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'Cautionary Tale': MSNBC's Joy Reid Likens Taliban's Mistreatment of Women to Religious Right in US

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  August 14, 2021 8:45 PM

MSNBC host Joy Reid, who is known for her particularly deranged takes, tweeted something absurd even for her. On Saturday, she warned that the plight of Afghan women at the hands of the Taliban is a "cautionary tale" for women in the United States.

Reid did not clarify who she was speaking of with this "far religious right dreaming of a theocracy" in the United States.

Republican strategist Matt Whitlock had the receipts to prove that Reid has made this same comparison countless times.

Others joined in to point out the absurdity of such a tweet.

Even a user who identified as someone who is "no fan of the evangelical right" wasn't thrilled.

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Some users also used the tweet as a reminder that staff from The Bulwark have gone on Reid's MSNBC show, "The ReidOut."

Others pointed out the historic amount of women in Congress.

As we've covered before, Reid has welcomed those on her show who make other comparisons when it comes to the Taliban, as former Lincoln Project senior adviser Kurt Bardella did in May. "I've been thinking to myself this whole time, you know, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the people who wanted to do harm to our nation and to our way of life and democracy, they got nothing on what this Republican Party is doing," Bardella said, during a segment. He doubled down on such remarks. 

When it comes to their treatment of women, the Taliban do not merely turn them away from getting an education. 

As the Feminist Majority Foundation outlined:

Upon seizing power, the Taliban regime instituted a system of gender apartheid effectively thrusting the women of Afghanistan into a state of virtual house arrest. Under Taliban rule women were stripped of all human rights – their work, visibility, opportunity for education, voice, healthcare, and mobility. When they took control in 1996, the Taliban initially imposed strict edicts that:

  • Banished women from the workforce
  • Closed schools to girls and women and expelled women from universities
  • Prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative
  • Ordered the publicly visible windows of women’s houses painted black and forced women to wear the burqa (or chadari) – which completely shrouds the body, leaving only a small mesh-covered opening through which to see
  • Prohibited women and girls from being examined by male physicians while at the same time prohibited female doctors and nurses from working

Women were brutally beaten, publicly flogged, and killed for violating Taliban decrees. Even after international condemnation, the Taliban made only slight changes. Some say it was progress when the Taliban allowed a few women doctors and nurses to work, even while hospitals still had segregated wards for women. In Kabul and other cities, a few home schools for girls operated in secret. In addition, women who conducted home schools.

Such mistreatment and abuse has been the subject of articles, scholarly articles, as well as web pages, including an archived version of the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. 

The Taliban are referenced in a Brookings report from September 2020 by John R. Allen and Vanda Felbab-Brown on "The fate of women’s rights in Afghanistan."

A TIME article by Lauren Bohn from December 8, 2018 lamented that "'We're All Handcuffed in This Country.' Why Afghanistan Is Still the Worst Place in the World to Be a Woman."