New Testament Reading-Matthew 5: 1-12
My plan for this morning was to preach a sermon that would lift up the life of Meena Keshwar Kamal, a woman who devoted 12 years of her short 30-year life to the struggle for peace and women’s rights in Afghanistan.[i] My fear, however, was that many of you might react to her story the way the poet Shilja Patel reacted when someone suggested that she read Meena’s biography. She responded, “I don’t want to hear more horrors and feel even more despair than I already do over the oppression of women in the world.” Eventually, out of guilt, she “picked up the book intending to flip through it as quickly as possible.”[ii] To her surprise, she found herself riveted and ultimately inspired.
Meena came of age in the heady student movements of the 1970s. In student discussions, the three M’s of Marx, Mao, and Mohammed featured prominently. Despite all the talk of revolution, students seemed to be missing what Meena saw as the most revolutionary change imaginable. In all of the speeches made by the men on campus, there was nothing about equality for women. Meena believed that to bring this about would require the fundamental transformation of the entire society.
Meena’s inclination for change could have been easily curtailed. Luckily, she avoided an arranged marriage that would have ended her university studies and her future ambitions. Instead, she found an unconditionally supportive husband who happened to come without a mother-in-law. Her husband was politically active, and she saw all of the support his organization gave to him for putting forth ideas and taking action. What Meena wanted was something that would give women the same support. She began by starting small and guarding the safety of the women involved. She contacted a few women who she knew and trusted. They met over tea and then invited their friends to join them. At the time, it seemed radical for women to simply have friends beyond their own families. To prevent authorities from discovering and apprehending them, they used false names to conceal their identities during meetings and only met in small clandestine clusters.
Despite such conditions, the women made shrewd use of the patriarchal limitations on their lives. Because their society was so segregated along the lines of gender, it was not unusual for women, unlike men, to gather privately by themselves for long hours at a time without raising the suspicions of authorities. In private, they could develop intimate bonds that held them together while the organizations of men fractured and splintered. In private, women from all backgrounds and classes discovered their oppression as women gave them something in common. And then, there were the burqas, the head-to-toe garments that women were sometimes forced to wear, especially in rural areas. The burqas proved to be a marvelous way to not only conceal their identities and give the impression of passive obedience, but to also secretly carry contraband and subversive newsletters.
Given their circumstances, it was not surprising that the first word the group selected in deciding upon their name was zan, the Farsi word for women. While numerous men would later become their supporters, they knew that men could not be counted on at that time. Political parties expected women to wait and have their needs met after the revolution. Meena translated this as meaning never. Then, there was the woman at a meeting who complained that all men did was “talk, talk, talk, and argue politics!” She wanted to be a part of group that “actually” helped people. Finally, there was the fact that the conditions faced by women gave them different goals to pursue and more obstacles to surmount. Despite the constrictions they faced as women, Meena took a positive outlook on their potential. She declared, “Women are an untapped source of great strength. Look at what we accomplish every day, feeding our families, caring for children. If we can come together to act in unison, we can make changes no one has dreamed of.”
The second word the women selected for their name was inkalab, meaning revolution, “because any attempt to change the lives of Afghan women would be truly revolutionary.” As a side note, I remember I was once at a church where I nervously suggested that we give part of our Easter offering to this organization. I was afraid people would be turned off by the word “revolutionary” and think I was supporting a bunch of Maoist guerrilla fighters. As it turned out, an outspoken woman in her 90s became the main champion of the cause in the church, and to my surprise we raised a remarkable amount of money.
The third word the women chose in forming their group was jamiat, meaning association, because they rejected the political party model. Parties sought power for its own sake, and they were dominated by those of a particular class and education. The group wanted an organization that would “be open to ordinary women, mothers, and students, who could contribute whatever time and resources they were able to give.” And, so the name of the organization became known as “The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan”-more popularly known by its acronym RAWA.
Despite its humble origins and despite tremendous persecution that included the killing of first Meena’s husband and then Meena herself, RAWA achieved some remarkable accomplishments in its early years. They taught literacy classes, offered nursing courses, started schools, printed textbooks, and opened orphanages and dormitories. Later, they would document and expose atrocities against Afghan women for the rest of the world. One CNN/BBC documentary featured film footage of Taliban executions in a soccer stadium. A RAWA member in the crowd had smuggled in a camera under her burqa. For their work, RAWA has received awards and recognitions throughout the world, even on Oprah.[iii]
For us in the United States, I suppose the easy thing would be to applaud the work of RAWA and be inspired by their fight against patriarchy in Afghanistan. I think the harder thing is to take it a step further and listen to what members of RAWA have to say about the role of the United States in Afghanistan. As one member said, “Our people’s dreams for liberation were shattered in the very first days after the invasion when they witnessed that the war criminals and Northern Alliance murderers and rapists who destroyed Afghanistan, were backed and brought back to power by the US and its allies after the fall of the Taliban regime.” She went on to say that “everyone knew that Afghanistan had once again become the centre of a chess game of the US and its allies who made the slogans of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ into painful jokes for our nation.”[iv]
Then, there was also the invasion’s grand rhetoric about helping the women of Afghanistan. The famous Indian author Arundhati Roy noted the belief that we could “bomb our way to a feminist paradise” in Afghanistan.[v] Instead, RAWA now tells us that conditions have not improved for women and in some areas they have become worse. In certain parts of the country, “the rate of kidnappings, rapes, selling of girls, forced marriages, acid attacks, prostitution and self-immolation by young girls and women has reached a record high, even compared to the Taliban regime.”[vi] Here in the United States we might throw up our hands in despair over this, but what about the women of RAWA? There is a poem about Meena written by one of their members. The poem speaks of how the spirit of Meena is still alive today. She’s present “in every RAWA action,” in every refugee blanket distribution, “in every school and every orphanage.” She is in the stadium filming the executions. She is even “there when you travel to strange lands to tell your story.”[vii]
When I think of the enduring lyrical power of the beatitudes, I don’t think it is because people hear them as a positive thinking mantra: You’re not oppressed, you’re blessed. I think it’s because people can hear them in almost any situation and still feel that somehow Jesus and the Kingdom of God are also present in that moment no matter how dire or perverse. In some ways, the original Greek is more powerful, it conveys the idea that the blessing of the Kingdom begins to be actualized in the declaring of it. Jesus was in effect declaring, “Hey, the Kingdom of God is right here right now. It’s in this community, and it’s for all those who are spat upon by the rest of society.” If Jesus were alive today, I wonder if he would look at the oppressed women of Afghanistan and say:
Blessed are you who have been kidnapped and tortured.
Blessed are you who have been forced into marriage or prostitution.
Blessed are you who grieve for the wounded and the dead.
And blessed are you who hunger and thirst for justice.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are the women of RAWA for theirs is the kingdom of God. Amen.
[i] Unless otherwise noted, the biographical information in this sermon about Meena Keshwar Kamal comes from Melody Ermachild Chavis, Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003).
[ii] The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, “Books on RAWA and Afghan Women,” <http://www.rawa.org/rawabooks.htm>.
[iii] The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, “Some RAWA Awards,” <http://www.rawa.org/awards.htm>.
[iv] Ian Sinclair, “Interview with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,” Z Magazine, (May 6, 2009), <http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21306>.
[v] The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, “Books on RAWA and Afghan Women,” <http://www.rawa.org/rawabooks.htm>.
[vi] Sinclair, see n. 4.
[vii] Neesha Mirchandani, “Meena Lives Within Us,” <http://www.rawa.org/neesha2.htm>.
