Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, and The Vatican Against Israel. His other books are in Italian.
10,470 kilometers separate Burlington, Vermont from Kabul, Afghanistan. But for the woke West, there is something that unites them.
The American state of Vermont, the kingdom of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, has just decided that parents should refer to their children as “child” and “kid”, instead of “son” and “daughter”.
Gender reigns supreme, not only in the woke American states and in Trudeau Land, but also in Kabul!
And while in Iraq the Parliament is voting on a law that will allow girls from the age of nine to marry, in Afghanistan it is difficult to find adequate words to describe the horrific abuse of women on such a large scale. The new law prohibits drivers from transporting adult women without a legal male guardian. It also prohibits women’s voices from being heard in public, including singing, acting or speaking into microphones.
The Taliban are determined to eradicate the few gains made during the Western occupation (2001-2021), where we saw women rise to the rank of journalists, parliamentarians, judges, and diplomats. Not content with closing schools and universities to women, the Taliban believe it is useful to ban them from speaking not only in public spaces in the name of virtue, but also in their own homes.
Such a monstrous regime deserves nothing but total and absolute condemnation. Yet the United Nations and various governments seem to prioritize the normalization of diplomatic relations with the Taliban over women’s rights.
“We are entering a world of relativism and barbarism,” wrote France’s most illustrious Catholic philosopher, Chantal Delsol, in Le Figaro. “How can we defend Afghan women when we justify the burqa here? The idea of Western truth born with the Greeks and Judeo-Christianity has collapsed.”
How can they defend them? They can’t.
Amnesty International has just called on the Taliban to end their “gender-based persecution.” But Amnesty has defined this persecution as targeting those “identifying as girls”.
Eureka! Afghan women can leave their homes uncovered, speak, sing, read: as long as they “identify as men.” (A word to the wise: To Afghan women who identify as men, "don't!')
Okay, Amnesty International hasn't said a word yet, not a word, about Hamas killing kidnapped Israeli hostages. But what about women who "identify as such"? Good heavens!
Strange things are happening in the woke world.
But the Taliban have astutely understood what the Western liberal elite wanted to hear. In 2020, the New York Times published an article by the ruthless Taliban deputy and terrorist Sirajuddin Haqqani, titled “What We, the Taliban, Want.” In the article, Haqqani promised that women would have equal rights once Afghanistan was “liberated from foreign domination and interference.”
Then the Taliban could have created “an Islamic system” in which “women’s rights guaranteed by Islam, from the right to education to the right to work, are protected”.
Does anyone remember the Taliban fighter who bursts into laughter when asked if women will be able to enter politics and vote? The interviewer was Hind Hassan of Vice News, a left-wing media, and it was just after the reconquest of power in Kabul.
“Will people be allowed to vote for women?” Hassan asked them. The Taliban burst out laughing and one of them, Commander Khatab, ordered the woke journalist to stop filming.
Will it really end like this, with the Taliban and the cut-throats laughing out loud at us Westerners?