Your voice matters, the silence shatters

Dr Abraham Mathai

The seeds of success in every nation on Earth are best planted in women and children" - Joyce Banda First it was barring women from university education, now it is stopping women from working in Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Afghanistan. The Taliban are fast erasing women from public life, and the world's worst fears are being realised.

The Taliban's extremist and radical Islamist ideology continues to worsen the fate of its women. The recent diktat banning women from universities contravenes the tenets of Islam. That is why, Islamic nations should be at the forefront, aggressively condemning this barbaric and chauvinistic bunch of people whose thinking is typical of mediaeval times.

The international community should ruthlessly condemn and castigate the anarchic regime in unsparing terms demanding that they be ostracised and outlawed. Today, the UN needs to mobilise the rest of the world to isolate those bent on disenfranchising and marginalising women, when empowerment forms part of the discourse in nearly every global forum.

There may be those who say there is little we can do, or that street demonstrations elsewhere do not change anything; but that is untrue. While you may not be in Afghanistan, it is a global world where distances have shrunk and news travels at the speed of light. The Afghan women and men, and I am heartened to see Afghan male students are protesting too, realising this is their fight, need support even from miles away. The world has to take action against Afghanistan sliding into the abyss under the Taliban.

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These women in Afghanistan, whose dreams are killed by Taliban rule, need the world to listen, hear and react. We have to, as individuals and a country, strongly condemn this. A quote by Brigham Young states: "You educate a man, you educate an individual. But if you educate a woman, you have educated a nation."

Awaken civil society especially Muslims across the world. Muslim voices should echo across the world the loudest. Days earlier, the Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) did issue a press release condemning the Taliban and told people who claimed Taliban 2.0 would be different from earlier that they are being proved wrong. Yet, we need louder voices from the community here and street demonstrations that will shake the Taliban.

In Afghanistan, women live in a prison of radical Islamic ideologies that curb their basic human right to education and chances to live a fulfilling life with a career. These women live in cages of moral codes and conduct, and their dreams are killed as they are suppressed to unimaginable levels.

Education is not a privilege but a necessity. Abraham Lincoln had stated in one of his speeches that, "as a nation, we cannot remain half slave and half free". Even that half freedom will be gone in no time.

Dr Abraham Mathai is founder chairman of Harmony Foundation and former vice-chairman of Minorities Commission