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Kamakshi Rautela speaks with Jiya Shrivastav on Women's Rights in Afghanistan and the Taliban's Interpretation of Islamic Law | SAM Youth Dialogue
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00:08Hello everyone and welcome to SAM Conversations. I am Jiya Srivastava and today we are discussing
00:14an issue that sits at the intersection of religion, politics and human rights, women's
00:19rights under the Taliban in Afghanistan. To explore this, we have with us Kamakshi
00:25Rotella, a doctoral candidate in international relations at South Asian University, New Delhi.
00:31Her research focuses on infrastructure politics and the frontiers of South Asia. She recently
00:38wrote an article for South Asia Monitor titled The Empty Chair at Islamabad, when Taliban saw
00:44women's rights subordinated by Islamic law. Her article examines how the Taliban's response
00:50to the conference goes beyond a disagreement over women's rights and becomes a question
00:55of who has the authority to interpret Islamic law. Kamakshi, welcome to SAM Conversations
01:01and it's our pleasure to have you with us today.
01:06Thank you so much Jiya for inviting me and thank you South Asia Monitor for inviting me. It's
01:12a very pleasure to discuss on a topic which is very close to my own research as well and
01:18I'm really thrilled to be the part here and this is the first time I'm actually interviewing somebody
01:25on my topic so it will be interesting for me as well.
01:29Okay, we are very glad to hear this. So Kamakshi, I'd like to begin with the image at the center
01:35of your article,
01:36the empty chair in Islamabad. So Afghanistan was invited to send a female representative to the conference,
01:42but no delegate arrived at the same time. The Taliban maintained that Afghan women already enjoy their rights under Islamic
01:49law.
01:50What did this empty chair represent to you? And why do you think this particular moment deserves attention beyond the
01:57question of Afghanistan's participation in the conference?
02:03Actually, this entire thing of family chair, basically it usually gets, you know, negated or ignored by the larger Islamic
02:13jurisprudence,
02:13because one imagines that the Taliban must engage with their own nearly and dearly partners, like the OIC itself, because
02:22they all are the, this is a Muslim organization.
02:25But because it claims to be a, you know, the authoritative interpreter of the Islam as well.
02:33But the thing that becomes very interesting for us and that gets very ignored is that what about the internal
02:40cleavages within Islam?
02:42Because Taliban doesn't represent the entire Islam. And if it is a part of OIC, does it actually participate as
02:51a member of it OIC or not?
02:53So when I talk about the empty chair, I also mentioned this, that, you know what, Afghanistan actually celebrates OIC's
03:02participation in different developmental fields.
03:04For example, even it appreciates educational initiative by the OIC itself.
03:10But at the same time, when you are appreciating somebody who is taking participation in the women education,
03:17and at the same time, you are saying that, you know what, you are doing it in a wrong way.
03:22It's a very ironical thing in order to understand how the Islamic languages actually work in a regional platform.
03:31We all know about there are bilateral tensions and there are systemic tensions as well.
03:36But a platform which is Muslim or Islamic regional in itself has itself being left, you know, left behind the
03:44eyes of the scholars and the academicians.
03:46And that's why this platform of the OIC, Women's Ministerial Conference, become very important.
03:52Because this is not the first time that they are conducting Women's Ministerial Conference.
03:56This is their eighth or ninth time that they are doing it.
03:59So, what about why we are luring this very unique space in itself?
04:06Right. That's a very important discussion because the absence itself was very significant.
04:12And the response that followed made the situation even more complicated, I guess.
04:17So, Kamakshi, in your article, you explain that the disagreement between the Taliban and the OIC is not necessarily about
04:24whether Islam should shape women's rights.
04:27Right. Instead, it is about how those rights should be interpreted.
04:30Right. So, the OIC conference addressed issues such as education, employment, health care, political participation, digital access,
04:39while the Taliban defended its own interpretation of women's rights under Islamic law.
04:45So, how should we understand this difference between the OIC's approach and the Taliban's position?
04:50And what does it tell us about the difficulty of building a shared understanding of women's rights across countries with
04:57different political and religious interpretations?
05:02So, basically, the thing here is that OIC has been taken a more liberal position on certain issues,
05:10whether it is digital infrastructure, whether it is women's rights or anything.
05:15So, we have seen that there is a clear evolution of the OIC itself.
05:20And that Taliban challenges because it believes that you cannot shift from your own, you know, Islamic jurisprudence.
05:28So, it believes and the second very important thing and which is related to this is that unlike the Gulf
05:35states,
05:35the Taliban is more closer to the Diyo Bandhi tradition, which is actually has its institutions in India and Pakistan,
05:44more largely in India itself.
05:46And it creates its inheritance from there itself and not the Gulf states or the any other Middle Eastern states.
05:53So, it believes that we are the Diyo Bandhis and we can challenge the, what is, you know, get adulterated
06:00within the Islamic laws in itself because we have a tradition which is going long back then your own liberal
06:07force.
06:07So, Saudi or any of the major Gulf states that stick by, you know, that stick by the Islamic laws
06:16itself, they have taken over the period of time a very liberal position
06:20because, of course, they have a very strong connection with the West itself and they don't want to be criticized.
06:26Everyone wants a legitimacy at the international stage.
06:30So, if you've seen across the world, whenever a state needs a legitimacy at the global platform, what it starts
06:39doing?
06:39It starts, you know, following the global governance norms that, yes, you are right, the liberal policy is correct.
06:45So, we start doing the C for it and that's what UIC did.
06:49But Taliban says that since when you are start doing the same thing, we are different, we are not liberal,
06:56we are Islamic states, so we stick by it.
07:00And we are different from your approach itself because you are getting more and more adulterated with the Western approach
07:06of the education.
07:07If I'm talking about Diobandi tradition with which even Taliban gets associated, the problem here is that the Diobandi tradition
07:16has its own very, you know, very regimented ideas towards the women's education itself.
07:23So, if you remember back when the Afghanistan foreign minister came to India, he visited the Diobandi schools itself because
07:32that is what the tradition talks about.
07:34But at the same time, the Diobandi tradition has itself a very rigid idea.
07:39But there is some flexibility where the Diobandi tradition can enter into the space and help Taliban to mold the
07:46policy regards the women.
07:48How? Diobandi tradition believes that, you know what, we agree that women should not be allowed to work or anything
07:56like that.
07:56But there should be women madarsas.
07:59Women should be at least educated.
08:01If not allowed to work, they should be educated.
08:03Diobandi tradition is a vociferous advocate of the women's education itself.
08:09And that's become very interesting because Taliban actually claims their inheritance from there itself.
08:15And if the Diobandi tradition pitches itself, which is right now it doesn't pitch because it believes that this is
08:21a state-to-state issue.
08:22But if somebody like Taliban is entering into your place, then it means that you have certain kind of a
08:29privileged position that you can bargain and negotiate at the same time.
08:33So we see that there is two different kind of internal things within the Islam itself.
08:40And here the Diobandi tradition can actually play a varied role here.
08:47Right, so this is like very true.
08:51And this brings us to one of the most interesting arguments in your article that I found that the debate
08:56is not simply about rights, but it's also about who has the authority to define those rights.
09:02One of the strongest arguments in your article is that Taliban is not merely defending its policies.
09:09It is also challenging the OIC's authority to determine what Islamic right should mean.
09:15So you discuss how Taliban's spokesperson pretended its own religious scholars as better placed to understand Islamic rights rather than
09:24any other institution.
09:25So how does this claim to interpretive authority change the nature of the debate?
09:30Does it make it more difficult for an international or regional organization to hold governments accountable for restriction on women's
09:39rights?
09:42So, you know, a very strong way of challenging the system is that you become the system maker and not
09:50the system follower.
09:52And that's what the Taliban tries to do here.
09:55If you see here that they are not saying that I am an exception.
09:58I am not an exception and do not try to keep us as an exception because every time there is
10:05some sort of crying or there is some sort of war or conflict, everyone believes that, oh, this particular state
10:11has this, you know, exceptional behavior or something like that.
10:15But Taliban says do not consider us exception.
10:18You are the one that is actually bereftent from your ideas.
10:21So we are not exception here.
10:23And when we talk about the women's right here, if you see that once you try to, you know, focus
10:31on who has the authority, who has the utility here to define even the rights, then the discussion is all
10:39over the authority, power, and women's right become conditional to those powers.
10:45And women's right here then get all of a sudden ignored because now your attention is not toward the women's
10:51right.
10:51Your attention is toward claiming that authority of being the builder of the Islamic power.
10:57So that's what we see.
10:59And we talk about that how this has, you know, has an effect on the change itself because see, Taliban
11:05has even within Afghanistan, there is a lot of, you know, ethnic levages within Taliban.
11:12And when we talk about the ethnic levages, Taliban wants to show that I am above all of you, whether
11:20you agree or you not agree, I am above you all.
11:24We see that in the last two, three years, in last two years, largely, Taliban's power gets challenged by the
11:31Haqqani network and many others because Taliban has its strong foot on the Pashtun heartland and not the entire of
11:38the Afghanistan.
11:40Because the Haqqani network is somebody who has a more tribal, strong foothold, unlike the Taliban who has more centralized
11:47power in Kandhar, Hairat, or Kabul itself.
11:51So Taliban and Haqqani network has some sort of flexibility towards the women's right.
11:57They are the ones that suggested that, you know what, let's create a gender segregated classes for the women.
12:03Let we allow the women to have more digital access towards education or, you know, doing the business or any
12:11sort of small kind of things.
12:14Now, Haqqani network has, because it is challenging, and at the same time, Haqqani network is an important part of
12:21the interim government of Taliban, it's said.
12:23Now, Taliban doesn't want Haqqani to, you know, control its own strong foothold.
12:28So when it is challenging OIC to being a liberal and to being the other in the Islamic jurisprudence, it
12:35is actually challenging the internal clivages within the Taliban.
12:39It knows that, you know what, when we have a more provincial or more decentralized form of government, Haqqanis are
12:46being more, you know, being liberal in their approach towards the women's education and their movement and mobility.
12:52And that is why the reason that they want to be the one who decides who is the sole interpreter.
12:58So it is a kind of a message to both an international audience as well as a domestic audience.
13:07Right. So like when government claim that its policies are already justified by religious principle,
13:14it becomes, I think, very important to look beyond what is being claimed and examine how those claims affect women's
13:21life.
13:22So the Taliban has repeatedly presented its position as being consistent with Islamic law.
13:29But their article raises a deeper concern, like when the state itself decides what women can exercise,
13:35those rights risk becoming dependent on state's interpretation rather than being meaningfully accessible to women in general.
13:43So how do we distinguish between a government's claiming to protect women's rights and actually women being able to exercise
13:51those rights in everyday lives?
13:53Like what should we look at when evaluating such claims?
13:58See, every, this is a fact and this is absolute truth as well that every state, you know, claims to
14:06be democratic or a human rights champion.
14:09But we all know the dark truth itself, that that is not the case.
14:14And at least in some sense, when Taliban is actually claiming the interpretive authority,
14:20it is claiming attention of the Islamic states as well.
14:25So when we say that to what extent it is actually even true, we all know the reality of the
14:32Afghanistan itself.
14:33We know that, you know, women have very, you know, limited accessibility over anything and everything.
14:41And this is a problem because the gap is so large that you cannot just challenge that, you know, this
14:48happens and that doesn't happen.
14:50It happens all the way around.
14:51It happens all across the world, whether you see in any Western democratic state or whether you see in any
14:56of the global South countries.
14:58Everywhere, this is a condition as well.
14:59But when we say that, you know, when the Taliban is actually saying that we are the interpreters of the
15:08Islam,
15:09do we see the same kind of uniformity across Afghanistan?
15:14Or even in the age of digital literacy, do we find the same thing?
15:20And we see that there are certain entry points that can be very helpful for the Afghanistan and the larger
15:28global governance system.
15:30For example, lots of women in Afghanistan are actually participating in the small businesses.
15:38They have their pages in Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, from there they handle, though they are facing a lot of problem
15:46to, you know, access the market and everything.
15:49They are always under the panopticon view of the state itself.
15:53But at the same time, that has some sort of agency as well.
15:57That means Taliban's control is not always an absolute in its all forms.
16:03Somewhere you get the entry points and there enter the India.
16:08How?
16:09We are actually get the chance to talk to many of the scholars who are actually researching on Afghanistan and
16:17the Women's Foundation.
16:18We get to know that India has initiated online education for the women of Afghanistan.
16:23And through that online education, women, though India has, we see that India has shifted its position on the women's
16:32cause,
16:32because earlier India was actually being very open on the human rights thing,
16:37but India has shifted in its approach towards the Afghanistan.
16:41Because India realizes that, let's be honest to each other, that Taliban is nowhere going.
16:48It will stay, at least for the next five to six years.
16:53We all realize that.
16:55So, does India will try to fill the gap by ignoring Afghanistan or try to be more strategic by engaging
17:02with it?
17:03So, India has realized that the best option is to enter through the online education.
17:07And many of thousands of Afghanistani women are actually taking online education through Indian educators,
17:15which is a very interesting thing to look into that.
17:17So, these are some of the entry points where Taliban is actually claiming and the existing reality.
17:25So, the gap can be, you know, filled in through different pipelines, which are not being at least cemented yet.
17:34And there we need to work.
17:36We are not saying that we will, you know, overthrow the Taliban, just like the US claimed to do so.
17:42We all realize that we cannot overthrow the Taliban.
17:45We need to find some more pragmatic approaches to engage with it.
17:50And that is the gap we are talking about.
17:53That gap can only be filled through certain strategic alignment itself.
17:59Right.
17:59Right.
18:00So, that distinction, like, also brings up a broader question about the role of regional institutions.
18:06So, if the issue is partly about who gets to define rights, then the response cannot be limited to statements
18:13of concern alone.
18:14Right.
18:15Like, the OIC brings 57 member states and provides a platform for discussion on issues affecting Muslim majority societies.
18:23Yet, as your article suggests, that even an institution like the OIC can find its authority challenged by a member
18:30state or government that rejects its interpretation of women's rights.
18:34So, what role can OIC realistically play in advancing women's rights in Afghanistan?
18:40And can regional dialogue and institutional pressure make a difference when a government believes that its own interpretation of religious
18:48law should take a precedence?
18:52So, the actual thing here is that OIC has a very limited leverage on Afghanistan.
19:00And the reason is that Taliban believes that we don't want another systemic rule from any other country.
19:08We want our own independence.
19:10Because Taliban, Afghanistan already has frozen funds in, you know, Swiss bank and all.
19:16And it wants those funds back.
19:18But at the same time, it doesn't want another country, whether it is any OIC-based countries or any Western
19:25countries, to again challenge their own authority.
19:28Because, let's be all honest, Afghanistan is one of the frontier states of South Asia.
19:34Being a frontier state, it has faced a lot of draconian laws, rules, and whatnot from the colonial powers.
19:44And not just colonial powers, from the Western states, from the Soviet, and everyone.
19:50It knows what it costs to, you know, be controlled by somebody else.
19:55So, it doesn't, you know, when you say that, does the OIC have such a form of entry points?
20:01No.
20:01OIC, at least for now, doesn't want itself to be engaged in Afghanistan in such a way.
20:08OIC, you know, has passed the declarations or whatnot.
20:13But declaration would not allow you to engage.
20:16Countries like Russia and now even many of the Central Asian states are getting engaged with Afghanistan.
20:22Though they say that, you know what, we do not recognize it formally.
20:26But the binary of recognition and non-recognition is outdated.
20:31How even India doesn't engage.
20:33But India is, India doesn't recognize Taliban.
20:36But India does believe in the engagement itself.
20:40So, countries, whether they believe that, you know, we officially recognize Taliban,
20:44or we are believing in, you know, partial engagement or whatever.
20:49These are just freemings.
20:51And when you say that, do they have any form of institutional pressure?
20:55Pressure is something that we need to avoid.
20:58That's the very absolute way to do engaging with Afghanistan.
21:03Because the moment you say that women empowerment,
21:05or we need to pressurize you because you are against the human rights and all of these things,
21:10that's the only moment, Taliban closed the door for you.
21:13And then you have no way to get into Afghanistan itself, right?
21:18So, what, for example, India, China, Russia,
21:22instead of saying that they are engaging through women,
21:25they are actually contributing in women's empowerment or any form of thing.
21:29They are saying that, you know what, we are trying to build public infrastructure.
21:32The moment you say public infrastructure and not the women, right,
21:37you might get an open door into the environment.
21:40Because Taliban believes that, okay, public infrastructure, is that what we want?
21:44And the moment India or any other country enters in the form of public infrastructure,
21:49whether in the form of hospitals or in the forms of any canal building
21:53or the road-related building, any form, schools or anything,
21:56we see that there is then women's participation as workforce can be visible.
22:00Because women in Afghanistan, actually, in some way or other,
22:05they are participating as midwives, nurses, doctors.
22:09There you go. You get the door open.
22:13So, the framing itself is very important.
22:16How do you frame it?
22:17Do you frame it as women empowerment and then you get,
22:20be shut down from Afghanistan?
22:21Or do you want to open it, want Afghanistan to engage more and more with you?
22:27And here, the countries like Russia and China actually plays a very, very important role.
22:32They are actually doing the same thing.
22:34They do not want the outside workforce to enter in Afghanistan
22:39and then get shoot down by the, you know, other ethnic networks.
22:43They want the people of Afghanistan to engage, you know,
22:47themselves in their own public infrastructure.
22:49And that's what they are doing.
22:51India, why India is contributing so much with the infrastructure development in Afghanistan?
22:55Because India knows that that is the only way that they can, you know,
22:58enter into the language of the women's, right?
23:01Right.
23:02Right.
23:03That's, that's like a great way to see this.
23:06So, now I like, finally, I'd like to take this discussion beyond Afghanistan
23:11and consider what this debate means to a wider region.
23:16Like, Afghanistan's situation is specific to its own political and historical context.
23:21But the question your article raises is much broader.
23:25Like, what happens when interpretation of religious or cultural principles
23:29is used to determine, to limit the women's right?
23:33Like, for countries across South Asia,
23:35this raises the question about representation, accountability,
23:38and relationship between tradition and equality.
23:41So, what do you think policymakers, scholars, and civil society across South Asia can learn
23:48from this episode of Islamabad?
23:50And what would meaningful progress on women's right look like
23:55when questions of religion, political, authority, and gender equality intersect with each other?
24:03So, basically, we all know that South Asia has a very, what I would say,
24:10a very traditionally rooted system.
24:12Whether it is, you talk about Pakistan,
24:15even when Islamabad is saying that, you know,
24:17Afghanistan is, you know, going against the women's rights and all,
24:21let's be honest that Pakistan itself is, you know,
24:24very backward in its approach towards the women.
24:27And any country in South Asia is doing so.
24:32Even India has certain challenges.
24:36We still have certain practices within the different Muslim networks within India
24:43that are very rigid and that are very challenging to the women's body itself.
24:49So, any country in the South Asia, whether they believe that they are democratic,
24:54whether or they believe that, you know, they are the very champions of the women's rights,
24:59that actually falls.
25:00And any country, basically, not just South Asia,
25:02but the entire global thing is that.
25:07It everyone claims to be, but that is not the truth.
25:09So, when we talk about the women's rights,
25:12and when the religion comes into picture,
25:14because we have for majoritarian system,
25:17in the South Asia, we see that the religion is such a big thing.
25:20And it is all because of the religion conflicts and the issues
25:24that we are so least integrated religion of the world.
25:29And when you talk about the women's rights,
25:32religion becomes a very, what I can say,
25:35a kind of a stick that starts beating to the moment you move away from the religion.
25:40So, we cannot stop the religion from holding the right thing.
25:46But it's all about how you approach in a very more strategic and a more public-friendly way.
25:52So, for example, Islamabad also has been, you know,
25:59in their realization phase itself that the KTK region of the Islamabad
26:04is facing a kind of spillover due to the Taliban's presence in Afghanistan.
26:11For example, music artists in Afghanistan, especially the female artists,
26:17they are facing so many challenges if they stay in the region of the KTK and all.
26:21So, what Pakistan is doing there?
26:24Pakistan has realized that the only way to do is
26:27to start actually countering the terrorism there.
26:30And that is their own way to start if any terrorist network
26:35is trying to, you know, form their government
26:37because that is the past of the KTK itself.
26:40Now, it is, you know, charging against the terrorists
26:42because they know that we need to prove ourselves that we need entry points.
26:47And the movement, every time we remain,
26:50always remember that whenever the religion enters,
26:54there should be some nuts and bolts that need to be integrated.
26:57For example, Afghanistan, talking about religion,
27:01at the same time, it wants the removal of the bans on its travel restrictions.
27:08Everyone wants.
27:09Taliban officials are not supposed to travel because of the ban.
27:13They want that.
27:14So, any country, if they face, you know, these kinds of loopholes,
27:18best thing is that if you want, start bargaining.
27:22If there is anything like that, if religion starts, you know,
27:26impending on the women's rights, start bargaining.
27:29You know, you need to touch upon the soft points of the state
27:33and not religion because I see that many of the time
27:36we start saying, oh, your religion is very orthodox.
27:39It is conventional.
27:40You cannot change the religion.
27:42But you can touch upon certain soft points,
27:44certain entry points that can actually, you know,
27:47maybe improve the position of the women's itself.
27:51Same in the situation of the Bangladesh,
27:53women's rights actually got very much affected
27:57where after the Sheikh Hasina, we see that.
28:01And during that phase, what did the interim government had done?
28:06Interim government had done that we have a large chunk
28:09of Bangladeshi women workers and we can't let them go
28:13because of the regimented ideas of some religious group.
28:17We can't let them go.
28:18Even the most religious grouping of the Bangladesh,
28:22which is now in the opposition,
28:25the major opposition party,
28:27has itself started negotiation.
28:29When people were shocked,
28:30how can such a regimented religious group
28:34start a negotiation over women, right?
28:36Because the moment you have the power,
28:38you know you need acceptability.
28:39You know you need a legitimacy from the larger background.
28:43And that's what they do.
28:44Why India opened the door for the women journalists
28:46when the Afghan foreign minister was not ready
28:50to speak to women journalists?
28:52Because India, no,
28:53it cannot deny the women journalists
28:55to enter the gold room
28:56because the moment you did so,
28:58you are no more a democratic country.
29:00And that's how.
29:02You need to touch upon certain soft points
29:04if you want the religion and women
29:06to remain separated.
29:10Thank you for sharing your insight
29:12and helping us unpack the question raised by your article.
29:15What stands out from our conversation
29:18is that empty chair was not simply a story
29:21about one's country's absence
29:22from an international conference.
29:24It also drew attention to a deeper struggle
29:26over who gets to define rights,
29:29interpret religious principles,
29:30and determine the space
29:31women are allowed to occupy in public life.
29:35Your article reminds us that
29:36discussing women's rights
29:38requires us to look beyond official claims
29:40and ask how those rights are understood,
29:43protected, and experienced in practice.
29:45So thank you so much, Kamakshi,
29:47for joining us on SAM Conversations.
29:50Thank you so much.
29:51It's such a nice to talk to you.
29:53I really feel pleasure
29:55to have a very good discussion with you.
29:58And I wish you very good luck
30:00to the Institute
30:01as well as your future ahead.
30:03Thank you so much.
30:05Thank you so much.
30:06Thank you to our audience for tuning in.
30:08We'll see you next time.
30:09Thank you so much.