I was musing about Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò (no thanks to Salon).
“Artists must create, critics defend, and democratic people support … works so extreme that they become unacceptable even to the broadest minds of the new state.”
Then I bundled up my baffling fixation with Italian avant garde, unclogged my nostrils, inhaled enough steam to qualify as an exotic dim sum that could be served at Royal China Garden and somewhere in between all of it, read this.
Prosecutors alleged that Kambakhsh disrupted classes by asking questions about women’s rights under Islam. They also said he illegally distributed an article he printed off the internet that asks why Islam does not modernise to give women equal rights. He also allegedly scribbled his own comments on the paper.
Sacrilege! To add to the specs. Always undesirable by the Mullahs.
My incensed faculties aside, I couldn’t bear to ignore the juxtaposition of the two non-linear storylines. In 1970s Italy, a slightly deranged poet promoting provocateurs and cultist concepts (almost unwatchable at times) and in the new millennium Afghanistan, a “radical” 24 year old student who was about to die – will now serve a 20 year sentence – for asking too many questions about women’s rights and querying I-slam’s patriarchal heritage and it’s need to evolve with times that are a’changin. (Or are they?)
The concept of radicalism can differ so widely across geographies: cultural, physical or plainly psychological. It’s amazing and slightly nerve rattling to deconstruct the boundaries of communal fear when it comes to what is and what’s not kosher in one specific realm. Especially, religious.
I won’t toil hard; I can’t regurgitate for hours about the debilitating portrayal of women in Islam. Anybody who doesn’t have a problem with a 60 year old “prophet” marrying and consummating that marriage, to a 9 year old kid, is plain jane insane! In my books, at least.
Focussing on this entire episode is just so unbearable though. In a world that is laboring hard to throw away the noxious beast of patriarchy that’s had a serpentine grip on our psychosis and lives for an infinite number of years, this predicament is like walking backwards so many light years, into a deep, dark black hole, an abyss we crawled out of. I am not even going to commence detailing the brutal disregard for Human Rights because it will have me gripping steel railings, if I launch into that invective.
20 years for someone whose sole crime has been to seeka cogent something and (or) scrape for rationale in an ultra-patriarchal mess. To promote women’s rights and equality. Of course, this repugnant verdict will be challenged, rightly so, in the Afghan Supreme Court and one can hope for a slight sliver of Hope. As tiny as that may be.
I reckon something like this must be so intangible for people like You and I; we live in carefully cultivated voids and possibly are, at times, completely inert to the Other Half. It’s The Half that is not even allowed to simply ask “why?”
Islam’s overpowering fundamentalist bend has taken a beating worldwide in the recent years for reasons that range from lunatic to bang on the money. As an atheist I have to admit that criticizing a particular kind of religious school of thought comes rather easily to me. I do condescend to calling myself a nihilist, no less. This state of being is guilt free and often – since I am writing in the shadows of partial anonymity – I am not in that environment (the culture of lawful amputation in the name of Allah!) to bear the brunt of my comments or actions. So, it creates a particularly malevolent reaction in me, when I encounter stories like these. I begin to despise my own personal freedom just a little bit. The fact that I can get away with being reactionary protester.
And I know that I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t ever detest the window granted to me for self expression and for seeking to change my little corner in manner that’s constructive and intelligent. Without someone throwing me into a prison for the rest of my life. I know of the struggles that have paved the way for enabling people like me – to publish our ideology without unnecessary terror setting home in our hearts and minds.
Of course, there are times we take this liberty for granted, we call it insufficient, worse still, impotent and ineffectual. Very often in a blanched out world, voices of the so called minorities ( black/beige/brown), their own fights of resistance and their overwhelming strife. Our overwhelming strife.
This is to remind us that we are never to dismiss our voices, no matter the unevenness of tone and the irregularity of its inflection.
Without meandering too much, what I really want to say is – I am (We are) deeply indebted to people like Parwez Kambakhsh. They remind me to not dismiss my freedom easily. Also, it forges a sense of grounding; there remain vast unchartered bastions in the Women’s Rights and Human Rights movements that can very easily become a blip on our radar unless we look really carefully.
It’s not easy to be a feminist in the Islamic world. It’s not easy to be a feminist in any world, actually. It’s not easy to be a feminist man. But, we persevere because of the unflinching optimism that Reason will triumph over zealotry.
