Impervious to Reason

Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, today said that if the Taliban are included in any future Afghan government that they would have to "respect women's rights". The Taliban by in large are illiterate thugs and those who can read are generally versed in the one book which even those who are illiterate revere. That book is the Holy Qur'an, That tome and the Hadith that accompany it do not advocate woman's rights. If you have ever read the Islamic holy books (as I have in the form of English interpretation as I neither speak nor read Arabic), you will find women are deemed chattel under the control of fathers and brothers and then transferred to be under the authority of a husband with no rights to her own children if the husband decides to leave the marriage by saying "I divorce thee" three times. The Taliban will never respect the distaff sex because the Koran itself disdains the fairer sex. It is not the ignorant Pashtun alone who take the Koran absolutely literally. The Christmas day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab believed that a heavenly reward of seventy-two virgins awaited him on the success of his mission of murder. Umar was no poor wayward semi-literate but a scion of one of the wealthiest families in Nigeria and the product of elite education including attending University College London while living in one of his father's chic abodes in one of the most expensive areas in the world. Umar's father was merely the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria and a former minister of Nigeria's cleptocratic government. The Times Square attempted bomber Faisal Shahzad who had evidently been directed and trained by the Pakistani Taliban was no imbecile either, having gained a US university degree but also had fervent belief in what is written. Mohamed Atta was the field commander of the September 11 atrocity and was no ill-educated pauper either, but the son of a prominent Egyptian attorney and was trained as an architect, even taking post-graduate courses in urban planning in Germany. The Taliban will never respect women's rights because the Muslim faith does not recognize them. Obviously, the most fanatical worshippers of Allah will not abandon their faith and their most deeply held religious views. It is not the Taliban that need to be reasoned with because they will never compromise. It is the Secretary of State herself and the Obama administration, that by refusing to name the enemy and believing that Islamist absolutism can be negotiated with, seem impervious to reason.