In life, your environment is who you are and what you do. It is written in our very human nature; adapt to survive. Sometimes, our environments are very rough and we have to be extremely mentally tough to survive. A key example of this mental toughness is a 20 year old Afghan girl named Gulnaz.When Gulnaz was 16, she was raped by her cousin’s husband, Asadullah. When this was discovered, they were both sent to jail and Asadullah got less time in prison for rape than Gulnaz did for "adultery!" After Gulnaz got out of jail, she was lost with no one to turn to. Her family and the rest of society had disowned her and women have few job opportunities in Afghanistan. The only ways that she could create a solid life for herself were to leave the country or to get married. But since the government wouldn't let her leave and no man would marry her because of her status, she was stumped. Her only option was to accept the offer of marriage from her rapist and she did so. It was the only way for her to make it in the world. She now lives a fairly steady lifestyle with Asadullah and his other wife (her cousin) and she accepts her situation very well. She says she has a "good life" and that she is "happy." I really hope what she says is true because someone who has lived through all of that deserves a happy life.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was anger. I was angry at Asadullah, I was angry at the Afghan government and mostly I was angry at Gulnaz’s Afghan piers. But as I stepped back a little bit, I started to develop some more complex thoughts about the issue. Obviously, the life and rigorous trials brought upon Gulnaz are absolutely heartbreaking and hard to see. But when you think about it, is it fair to be angered with the people around her who shunned her? If all you were ever raised to think your whole life that shunning her is OK, is it really your fault? I say no. The problem here is the social constructs that have been built up in Afghan culture. Many people blindly follow the mob mentality no matter what the issue is. The only way to stop the mob is to get the organization that is controlling it to change. In the case of Afghanistan the head of the mob dragon are the Islamic leaders there. Cultural orthodoxies arise very frequently in heavily religious areas due to the preaching of the religious oligarchy. And knowing that Afghanistan is very religious, we can infer that the problem with women’s rights is deeply seated in religious teaching there.So the only way for cultural prejudices to stop is for some brave souls to rise up in the ranks of Islam and once they near the top they should speak out against what is wrong and try to commence change. Someone could rise up and make a difference in the way that Pope Francis has in the Catholic church with his stance on gays, for example. The road to the top is dangerous and possibly life threatening for anyone who wants to try, but in the end if successful an end can be brought to the horrors that haunt people like Gulnaz every day.
I don't think it's right to excuse individuals for being complicit in this culture of oppression just because they were raised this way. We're talking about adults, many of which have access to the internet.
ReplyDelete