Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador-at-large for the Taliban, was a pretty good choice as a spokesman for the thuggish, murderous regime. He lied back then and he still lies all the time, apparently convincingly enough for the New York Times and its reporter Chip Brown (who, wooed and wowed by Rahmatullah, refers to the brutal gangs of women-beating Talibs as “Vice and Virtue busybodies“) in his February 26 article, “The Freshman.”

We will begin by quoting from the NYT article, and Rahmatullah’s revisionist protrayal of himself as a naif. Brown is recalling a conversation with Rahmatullah in Yale Commons concerning the Taliban spokesman’s 2001 trip to the US:

When he rose to speak on ”Prospects for Afghanistan” at the Atlantic Council, hecklers in the audience shouted. A gray-haired woman in the audience stood and lifted the burka she was wearing over her head. ”You have imprisoned the women — it’s a horror, let me tell you,” she cried. Rahmatullah was caught on videotape responding: ”I’m really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you.”…

Looking back, sitting in the Commons after his class on terrorism, he said that were he to do the trip over, he would be less antagonistic. ”I regret the way I spoke sometimes. Now I would try to be softer. A little bit.”

The most substantive debate took place at Yale on March 27, 2001. ”The Taliban: Pros and Cons” was arranged and moderated by Prof. Gustav Ranis, then at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Ranis had recruited Prof. Harold Hongju Koh to argue the con side of the debate. Rahmatullah did not know who Koh was, and he was not impressed by what the professor had to say.

”He said, ‘Women under the Taliban cannot go to doctors,’ and I said, ‘Do you think I cannot take my daughter to a doctor?’ He said, ‘Women can’t walk outside without a male relative.’ I said, ‘My wife walks outside.”’ At one point, Rahmatullah asked, ”Have you ever been to Afghanistan?” ”No,” Koh said. ”Well, if you were my only source of information about the Taliban, I’d hate them too!”….

In Kandahar, he presented what he had gleaned from his trip to Mullah Omar and a group of senior advisers. It was quickly evident that they weren’t interested in his ideas. ”I nearly got into a fight with the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mullah Saqib, who had verified the edict to demolish the Bamiyan Buddhas,” he recalls. ”I said, ‘Why can’t we have women’s education?’ And he said, ‘We’ll have it later.’ I said: ‘There isn’t any time. Why are we waiting?’

The self-serving remarks in italics are obviously a lie, which in our opinion the Times should have challenged Rahmatullah on; the draconian limitations by Rahmatullah’s colleagues on the freedom of women had already been in place for five years when the Ambassador was trying to pretend he was raising some objection to them. It is also amazing to us that Rahmatullah’s previous lies about women under Taliban oppression in his 2001 debate with Professor Koh are not called precisely what they are. We will quote from the broadcast of Radio Sharia in Kabul on the days after the Taliban took over, as recounted in My Forbidden Face (pp. 36-38), a story of a Afghani girl about the same age as Rahmatullah, who was living in Kabul with her parents on September 28, 1996 (see also Guardian):

“From now on the country will be ruled by a completely Islamic system. All foreign ambassadors are relieved of their duties. The new decrees in accordance with Sharia are as follows:
– anyone in possession of a weapon must hand it in to the nearest mosque or military checkpoint.
– women and girls are not permitted to work outside the home.
– all women who are obliged to leave their homes must be accompanied by a mahram: their father, brother, or husband.
– public transportation will provide buses reserved for men and buses reserved for women.
– men must let their beards grow and trim their mustaches according to Sharia.
– men must wear a white cap or turban on their heads.
– the wearing of suit and tie is forbidden. The wearing of tradtional Afghan clothing is compulsory.
– women and girls will wear the chadri.
– women and girls are forbidden to wear brightly colored clothes beneath the chadri.
– it is forbidden to wear nail polish or lipstick or makeup.
– all Muslims must offer ritual prayers at the appointed times wherever they may be….
– it is forbidden to display photographs of animals and human beings.
– a woman is not allowed to tak a taxi unless accompanied by a mahram.
– no male physician may touch the body of a woman under the pretext of a medical examination.
– a woman is not allowed to go to a tailor for men.
– a girl is not allowed to converse with a young man. Infraction of this law will lead to the immediate marriage of the offenders.
– Muslim families are not allowed to listen to music, even during a wedding.
– Families are not allowed to photograph or videotape anything, even during a wedding.
– Muslim families may not give non-Islamic names to their children.
– all non-Muslims, Hindus, and Jews must wear yellow clothing or a piece of yellow cloth. They must mark their homes with a yellow flag so that they may be recognizable.
– all merchants are forbidden to sell alcholic beverages.
– merchants are forbidden to sell female undergarments.
– when the police punish an offender, no one is allowed to ask a question or complain.
– all those who break the law of Sharia will be punished in the public square.”

Soon after these regulations were enforced, even stricter ones came into being. Birds and dogs were forbidden as pets, children were forbidden to fly kites, and women were subject to being beaten for wearing white shoes. Our favorite lunatic pronouncement of the regime that Rahmatullah spoke for is this: “It is forbidden to whistle or to own whistling teakettles.” (Amazing that the author retained the sense of humor to give us that one, after all she had been through.)

It is clear from these crazy religious regulations and the horrific story Latifa recounts in My Forbidden Face — as well as from so much other evidence — that Rahmatullah was lying in his debate with Professor Koh. Women were beaten for no good reason, and deprived of free movement, jobs and education. We find Rahmatullah’s comments about women and doctors in Taliban Afghanistan particularly offensive; Latifa’s mother was a doctor, and the things she saw as people secretly came to her apartment for primitive treatments are pre-historic in their barbarity.

Chip Brown and the New York Times would have us believe that Rahmatullah harbored secret doubts about his Taliban colleagues, and, indeed, even voiced these doubts from time to time. (That appears to us the fair conclusion to draw from Brown’s not laughing out loud and challenging the absurd claims of former Ambassador Rahmatullah.) Allowing this unrepentent liar to keep getting away with his misrepresentations seems to be a crime all by itself.

In case we haven’t made ourselves clear, we think that Rahmatullah is one of the worst of the worst; it is one thing to do evil, it is perhaps a worse crime to be evil’s apologist. A man who kept company with bin Laden on one or more occasions, including media interviews, has no business trying to pass himself off as a naif.

But perhaps we are wrong. Chip Brown and the New York Times seem more than happy to be buying what Rahmatullah is peddling. So does Yale, so eager to recoup the loss of “another foreigner of Rahmatullah’s caliber” who went to Harvard. In the end, who cares if women can’t have teakettles that whistle, walk the streets of Kabul unmolested, or find work to feed their children? Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi can walk breezily down York Street whistling the Whiffenpoof song, and read about himself in the New York Times as he lunches at Mory’s, and maybe that’s what really matters.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 at 5:45 pm and is filed under art, culture, General, Left of Left, MSM, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.