What can you say about a religion that is so anti-women? It's disheartening that this is spreading throughout all these countries.
All throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan's impoverished western border with Afghanistan, lie the ruins of barbershops and music and video stores – symbols of Western-oriented life that religious extremists have destroyed in a growing wave of violence.(via)
Now Islamist militants have a new target, and if they are successful, observers say their campaign could be disastrous for Pakistan's future.
In what appears to be an escalating spree over the last year, extremists have bombed at least four girls' schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home. While no girls or school staff have been killed, girls in some areas have stopped attending classes – marking a direct blow to Pakistan's national enterprise of "enlightened moderation," which posits female education as a central pillar.
Pakistan finds itself at a precarious tipping point: Tremendous gains have been made in female education in recent years, but a considerable gender gap remains. Extremists' efforts to undermine education for women, who are historically one of Pakistan's most potent forces of moderation, could further empower Pakistan's growing ranks of Islamist militants.
"Because girls are the ones suffering from these oppressive ideas, if they are educated they will be a better ally in the promotion of liberal ideas and secularism," says Farzana Bari, who heads the gender studies department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
The continuing wave of attacks could tilt Pakistan's sensitive political balance, observers say, and hurt crucial economic development efforts. As female education improves, infant mortality rates tend to decrease, family health improves, national incomes rise, and female citizens become more politically active and aware of their rights, say development experts.
"You'll be keeping half the population of Pakistan idle [if the bombings continue]," says Syed Fayyaz Ahmad, the joint education adviser of the Ministry of Education in Islamabad. "[Girls] would not add to the economic development of NWFP. If your female children are not educated, your next generation of boys and girls are affected."
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It is these new schools that extremists like Maulana Fazlullah, a powerful preacher in Swat valley, tend to target. For months, using a pirated radio channel, Mr. Fazlullah had warned locals against sending their girls to school, calling it un-Islamic and a violation of purdah, the religiously mandated confinement of women away from public scrutiny.
"A woman has been asked to remain behind the four walls of the house. Men have been given preference by God," Fazlullah explains in an interview on the banks of the Swat River, where he is building a madrassah, or religious school. In a recent peace treaty signed with the government, Fazlullah agreed to stop preaching against girls' education in return for keeping his illegal radio station
Maybe it's time for the women to fight back. I'd start with this religious school and radio station. I think the feminists should start a campaign to arm these women and help them fight back.
