Category Archives: Afghanistan

Nawal El Saadawi on Osama Bin Laden

Afghanistan, Gender and Sexuality, Osama Bin Laden


Nawal El Saadawi


Nawal El Saadawi: Leftist support of Taliban is short-sighted

by Sahar Saba, Viewpoint, Pakistan, September 10, 2010

Award-winning Egyptian writer and feminist Nawal El Saadawi hardly deserves an introduction. Author of over forty books—-translated to over 30 languages—-she has inspired women all over the world but particularly in Muslim world with her writings as well as courageous struggle against obscurantism. She has faced threats to her life, was fired from job by Egyptian authorities and imprisoned, has seen her books banned, even went in exile but has been steadfast and vocal when it comes to women rights and socialism.

Sahar Saba: Osama bin Laden’s act nine years ago became instantly popular all over the Muslim world. Now after nine years, in your assessment, how has the Muslim/Arab world benefitted or suffered as a result of September 11?

Nawal El Saadawi: After nine years of September 11, nobody has benefitted from Sept 11 except global and local powers who started the colonial oil war and triggered religious conflicts in the Arab region. Continue reading Nawal El Saadawi on Osama Bin Laden →

Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry

Afghanistan, Development, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Pakistan


Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, September 18, 2010

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests. Continue reading Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry →

The Meaning of Democracy

Afghanistan, Development, Gender and Sexuality, Literature

The Meaning of Democracy

by Roya, Afghan Womens’ Writing Project

After the Taliban‘s black regime, when houses were cages for women and only the wild Taliban ideology was law, when the burqa was accepted as a symbol of freedom and the real Islamic hijab disappeared unknown—after all this, Afghan women recognized the word for Democracy.

But Democracy is a very young word for the people of our country, very new in our cultural dictionary, and the question is: Do women understand this word? Do they welcome it, or hide under their burqa?

I think Democracy knocked on the doors of only some women in Kabul, Mazar, Herat, only a few of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. In most areas, Afghans still don’t know this word. Many think it is a word used only by politicians who travel all over the world, live in the tallest buildings and own the latest car models. Democracy, easiest explanation, is government of the people, for the people. But in our country, people think whatever your heart wants, do it, and that is the meaning of democracy. Continue reading The Meaning of Democracy →

Covering Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Law, Journalism and Media, Photography, Taliban


August 9, 2010 cover of Time Magazine

As usual for the end of the week, my Time arrived yesterday. It seems a bit unusual that I should receive the August 9 issue a week early, but then Time is not always accurate. The cover photograph is startling, haunting, disturbing and an unfortunate example of sensationalized news reporting. I cannot help but compare this to the widely traveled National Geographic photograph of an Afghan woman. I have no objection to covering a human tragedy etched in the face of young Aisha, the 18 year old girl whose nose and ears were cut off by self-righteous extremists who practice a brand of Islam that would make the Prophet Muhammad roll over in his grave. But the cover’s prominent announcement of the article inside by Aryn Baker is in fact not the title of the article, nor the main message of the author. “What happens if we leave Afghanistan” is a lot more sensational than “Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban,” which is why it graces the cover. Tragedies, like sex scandals, sell. The issue for me is how they should be reported responsibly.


Afghan woman holding 1985 National Geographic issue with her picture on the cover

Continue reading Covering Afghanistan →

Worth a Response: Why Yemen is not Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Journalism and Media, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


“The village of Rihab in Wadi Dawan, a valley that is the ancestral home of Bin Laden”; Simon Norfolk/Institute, for The New York Times

Yemen hardly ever makes the news unless a journalist wants to rail against the green-dribbling khat habit of grown men who wear skirts or trump with the terrorism card. In the Sunday Magazine of The New York Times, Robert F. Worth asks the provocative question: “Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?” For an article that begins with a photograph of the valley “that is the ancestral home of Bin Laden” and mentions an American cruise missile in the first line, it hardly takes a Ph.D. to figure out what the answer is most likely to be in the mind of the reader. Worthy reporter that he is, The New York Times Middle East correspondent does not directly answer the question. He does not need to, since the Al Qaeda-laced narrative itself hinges on the comparison. The article ends with a visit to an “old man with a deeply lined face” and who walks with a cane. When asked if his son, an Al Qaeda figure described in the story, was really part of the plot in the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the father responds:

‘No,’ he said, ‘ I don’t believe this.’ He was silent for a long time, staring at the closed door of the house, which was illuminated at its edges by a bright rectangle of afternoon sunlight. then he spoke again.
‘He is a mujahid,’ he said, or holy warrior. ‘He is fighting those who occupy Arab lands. He is fighting unbelievers.’

I have read a number of articles by journalist Worth, usually with a favorable view of his ability to introduce nuance into what is generally a black-and-white portrayal of things Arab and Islamic. For this article, he contacted diplomats (former Ambassador Hull) and scholars (Gregory Johnson) who are knowledgable about recent political events in Yemen. He is also to be commended for learning some Arabic, although I am not sure his year-long training in classical will be of much help in casual conversation in dialect. Yet he visited Yemen and actually talked to local people and not just the other reporters in the pool. In this sense, the reporting is not bad, certainly not like The Daily News or Fox News engineering. The problem is that neither is the article very good. The question in the title, which perhaps was not the journalist’s choosing given the control of editors, is blatantly rhetorical, not a genuine search for an answer that goes beyond the verbal War on Terror jousting on all sides of the aisle in Washington and in much of the media. Continue reading Worth a Response: Why Yemen is not Afghanistan →

Payback for No Pay

Afghanistan, Development, Iraq, Iraq War


Haji Layeq says an American company failed to pay a construction company he has ties to; photo by Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Much of the world, despite what many Americans think, does not trust the United States intentions in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Both countries have seen corruption and favoritism at the highest levels. In theory “America” stands for citizens’ rights and equal treatment under the law, but in practice such principles may conveniently be ignored in war zones. Such a case was reported on yesterday in The New York Times by Carlotta Gall. She writes:

The failure of American companies to pay for contracted work has left hundreds of Afghan workers unpaid in southern Afghanistan, and dozens of factories and small businesses so deep in debt that Afghan and foreign officials fear the fallout will undermine the United States-led counterinsurgency effort to win the support of the Afghan people.

Continue reading Payback for No Pay →

Hate, Times Squared

Afghanistan, Ethics, Immigration Issues, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


Photos juxtaposed on May 6 by the New York Post, tabloid journalism at its most blatant

Faisal Shahzad, not your typical terrorist: unless you think being a Pakistani Muslim makes you a typical terrorist. Anyone reading yesterday’s New York Post (Wednesday, May 5) and taking the blustered and bloated tabloid rhetoric seriously could easily make such an assumption. I do not, as a rule, read tabloids, although seeing what many others do read is a useful reality check from time to time. But on the train home from Manhattan yesterday there was a crumpled up newspaper under the train seat and at least 45 minutes to unwind. The cover was, for a change, not a pun. It might be called a revelation, as it read: “REVEALED: WHY HE DID IT. EXCLUSIVE. Revenge for US drone attacks on Taliban terrorists.” Six pages (and more) were devoted to the story, although there was little that I found exclusive in the shoddy news reporting and vengeful commentary by the tabloid’s stalking heads.

Let’s start with the cover and what the tabloid pictures for us. Continue reading Hate, Times Squared →