Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T22:44:45.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women's Roles in the Afghanistan Jihad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Audrey C. Shalinsky
Audrey C. Shalinsky
Affiliation:
Teaches at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, P.O. Box 3431, Laramie, Wy. 82071, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the winter and spring of 1990 Farghanachi Uzbek refugees from Afghanistan were the subjects of my ethnographic research in Karachi, Pakistan, where they form an unregistered community. The Farghanachi frequently play cassette tapes that explain the ongoing jihad in Afghanistan through stories about the Prophet Muhammad. Women and children use the tapes to accompany conversation and to facilitate discussion of Islam and martyrdom; occasionally they cry at the stories, which remind them of their own dead kin, the extraordinary circumstances of jihad, and their transformed lives. This paper draws conclusions about the ideal roles of women in jihad from a tape recorded in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan. On the tape the exemplary behavior of a mother, wife, and daughter during the famous battle of Uhud that Muhammad and his followers fought against the Meccans is recounted. The infamous Hind the liver eater—who symbolizes the brutality and violence of female vengeance—is ultimately vanquished by these good women.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , November 1993 , pp. 661 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

Author's note: All excerpts from the tape were translated by A. Manan Kaisken, a longtime informant, and myself. The words in brackets indicate added phrases for the sake of clarity in written English or informants' comments. I am solely responsible for the interpretations offered here.

1 Farah, Madelain, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of al-Ghazali's book on the Etiquette of Marriage from the Ihya (Salt Lake City, 1984), 33–53Google Scholar; Lapidus, Ira, “Knowledge, Virtue and Action: The Classical Muslim Conception of Adab and the Nature of Religious Fulfillment in Islam,” in Moral Conduct and Authority, ed. Metcalf, Barbara (Berkeley, Calif., 1984), 38–61.Google Scholar

2 Mernissi, Fatima, Beyond the Veil (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 1;Google ScholarRosen, Lawrence, “The Negotiation of Reality: Male-Female Relations in Sefrou, Morocco,” in Women in the Muslim World, ed. Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikki (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 566–67.Google Scholar

3 Kūllīyati Chāhar Kitab (Peshawar: Nurani Kutub Khana, n.d.)Google Scholar.

4 Jarring, Gunnar, Materials to the Knowledge of Eastern Turki: Tales, Poetry, Proverbs, Riddles, Ethnological and Historical Texts from the Southern Parts of Eastern Turkistan with Translation and Notes, parts 3 and 4 (Lund, Sweden, 1951), 88–89;Google ScholarPastner, Caroll, “Accommodations to Purdah: The Female Perspective,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 36, 2 (1974):410;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShalinsky, Audrey, “Reason, Desire and Sexuality: The Meaning of Gender in Northern Afghanistan,” Ethos 14, 4 (1986): 223–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Anderson, Jon, “Social Structure and the Veil: Comportment and the Composition of Interaction in Afghanistan,” Anthropos 77, 4 (1982–1983): 397–420.Google Scholar

6 Lapidus, , “Knowledge, Virtue and Action,” 41.Google Scholar

7 Shalinsky, Audrey, “Women's Relationships in Traditional Northern Afghanistan,” Central Asian Surveys, 8 1 (1989): 117–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Shahrani, M. Nazif, “Local Knowledge of Islam and Social Discourse in Afghanistan and Turkistan in the Modern Period,” in Turco-Persia in Historical Perspective, ed. Canfield, Robert (Cambridge, 1991), 161–88.Google Scholar

9 Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), 93–112.Google Scholar

10 Fischer, Michael and Abedi, Mehdi, “Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses,” Cultural Anthropology 5, 2 (1990): 107–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Lessing, Doris, The Wind Blows Away Our Words (New York, 1987), 145–54.Google Scholar