Much as it is jus­ti­fied, the oppro­bri­um heaped on the Tal­iban for decree­ing women must shroud them­selves in all-encom­pass­ing burqas in pub­lic, would car­ry more weight if it includ­ed an uncom­fort­able acknowl­edge­ment: insti­tu­tion­alised misog­y­ny doesn’t make them unique.

Let me be clear: I think the Taliban’s treat­ment of women and girls is odi­ous. It shows them to be lit­tle more than a col­lec­tion of sex­u­al­ly-repressed zealots total­ly out of touch with much of the mod­ern world. But women’s rights weren’t trum­pet­ed as a rea­son for the inva­sion of Afghanistan until it began to founder, and sanc­tions cer­tain­ly aren’t help­ing them.
So, it’s fair to pon­der to what degree the West­ern hand-wring­ing over the Taliban’s rever­sion to type has to do with embar­rass­ment about igno­min­ious­ly hand­ing pow­er back to them after twen­ty years of war that left the coun­try in des­per­ate straits. 
The White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil con­demned the burqa decree and issued a warn­ing: “The legit­i­ma­cy and sup­port that the Tal­iban seeks from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty depend entire­ly on their con­duct, specif­i­cal­ly their abil­i­ty to back stat­ed com­mit­ments with actions.” (Emphases mine)
One has to won­der if the framers of the state­ment — the phrase in bold in par­tic­u­lar — are aware of the adage “peo­ple in glass houses …”.
Think Roe v Wade.
Three mem­bers of the U.S. Supreme Court, who will appar­ent­ly vote to repeal that land­mark deci­sion, stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly in their con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings they would not do so. A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board opin­ion piece not­ed that “the right to choose whether to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy is on the verge of being elim­i­nat­ed because five mem­bers of the cur­rent Supreme Court don’t like it.”
Replace “cur­rent Supreme Court” with “rul­ing Tal­iban”, and imag­ine what the reac­tion would be.
Then, con­sid­er that Jus­tice Samuel Alito’s leaked memo on end­ing abor­tion rights drew inspi­ra­tion from a 13th cen­tu­ry legal trea­tise that includes this ‘wis­dom’: “Women dif­fer from men in many respects, for their posi­tion is infe­ri­or to that of men.”
‘Tal­ibanesque’ goes some way to sum­ming that up.

                          SELECTIVE TARGETING

Human Rights Watch, which has been a con­sis­tent voice for Afghan women, not­ed in a Tweet when the burqa decree was issued that it is “far past time for a seri­ous and strate­gic response to the Taliban’s esca­lat­ing assault on women’s rights.”
All well and good, except the Taliban’s edict is based on an (arguably archa­ic) inter­pre­ta­tion of reli­gious tenets. Again, that doesn’t make them unique.
In recent years, Israel’s ultra-Ortho­dox lead­ers have lob­bied to remove wom­en’s faces from adver­tise­ments on the side of Jerusalem bus­es in reli­gious areas. Dur­ing recent Jew­ish hol­i­days, signs in Mea Sharim, a reli­gious neigh­bor­hood of Jerusalem, admon­ished women to keep off the main road and use side streets “for the sake of modesty.”
Gen­tiles weigh­ing in to con­test or protest such reli­gious stric­tures would almost cer­tain­ly, and quite right­ly, be con­sid­ered anti-Semit­ic. It’s a prob­lem, or issue, for the com­mu­ni­ties in ques­tion, not outsiders.
How is that dif­fer­ent from Pash­tuns in Afghanistan insist­ing on burqas in pub­lic?

                              BLIND EYES, SELF-INTEREST

When it comes to dou­ble stan­dards vis-a-vis the Tal­iban, Moslem coun­tries are in the fore­front, and the West is hap­py to have them there. The 57 mem­ber coun­tries of the Organ­i­sa­tion of Islam­ic Coop­er­a­tion (OIC), con­demned the Tal­iban for pro­hibit­ing sec­ondary school edu­ca­tion for girls, and warned it would have con­se­quences. Anoth­er case of “peo­ple in glass hous­es”, Sau­di Ara­bia being a prime example.
Recent “reforms” gave Sau­di women the right to obtain their own pass­ports, trav­el abroad and live inde­pen­dent­ly with­out the per­mis­sion of a male guardian, or “wali”. The Euro­pean-Sau­di Organ­i­sa­tion for Human Rights derid­ed the new rules as “pro­pa­gan­da” which “don’t impact the human rights sit­u­a­tion in a mean­ing­ful way”.
Con­sid­er­ing that Sau­di women still can’t mar­ry, start cer­tain types of busi­ness, or leave prison or a domes­tic abuse shel­ter with­out the express per­mis­sion of a male rel­a­tive, that’s hard to dispute.
So how is it that allow­ing Sau­di women to dri­ve (while keep­ing activists who called for it in jail), earned their de fac­to ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman the gar­land of “reformer”. Some­thing to do with his hand being on the world’s biggest oil spig­ot, perhaps?
I saw an impres­sive response to what could be called an affront to a woman’s rights a few years ago in cen­tral Rome. A taxi stopped halfway across a pedes­tri­an cross­walk just as an Ital­ian non­na (grand­moth­er) stepped off the curb. She prompt­ly whacked the hood with her cane, and loud­ly told the dri­ver he was, among oth­er things, a “defi­ciente” (moron). The cab­bie held his hands up, palms togeth­er, in a very Ital­ianate ges­ture of apology…and then backed up.
Next time a coun­try needs admon­ish­ment over women’s rights, I humbly sug­gest politi­cians and rights advo­cates enlist an Ital­ian non­na to deliv­er it.
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