At the Woman to Woman centre, 20 women of all ages were sitting on the floor, all them with burkas left hanging on pegs by the door. Despite the absence of outward change, were things getting better for them now that the Taliban had gone? There was a spontanteous chorus of cries, hands raised in the air, laughter, sighing, exclamations - my translator could not keep up with their energetic assertions that life had changed beyond recognition. This relative liberation - freedom to walk outside for many who had never left their one room in years - was hard to imagine. "I never saw the light of day in five years!" one widow said.

So why did they still wear burkas? A gnarled and toothless old woman from the countryside (who might be no more than 50 - already beyond the average life expectancy here) said she had worn hers since she was seven and she could not imagine the nakedness of going without it. But she thought the younger women soon would and should shed it. These women were the poorest, many of them homeless, uprooted by war, or among the country's two million war widows. "We wear the burka because we are still afraid," several said. It is too dangerous; and besides, the psychological effect of five years of terror is not easily erased at a stroke. How many thought they would take them off some time soon? Eight of the 20 raised their hands, mostly the younger ones, though only five said they had ever worn a burka before the Taliban came.

However symbolic they seem, the truth is that the burka is the very least of their problems, mere outward garments, easily discarded. The inner scars of the way women are treated here in this darkly savage place will be harder to erase. As the women talked of their lives, terrible stories tumbled out. Though none of them knew each other already, they wept when they listened to one another. Fahina, a woman in her 30s, wearing a thin black veil and swaying back and forth a little as she spoke, began to tell how she was beaten daily by her husband, a drug addict who had sold everything in the house. So why did this woman not leave a dangerous drug-addict husband who drained her money away? Because, she explained, she would have to leave her 12-year-old daughter behind with him. By now several other women were crying in sympathy.

At the start of this session, many had proclaimed that women should have absolutely equal rights with men, so I asked the translator if they thought it right and fair that this abusive father should keep the child. The translator looked at me nervously and whispered, "I don't think I can ask that." "Why not?" "Because it is our Islamic law, in the Koran, that after the age of nine a daughter belongs to the father." "But ask them if it is fair in this extreme case?" Quietly the translator asked them, and they fell silent and gazed down at the carpet. No one spoke until Fahina, the battered wife, said softly, "It is the law", with tears falling down her face.

Once the shutter of religion falls, the rest is silence. The women are indoctrinated so deep with it that their own inferiority is branded on their brains. Every time sophisticated Muslims in the west use sophistry to explain that the prophet was actually a great liberator of women, every time they fail to condemn outright some of the Koranic laws themselves and demand reformation, they help condemn women across the Islamic world to this self-immolating damage.

Wendy I too am not muslim, but hey, even you've got to agree that islam is better for women then this crazy democratic garbage that Bush and his puppets like Blair, are trying to govern people under. For instance muslim women cover themselves and do not want to show their bodies, im all for that. Whereas western women do the opposite they show their breasts etc, and expect respect from us men, you've got to be stupid, the only thing their gonna get from us is the want to take them to bed. The only thing that i feel where the religion of islam lacks, in fact its not the religion its the people. Islam in all its purity does as they say liberate women, because the way i look at it, women will be only judged on their intellect and faith rather then if they are a 38DD chest size. One question though, why do so many muslim women not wear the hijab, or like in afghanisatan the RWADA (a womens group) are trying to oppose wearing the hijab, when it clearly states in your Quran and elsewhere that the muslim women are obliged to wear the Hijab!?! By the way Christian women are obliged to wear a headscarf to Wendy, so a hope your doing your bit for the Christian faith, whens the last time you saw a picture of Mary without her Hijab?

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Another thing, for the person who thinks that we are opressed women in islam, i dont think so. Whats so oppressed about us huh?
Allah tells us to wear the hijab, ok? did you ever actually think with you brains and say why? or did you just listen what them ignorant ones say that Allah is opressing us, or islam....or whatever.!
How are we opressed when allah is trying to protect us? How are we opressed when we get sooooooo much respect from people more than the one who do show off there body like what keanbin said?? How are we opressed when woman were mentioned in the quran sooooo many times...not sure how many.... but alot mashallah!
Getting raped, isn't that oppression? Getting sexually harrassed, you dont call that oppression? Just being used as a sex material...AINT THAT OPPRESSION??† You tell me! Or is that just how kuffar live? like animals! And say that we are oppressed....Subhan allah! How many muslim woman do you hear everyday getting raped??? NONE! because Hijab is not just a peice of scarf on our heads, Hijab means a covering, and protection from people and eyes!