Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Op-ed .... Finally

This week in history we both watched a film and read an article in the New York Times: Upfront, about the price that girls have to pay for attending school in the middle east, in this particular article: Afghanistan.  This article titled “The Price of Going to Class” and written by Dexter Filkins, was a real insight into the lives of girls in Afghanistan.  Honing in on one story in particular, about a young girl named Shamsia Husseini.  This girl while walking to school with her sister, was asked by a man on a motorcycle if the were going to school.  Not seeing any particular reason to lie she said yes, and the man splashed acid across her face.  I believe that this is just giving these girls more of a reason to go to school, acid wont kill them, and since they have already scars from acid, more wouldn’t be the end of the world.  I don’t think acid is going to stop these girls from going to school. 

            This article also gave its piece on the Taliban and how they were the first ones to openly forbid girls to go to school.  Before the Taliban girls going to school was just socially no yet accepted.  However, with the rise of the Taliban, came a more cemented feeling that women shouldn’t be attending school.  In a sense this whole ordeal in Afghanistan is very similar to Hitler, and Mussolini.  They built themselves up by convincing people to join, and after a while they had enough power to force their idea’s on people.  They would do so through violence and making people scared, which is very similar to the Taliban.  Plus the Nazi’s also forced their opinions about women (how they should stay at home and just be house wives) on the rest of the population, yet again similar to the Taliban.  I guess all bad things have one common thread.

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