The plight of Afghan women who kill themselves to escape bad marriages is held to be a humanitarian disaster by TIME Magazine writer Abigail Hauslohner, who focuses on immolations, probably because they are sensational. Of course, the Taliban takes the blame in a number of links in the article, but as far as I can tell these women are not members of the Pashtun ethnic group, from which the Taliban draws support. Actually, the article suggests that they may be immolating themselves because of an Iranian movie that featured a self-immolation on the part of a girl in a forced marriage, which suggests that they are ethnic Persians — not Pashtuns. Therefore, it isn’t even clear that the Taliban has anything to do with them.
Interestingly, the article actually goes into some detail about the strange family relationships that characterize these cases (and Afghanistan in general). Cousin marriage and polygamy appear to be major factors in the decisions of both girls to torch themselves — probably far more important than spousal abuse as it is understood by Westerners, which involves, in the popular imagination, some drunk brute coming home from the bar and smacking his wife around, e.g. Stanley Kowalski.
Ironically, the wanton destruction of the Western nuclear family by feminist culture-warriors will inevitably bring some different form of marriage, because without some cooperation in child-rearing our population will simply die out and be replaced. Prime candidates include the Muslim paradigm, as in Afghanistan, or The Law of the Jungle, as in the Congo. Either way women are big trouble. East Asian style patriarchy is out, because it is proving to be just as susceptible to the ravages of Western family law as Western families.
However, what is most telling about the focus on Afghan women’s suicide is the silence in Western media about the highly increased rate of male suicide after divorce in the Anglosphere. Afghan women, half a world away, merit more sympathy and attention than men in our hometowns who are driven to kill themselves by a highly punitive “justice” system that is not dedicated to justice, but rather to removing children and property from divorced men.
Recently, a man immolated himself in public – right in front of Brisbane’s Supreme Court – over a family law matter. There has been no public pity, no calls for change — nothing. Yet we have thousands of troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and this is justified on the basis that it is a fight to stop the abuses that lead women to kill themselves.
Just think about what that says about our governments’ priorities.
