On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
> But the Taliban - many of whom were not Afghans, and of those who
> were, were from an ethnic group representing well under half the
> population - forced women to wear the damn things. It's not like they
> were spontaneous expressions of home-grown patriarchy.
Are you sure about that? My impression was that women wore, and still wear, the burkha in rural areas controlled by the Northern Alliance because their husbands demand it. I was under the impression the divide was not foreign/homegrown so much as city/country -- kind of like with the chador in Iran: the imposition of cosmopolitan city ways on the more conservative countryside (in Iran by the Shah, in Afghanistan by Soviet supported governments) contributed to a fundamentalist backlash that ended up enforcing country customs on the city folk.
But if anyone knows of a balanced historical treatment of the subject online, I'd love to read it. Because now that you mention it, it is kind of odd to reconcile widespread burkha-wearing with the fact that the dominant traditions of Islam in Afghanistan until 30 years ago are usually said to be influenced by Sufism and Buddhism and marked by their relative tolerance. So somewhere my understanding is deficient or oversimplified or both.
Michael __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com