Organized religion is used to brainwash females from birth to believe they are second class. Christianity does the same thing. My mother believes fervently that women were put on earth to wait on men. My sister will give me something trivial and asks me if I have my husbands permission to bring it home. Am I Afghani. No. I'm a typical white middle class American. It's hard to undo thousands of years of brainwashing overnight. Which is what people think George Bush is going to do in the middle east. Plenty of people all over the world, male and female, believe females are inferior. Look at our language here in the west. We still refer to people as "mankind" instead of human and God is still referred to exclusively as a he.

The beauty of how organized religion works to oppress women is that it teaches women to think of themselves as inferior, and deserving of second class treatment, because it is suppossedly God's will. Women then treat their daughters as second class and spend all their energy on their sons.

There are countless people in this country that still think that Eve came from one of Adam's ribs, which means we were created second, and it is still thought that "man" was kicked out of the garden of Eden because of Eve. Which is why God ordained that females be servants to males and devote our lives to being their servants, having no will and talents of our own. How do you explain evangelical or any other kind of Christianity in this country and the fact that females are the biggest attendees in Church?

Men and women have the same number of ribs.

We still haven't undone the second class treatment of women in the US and we've been fighting for it for centuries. And it is women blocking female equality just as much as men. Equality aint't gonna happen overnight in the middle east. It probably won't happen anywhere on the planet, not even here.

NNG, you are out of your mind. I was raised Catholic and they may have told me I'd go to hell for pre-marital sex, but no one was ever killed over it! In fact if we did it all we had to do was go to confession and say a few "Hail Marys" and that was that.

Once in Manhattan I saw a woman in one of those black jaballah things. It was the most frightening thing I have ever seen. I would kill the motherfucker that tried to make me wear one, or die fighting it. Radical Islam is a frightening thing.

'We still refer to people as "mankind" instead of human and God is still referred to exclusively as a he.'

Hey, NNG, did you even read the article? Are you seriously equating the way some folks in this country use nouns with the extreme, outrageous plight of women in Afghanistan?

Do you think it's clever or helpful in any way to automatically throw up the ol' "Christians are just as bad?" every time you're presented with the appalling reality for women in places like Afghanistan? Is this like some kind of knee spasm you are unable to control? You help NO ONE with this kind of pathetic reaction.

Read the article again. Send it to friends. I don't care what political stripe you are, where you go to pray (or not), how much you hate right-wing Christian fundamentalists -- anyone who cares in the least about human rights should be saddened, angered, and mortified by this news, and demanding more from our political leaders.

Thanks, Salon for reprinting this crucial, informative piece.

Muslim nations and Islamic groups (the ones who fly into a rage over cartoons and see Islamophobia in every critique of their religion) seem surprisingly silent on the situation in Afghanistan, now and ever since the rise of the Taliban. Where is their deep concern for their fellow Muslims so evident in Palestine? I mean the sincerity of that concern is the reason we're fed for their explosiveness and anger at the West.

Self-labelled 'Islamic feminists' make grandious claims about Islam being the most respectful religion towards women, the most liberated religion in the world in Muhammed's time (not true arguably, but they seem to overlook the fact that the world's moved on quite a bit since then), etc. If women really have all these rights in Islam why aren't Muslimahs howling about the treatment of women in Afghanistan?

If the Taliban don't represent an accurate picture of Islamic belief as people claim then why do Muslims who further moan that their religion is misunderstood/misrepresented by the West seemingly tolerate (both now and before the US invasion) the most visible example of everything your average Westerner sees as wrong with Islam? Brutal gender apartheid (they make the Saudis look like Ms. subscribers), violent tribalism, homophobia, corporeal punishment for non-violent crimes, drug peddling, gross illiteracy in a religion with a holy text at its centre, etc. Talk about bad press....

British Muslims are furious about the arrest of a handful of people last week suspected of plotting to kill a fellow Muslim (prominent Muslims like head of the MCB had the gall to compare the situation UK Muslims face to that of Jews in Nazi Germany), yet the fate of millions of Afghan women seems to matter nought to them. The same thing with female genital mutilation, the modern day slave trade in North Africa, denial of women's education, honour killings, forced mariages...all 'supposedly' unIslamic if you listen to apologists but whose leads the charge against these crimes at every turn Western feminists and other non-Muslim liberals (and even conservatives).

But no Muslims and their supporters are too fixated on the Palestinian (who we've seen this week have plenty of fight in them, even if is killing one another) and their anti-Western multicultural political games to care about defenceless victims being brutalized in the name of Islam.

Sometimes articles have such a jawdroppingly inane premise that one marvels at the mental gymnastics of the author. If I am to understand this article, somehow because 1000+ years of Afghan custom, culture, politics and belief have not been erased in the past 5 years, it is all George Bush's fault? Somehow too I missed the clear instructions on how to accomplish this aim in this article, or perhaps wishing something is supposed to be a substitute for action?

Are women discriminated against in Afghanistan and (in most parts of the country) treated more like chattel than an individual? Yes. Is this due to the tribal culture of the area mixed with an overlay of religious justification? Yes. Is the lack of development in the country caused by the mountainous terrain and lack of resources (with a generous dollop of resistance to change due to the culture) Yes. Are there differences in treatment of women between areas (tribes)? Yes - with the Pashtoon regions being the worst (and not coincidentally, their being the heartland of the Taliban).

I am happy that women have made some progress in Afghanistan since the Taliban were thrown out of power in 2001-2002. And it is not surprising that most of this progress tends to be in the urban areas where the grip of the tribal reins is the loosest. But can we please have some realism here? The fundamental cultural patterns of the Afghan people have not been changed, and short of shooting every male over the age of 2 years old, it is not going to be fundamentally different in the future. There is also a struggle going on in the country between the previous rulers (the Pashtoon) and the rest of the country that has yet to be resolved - a low grade version of the struggle going on in Iraq between the Sunni & Shia factions. The rump Taliban are just taking advantage of this tribal struggle as a means to return to power.

So, in the end, there is no magic bullet to bring this area into a "Western European" norm of culture and human rights without a slow, grinding path to educate the populace and change the old ways. Short of filling the country with a invading army and acting like a reverse Taliban to force all the women to wear bikinis instead of burkas, what would the author suggest is the best answer?

And no, I don't see George Bush leading that fight either.

When you write articles on serious subjects - please don't throw away the small progress to make cheap political points.