying the Taliban are better, of course, but what a waste. (And maybe the Taliban would not have been in power either if our sociopathic elites were not so busy playing politics back beginning in the 1970s and 1980s! Just like we helped the Khmer Rouge come to power largely because we illegally dropped millions of tons of explosives on Cambodia.

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