KABUL: A group of Afghan female lawmakers and activists are eyeing an unlikely alliance with the religious leaders, hoping to promote women’s rights through Islam.
Though women have made hard-fought gains in education and work since the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, fears are growing these could suffer a reversal when most foreign forces leave by the end of next year.
In the conservative, male-dominated country where religion often holds more sway than legal authority, religious leaders have often been a major barrier to women obtaining the rights granted to them under the constitution.
“The role of the mullahs is crucial because we’re an Islamic nation and the mosques are being used against women. Why not use them for women?” asked MP Fawzia Koofi.
Koofi, from the rural Badakhshan province, is in talks with the religious elite to promote pro-female sermons during Friday prayers in mosques where the government pays clerics’ salaries.
The hope is that the sermons will help address the problem of violence against women in a country where many men are suspicious of women’s rights and see them as imported from the West.
The campaign will start in Kabul and be implemented in the provinces but only in 3,500 government-funded mosques. There are 160,000 mosques in the country of 30 million people.
In April, conservative lawmakers indefinitely delayed debate in turning a decree banning violence against women into law, citing it as un-Islamic.
Efforts to strengthen the elimination of violence against women law were spearheaded by Koofi.
With the deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops looming, some women feel they are left with no choice but to try to gain the support of the men.
“They’ve defamed us. I can’t go into a province and try to fight for women rights if the local mullah is against me,” said rights activist Wazhma Frogh, Director and Founder of Women Peace and Security Research Institute. “This is the only solution.”
Also under consideration is a plan for textbooks for clerics that teach them women’s rights within the context of Islam. Abdul Haq Abid, Deputy Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, has been in talks with Koofi for nine months over the campaign. “Women have sacred rights granted to them in Islam, so imams need to preach this to people in underdeveloped provinces, so they become aware,” Abid said. Reuters
