Ahmed Rehab hardest hit
This makes sense. After all, if women (as opposed to Ahmed Rehab) are wearing makeup in Afghanistan, who would see it?
Seriously, this represents still more Sharia-inspired erosion of women’s rights in Afghanistan. This is the same Sharia that Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. assure us is benign and completely compatible with Western values.
More on this story. “Afghan Religious Leader Approves Of Restrictive Edict On Women,” by Frud Bezhan for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 22:
One of Afghanistan’s top religious figures has defended a series of religious decrees that observers warn could further erode women’s rights in the country.
The eight-article fatwa was issued by a local ulema, or religious council, in the district of Deh Salah in the northern province of Baghlan last month. Among the edicts was a ban on women leaving their homes without a male companion and another that banned the sale of cosmetics on the basis that they are “un-Islamic” and promote adultery.
The fatwa, reminiscent of the strict edicts imposed by the Taliban during its rule of Afghanistan, prompted condemnation from rights activists and many of the district’s residents. But while only senior clerics have the right to issue such edicts, the country’s top religious figures have stayed silent on the issue up to now.
That changed when Mawlawi Enayatullah Baligh, a presidential adviser who serves on Afghanistan’s top religious panel, the Ulema Council, staunchly defended the edicts while discussing the closure of cosmetics shops. “There is no way these shops could have stayed open,” he told the Reuters news agency on July 20. “Shops are for business, not adultery.”
The fatwa also barred women from clinics without a male escort and ordered strict dress codes for women, although it did not elaborate.
The document also threatened unspecified “punishments” for those who did not obey. During its rule, the Taliban’s notorious vice and virtue police publicly beat women for breaking rules imposed by the group….