Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (33 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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Zonis, M. and D. Brumber.
Khomeini, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Arab World
. Cambridge: Harvard Middle East Center, 1987.
Zubaida, S. "An Islamic State: The Case of Iran."
Merip,
no. 153 (JulyAugust 1988): 37.
. "The Quest for the Islamic State." In
Studies in Religious Fundamentalism,
ed. L. Caplan. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 2550.
 
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7
Fundamentalism and the Woman Question in Afghanistan
Valentine M. Moghadam
Introduction
During the 1980s, Afghanistan was the site of a prolonged and bloody battle between government forces, who were assisted by Soviet troops, and an armed Islamist opposition collectively known as the Mujahideen, which was supported by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The geopolitical dimension of the conflictand international opprobrium for the Soviet military interventionovershadowed two important issues: (1) the origins of the conflict between right-wing Islamists and the left-wing government, and (2) the importance of "the woman question" to the conflict. It is my contention that the Soviet intervention and world attention to it obscured the essential nature of the conflict: between modernizers and traditionalists, and between women's emancipation and patriarchy.
This essay focuses on the woman question in Afghanistan, in particular the vexing issue of women's rights and women's emancipation. It surveys the status of Afghan women before and after the Saur Revolution of April 1978, comparing the situation of women under the government in Kabul with that under the Mujahideen in the refugee camps of Peshawar, Pakistan. Notwithstanding the neglect of the
 
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gender dimension in nearly all accounts of Afghanistan, the woman question was an integral part of the conflict between the Mujahideen and the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the ruling party which came to power in the Saur Revolution.
Recent feminist scholarship has revealed the centrality of the woman question during periods of social change or political contest (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989; Moghadam 1990, 1991). Women frequently become the symbol or marker of political goals and cultural identity during processes of revolution and state-building, and when power is being contested or reproduced. Representatives of women are deployed, including the unveiled woman of today, who signifies modernity and national progress, or the veiled, domesticated woman, who symbolizes authenticity and the cultural reproduction of the group. Women's behavior and appearanceand the range of their activitiescome to be defined by, and are frequently subject to, the political or cultural objectives of political movements, states, and leaderships. In some political projects, women may be linked to modernization and progress (as in the case of Turkey under Ataturk, Tunisia under Bourguiba, South Yemen under Marxist leadership, and Afghanistan under the PDPA). In other political projects, women are linked to cultural rejuvenation and religious orthodoxy (as in the case of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, Pakistan under Zia ul-Haq, the Afghan Mujahideen). In patriarchal contexts in particular, where women's reproductive roles are fetishized in the context of kinship-ordered structures, women must also assume the burden of maintaining, representing, and transmitting cultural values and traditions.
This essay considers the importance of the women's rights issue in recent Afghan history, and the battle over "the woman question" between fundamentalists and reformers. The issue of women's rights in Afghanistan has historically been constrained by (1) the patriarchal nature of gender and social relations, deeply embedded in traditional communities, and (2) the existence of a weak central state, which since at least the beginning of this century has been unable to fully implement modernizing programs and goals. The two are interconnected, for the state's weakness is correlated with a strong (if fragmented) society resistant to state bureaucratic expansion, civil
 
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authority, regulation, monopoly of the means of violence, and extractionthe business of modern states. Today's Afghan state is arguably stronger than it has been in the past, and some important steps were taken during the late 1970s and 1980s to improve women's legal status and social positions. Yet war and the fundamentalist backlash have largely defeated the original goal of emancipating Afghan women. In the late 1980s, the Afghan leadership shifted from social revolution to national reconciliation, relegating women's emancipation to a more stable future.
Afghan Social Structure and Its Implications for Women
Historically, the population of Afghanistan has been fragmented into myriad ethnic, linguistic, religious, kin-based, and regional groupings (Dupree 1980; Roy 1986). One of the few commonalities in this diverse country is Islam. Afghan Islam is a unique combination of practices and precepts from the
shari'a
(Islamic canon law as delineated in religious texts) and tribal customs, particularly Pushtunwali (Griffiths 1981: 11112). For example, contrary to an Islamic ban on usury, it continues to be widespread and has kept rural households in perpetual indebtedness (Griffiths 1981: 122; Male 1982; Hammond 1984: 71; Anwar 1988; Urban 1988: 20). Exorbitant expenditure in marriages (
sheer-baha
) has also contributed to the rural household's debt accumulation. The Islamic dower,
mahr,
has been rendered a brideprice. The absence of inheritance rights for females, though contrary to Islamic law, is integral to the complex web of the tribal exchange system (Tapper 1984; Howard-Merriam 1987).
"Afghan nationalism," properly speaking, is at best incipient, in that the concept of a nation-state or of a national identity is absent for much of the population (Hammond 1984: 5; Urban 1988: 204), having been promoted primarily by modernizing elites since the nineteenth century (Gregorian 1969). During most of the country's recent history, the fragmented groupings composed warring factions. Battles were fought principally over land and water, sometimes over women and "honor," and usually to exhibit sheer power.
Afghanistan's rugged physical environment serves to isolate residential communities and to create microenvironments. Members of
 
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the same ethnic group and tribe who reside in different locations must adapt to their own microenvironment, which may result in different kin-based groups within the same tribe and ethnic group using different modes of production. For example, the Durrani Pushtunswhom Nancy Tapper studiedwere primarily agriculturalists, while the Sheikhanzai Durrani Pushtuns, who were the subject of Bahram Tavakolian's research, were primarily pastoralists (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 105).
In many parts of the Third World, preindustrial modes of production combined with the social and political control that men have over women's lives create a cultural matrix in which men exchange women and control women's productive and reproductive capacities within the family unit. This authority, which is based on patrilineal and kinship relationships, is not diminished by women's central role in agricultural production. Indeed, in some cases women's participation in socially productive work may result in their "enslavement rather than their liberation" (Afshar 1985: 67). What Afshar means is that in such a context, a woman's labor power is controlled and allocated by someone other than herself, the products of her labor are managed by others, and she receives no remuneration for work performed. The partial penetration of capital in rural areas, where, for example, carpet-making is a commercial enterprise, allows male kin to exploit women's labor without any wage payment. Here women's subordination and intrahousehold inequality are intensified as a direct result of their ability to contribute substantially to the family income (Papanek 1985). In many such contexts, women may be seen as "too valuable" to educate and the money they earn may well finance the education of men. For both economic and ideological reasons, females may not be given "release time'' for education or labor market employment. In extended patriarchal, patrilineal households, collective (male) interests dictate strict control of female labor deployment throughout a woman's lifetime.
Contemporary Afghanistan is one of the last remaining examples of classic patriarchy. Kandiyoti (1988) refers to "a belt of classic patriarchy" which stretches from northern Africa across the Middle East to the northern plains of the Indian subcontinent and parts of (rural) China. The key to the reproduction of classic patriarchy today lies
 
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in the operations of the patrilocally extended household, which is also commonly associated with the reproduction of the peasantry in agrarian societies. The subordination of women in kinship-ordered or agrarian societies seems to be linked to the reproduction of the kin group or of the peasantry, as well as to the sexual division of labor. A predisposition to male dominance is inherent in the relation between the precapitalist peasant household and the world of landlords and the state (Wood 1988), and in the reproduction of kinship-ordered groups, wherein women are exchanged and men are the transactors (Rubin 1975). In a patriarchal context, women are assimilated into concepts of property.
In those areas of the world still characterized by the patriarchal extended family, the senior male has authority over everyone else, including younger men, and women are subject to distinct forms of control and subordination. Indeed, the social structures in the patriarchal belt are characterized by their institutionalization of extremely restrictive codes of behavior for womensuch as the practice of rigid gender segregation and a powerful ideology linking family honor to female virtue. Men are entrusted with safeguarding family honor through their control over female members; they are backed by complex social arrangements which ensure women's protectionand dependence (Kabeer 1988: 95). In contemporary Muslim patriarchal societies, such control over women is considered necessary, in part because women are regarded as the potential source of social
fitna,
that is, disorder or anarchy (Sabbah 1984; Ghoussoub 1987).
As Stacey (1983) found, patriarchy in China originates in "a family and social system in which male power over women and children derives from the social role of fatherhood, and is supported by a political economy in which the family unit retains a significant productive role." Young brides marry into large families, gain respect mainly via their sons, and late in life acquire power as mothers-in-law. Women's life-chances are circumscribed by patriarchal arrangements which favor men. One typically finds an adverse sex ratio; low female literacy and educational attainment, high fertility rates, high maternal mortality rates, and low female labor force participation in the formal sector. Demographic facts about societies such as Afghan-

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