I thought that this article was pretty cool, As Taliban starts restricting men, too, some regret not speaking up sooner - Beside imposing severe rules on women, new laws require men to grow fist-length beards and bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior.
I guess that it depends on whose fat is in the fire. Subjugating women is one thing but we never thought that it would come to this. Messing with the menfolk is an entirely different proposition.
Women have faced an onslaught of increasingly severe limits on their personal freedom and rules about their dress since the Taliban seized power three years ago. But men in urban areas could, for the most part, carry on freely.
The past four weeks, however, have brought significant changes for them, too. New laws promulgated in late August mandate that men wear a fist-long beard, bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior, widely interpreted as a prohibition against jeans, and ban haircuts that are against Islamic law, which essentially means short or Western styles. Men are now also prohibited from looking at women other than their wives or relatives.
Poor guys are starting to feel it too.
These first serious restrictions on men have come as a surprise to many in Afghanistan, according to a range of Afghans, including Taliban opponents, wavering supporters and even members of the Taliban regime, who spoke in phone interviews over the past two weeks. In a society where a man’s voice is often perceived as far more powerful than a woman’s, some men now wonder whether they should have spoken up sooner to defend the freedoms of their wives and daughters.
“If men had raised their voices, we might also be in a different situation now,” said a male resident of the capital, Kabul, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity or that only their first names be used due to fears of drawing unwanted scrutiny from the regime. “Now, everyone is growing a beard because we don’t want to be questioned, humiliated,” he said.
Hard to really feel sorry for these guys now that the sandal is on the other foot.
The Taliban say that they are merely protecting Afghan women from corrupt western influence. Funny, Trump said yesterday that he was protecting women with his abortion stance. That kind of protection I think they can do without.
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Speaking of Afghanistan, the Trumpers have been bloviating about Biden's departure from Afghanistan with a venom and disregard for history and truth that is astounding.
Trump made a side deal with the Taliban that cut out the Afghan government and created an impossible deadline for withdrawal. He invited the Taliban to Camp David but did not invite our allies, the Afghan government. This deal freed 5000 Taliban fighters unconditionally. Trump's deal left only 2500 U.S. fighters in Afghanistan.
During a speech in Detroit marking the day, Trump placed the blame for the "humiliation in Afghanistan" on both Harris and Mr. Biden.
In a response first shared with CBS News, Harris' campaign is using Trump's announcement, and abrupt cancellation, five years ago of a meeting at Camp David with Taliban leaders, to highlight the role his deal with the Taliban played in the withdrawal.
The campaign argues that Trump's deal created a "virtually impossible" deadline and left "the Biden-Harris administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous, costly mess."
"Trump shamelessly attacks the vice president because he hopes he can trick the country into forgetting that his own actions put troops in harm's way," Harris campaign national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein told CBS News. "Trump wanted to bring the Taliban to Camp David just days before September 11th—think about that. He cut a bad deal with the very same people who violently took over Afghanistan and led to the collapse of the Afghan government."
On Sept. 7, 2019, Trump tweeted that a meeting with the Taliban was canceled after a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack by the terrorist group. Months later, in February 2020, Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban to pave the way for a significant drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the end of that year, in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban that the country would not be used for terrorist activities.
However, Taliban attacks on Afghan forces continued. Trump's former national security adviser H.R. McMaster called the deal a "surrender agreement with the Taliban" during a podcast interview.
Trump's own National Security Advisor says that Trump bears responsibility for the withdrawal.
McMaster told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the former president had made a decision in 2017 to maintain a US presence in Afghanistan, but that Trump then changed his mind. The Trump administration ultimately entered into an agreement with the Taliban requiring US troops to withdraw from the country by May 2021. President Joe Biden, after he took office, pushed that withdrawal date back to August.
“He couldn’t stick with the decision,” McMaster,who served as Trump’s national security adviser from early 2017 until April 2018, said on “AC 360.” “He didn’t stick with the decision. And I think people were in his ear and manipulated him with these mantras: ‘End the endless wars’ and ‘Afghanistan is a graveyard of empires’ and so forth.”
Asked by Cooper if Trump bears some responsibility for the heavily criticized withdrawal during the Biden administration, McMaster responded, “Oh, yes.”
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The mayor of Hamtramck, the town where my father lived when he came tot his country and where he attended high school, has endorsed Trump. Amer Ghalib is a Muslim immigrant from Yemen.
Last year, Ghalib was among a group of Hamtramck residents who met with controversial conservative activist Michael Flynn, a former Army general and Trump's first national security adviser. In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. He was later pardoned by then-President Trump. Flynn visited Hamtramck last year.
Ghalib has previously drawn criticism from some for social media posts he wrote before he was mayor. In one written in January 2020, Ghalib described former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as having "the soul of a martyr." The post was written in Arabic and Ghalib wrote it after Iran launched missile attacks on military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq.
"May Allah have mercy on the soul of martyr Saddam Hussien, he faced Persia, America and the whole world and his hair was not shaken," reads part of Ghalib's post. The English translation of Ghalib's post was verified Monday by Wessam Elmeligi, an associate professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and director of the university's Center for Arab American Studies.
Hamtramck, the first city in our country with an all Muslim city council and mayor, is the town that banned gay pride flags last year.
Two members were tossed off a human rights commission for not towing the muslim line.
A Michigan city with an all-Muslim council that made waves banning LGBTQ+ Pride flags on public buildings has removed two members of a city commission for breaking the new law.
Hamtramck, population 27,000, is an enclave surrounded by Detroit. More than 40 percent of residents were born in other countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a significant share are of Yemeni or Bangladeshi descent.
On Tuesday, the council unanimously approved removing Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole from the Hamtramck Human Rights Commission for flying the rainbow flag over a public sidewalk, with a member saying they 'defied the rule of law.'
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| ritual slaughter in the streets of Hamtramck |
Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, who was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote to become the nation’s first Yemeni American mayor, told the Guardian on Thursday he tries to govern fairly for everyone, but said LGBTQ+ supporters had stoked tension by “forcing their agendas on others”.
“There is an overreaction to the situation, and some people are not willing to accept the fact that they lost,” he said, referring to Majewski and recent elections that resulted in full control of the council by Muslim politicians.
On one level, the discord that has flared between Muslim and non-Muslim populations in recent years has its root in a culture clash that is unique to a partly liberal small US city now under conservative Muslim leadership, residents say. Last year, the council approved an ordinance allowing backyard animal sacrifices, shocking some non-Muslim residents even though animal sacrifice is protected under the first amendment in the US as a form of religious expression.
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