Women's rights in Afghanistan

Today I signed a petition aiming to support progress for women in Afghanistan. They suffer hellish levels of abuse on a daily basis including violence and rape, for which the chances of just punishment for the perpetrators is very low compared to the Western world. The petition calls for a fully funded and supported action plan for women's rights in the country. This includes funding for shelters and legal representation. Although things have undoubtedly improved in the last decade, with the prospect of international troop withdrawal next year, there is the risk the the Taliban will once again be able to impose more of their malevolent will on the county's poor citizens. This is a very important appeal. Please, you can help here http://www.nowomennopeace.org/index.php?option=com_rsform&formId=28#.UTr0n9FOp4F

But I would have a clear conflict of interest here, some might say. Most of the women I am helping here are Muslims. They are part of a religion that commits some terrible atrocities the world over. They are deluded in their thinking about the world around us and are invested in a regressive belief system that moves basic human rights, liberty and democracy back hundreds of years. Why should I help these people when often, they either do not want to be helped or refuse to help themselves? Western societies these days get accused of trying to impose their western values and western beliefs on a rightfully unwilling and unreceptive populace, who see our decadence as a colossal sin. Some might say this, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. We aren't likely to get anything back for this effort, so why help?

I'll tell you why. It's because social justice is more important than people's beliefs or modes of thinking. I am a liberal secular humanist first, then an atheist. My atheism does not define me, since a lack of something is never really a defining characteristic. I help because I can, and because it's the right thing to do. I do this with the underlying belief that there is something of value in Western society. Is it better? Probably, but that doesn't mean there isn't value in Islamic societies, or nothing we can learn from them. But to believe that Western society is no better is to give in to the defeatist sentiment that all our efforts over the past couple of hundred years with the privilege we have been given, have been for nought. I find this difficult to accept, which relativists will find hard to swallow. But treating women in a better way cannot really be seen in a negative light, surely?

Some atheists would say that increasing secularism is the best way to ensure that societies become more progressive and improve women's rights. Hence they espouse the promotion of atheism. But I think there is a two-way causation effect at play. For me, increasing social justice and improving women's rights within their existing social and cultural structures will increase secularism, kicking off a desirable positive feedback process. Afghan women have a vested interest in more moderate and less radical forms of Islamism, and this goes hand-in-hand with their increased rights. And while still tough, it is patently easier to adopt the latter approach, as wholesale changes of deep-seated beliefs and cultures will take a long time.

We can look at this as a top-down against bottom-up approach. The top-down way is directly encouraging western values. This needs to be done very carefully, if at all, due to the resistance we can expect. The bottom-up example is funding, supporting and promoting women's rights. This approach to "work from within" has a couple of key advantages. It enables the progress that is made to be attributable to the people it will be benefiting: it is their gain for their work. This avoids the direct danger of "value imposition" by the west, and the people working from within can do so at their own pace. This is why the project I linked to above is exactly such a good way of helping making Afghanistan a better place. Men have had their chance with all the power, and frankly squandered it. I trust women, and their superior empathy, to help their country in the best ways possible to alleviate suffering in the short term, and work towards the long-term goal of a future that creates less suffering in the first place: an increasingly secular future.