A reason to act, caught on video

Many a Hollywood cause has been built around film, but no one in the Feminist Majority Foundation ever expected that one of their most powerful recruiting tools would be a few minutes of cellphone video shot in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

The Feminist Majority is one of the oldest of the industry-connected organizations concerned with women’s issues. Co-founded by longtime Hollywood activist Peg Yorkin and strongly supported in recent years by Mavis Leno, wife of talk-show stalwart Jay, the organization has been moving strongly in recent weeks to put the situation of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the center of the U.S.’ foreign policy agenda.

Some of President Obama’s advisors have argued that the administration’s new approach to Islamic fundamentalism in that region should include a willingness to negotiate with the Taliban; it’s not an approach that wins favor with the feminist group.

“There’s no ‘moderate’ Taliban,” said Mavis Leno. “All of the Taliban is bad.”

The Feminist Majority’s efforts got a major boost when Taliban thugs who have taken over Pakistan’s scenic Swat Valley allowed themselves to be filmed flogging a helpless young woman.

Her supposed offense was refusal to marry a local Taliban commander. And when his men spotted her speaking with an electrician who had come to do work on her family home, they alleged that she had violated Islamic law and sentenced her to be flogged with 30 lashes of a cane. A group of men held her down while another beat her.

Someone in the crowd filmed the whole horrifying incident with their cellphone. (It moved within hours from its airing on local Pakistani networks onto YouTube.)

The video struck Hollywood like a lightning bolt, in part because the Feminist Majority already had a campaign in place working for the rights of Afghan women with a major fundraiser set for April 29 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“Everyone called over the weekend,” said Yorkin. “People are outraged.”

The cause got a further boost when the Afghan legislature passed a bill that essentially allows the country’s Shia Muslim men to rape their wives. German Chancellor Angela Merkel used her state visit to Kabul this week to tell Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the measure should be reviewed “very carefully.”

“We are glad that Obama is refocusing on Afghanistan,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “We need to make sure the women’s programs are indeed fulfilled. We recognize there are forces that want to establish a dictatorship in Afghanistan. That would be horrific for women. We can’t desert them now.”

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