Tuesday 4 July 2023

The propagation of virtue...

We have to call it out for what it is: religiously mandated restrictions on what women can and cannot do. Under the repressive regime of the Taliban, the status of women in Afghanistan has reverted to how things were twenty years ago. Can: stay at home. Can’t: go to school or university, teach, work in NGO offices, or go to parks, gyms or sports club. In a systematic segregation sometimes referred to as ‘gender apartheid’, women are excluded from public office and the judiciary. They can’t travel more than 45 miles without a mahram (a close male relative). They have to cover up. And a month from today, all the beauty salons in the country will have to close. All these restrictions come from a group of pious Muslim men, with an Orwellian name: the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue.

Licensed today: farmland in the Eden Valley, near Great Salkeld, with Cross Fell and the North Pennines in the distance…

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