Madam, – The silence following your Editorial of August 19th is frightening and awful. Surely there must be a response from believers in the Muslim religion, if not from Christians, when a pregnant widow receives 200 lashes before being shot in the head. Coupled with the stoning to death of two lovers before a crowd on a Sunday afternoon, these atrocities must be unequivocally condemned by all fair-minded folk. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Your Editorial (August 19th) highlighting the horrific violence against women in Afghanistan is commendable, but your apparent support for continued overseas armed intervention to prevent the degradation of women by the Taliban is, I believe, misguided and indeed counter- productive.
No matter how evil or depraved religious or cultural mores are in any society, real change must come from within. Change depends on individuals and groups persistently challenging and confronting, usually at great personal cost, the ruling elite. This process can be greatly helped by overseas media exposing the naked abuse of power masquerading as religious or cultural norms.
One could also justify a “South African” style boycott to pressurise offending regimes to conform to basic human rights. But foreign armed intervention is nearly always doomed to failure.
Can you imagine the reaction from Irish society in the 1950s if a foreign army tried to save children from institutional incarceration and abuse by the Catholic Church? The likely reaction would have been a strengthening of right-wing Catholic fundamentalists in Ireland.
Only we, the people, are capable of extricating ourselves from the yoke of our homegrown Catholic Taliban. – Yours, etc,