Malala Yousafzai urges Muslim leaders to challenge policies restricting girls and women's schooling.

Summary

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai condemned the Taliban’s treatment of women at a Pakistan summit on girls’ education in Muslim communities, stating, “The Taliban do not see women as human beings.”

She criticized their policies banning Afghan girls from education and work as “gender apartheid” and un-Islamic.

Afghanistan is the only country banning education for girls beyond grade six, affecting 1.5 million girls.

Malala urged Muslim leaders to challenge these practices and advocate for girls’ education globally.

The Taliban declined to attend or comment.

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
    33·
    1 day ago

    Something about the “not human” phrasing is bothering me. I get what they’re trying to convey and I don’t dispute it, but it also feels inaccurate in a way that might lead us to miss important aspects of the situation.

    I’m sure if you asked an Afghan man how many people live in his home, he’d include women and children in his answer. So I don’t think they literally see women as a separate species.

    My gut feeling is more like Afghan men don’t generally believe in the concept of human rights, as opposed to separate sets of rights for men and women. Hell, they may not even believe in the Western concept of rights at all, and may think only in terms of things like religious obligations and cultural norms.

    I wonder if there’s a different phrasing we could use that has the same emotional impact but doesn’t suggest questionable conclusions about the world view of Afghans.

    • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I’m sure if you asked an Afghan man how many people live in his home, he’d include women and children in his answer.

      I’m not so sure. I have zero basis to think it’s one way or another, but given all the oniony-but-actually-pure-facts headlines of these recent… months? I’m definitely not certain of it.

      • NosferatuZodd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        16 hours ago

        you shouldn’t base your thinking on western news which generally have an incentive to exaggerate everything related to Afghanistan and taliban.

        there’s a recent video from a non-muslim youtuber called Arab going to the taliban and vlogging his experience, from what I saw in his video the taliban aren’t as bad as the headlines suggest, I don’t really like the guy but the videos are good.

        the fact that they don’t give girls the same rights as boys are facts, but there’s more to it than just “girl less than boy” as the media portrays it, you need to understand the culture more before coming to conclusions like that the afghans think of women as subhuman.