What Extremism Looks Like

If you’ve seen the recent statements from Ryan Walters about “out of state atheists” trying to keep Oklahomans from “exercising ... freedom of religion,” two things are clear: Superintendent Walters doesn’t understand what freedom of religion means, and we should all be afraid of how he is trying to remake Oklahoma schools.

Does he have any idea of what it’s like to live in a country where only one religion is allowed, where the patriarchy rules, and where severe punishments are handed out to everyday citizens for living their lives?

Perhaps he should read the Parvana books by Deborah Ellis.

Ellis spent time in the refugee camps of Pakistan, in the 1990s, interviewing refugees who had escaped from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. What happened to those she interviewed happens to the characters in her series.

In The Breadwinner, the first book in the series, Parvana lives in a partially destroyed apartment building in Kabul with her mother, her older sister, and a young brother. Before the Taliban took control, her family was middle class.  Her mother was a writer for a radio station. She and her older brother and sister were in school. Now, her brother is dead and her father is in prison.

The Taliban has decreed that women can’t leave their homes unless accompanied by an adult male family member. How does one exist, then, when there is no adult male in the house?

Parvana cuts her hair, puts on her dead brother’s clothes, and goes to the market to earn enough money to feed her family. Her older sister, too, finds a way to be useful. As in pre-Civil War America, she and other brave people set up moveable secret schools.

In this time of war and extremism, with that extremism seeping into our state government, this is an essential series to read. What happened in the ‘90s in Afghanistan is happening again. We can’t let it happen here.