The recent ban by the Taliban on the sale of contraceptives or any device used for birth control by woman is another pushback towards the development of an entire race of the subjugated Afghan women’s rights issues. Afghanistan has not only banned the autonomy of a woman and her body but has also gone further to ban girls from attending college. The logic presented, is the bad influence of education and their theory of the anti West propaganda, which is being delivered to the gullible Afghani women.
We all know that any organised religion gets its fuel from putting the fear of an invisible god, who also happens to be a man in most religions. A god who teaches us about the ideas of good versus bad. The sermons received are made to believe that they are towards a larger good of society. But the truth is being hidden. It is far more murky when the onus of being morally conscientious and correct, falls heavily on the shoulder of the woman in a nation. God who is worshipped as a male form seems uncannily in favour of men living life without rules unlike women.
Feminism in Islam has constantly been on the forefront of all criticism. But very few movements apart from the current Iran situation, has been able to garner world media attention. Therefore Taliban too creates rules in its autocratic fashion as the world sits recoiling at the status of the women there. The respect given to a woman is glaringly patriarchal and questionable. The idea of a free woman is like an abhorrent creature, born to please a man and only run a household. Any dreams outside the four walls are to be gagged and thwarted.
The logic of the ban on contraception is being portrayed as the West who is the devil in an Islamic world and wishes to decrease the footprint of Muslims world over. This is directly targeted at the sentiments of the common Afghani Muslims who may believe that they are disliked and misunderstood world over after 24/7 attacks. Islamophobia is being touted as an example of why they must understand, that it is imperative to retain their culture, irrespective of its archaic ways in a developing world. The ban further cements the idea of a free woman as an aberrant notion.
This twisted rule surely makes one imagine and conjure a world where women should only be seen covered, in a hijab and with a brood of children following her. Girls must learn to follow her mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps without any questions, individuality or thought to the laid rules. Anyone flouting it, can face death penalty in the country, run by the fundamentalists.
With this rule, the Taliban is not only cruelly dismissing the woman but also refusing to acknowledge how multiple pregnancies will ravage her body. In this set up, the man isn’t accountable for unwanted pregnancies. Because the men are not going to be tutored to abstain from sex. The woman and her body is the theory, that the Taliban believes is the way forward to increasing the Muslim population World over.
It is known medically that multiple pregnancies can cause serious harm to a woman’s body. There is a syndrome called the “maternal depletion syndrome”. The constant back to back pregnancies can deplete essential nutrients, making mothers at a higher risk for anemia and other complications such as uterine rupture and also putting their babies at risk of low birth weight and preterm birth.
But for the Taliban naturally a woman’s uterine health isn’t much of a concern. What matters is the drive to halt the western concept of controlling population.
Currently things like birth control pills and Depo-Provera injections are not being allowed to be kept in the pharmacy. The shop keepers have been warned by the gun toting Taliban to not even dare to sell the old stock in Kabul.
This marks as the the latest attack on women’s rights by the Taliban who came to power in August 2021 after the US troop withdrawal.
The world has its hands tied up.
As women we have no choice but to sit back and watch the condition of Afghan women being denigrated to becoming baby machines and also marvel, author Salman Rushdie who still makes a comeback after the Fatwa attack, losing one eye and the heinous stabbing.
Mohua Chinappa is an author and a podcaster of a show called The Mohua Show.