Part IV
Written by Hassan Reza Khawari, Translated by Shekib Jaghori
3. The Quest for Liberation
3.1 Pillars of resistance to violence: knowledge, justice, and competence
From what has been said so far, it is clear that the exclusion of women from public life is not merely a political decision or an administrative accident. It is rooted in our historical perception, language, and aesthetics. Our society has not only rejected women’s participation in social life but also adorned and sanctified this exclusion through poetic language, turning it into a cultural virtue.
In this condition, women are accepted not as citizens but as images, beautiful yet voiceless, captivating yet powerless, present yet without roots. Even love, the highest cry of longing in Persian culture, has not been able to carry women beyond silence or liberate them from the prison of repression. In the most romantic moments, women remain behind the walls of eloquent erasure: where passion exists without reason, images without interpretation, and suffering without narrative, like refugees stranded at a border. Their drowning images may appear on the desks of human rights advocates, yet no arms are opened to recognize their presence or affirm their rights.
Women, like prisoners at the customs of existence, have never been admitted into the “city of language.”[1] They have been denied participation in decision making, their passports of subjectivity confiscated at the border of decayed traditions. Like undocumented refugees, they are expelled from the homeland of fundamental rights.
In the past two decades, limited international involvement in Afghanistan did introduce new roles and rights for women. But these were written into official documents from above, imported from international policy archives rather than rooted in local cultural imagination. Women suddenly appeared in texts, yet without grounding in social consciousness.
This “appearance without ground” created hope, but collapsed at the first storm. Women’s rights, like the youth clinging to the wheels of evacuation planes, fell to the earth and were scattered in the cold soil of oblivion. Historical custom and raw power resurged as soon as the international observer departed.
Now violence against women has not only returned but intensified. It no longer always arrives with a scream, it hides in glances, in jokes, in exclusion, in laws, and in silence. Much of it is invisible. What is seen is often not understood, and what is understood is quickly forgotten. That is the texture of ancestral custom.
In such a context, ending violence cannot come only through regime change or new laws. Between legislation and its realization there remains a structural gap, the very space where violence nests, feeding on traditions of discrimination against women.
The path to freedom lies not only in legal reform but in a transformation of understanding, in a shift of local awareness, and in the cleansing of social perception. Justice can only take women’s hands if it moves consciously and freely, supported by critical awareness and active competence, not by imitative beliefs or borrowed, ineffective institutions that worsen conditions rather than repair them.
Awareness is the cradle of justice, for it opens the door to coexistence amid differences. By awareness, we do not mean the neutral knowledge of state curricula, but critical awareness, the awareness that questions local habits, unravels ancestral customs, exposes the aesthetics of domination [2], and critiques the culture of oppression.
Change becomes possible when society ceases to glorify erasure and, instead of praising women’s silence, begins to listen to their voices. Education must serve freedom and equality, not merely offer slogans for donor funding. It must reshape minds, habits, and language, creating genuine bonds with people, not just virtual likes. This collective awareness is the real tool of women’s empowerment.
It is no surprise, then, that today this very education, this very awareness, which should be the prelude to freedom and equality, is censored, suppressed, and rewritten to conform to Taliban values. In many places, awareness is not only unsupported but treated as an enemy. Until this thick cultural wall and this inner bedrock of oppression crumble, neither justice, nor freedom, nor liberation will ever breathe or unfold.
3.2 Return to Justice and Rationality: competence and the dawn of liberation
Justice is a universal necessity, a shared need of all the wounded people of this land. Violence in Afghanistan is not limited to women, though they remain its most vulnerable and defenseless victims. This violence is structural and deep rooted, cutting across all ethnicities, languages, communities, and classes. Therefore, its remedy must also be comprehensive and profound, reaching to the roots, a return to justice.
Justice (fairness and competence) is the true alternative to violence (decay and destruction). When justice enters history, it prevents the spread of oppression and discrimination and makes equality possible. Yet justice cannot be realized without rationality (knowledge and critical awareness). Rationality is not only the regulator of laws and institutions; it is also the foundation of conscience and responsibility. Through rationality, we can influence perpetrators of violence and open horizons of hope for its victims.
On the inner level, rationality awakens sleeping consciences and gives voice to silenced minds. On the outer level, it aids institution building, supports civil life, and offers protection to marginalized groups and vulnerable individuals. But this return to critical rationality is neither immediate nor easy.
Rationality is a demanding process, not a sudden eruption. It is not like a sudden rain flooding the parched earth, but like a patient spring that must be carefully dug and nurtured until, drop by drop, it breaks through the stone of tradition and finally blossoms and bears fruit.
At first, rationality creates only the conditions of civil life, not its full realization. It opens the space of civility, the beginning of a human existence. This possibility is fragile, tentative, and requires continuous nurturing and lived experience to endure. Through the daily practice of rationality, a civil tradition may be built in which violence against women is gradually reduced and ultimately eradicated. Afghanistan is still far from this rational ideal, the road is long and arduous, requiring immense intellectual effort and persistence.
What turns this fragile rationality into a lasting tradition is daily engagement and conscious living in every moment. Until rationality is lived, institutionalized, and embodied as a moral habit, it remains mere possibility. Building a just society, therefore, cannot be achieved by a single uprising or slogan, but requires years of sustained intellectual struggle and awareness raising centered on justice. We must pour our souls into the pen, dedicate our lives to this cause, and light the lamp of awareness in every home and every street. Women and men alike must take part, for the only weapon the Taliban and other dark forces cannot seize is awareness. Neither house to house searches, nor torture, nor killing can uproot a thought rooted in the depths of the human spirit.
Awareness has a vitality of its own, it does not fear death and cannot be erased by denial. Like a gentle light, it extends beyond the individual, inhabits collective memory, and resonates through history with the call of justice. Though this light may flicker and seem dim, if protected it can ignite a great fire, one that dispels the darkness of violence and plants the seeds of equal humanity and just coexistence amid the ruins of our lives.
4.1: Turning away from the era of violence and opening the horizon of liberation
Violence against women is the result of deeply rooted social, cultural, and historical structures that have characterized Afghan society for centuries. This violence not only manifests itself in individual actions, but is also institutionalized in systems, language, customs, norms, and collective memory. To combat it, we need a critical, structural, and justice-oriented rationality that has a liberating effect. Reason and justice are essential for our competence and power in this chaotic field. Our struggles must be rational and just. Without reason, resistance turns into a reproduction of violence, and without justice, liberation efforts fall into the trap of new forms of domination. We are dealing with a coherent intellectual and historical system that can be summarized in three main areas: tribe, plunder, and faith. These constructs are embedded in the long-standing structure of lineage or blood ties. This system redefines not only women but also humanity itself through the lens of lineage, property, and subjugation, systematically denying and eliminating the possibility of free agency, equality, and participation. In such a system, women are not seen as active agents but are pushed out of the realm of meaning and power. This exclusion is not only a symbol of gender discrimination, but also reflects a deeper existential inversion of human self-understanding. As long as this rigid mindset remains unchanged, society will remain trapped in a vicious cycle of violence, oppression, discrimination, and gender apartheid. Any endeavor to liberate women is essentially an attempt to rebuild the horizon of humanity, a horizon in which human dignity is defined by reason, freedom, equality, and respect, and not by descent, ethnicity, or gender. Violence against women is not a new phenomenon, even if it is more obvious and acute today. It has become deeply engraved in our historical memory and has developed into a false nature over generations. Violence has not only become an integral part of our daily behavior, but has also shaped our very existence. Until this biological and historical structure is challenged, no reform will last. Therefore, women’s liberation cannot be achieved through legal reforms or changes in individual behavior alone; it requires that we free ourselves from the mental, moral, and historical shackles of violence. In this context, two radical relationships must be explored and established: The relationship between women and critical thinking. This connection is the first step towards the re-creation of the empowered woman. Through this relationship, the age-old myth of women’s intellectual inferiority is debunked and women are recognized as thinking subjects and partners in the production of human knowledge. Philosophy is the language of reason, and women’s entry into this realm signifies their return to their home of inquiry, reflection, and meaning. The relationship between women and the city. The city symbolizes diversity, civilization, participation, and public presence. The connection between women and the city is not only important in geographical terms, but also in political and symbolic terms. The transition of women from the private sphere to the public sphere means a redefinition of power dynamics, a restructuring of the rules of dialogue, and the creation of opportunities for an equal life in society. The conscious woman in the rational city understands both how to end the history of violence and how to create a new horizon in the history of civilization. Rethinking these two relationships is crucial to creating a different world in which women are not pawns of tradition, victims of history, or oppressed by local customs, but active shapers of meaning and creators of the future.
4.2: Critical thinking as a path to liberation
Suppose we consider philosophy to be the ancient art of radical criticism in its purest form. In this case, the gap between women and liberation is as wide as the gap between women and philosophy itself. Philosophy, with its deep tradition of questioning, not only articulates the voice of liberation but also strengthens its argument. It brings to life the possibility of liberation through three interwoven pillars: self-determined humanity, critical rationality, and self-determined civilization. From this perspective, as long as women remain on the margins of knowledge and critical thought, and as long as the essence of female existence and consciousness does not shine forth in the realm of reason and the horizon of self-determined civilization, they will remain trapped in the cold, oppressive shadow of local traditions that consider them less than fully human. This linguistic wound is more than a moral insult; it reflects a structural system that claims reason as a male domain and has excluded female experience from the realm of thought. However, thought, especially philosophical thought, does not emerge in isolation. It requires certain conditions to take root, which must be seen as prerequisites for philosophy to enter both the female world and society as a whole. These conditions are closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing.
4.2.1: The establishment of a self-determined civilization
Critical thinking requires an environment in which society is open to questioning, doubt, and free dialogue. As long as social structures are dominated by tribal traditions and pseudo-religious narratives, philosophical and critical thinking will be suppressed. In such an environment, women’s liberation will remain a distant dream. Therefore, the foundations must be laid for a self-determined civilization in which women’s liberation is paramount.
4.2.2: Building communities of friendship
Philosophy thrives in an atmosphere of friendship, kindness, empathy, and open dialogue, and not in an environment of hatred, hostility, or idolatry. In this context, friendship is not just an emotional bond, but a civic framework that promotes human diversity, critical thinking, coexistence, and appreciation of differences. Developing meaningful friendships requires transcending tribal, ethnic, or local affiliations. Friendship is what fundamentally connects the core elements of a city and forms the basis of urban life and interpersonal relationships.
4.2.3: The pursuit of continuous dialogue
Thought is a continuous process, and dialogue is its dynamic manifestation. The pursuit of dialogue is a direct challenge to violence, because violence means the end of dialogue and the beginning of a deadly silence. Constant dialogue leaves no room for anger, discrimination, or oppression. In this way, philosophy is an integral part of urban life and not just a marginal phenomenon. From this central position, it becomes clear that women’s liberation is not just an identity issue for one section of society, but a concern for the future of all humanity. Without the active participation and cooperation of men and women, this liberation will remain uncertain. Thinking only becomes truly liberating when it is recognized not as a privilege for a few, but as essential to collective life. In this context, women and philosophy converge and become two pillars of a common horizon, the horizon of liberation.
Notes on Key Terms
[1] City of language (شهر زبان) – A metaphor for the cultural and political sphere of recognition, storytelling, and justice, from which women have historically been excluded.
[2] Aesthetics of domination – Refers to the ways oppression is beautified, normalized, or justified through poetry, culture, or rhetoric.
[3] Republic of silence (جمهوری سکوت) – A metaphor for a cultural state in which women’s voices are absent from public discourse and memory.
[4] Aesthetics of equality – A philosophical expression for beauty created through justice and equality, as opposed to domination.
Editor’s Note: This article continues in Part V
Note: The Photo is from the Internet
