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Subscribe to RSSAs urban youths embrace the holiday banned by the Taliban, one group is banking on love, or at least marriage, to help end violence in Afghanistan. NBC News' Mandy Clark reports.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Suliman and Farzana Sharifi’s marriage is very unusual in Afghanistan.
The 23-year-olds have a love match in a country where most weddings are arranged. That fact makes Valentine’s Day, a holiday banned by the Taliban but embraced by many of the country’s urban youth, extra-special for the two.
Both work hard to surprise each other on Valentine's Day, which they've celebrated for the three years they've been together.
“I don’t let him know, he doesn’t let me know," said Farzana, a university student who heads up an Islamic NGO that runs orphanages throughout the country. "Like a month before Valentine’s day we act that we don’t know it is Valentine’s Day. So, we normally surprise each other.”
This isn’t just a game – the couple believe that love is simply more powerful than hate, and it could be a weapon in ending the insurgency.
“When love comes even the Taliban can’t stop anybody,” Farzana adds.
But can love really stop Taliban fighters in other parts of the war-torn country?
An American charity put money on it. Getting married in Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, is very expensive. Women’s families can demand dowries of up to $10,000 from prospective husbands, Qasimi said. With the average Afghan earning less than $500 a year, these demands make marriage and family unachievable for many.
Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images
More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.
With the help of local NGOs, Texas-based Comfort Aid International helped organize a mass wedding of 38 couples last year.
“We did this to prevent our youth from joining the Taliban side. They often join the Taliban because they are single and poor,” local organizer Sayeed Saleh Qasimi said.
That’s were Comfort Aid steps in – it has helped arrange the weddings for more than 1,000 couples already. Local organizations it works with have negotiated with local families to agree to more reasonable dowry prices.
One young husband, Sayeed Hussaini, says he simply wouldn’t have been able to get married without the charity’s help.
“Everyone wants things in life, like getting married,” the unemployed construction worker said. “But a lot of people are doing bad things for money like joining the Taliban.”
He added: “I am jobless but I will not join them.”
Hussaini's new wife Fatima is the reason he won’t risk his life.
She says she’s grateful for the charity’s help in easing their financial woes, which allowed the couple to marry.
So perhaps Farzana is right to hope that love can conquer war.
“I think love can change anything,” she said, turning to her husband Suliman. “Yeah, yeah it changed you, it changed me.”
Related:
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Afghan orphans hope their music will win over 'American hearts' at Carnegie Hall
Tears of joy: The moment an Afghan teen learned of Oscar nomination
This story was originally published on Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:25 AM EST
Leave a Comment:
The Answer : NO ! ----- you must die ! pain and suffering ! it is tradition ! Halalalalalalalala !
Yes a wonderful liberal bunch of crap for idiot liberals to enjoy and feel warm and fuzzy about. Void from reality but is that not the center of any liberal thought action or policy?
My short answer is "no".
And Western love is not appreciated anyhow, so let's stop feeding jam to the pigs. At best, let's giveaway small arms to loving people so they can eradicate the Talibanned.
Bring the troops home.
If you want your freedom, you have to not let anyone take it from you. This is what this couple is doing.
They will be marched bravely to the place where the true believers will hurl stones the size of Grapfruits at them till they stop moving then shove what is left into a shallow hole.
"Ain't love Grand!"
Lazarus
I wonder if the readers understand where these customs come from such as arranged marriages, chopping off the hands of thiefs and stoning transgressors of the laws of Islam?
It is DIRECTLY from the Old Testament as if it were written yesterday as the "absolute end-all", "the buck stops here" and "this is the end of the line" type of absolute laws.
If you have read the OT, you know that Abraham had hundreds of wives and concubines(slaves for sex) which is ironic that he is considered the "Beloved" of God. From all of these underclassed women, he had hundreds of sons that he cherished as his heirs and soldiers for his army. however, the female children are hardly mentioned except as being sold or traded in arranged marriages. If you have not read the OT, perhaps this is enough information to stimulate your curiousity.
Anyway, the Muslims throughout time discouraged the use of a formal education since the only book that matters is the koran. Everything else is contrary to the teachings for a true believer and thus should be destroyed.
During the times of the Ottoman Empire the western influences demonstrated to the Sheiks that education was needed to keep up a modern military so certain people were allowed to atend Artillery schools and related topics, but liberal teachings about diverse subjects was forbidden. The women were certainly not allowed to attend schools and the number of men allowed to attend schools was limited to a few chosen families.
Perhaps this was good idea because when the "True Believers" were upset about the modernization of its military and culture (happened frequently), they would hold coups and execute everyone from the Sheik on down. This cancerous form of tolerance for the fanatics was known to the western powers as the Sick old Man, referring to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. To this day Turkey is still plagued with the shadow of the Muslims rising up to murder the politicians in their sleep.
The disturbing thing to me is that we can look at the internet and see the political powers in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and others to witness first hand the outright terror that the muslim religion applies to all, even their own. These horrible people are not policed by any universal moral standards that we in the west are judged by. Their own people fear retribution from them as if they are always present, like some incideous being hiding just outside of the range of eyesight, but always there to pounce upon the fearful like the mythical thunderstrike from God above.
The term Jihad is very real and has already begun as a serious movement and I pray that the world will recognioze it before it is too late and we are all consumed by the flames.
"In war there is the great noise of battle and the greater noise of love" That this couple in a terrible war have found love gives us hope. "hate never overcomes hate, only love overcomes hate" Those words were spoken by the Buddha 2,500 years ago and yet we still have trouble to accept them. This couple have found love and it will endure no matter what happens to them. 2,000 years ago another man by the name of Jesus said "Love one another" and like the Buddha, his words we still cannot follow. We lack true faith.
Dear Harry,
your idealistic points are the hopes of all but in the real scope of the world it is ludicrous to expect.
I have a question for you. "to an atheist, is religion real?" The obvious answer is NO, but the reality is that as long as just one "True believer" is willing to kill the Atheist, the religion is very real. You see, it is all about whose perception is more powerful. you can sit around all day long and smell the rose garden and seek oneness with the universe as a true believer in Buddha, but when one religious Fanatical Muslim walks up with an AK in his hand, your faith will not buy you a cup of coffee or a moments worth of peace.
You are aware that Budist monks are taught to fight? The western perception of the eastern religions as was brought to via Abbey Lane is just so much fiction.
The only way for evil to grow is for good people to allow it to do so.
Lazarus