Early this week, we read in the news that the Taliban were stopping female Afghan students heading to the university from leaving the country to study in Dubai.
What kind of society or ideology would prevent girls and women from pursuing an education that would empower them to live productive or fruitful lives, and to help raise the literacy and numeracy rate of their country?
If a government don’t respect the human rights and fundamental freedom of women and girls, it speaks volumes what kind of radical thinking is behind their spiritual or ideological decision and action.
Just when the civilized world thought that forcing people to be attired in a certain way based on man-made laws is bad, banning them from attending secondary schools and universities makes a mockery of all the rites and rituals that are practiced to moralize or de-infidel-ize them.
In most developed or semi-democratic societies, not sending your children to school, or depriving them of a formal education, for no valid reasons, could land parents and caregivers in deep trouble with the authorities.
In multicultural Singapore, even educated parents can’t simply homeschool a child just because they want to without a valid reason from the Ministry of Education. For example, religious-minded parents can’t conveniently send their children to a madrasah for their formal education if they can’t convince the authorities that their children’s educational, emotional, and social needs would be well taken care of.
A government that fail to provide formal education for its citizens, male and female (or whatever other labels some might prefer to be identified themselves with), or discriminate against girls and women, or alienate certain racial or religious groups, and minorities, makes us wonder how far these people have been radicalized, or are ideologically brainwashed or spiritually blinded.
When rogue rulers or radical religious leaders in a theocratic state control the lives of millions of men, women, and children based on radical ideology, by dictating them how they ought to live and be taught, one can imagine what kind of citizentry they’d produce for future generations.
The marginalization and objectification of girls and women is condoned in many Mohammedan milieux or Islamist circles, and these practices hardly ever make the headlines, compared to the misinformation or disinformation on the repression of Uyghurs and genocide in Xinjiang.
As someone aptly commented, it sounds like Americans “don’t like Chinese and also don’t like Muslims, but they seem (or pretend) to like Chinese Muslims.”
For “infidels,” selling or marketing Singapore math titles to the Taliban or Boko Haram (which outwardly or publicly abhor and denounce anything Western or Christian) is like running a half-priced campaign for ice cubes in Alaska.
Since the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, after trying to free the people from terrorism and radical Islamism for two-odd decades, arguably, both Trump and Biden are directly or indirectly responsible for the current deprivation of education among girls and women in the country.
It’s a back-to-square-one situation before 9/11, when radical Islamists and terrorists religiously relegated girls and women to domestic slaves.
The Western media put a premium on “radical democracy” but pay lip service to the lack of educational and job opportunities for millions of girls and women in Afghanistan and many so-called “moderate Muslim” countries.
Below are some previously x-ed (or tweeted) politico- or religio-mathematical questions non-NATO [no-action-talk-only] math educators would like to reflect on if they wished to play an active part in the education emancipation of girls and women in many oppressive or rogue regimes around the world.
1. Guesstimate how many millions of girls and women in Afghanistan would be denied of their human and educational rights, as the Taliban start enforcing their man-made Sharia law to oppress or enslave them in most spheres of life.
2. How many Afghan girls and women would be robbed of an education under the Taliban in 2021 and beyond, as radical Islamists and terrorists force them to be subservient to men?
3. If Section 377A humiliates and hurts gay people, doesn’t the men-designed Sharia also “discriminate or disadvantage girls and women”? Shouldn’t those discriminatory laws against them be repealed?
4. [Fake] Math News: Trump & the Taliban. Afghan judges are deliberating what sharia punishments should be meted out to Trump for his financial, political & sexual crimes. What are the odds that he’d be spared of barbaric amputation, caning or stoning?
5. How many Malala Yousafzai’s Afghanistan and other Muslim-majority nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia—where women and girls are often discriminated and enslaved—would need to fight for women’s and children’s rights against the Taliban and the ayatollahs?
© Yan Kow Cheong, September 3, 2023