Part I
Written by Hassan Reza Khawari, Translated by Shekib Jaghori
1) The black mirror of a broken society
Afghanistan is more than just the name of a country. It represents a condition, one marked by fragmentation, rupture, and unrelenting crisis. If there is a point within this multilayered and complex crisis where ruin has manifested in its purest form, it is undoubtedly the situation of women. The situation of women in Afghanistan is not merely part of the general collapse; in many cases, it is a compounded ruin in itself: an intersection of historical violence, cultural domination, legal denial, systematic repression, and current gender apartheid.
In Afghan tradition, women are defined by two pejorative Arabic terms: da‘ifa (ضعیفه), meaning “weak,” and naqis al-aql (ناقِصُالعقل), meaning “feeble-minded.” These are not merely personal descriptors; they are ideological constructs that sustain a system of oppression grounded in religious authority.
The term “weak” defines a woman’s body within a framework of incapacity, dependence and subordination to the man, which prevents her from actively participating in social, economic and political life. The term “feeble-minded” prematurely devalues a woman’s mind and consciousness, making her voice unfounded, her judgement unreliable and her presence insignificant. These two false labels serve the same purpose: the disempowerment, silencing and social erasure of women’s existence.
These concepts did not arise in a vacuum. There are at least three intertwined levels of crisis that are essential to understanding the situation of women:
1. The social context that made these perceptions possible: How did power structures such as family, tribe, religion and state work together to create and reproduce this degrading image of women? What dynamics solidified and maintained this oppressive order?
2. The cultural context that legitimized these ideas and created the basis for their persistence: How did literature, language, customs, ethics and even humour and stories convey this misogynistic thinking? How have stereotypes been transformed into “self-evident truths”?
3. The possibility of liberation from this situation and the vision of liberation: Can we imagine a vision of freedom from this situation? What should we focus on in order to tear down the centuries-old walls of discrimination and misogyny? Do the historical resistances of women, despite their obvious failures, offer a basis for a new possibility of liberation?
In order to connect the past and the present and to show the historical roots of this situation, a brief analysis of the story of “Gol Begum” — a woman whose voice echoes in history — is given at the end of this essay. Her testimony serves as a powerful document that reflects the systematic ruin through the lived experiences of Afghan women.
2) The structures of women’s ruin in Afghanistan
2.1 – The social structure of women’s ruin
2.1.1 – Patriarchy and misogyny in Afghanistan
Physical weakness and intellectual deficits are not innate or natural characteristics of a human being. These concepts are not biological facts, but historical judgements that have evolved within a particular social structure. Therefore, when a woman in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries is labelled as “weak” and “feeble-minded”, it is not a scientific description, but a historical, political and cultural construct: a construct that emerged at a certain point in time, continued throughout history and, since it is a construct and not natural, can be criticized and changed.
To understand this structure, Ibn Khaldun’s analysis of the foundations of the formation of Islamic states and societies, presented in his renowned work The Muqaddimah, is highly illuminating. Afghan society remains underdeveloped, and theories rooted in the modern subject do not seem especially valid or precise when applied to its context. In contrast, indigenous theories offer a more suitable analytical lens. At the very least, they provide a closer perspective that allows us to view the situation from within, grounded in local realities.
The Moroccan philosopher Muhammad Abed al-Jabri, in his reinterpretation of Ibn Khaldun’s analysis in The Critique of Arab Political Reason, identifies three central components that form the core of Islamic-Arab societies: tribe, spoils of war (ghanimah), and faith. These three elements not only constitute the social and political foundations of ancient Islamic societies but also continuously reproduce one another in a closely interlinked, cyclical chain. A society built on these three pillars is inherently non-civil, as it emphasizes dominance, conflict, and distinctions based on gender, lineage, and physical power rather than equality, dialogue, and participation.
Each of these three components has a distinctly male-dominated structure:
Tribe: The Tribe is based on patriarchal bloodlines and tribal solidarity (asabiyyah). Although women are involved in the reproductive process, only male blood determines legitimate lineage and tribal affiliation. Women are not actively involved in determining lineage and power. According to Islamic jurisprudence, the ownership of a woman’s breast milk (which is produced in her body) does not belong to her, but to her husband.
Spoils (Ghanimah): Spoils come from war, and war is the arena for the expression of male dominance. In this structure, the economy is not based on “production” but on “expropriation.” A woman who plays no role in war or in the exploitative economy of a patriarchal society is considered part of the spoils herself and is excluded from their distribution. As a result, she is both economically marginalized and socially devalued as “weak,” dependent on men for her survival. The Qur’an also supports male superiority by stating: “Men have authority over women.”
Faith: Faith, although seemingly a domain of universal humanity and divine instruction, in this context becomes an instrument for regulating unequal duties and legitimizing inequality. Women are regarded as morally obligated but not empowered; their duties are not designed to uplift, but to control, subjugate, and restrain them. A woman’s refusal to sexually submit to her husband is defined as nushuz (disobedience) and is subject to punishment and deprivation. Women are considered intellectually inferior not because they are, but because they have been excluded from contributing to knowledge, power, and law.
In a society based on the logic of plunder, patriarchy, and gendered exclusivity, women are marginalized. Their historical exclusion from the spheres of power, knowledge, and economy is gradually inscribed in language and custom as an inherent deficiency. Society not only denies women equal rights but also justifies this inequality and gender apartheid by labelling women as “weak” and “deficient.” This cultural exclusion becomes normalized, embedded in the collective consciousness, and accepted as an unquestioned truth. The early Islamic conquests did not alter this structure but rather extended it to the conquered territories. These conquests were, in fact, an international expansion of plunder that imposed Arab and Islamic cultural structures on the conquered territories.
However, a more subtle and disturbing truth emerges here: in this system, women are neither completely dehumanized, thereby exempting them from duties, nor fully humanized, thus granting them full rights. Instead, women exist suspended in a liminal space between humanity and non-humanity. They are “half”: half human, half rights, half citizens. This duality upholds the appearance of womanhood while systematically depriving women of their rights and reflects the harsh and intricate nature of gender discrimination in Afghan society.
Afghan women are not only victims of discrimination but also bear the burden of a historical paradox: they are obligated without being autonomous, and obedient without playing a role in shaping the rules of obedience they are supposed to follow. It is not just oppression, but a complex, institutionalized form of erasure that deprives them of their power, but not of their obedience.
Editor’s Note: This article continues in Part II.
