A woman covered from head to toe, secluded, silent. silenced. That is the image we have on this side of the world of Muslim women, either because we do not understand their faith or because we believe that subjugation and extremism is the only denominator in the world they inhabit. This is not entirely true.

Feminist struggles are also a thing of the faithful of Allah. This is demonstrated by Muslim artists in general and Afghans in particular; women whose art has known how to confront extremism. These days, it became clear to even the most clueless that in Afghanistan there were pop singers —Aryana Sayeed—, orchestra directors —Negin Khpalwak—, film directors —Sahraa Karimi— plastic artists and even street performers.

For example, the following message circulated on WhatsApp: "These are works by an Afghan artist named Shamsia Hassani, if we share them, it will be like giving her a voice and all the Afghan women who are living through hell."

Shamsia Hassani (Iran, 1988) is the first female graffiti artist in Afghanistan. Her works give Afghan women a different face, a face with power, ambitions and will for the future. The character of the woman that she uses portrays a human being who is proud, powerful and who can bring about change. During the last post-war decade in Afghanistan, Shamsia's works have meant color in the streets, but also in galleries, and have valued all women in the country. “Art changes people's minds and people change the world”, is her motto. Her artworks have inspired thousands of women around the world and given new hope to Afghan artists in the country.

Malina Suliman (Kabul, 1990), is a painter, sculptor and graffiti artist. She is one of the few Afghan women artists who managed to break through in the twenty years of US occupation. Her art challenges Muslim patriarchal culture, especially the burqa, which she calls “a form of control under the false idea of ​​respect. Each religion gives a different name to the burqa, but it really only serves to control women and keep them locked up." She and her family have been threatened by the Taliban. She has been stoned while she was painting, and her own family locked her up for almost a year to prevent her from painting, claiming to be ashamed of her works. One of her works that received the most criticism from her was a skeleton wearing a burqa; which she defines as a “self-portrait”.

These and other artists have been part of the series of collective exhibitions "Abarzanan" (Super women), which was born at the initiative of the photographer Rada Akbar and brings together women artists from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Thanks to the fact that “Abarzanan” is online, we can see monuments, paintings and installations that honor the contribution of women to Afghan history, such as the singer Bakht Zamina, the teacher Safia Amajan, or the television presenter Shaima Rezayee. What these women have in common is, in addition to having broken conventions and left traces, is that they were murdered. The cause? Live freely.

Art vs hijab?

In the West we have learned to understand accessories such as the hijab or the burka as a symbol of oppression, without half measures. A series of photographs taken by the Yemeni Boushra Almutawakel recently went viral as part of her project “The hijab series”. It is a sequence that shows the transformation of a Muslim mother, her daughter and a doll, from their usual clothing to being completely covered with a burqa and disappearing.

The work was created in 2010, but as a result of the Kabul crisis it has circulated on networks under the legend "disappearance" and has been the image of critics of the Taliban regime, but also of Islam. The impact has been very strong, however, the author told the BBC that she has mixed feelings regarding the success of her work. “My work is a commentary on patriarchal misogyny. Fear, control and intolerance. […] I am not against hijab. If it was, I would have split my series with a woman in a bikini,” she said.

The problem is the extremists. It is not entirely true that the ideas they defend are based on the Koran. The Indian writer and activist Samina Ali, who professes the Muslim religion, denied this in her TED talk entitled What does the Koran really say about the hijab and the Muslim woman?

“The Qur'an consists of 114 chapters, each one written in verses, like poetry. There are some 60,000 verses, and only three refer to how women should dress. In none of them does it specifically detail the type of clothing that we should wear”, she says in her TED x University of Nevada, in which she also cites Muslim scholars who say that these verses are vaguely worded because women can decide How to dress according to your culture.

The extreme interpretations, adds Samina Ali, come from positions that a good part of the Muslim world does not share.

The resistance of Muslim women

María Eugenia Ylla, art historian, considers it important to see these artistic works as a response to structural violence that translates into the attempt to colonize women's bodies. Quoting Rita Segato, she points out that the patriarchal structure that is transcultural, and that art as a response is a sign that it is impossible to sustain said system, since its structure has begun to collapse throughout the world.

“Art that makes things uncomfortable, that puts things in tension, faces censorship. Today, thanks to communication, the media, the social media, we can see censorship up close, and that is a privilege of our time, because we can see it and combat it almost in real time. Before, censorship was systemic, that is why history is now in charge of rescuing those voices that were silenced”, she adds.

But, at what point does art function as resistance? “I could tell you that it depends on who reads or who enunciates, however, it is very difficult for an artist not to be aligned with what happens in his time. The works are almost always political, what happens is that we sometimes tend to see them as something banal, but they have a political side. For example, reproducing portraits that respond to hegemonic stereotypes is, in a way, a demonstration of power, and that is also political”, she points out.

The Taliban invasion creates fear for Afghan artists, but also for women in general. Marina Navarro, executive director of Amnesty International in Peru, explains that this fear stems from the experience that, between 1996 and 2001, the country lived under the Taliban regime. “In the last 20 years, women have fought to recover their rights and dignity. It would be necessary to differentiate the danger that professional women, journalists and politicians have right now who could be victims of reprisals, as are activists and other women whose work is public, ”she emphasizes.

The right that is most in danger is the right to education, says Marina Navarro, because although there are currently more than 3.3 million girls in the educational system, Unicef ​​calculates that there are two million girls who still do not have access to The education. With or without the Taliban, women have fought hard to obtain their rights, which is why since the negotiations for the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan began, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have called for the rights of women to be respected. . Although the Taliban have pointed out that women have nothing to fear, their first actions are not a good sign: they have banned women from university and some professionals have reported that they have lost their jobs.

Marina Navarro recalls that, of all the people who have fled Afghanistan in recent months, 80% are women and girls, most of them in neighboring countries. That is the importance of the international community: that it can admit them as refugees, that they do not close their borders. If they do, this could be equivalent to a death sentence.

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