Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the Taliban's morality laws, which severely limit women's roles in society, are a form of systematic gender persecution.

Speaking to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Türk criticised new rules that ban women's voices in public and enforce strict dress codes, including mandatory full-body coverings.

"I shudder to think what is next for the women and girls of Afghanistan" Türk said.

The Taliban, who regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, have systematically continued the repression of Afghan women. They have excluded women from public life, education and most forms of employment.

Despite their initial promises of a more moderate rule, the regime has since prohibited girls from attending school beyond primary level and restricted women's access to work and healthcare unless accompanied by a male guardian. Public punishments for not adhering to the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic dress codes have also been reported.

"I want to make clear my abhorrence of these latest measures which include forbidding even eye contact between women and men who are not related and imposing mandatory covering for women from head to toe, including their faces" Türk told the council members.

Institutionalising gender discrimination

The Taliban have yet to respond to the UN's statements. However their latest actions, including banning women's voices from public broadcast and tightening restrictions on travel, have drawn widespread international criticism. The Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has enforced these rules which further isolate Afghanistan from the global community.

Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, also addressed the council. He warned that these policies are institutionalising gender discrimination and could have long-lasting impacts on Afghan society.

Bennett said he had talked to Afghans in several provinces. They had described a visible increase in the presence of morality inspectors and tightening restrictions, particularly on people's freedom of movement.

The UN has called for greater humanitarian assistance, with 24 million Afghans currently in need of aid. Yet the Taliban's policies, along with international sanctions, have hindered the flow of much-needed support.

Sources

AP News

On 20 July, the newspaper dedicated its front page to condemning the Taliban's decree that all Afghanistan's beauty centres must close down.

The beauty centre closure is a complete shutdown.

The Taliban decree is likely to negatively affect thousands of women-run businesses. Many have families and no other source of income.

The Kabul Chamber of Commerce estimates 50,000 women will lose their jobs as 12,000 businesses close.

The decree has sparked protests and widespread concern. Some 50 women even braved personal danger to protest in the capital city last week.

The Taliban dispersed them with gunfire and fire hydrants.

Afghanistan "has been plunged back into darkness for almost two years now," the article says. (The two-year time span refers to the Taliban's return to power in August 2021.)

Banning beauty centres is the latest in many Taliban efforts to control women's rights.

The centres "were one of the last spaces of freedom and gathering for Afghan women", the article continues.

"Women have been banned from working in NGOs; they have been barred from most secondary schools, universities and public administrations.

"They have been denied access to parks, gardens, sports centres and public bathrooms, while they are once again obliged to cover their faces when they leave their homes."

UN support

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is gravely concerned about how the Taliban suppressed the women's peaceful protest.

UNAMA condemned it as a significant setback for women's rights in Afghanistan.

The UN mission urges the Taliban to respect citizens' rights to voice their opinions without fear of violence.

As international attention remains on the unfolding situation, Afghan women's plight continues to draw global concern.

Observers are monitoring developments in Afghanistan, particularly in relation to the future of women's rights and gender equality.

The United Nations mission in Unama is also openly supporting the women.

"The news of the forced repression of a peaceful protest by women against the closure of beauty salons, the latest denial of women's rights in Afghanistan, is deeply disturbing,' the UN mission in Unama said in a statement.

It is urging the Taliban "to guarantee the right of citizens to express their views without suffering violence."

Source

• Osservatore Romano

The Western world's insatiable appetite to feed its cars and planes with petroleum products enriched these societies without developing them.

Their cultures and structures were still essentially as they were in the Middle Ages, and have not moved much further since.

Meanwhile, however, they have become economically powerful, and have used their wealth for ideological purposes.

In particular, they have extended the reach of their very conservative interpretation of Islam by founding and financing mosques and Muslim community centres wherever Muslim immigrant communities needed them, and supplying them with imams of the same conservative disposition.

This has undoubtedly hindered Muslim integration into British society.

It has made British Muslims, as a faith community, unhealthily dependent upon outside interests who are pursuing their own agenda.

There are many shades of opinion, many schools of interpretation, within the Muslim ummah, but the most aggressive one, backed by Saudi and Gulf State oil, is known as Wahhabism.

At the core this is the Salafi movement, advocating a return to the religious beliefs and practices of the first three centuries of Islam. It should be noted that Wahhabism and Salafism are Arabic, which the majority of the world's Muslim population is not.

The ideology which drives them tells them that is the will of Allah that the whole world should honour and worship him by keeping his laws, known as the sharia, and following the Quran and the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet.

The will of Allah has been frustrated so far in human history as other more powerful political forces have countered it, mainly centred in Europe and America.

In Wahhabi social theory, the main opponent of Allah is Satan, and those who oppose his will are therefore in league with him, that is to say, Satanic.

It is a world divided into Good and Bad, with not much in between.

The failure of the Muslim world to convert the rest to its ways is a source of deep and painful frustration and humiliation for ultra-conservative Muslims of the Salafi school.

The Taliban - the word literally means "student" - have studied this Wahhabi version of Islam in madrasas or theological schools, often in Afghan refugee camps over the border in Pakistan.

In Pakistan itself, as in India before partition, the main conservative tradition in Islam was known as Deobandi, against the more permissive and Sufi-based version called Barilvi.

Followers of the Barilvi school, who predominate in Pakistan, believe Islam must evolve and modernise; the anti-Sufi Deobandis, under Wahhabi influence, believe it should instead return to the fundamentals.

If it does not go voluntarily, they believe they have a duty to force it.

Some historians believe the British Raj in India encouraged the rise of the Deobandi movement in the 19th century on the principle of "divide and rule".

The significance of all this for the West is that it often finds itself as a spectator of, and clumsy intervener in, religious disagreements about which it knows little and cares less.

The basic Shia/Sunni divide it is aware of; Deobandi verses Barilvi it is not. Presumably from Lahore, the conflict in Northern Ireland looks similarly obscure and confusing.

What the West has largely forgotten is the enormous debt its civilisation owes to Muslim scholarship. Continue reading

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president says the government should provide at least 20,000 humanitarian places for refugees from Afghanistan in the wake of the current Taliban takeover.

In a letter to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Coleridge points out the "outpouring of concern for the people of Afghanistan" since the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban seized control ten days ago.

Even though Australia has provided 8,000 places for Afghan people for several years, the current need to increase the refugee intake is pressing, Coleridge urges.

He told Morrison that although the additional 3,000 places it is offering "is a substantial commitment," more are needed.

Based on estimates from key humanitarian organisations and pledges from other countries, Coleridge suggested to Morrison that at least another 17,000 places need to be made available.

Coleridge also promised Morrison help from the Catholic Church in Australia.

"Australia has stepped up before in response to significant humanitarian crises and I urge your government to be generous," his letter says.

The Catholic agencies "stand ready to assist your government with the resettlement of refugees as an expression of our great concern for the people of Afghanistan."

Coleridge's letter emphasises the very real danger people in Afghanistan face.

He said many Afghans would find themselves vulnerable under Taliban rule.

He made particular mention of those who supported Australia's defence personnel when they served in Afghanistan. They included people who lost their lives, religious minorities and women.

"It would seem our moral duty to stand with those who supported Australian military forces as interpreters or in other capacities, who it seems likely will suffer reprisals and even death for their work," he continues.

"We should also offer refuge to other Afghans who are likely to suffer persecution or risk being killed because of their opposition to the Taliban, or because of their beliefs, values and way of life, including members of the Christian community.

"There is a particular risk to women, and Australia's humanitarian response should recognise and support their dignity and human rights."

Source

• Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference
• Image: BBC

Francis made the appeal in his noon address as Taliban insurgents entered the capital Kabul and the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.

"I join in the unanimous worry about the situation in Afghanistan. I ask you to pray along with me to the God of peace so that the din of weapons ends and that solutions can be found around a table of dialogue," he said to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square.

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The most active people are women, They are the bearers of a positive vision of the country's future, says Barnabite Fr. Giuseppe Moretti, who was a missionary in Afghanistan for 25 years.

"They are very intelligent and have a more open mentality than men. They try to fight slavery with principles of freedom, which is different from libertarianism: all this is even more effective when there are local organisations or associations that support these initiatives. The future of Afghanistan is certainly in the hands of women."

Moretti says the principles of integration and innovation carried out by Afghan women is an integral part of national history:

"One can believe, with good reason, that if King Mohammed Zahir Shah managed to implement the programme he had in mind, Afghanistan today would be one of the most open countries in the Middle East.

"The monarch had begun a process of modernisation, almost of ‘Westernisation', but respecting Islamic culture, which would have made Afghanistan a vanguard country under all points of view. But the story went differently."

Several associations supporting women's rights are perplexed about the results of the talks in Doha, Qatar, between US government officials and the Taliban movement.

The Afghan Women's Network is one of several support networks of women's organisations active in the country.

The Network has published a document officially asking the US to involve women in peace talks, so "their concerns and solutions are raised and included in all decisions and to respect, protect and implement their rights. The legitimacy and sustainability of peace depend on the full, equitable and meaningful participation of women".

The support networks fear the "price" of the agreements between the United States and the Taliban movement will be paid by the women themselves, with compromises that could represent a return to the repressions suffered in the past under a fundamentalist government.

Source

• Newsbook
• Agenzia Fides
• Image: UNAMA - UN missions

Pope Francis has sent his condolences after the attack on the hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, which killed over 70 people on Monday.

The majority of the victims were lawyers who had gathered to mourn the assassination of the president of the Baluchistan Bar Association, Bilal Anwar Kasi, who was killed earlier in the day.

The Catholic Church in Pakistan has also condemned the attack which was carried out at the entrance of the emergency department of the hospital.

A faction of the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the hospital attack and the killing of Kasi. However, ISIS has also said it carried out the bomb attack.

"Killing innocent people is (an) inhuman act and totally unacceptable," said the National Commission for Justice and Peace, a rights-based organisation of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops' Conference, in a statement condemning the "tragic killing."

The telegram sent by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin reads:

Deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life after the attack on a hospital in Quetta, His Holiness Pope Francis sends heartfelt condolences to the relatives of the deceased, to the authorities and to the entire nation, as he offers the assurance of his prayers for the many injured victims of this senseless and brutal act of violence. Upon all who mourn and upon all who have been affected by this tragedy, His Holiness invokes the divine gifts of consolation and strength.

Source

• Vatican Radio
• Catholic Herald
• Image: tribune.com.pk

Fourteen people were killed and more than 70 were injured when two Taliban suicide bombers attacked the churches in Lahore on Sunday.

At his weekly Angelus address, Pope Francis said it was with "much pain" that he learned of the attacks.

"These are Christian churches and Christians are persecuted, our Christian brothers are spilling their blood simply because they are Christians," he said.

"I implore God . . . that this persecution against Christians - that the world seeks to hide - comes to an end and that there is peace," he added.

Continue reading

Dan has been Columban priest for 25 years. Last year he ran in the London Marathon

"Life will not be the same for their loved ones again, and not for the Christian community, not for other minorities, and not for the majority of peace loving Muslims in Pakistan."

On 22 September two suicide bombers exploded their bombs in All Saints Anglican Church as worshippers were leaving after services to get a free meal of rice offered on the front lawn killing 85 and wounding 141 people.

Militants linked to Pakistani Taliban have said they carried out the bombing in the city, which lies in what was formerly known as the North-West Frontier of Pakistan.

Source

• Columban Missionaries Britain
• Image: columban.org.au