Taliban Assassinates Womens-Rights Campaigner

Taliban assassins shot and killed one of Afghanistan’s leading reformers for womens’ rights , Safia Ama Jan. It isn’t as if Jan was sunbathing at the time, either — they shot her through her burka on her way to her job as Kandahar’s Womens’ Affairs director:

Suspected Taliban gunmen shot dead a leading women’s rights campaigner in Kandahar yesterday in the latest assassination of a government official in the restive southern provinces.
Women’s Affairs director, Safia Ama Jan, was killed on the city outskirts as she left for work yesterday morning. The assailants shot her four times in the head, through a burka, before fleeing.
Ms Ama Jan, 56, has been an advocate for women’s rights in Kandahar, the former Taliban headquarters, since the fundamentalists were ousted five years ago. Her murder appeared to mark a return to a strategy of intimidation and assassination after the defeat of Taliban fighters at the hands of a Nato force in western Kandahar this month.
Relatives described Ms Ama Jan as religious and a champion of women’s education for more than three decades. She stayed in Afghanistan under the Taliban to give secret classes to local girls at home.

I doubt you will read much more today in the media about Jan’s murder. The American press doesn’t discuss Afghanistan much anymore anyway, except to report bad news in the border regions. The Guardian reminds us that the Taliban pretty much shot its load as a military force and now have to return to their roots as assassins to influence events in Afghanistan.
Jan reveals the Taliban and their Islamist ilk for the cowards and oppressors they are. She did not enter beauty contests or convert to Christianity, two of the myriad reasons why the Taliban might choose to kill a woman. Jan even wore the burqa even after the Taliban fled from power. She modeled Muslim modesty and lived her life in a devout manner — but she refused to allow her fellow Afghani women to live in the darkness of ignorance. She dared to educate girls instead of leaving them as chattel to be bartered by Islamist men for their own purposes.
For these modest goals, the Taliban sentenced Jan to death. The radical Islamists fear freedom and education, especially when it comes to women in Islamic society. They are, in fact, cowards of the worst order, and their entire philosophy is based on that cowardice. They must win through intimidation, because radical Islam will never win through free choice. It will never live peacefully with other forms of government, Muslim or not, and it must be confronted and beaten wherever it raises its head.