Women's Rights in Afghanistan

[Makalakumu]

What Colonialism in the Middle East are you talking about, Maka? There really wasn't much to speak of other than the past couple of hundred years:

http://ocw.nd.edu/arabic-and-middle...ligion-history-and-culture/lectures/lecture-4

That is a very limited view of Colonialism. One Empire or another has brutalized and stolen from the people who lived there since before Christ. What effect has this had on the culture?

All of this violence and poverty plays a huge effect in what we see now in terms of how these people view their fellow humans.

 

[Sukerkin]

And the same can be said of Britain too, just noone wrote a 'holy' book about this part of the world .

At some point a people has to take possession of it's own failings and deal with them. The best an outside influence can hope for is to shine a little unwelcome light into the dark corners to get things moving.

 

[Makalakumu]

And the same can be said of Britain too, just noone wrote a 'holy' book about this part of the world .

At some point a people has to take possession of it's own failings and deal with them. The best an outside influence can hope for is to shine a little unwelcome light into the dark corners to get things moving.

Maybe, but I also think we need to have a little more faith in people as well. If Western powers would simply let the region be autonomous, develop, and get wealthy, the positive interactions between cultures and the sheer economic weight of oppressing half your population begin to take their toll. The pessimist in me thinks that if the Empires just crumbled away, all the people with old beliefs would have to die before freedom could realistically happen. That could take 100 years or more. On the other hand, people who want to engage in economic activity are going to be interacting with women and these extreme beliefs are going to cost them a lot of money. The financial incentive to moderate may even spur the oldsters let their daughters doff their burkas.

That said, there simply is no way this culture is going to change if things remain status quo. The West learned through rational economic activity that limiting entire groups of humans rights was costly. And I think the case could be made that all the Imperial shenanigans in the West probably impeded our moral development as well. I remember reading an article that painted a picture of the Roman Republic as a pre-industrial society that was essentially on the cusp real industrialization. However, when the giant wars kicked in and the Empire was flooded with slaves, economic progress faltered and advancements toward more human freedom died as well.