“How dare they stop girls from getting an education? Where in the Quran does Allah says girls can’t get an education?” Azka goes on trembling with rage everytime people tell her that she doesn’t need an education. Maybe she has not had the chance to study, but at least she has read the Quran - as we can understand from her own words -.
What she says is particurarly relevant, and let us wonder about how often the Pakistani abuse of their religion, denigrating women’s condition and possibilities. Quran claims no difference between women and men, as they are creations of the same God. It is said in sura 9,71: “The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and establish prayer and give zakah and obey Allah and His Messenger. Those - Allah will have mercy upon them. Indeed, Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.”
Religious discrimination however is not all. There is a lot more about women’s discrimination we should know about. One can’t go on without mentioning women’s lack of rights in the Middle East, due to men’s power over them. As Europe and America have almost achieved equal rights, East countries still have big differences between both the sexes to overcome. Women have no influence in social life and their only task is to be good mothers and wives. They are locked in their own houses and subdued to men (they haven’t got any decisional power - at least the majority of them). Overall, we can say that men misuse their religion in order to gain some advantages: e.g. in Pakistan there is no democracy and often the political chief is also the religious one.
This is probably the biggest discrepancy between Christianism and other religions: while Christians are allowed to read the Bible, the Gospels and all the other religious texts and they can choose their own credo, on the contrary many other religions such as the Islamism have an exclusive access to their literary works (except for a few of them), and only some people can study them. There is a kind of hierarchy in which anyone’s knowledge corresponds to their position. Therefore, a large number of believers is forced to believe just according to what it is told without being able to verify the information received.
Everyone who tries to rebel is almost never able to prevail. This is what happened to Malala, another 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl, whom the Taliban tried to kill last year. “She was so brave. She became a wall in front of terrorism” says another teenage activist about her.
History always teaches us that ignorance is a great tool to control masses, so what we need to do is to prevent the appearance of new despotic governments and spread education all over the world so that anyone can learn to think critically and independently.
The Taliban have controlled the religious power and used it according to their needs this far, now it is up to us to teach them how hard is to deal with a group of educated women who struggle for the recognition of their rights.
Nicola Simonetti Giulia Franchi
III Liceo Classico
