Arrogant Implications

The idea that it would be different here took the backseat through Kashmir. It didn't surface in the moderate Islam of Lahore, nor Islamabad. It didn't come up in Azad Kashmir. Only now, as we head up the Karakoram Highway and over to Swat do things change.

Human rights here are not a function of government policy. They do not deal with Yangon limiting internet access or other resistances to the new world. Here, Human rights stem from culture; the past; the interpretations...individuals, communities, beliefs. Not nation-states.

It is here in this land where the proposition in the Quran that women should maintain modesty and privacy is interpreted to be that women shall not leave the home and that they shall not be seen by strangers...or even male friends; that people defend suffocated liberties. It is, after all, the Quran and the word of their God. It is the ver core of their view of this world - the view we all must have lest we slip from sanity. AND as the women are locked away from light, as they remain elusive to interactions, as they are tossed into arranged marriages, and even murdered without constraint or consequence in the name of 'honour' still women do not scream but only murmur from the corner. "Women are not allowed to leave home for the market... or even the hospital," they whisper, and even then the fear of making their voice heard is loud.

The men who came BACK to our hotel only to make our acquaintance after seeing us in the street agreed with the Taliban. A good regime, "good men," good ideals like you and me. Sure, they forced a few people to act as they didn't wish, but Afghanistan was safe. It was moving forward in the name of Allah. Under the US, Afghanistan is in chaos, with a crumbling economy and crumbling personal safety. The TALIBAN was good for Afghanistan, they say.

Yet the "what! How!?? What about rights?! to CHOOSE?!" are quickly qulled by the realization (again) that we are not here to change but merel to learn. The "Taliban is terrible" is a biasd statement based on faith, information accepted, and beliefs. So, too, is "the taliban is excellent" - except they value safety, security, order, and that "other thing" (salvation), while I and the myth of America(in theory, Bush and red America aside) believe in choice above security. As enny exclaims, "Who are WE to say they're wronge, we should let them live as they want to live where they are. If they don't agree, they can leave the country..." the clash becomes apparent.


A community built on common rules of conduct and a community built on individual freedoms (limited in comparison to some and in need of expansion though they may be, not to mention in danger at the hands of a very clever though outwardly awkward henchman) meet in the global arena. Again, this is no longer China's secular cultural revolution, not the communist Angkar, not the egalitarian enemy in Ho Chi Minh. This is GOD now...a civilization whose mandate for male superiority comes from the divine, as it did in Europe, America, and everywhere else in years past.

But..uh..oooh...actually it comes from the interpretation of divine texts. It comes from the Mullah blasting across the loudspeaker his perception of the words, which become much more than laws enforced with punishment, instead rising to the level of edicts whose betrayal leads to hell and to whose adherence leads to heaven; salvation; paradise. "I don't know what it is. But it's better than this world" Usman says.

"The burning sun of oppression always risess over a horizon of consent." The whispering women agree with the interpretation too, to some extent at least. (I cannot assure, for I have not interviewed and do so only on my toes as I want not to inspire "honour" acts). They too see heaven in the mullah's words. They believe much in the same way the Untouchables believe in India. But, that is, not all of them...

Sure they could. Those who dissent could run off. They could escape to Lahore... but then, they've never been. They don't know the world outside of their home as even the fifteen year old married to the man at lunch left school to enter lockdown at her wedding on her 14th year. The travesty is not the unbelievers' difficult escape, though, so much as the proximity of their oppressors. Big Brother lives in the next room over.

And on the face of such a culture without outlet for those who seek it; can one who truly believes in individual rights to choose remain neutrally pluralistic? Can he turn his cheek and ignore?

Where, then, does this line between faith in religion and faith in individuality collide? Where is the line we dare not cross?

The interpretations may ALL be contrary to Mohammad's (MPBWH) (Insert Christ's name here, if you prefer, the lesson I learn is the same) teachings, but there is no true way of knowing today. Mine is as easily flawed as the Mullah. Yet this very point - their separation in age from their origin - creates all of their validity. Interpretation becomes belief becomes religion becomes reality. The prophet is no longer here to clarify, so what you read is true...no matter what you think it says.

When the United States drops bombs on Afghani oppressors, Shah sees good men killed by "The very best terrorist." Right or wrong, they believe. And the liberation of some creates hatred of more. So the conflict ensues.

To whom should we give power? Only I can decide...except, of course, here; where they've not enough power to choose lest they risk outright death. (though maybe that's not as big a hindrance to my philosophy as I am tempted to think)

So, you see, that point where adaptation to culture no longer becomes a kind gesture or a desire to learn, even a desire to fit in, has been reached. A decision to adapt is now a decision of humanity. The decision is human rights. The decision is beliefs, and as enny dons her head covering but denies adherence to the customs of burkha or seclusion, pluralism is that much harder to come by.

____

Up the valley Shah unexpectedly hops in the van behind us. He becomes our unassuming, uninvited guide; though luckily he turns out a gentle soul. He spends a day on the riverside as we delve further into the mystery of life through religion and, my preference, plain quiet nature by the river. We find new friends...again.

This time, though, they're Pathan (syn. Pashtun or Aghan), and with their tradition of hospitality as their weapon, they suck us in. We spend almost a week with him, his family, or people connected to him. I stay in his guest room for a day, while enny wanders the family portion of the home and delves into the aspect of Pashtun life that I cannot witness due to custom. They force feed her ice cream made in her honor, decorate her with Henna, and accept her as family. In the other room, the men accept me similarly and between card games and conversations we feel yet again that we know them better than reality would allow.

The morning comes and after throwing a makeshift wire contraption connected to two exposed nails carrying electric current stuck in the wall into a bucket for hot water with which to bathe in the home of electric company employees, we dine on lunch at a nearby home. Here, one man in the family has married an American woman (though she is not present), providing for an interesting exchange on hopes and dreams of America, as well as hopes and dreams of Americans here. We are overfed yet again, and smothered with gifts simply for being. After all, we are guests...

In Mingora we thought we had bid our adeu from the family before we run into Tariq, a brother, in the street. We spend the next three nights smothered in hospitality at his company's apartment with seven coworkers coming and going variously, and consistently treating us like visiting royalty. We ride the company motorcycle around town, and up to Malam abba - the second ski resort on our tour. This time, the lift is down and while some Pakistanis hillariously topple over on ancient skis on the lower slopes, most simply throw snowballs or slide down sans sticks. The view, though, is beautiful and we would not have witnessed it if not for the insistence on incredible hospitality.

Even as this family stems from the ultra Islamic areas outside of Pakistani law known as the Tribal areas - specifically from Darra, a lawless town built on the illegal gun trade - we find nothing but genuine beauty in their eyes, hearts, souls. They modified doctrine to allow us to dine with them and sleep in their homes. One time only we were asked if we would enter Islam, and then only fleeting. Our subtle dismissal of the invitation was accepted quickly, and we entered more of a dialogue than an attempt to pressure us into faith.

In fact, as Tariq explained the laws of the Tribal Areas to us (a lifestyle built partly on hospitality, kindness, and love for others, and partly on obligatory revenge, punishments that could include a hand chopped off for stealing or being stoned to death for rape), he remains calm, normal, kind. These practices are not an outrage for him, nor does he see their perpetrators - his kin - as fundamentalists, extremists, or any other vocabulary "imported from the West." They are, quite simply and without under or over exaggeration, a different way of thinking.

So after I leapt toward a conclusion of oppression, of inustice through unrelenting confinement to the home, my time with new friends lessened my hard views somewhat. enny's descriptions of women smiling and laughing inside the home do little for an argument either way, yet interaction with even the men provided a warm soul and understanding of human beings, rather than a falsely simple perception of truth.

Islamic Traditions in the Swat Valley collide on a very basic level with modern thought in the United States; this much is true. But so too is it true that Hinduism clashes. That Buddhism clashes. That the third world's general bias toward family more than individuality clashes. And, it is true that a common conversation in Swat as in America is fundamentalism - only that there I believed that it was in Pakistan, while here I cannot find it...no one seems to be able to. Despite an attitude toward women that we would deem oppressive, the Pashtun people we've met would not treat a woman, man, or child with anything other than what they deem respect. Their version of respect, only, varies from ours.

So maybe, and only maybe, pluralism has not faltered. But I suppose I'm not as convinced as I was a few months ago in a cafe in Kathmandu. Maybe the "Clash of Civilizations" is real, after all...

___

Now we sit in Peshawar - a frontier town and the historical first stop of any invasion of the subcontinent, from Alexander the Great to the Mughals to the British. Not far from here a few weeks back the USA dropped a few bombs - you probably saw pictures of Peshawar's streets in the paper, whether you knew it or not. But, alas, a riot of a hundred in the streets causes an international media fiasco while millions sit silently loving Americans and American-ness, but hating both political sides of this ongoing "war." The man from Afghanistan on the bus exclaimed, "I think USA people are very nice...really!" and so far, we've found no reason to be more afraid than elsewhere on this planet....except, that is, of the stifling, oppressing, constraining feeling from continuous invitations for dinner, tea, lunch, breakfast, tea, talking, laughing, going to homes, etc.

I still don't know enough....but then, no one ever does. Or, that is, everyone always does. Either way, we continue...