We are all aware about the brutality that was unleashed by the taliban regime in Afghanistan. Khaled hossani has tried to bring the plight of the Afghan Women with his book "A Thousand Splendid Suns". I was horrified beyond words to learn aboout the barbaric regime that the people of Afghanistan endured.
The following list offers only an abbreviated glimpse of the hellish lives Afghan women were forced to lead under the Taliban, and can not begin to reflect the depth of female deprivations and sufferings. Taliban treated women worse than they treat animals. In fact, even as Taliban declared the keeping of caged birds and animals illegal, they imprisoned Afghan women within the four walls of their own houses. Women have no importance in Taliban eyes unless they are occupied producing children, satisfying male sexual needs or attending to the drudgery of daily housework.
Taliban restrictions of women:
Complete ban on women's work outside home, which also applies to female teachers, engineers and most professionals. Only a few female doctors and nurses are allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul.
Complete ban on women's activity outside home unless accompanied by a mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother or husband).
Ban on women dealing with male shopkeepers.
Ban on women being treated by male doctors.
Ban on women studying at schools, universities or any other educational institution.
women wear a long veil (Burqa), which covers them from head to toe.
Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a man.
Whipping of women in public for having non-covered ankles.
Public stoning(till death) of lovers.
Ban on the use of cosmetics. Women wearing nail polish have had fingers cut off.
Ban on women talking or shaking hands with males who aren't Mahram.
Ban on women laughing loudly. No stranger should hear a woman's voice.
Ban on women wearing high heel shoes, which would produce sound while walking. A man must not hear a woman's footsteps.
Ban on women riding in a taxi without a mahram.
Ban on women's presence in radio, television or public gatherings of any kind.
Ban on women playing sports or entering a sport center or club.
Ban on women riding bicycles or motorcycles, even with their mahrams.
Ban on women's wearing brightly colored clothes. In Taliban terms, these are "sexually attracting colors."
Ban on women gathering for festive occasions such as the Eids, or for any recreational purpose.
Ban on women washing clothes next to rivers or in a public place.
Modification of all place names including the word "women." For example, "women's garden" has been renamed "spring garden".
Ban on women appearing on the balconies of their apartments or houses.
Compulsory painting of all windows, so women can not be seen from outside their homes.
Ban on male tailors taking women's measurements or sewing women's clothes.
Ban on males and females traveling on the same bus. Public buses had been designated "males only" or "females only".
Ban on flared (wide) pant-legs, even under a burqa.
Ban on the photographing or filming.
Ban on women's pictures printed in newspapers and books, or hung on the walls of houses and shops.
Apart from the above restrictions on women, the Taliban had:
-Banned listening to music.
- Banned the watching of movies, television and videos.
- Banned celebrating the traditional new year (Nowroz) on March 21. The Taliban proclaimed the holiday un-Islamic.
- Disavowed Labor Day (May 1st), because it is deemed a "communist" holiday.
- Ordered that all people with non-Islamic names change them to Islamic ones.
- Forced haircuts upon Afghan youth.
- Ordered that men wear Islamic clothes and a cap.
- Ordered that men not shave or trim their beards, which should grow long enough to protrude from a fist clasped at the point of the chin.
- Ordered that all people attend prayers in mosques five times daily.
- Banned the keeping of pigeons and playing with the birds, describing it as un-Islamic. The violators will be imprisoned and the birds shall be killed. The kite flying has also been stopped.
- Spectators in stadia who clap their hands or cheer shall have their palms chopped off.
- Anyone who carries objectionable literature will be executed.
- Anyone who converts from Islam to any other religion will be executed.
- All boy students must wear turbans. They say "No turban, no education".
- Non-Muslim minorities must distinct badge or stitch a yellow cloth onto their dress to be differentiated from the majority Muslim population. Just like what did Nazis with Jews.
- Banned the use of the internet by both ordinary Afghans and foreigners.
And so on...
The use of animals in medical experimentation has had been one of the most controversial divisive issues since the seventeenth century. Edward Freeman, one of the most distinguished of recent English historians stated, “The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, faithful animal race form the blackest chapter in the whole world’s history”. It is estimated that 200 million animals suffer and die in the name of research every year. People say We have rights over animals. At no point and time should we ever justify ourselves through the pain and suffering of another being. The better informed individuals are about the issues, the more rational and logical their actions will be. Humans use animals in experiments without noticing that animals can feel and suffer just like humans do. Humans are heartless, wicked and merciless towards non-human animals; humans have no thought for the feelings and suffering which they inconsiderately cause on animals. The Bible says; “Then God said let us make man in our image … and let him have dominion over fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over the cattle … and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” – Genesis 1:28. So many people mix this statement up, they’re like why should animals have rights, god doesn’t say they should! Well in the bible, it doesn’t say that we have the right to work the hell out of them, run them into the ground, brutally murder them, bash them, and maim them! It’s just like the way parents have domain over their children, they hold no right to use their children as tools, and they have no right to abuse them. It means they have the responsibility to care for them. Opposing to what many people believe, testing drugs on animals often give faulty results. Although animals may seem like the perfect species for testing new drugs, the experiments are unreliable and can cause unidentified side effects. Most medical and researcgers are of the view that humans and animals differ on a cellular and molecular level, and, importantly, that is where disease occurs." "We were finding, through scientific research, that extrapolating data from animals to humans is misleading, unnecessary, dangerous, or all three." Animal experiments do not solve medical problems or help us to improve in medical field. Opposite to a majority of the human population belief, animals are not perfect species to find treatments for diseases. An animal can experience different physical and psychological effects compare to a human experiences. It is also impossible to re-create a naturally occurring disease. The belief is held that animal experimentation is necessary in order for vaccines, cures and treatments for human illnesses to be effective. But, the fact of the matter is animals react differently than humans to various vaccines. Since humans and animals do not contract the same diseases, these diseases have to be induced onto the animals. In addition, experimental treatments that have been proven effective on animals need not necessarily work on people. Experimenting drugs on animals can keep safe drugs off the market and keep dangerous drugs av
ailable for humans. Animal testing is unreliable, and humans should begin to not trust the information given about a drug according to an animal test. Also, it is unfair to put them through excruciating experiments just to know if humans can wear a new sun block cream. Humans are better test subjects than animals are because it is impossible to re-create naturally occurring human diseases that arise from within, in a healthy animal or even in a healthy human. This is simply because once it is re-created it is artificial and no longer the original, natural disease. By re-creating a disease it is impossible to tell how the side effects have changed through reconstruction and the differences in the progression of the disease. When we re-create a disease, it is inevitable that vital information is lost to recreation alone, not even considering what is lost by the animal being injected with the human disease. There are many other ways to get the same results as humans receive from animal experiments. These methods are viewed as more moral, practical, effective, and less expensive, why wouldn’t we use these methods? Computers can often predict the toxicity of chemicals, including their potential to cause cancer or birth defects, based on their molecular structure. Computer simulations can also predict the metabolism and distribution of chemicals in human tissues. Animal Experiments have also put dangerous drugs on the market. "Protocol", a drug for heart disorders, that passed animal test was pulled off the shelves when the drug caused blindness in people. Also, arsenic, which is toxic and causes cancer in humans, has not caused cancer in any animals. More than half of the prescription drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in the past half century caused serious side effects that later caused the drugs to be removed from the market. Furthermore, animal experimentation can keep effective drugs off of the market. It’s very possible that many drugs that have been tested on animals were found to be deadly or involved serious side effects but if tested on humans could have been found to successfully cure or treat a specific disease. Even though animals sometimes have the same reactions to a disease or drug as humans do, usually the animals experience much different effects. There is also no way for experimenters to notice psychological effects on the animals; and the animals can’t tell experimenters how they feel and what they are experiencing. Animals cannot communicate through words so their frightened voices go unheard. Many important medical advances have been delayed because of misleading results derived from animals. Studies on monkeys falsely indicated that the polio virus was transmitted via a respiratory, rather than a digestive route. This erroneous assumption resulted in the delay in development of a vaccine. These inaccuracies in animal experimentation can be blamed for many deaths. For example, "milrinone", a drug that raises cardiac output, increased survival of rats with artificially induced heart failure. But humans taking this drug who had severe chronic heart failure had a 30% increase in death. A rat is different than a pig, which is different than a human. Since every species has their own differences, it is hard to predict any side effects that will occur in all the animals. The arguments for and against animal experimentation are going to continue for some time, both between the general public and those directly involved. Those who oppose animal testing believe that all testing associated with the use of laboratory animals should be banned immediately. However, one could argue by saying that a total ban on the use of animals will prevent a great deal of basic medical research, and the possible production of certain vaccines, No new medicines would develop and the safety of people would be at stake. On the other hand, the supporters of animal testing say that humans hav
e always benefited from the health care developments that depended upon the activities of animal research and would continue to benefits from animal testing. There is a lot of pain that these animals have to undergo for testing; hence animal testing cannot be supported. At the same time animal testing cannot be banned immediately because it is our only successful channel to develop medicines and cures. While there has been promise to find alternatives to animal testing, the best researchers can do is try to reduce the animals being used. They can resort to new scanning technologies, which can assist doctors to learn the diseases from human without the actual necessity of animals. Computers can be used to replace the animals as it would reduce the necessity of live animal experiments. The development of substitute to animal experimentation will persistently gain impetus as people become more aware about the problem. Though it is difficult to eliminate animal testing completely, humans can prevent the animal testing by stop certain products that don’t necessary need animal testing. All humans can do now is try to reduce the animals being harmed in experiments to aim for benefiting society.
