'Mass illness' hits Afghan schoolgirls

Olive, you seem to be very angry these days. Is it pre-wedding stress or what?:-)

This is nothing, just to keep women inside their homes. If they are not educated, they have no where to go. So will be easy to make slaves of them. There would be no risk of them turning rebellious and defy men.

I have quite a few afghan aquintances and non of them prefer living under Taliban regime . Every society has group of people who twist and turn culture religon and traditions to their own perverted righteous ways and then enforce it on the society at large. One of the twisted reason is forwarded by whyte knight ; In reality this argument has been put forward by nearly all cultures in the west and USA before universal education and women rights were fought for and earned by the women in those societies.Afghan culture is very conservative but education of women has never been forbidden. The matter of concern always was that the girls were mostly not given an oppertunity to continue education to college or university and married by 16 - 17 years of age.

The news item is sad and tradegy suffered by Afghan women uner ther barbaric taliban rule is unimaginable by people who have not had a first hand experience of Taliban and their twisted way of thinking.

Dont relate this horrandous crime to either culture or religon of the Afghans.

i disagree with you fairness and equality will stop crimes all over the world not only in Afghanistan , when the world lives fairly every bad people will change

Since the HOT topics and NEW topics are not shown on front page, people must have missed it. Or maybe they don't have any answers?

Yes I also thought more people will be commenting on this. Maybe my Afghan friend Dot.com is on vacation today else atleast he would have posted something.

Why is nobody commenting on this? What happened to all the people who actually enjoyed serious discussion? Man QL SUCKS lately. There's nothing worth commenting on and when finally there is something nobody comments!

It's got to do with the thinking that a woman is supposed to stay at home and take care of household chores and for that they don't need to be educated. Education may corrupt them and they may start thinking about moving out of the house.

I'm sure it has something to do with "protecting" women and keeping them away from men. I'm not a Taliban so I honestly couldn't tell you what they think.

How can it be a religious matter? Does Islam prohibit women from studying? I haven't heard of it, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Or if it's purely cultural - why?

Personally I've never met anyone actually from Afghanistan who says they would prefer to stay under Taliban rule, seems to me the only people who say that are people who have never been to Afghanistan and are simply anti-American.

Maybe a good looking hunk like me passed by and all the girls fainted :P

Seems to be related to culture and religion , both.

Not the answer to your question but......That mass illness in girls can be 'mass hysteria' which is actually very common in teenage girls. Happens in my country quite often. One girl loses consiousness and then follows a chain of many other girls. Its then labeled as due to some supernatural cause but is actually mass hysteria. It is just the manifestation of underlying anxiety or stress, nothing serious. I hope it is same in these girls and nothing serious.

I remember a topic earlier about how the Afghans preferred to stay under Taliban rule. Is this sentiment reflected by the women who are not allowed to obtain education as well?

They r psycho, fools and a maniacs..Nothing can be done to change them..They will continue to live in a hell and will make others to do same..FOOLS..

Culture reinforced by misinterpretation of the religion.