Aisha, Afghan Teen Mutilated By Taliban, Unveils New Nose (VIDEO)

The mutilated Afghan girl featured on a controversial Time magazine cover unveiled a new nose at a California benefit this weekend, where she was also honored with a prestigious award.

ABC reports that 19-year-old 'Bibi' Aisha looked cheerful and stylish as she accepted the Enduring Heart Award from the Grossman Burn Foundation, the Los Angeles-based humanitarian organization that is providing her with eight months of reconstructive procedures. While she continues to undergo treatment, Aisha has been provided with a Hollywood-style prosthetic nose which she can apply herself daily in the meantime.

On hand to present Aisha with her award was Maria Shriver, wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "This is the first Enduring Heart award given to a woman whose heart endures and who shows us all what it means to have love and to be the enduring heart," Shriver reportedly told the crowd. Also attending the ceremony was former first lady Laura Bush, whose work has touched on the plight of Afghan women.

Aisha, who has never revealed her surname for fear of reprisal, told Time that her nose and ears had been cut off by her Taliban fighter husband after she ran away. She had been married at 18 as part of a "blood debt" after her uncle killed one of her husband's relatives.

Watch video of Aisha accepting her award here:

Comments

[Linoln]

07:16 PM on 12/08/2010

I am also an Afghan Muslim and it breaks my heart to see how some of our less fortunate beautiful young ladies are savagely tortured. I could not hold back my tears as I was watching this video. What troubles me the most is how these girls are forced into marriage for money or revenge and I blame the family, and by family I mean the men only. The majority of women in tribal areas have no rights and are treated worse than animals and this is due to lack of awareness about Islam and their false ideologies. As a practicing Muslim my family has given me the right to complete medical school and choose my own life partner; this is how Islam teaches us to be kind and gentle towards our children and wives. But after reading a few comments from some of you attacking Islam whenever you get a chance, I just wanted to clear the air and shed some light. Please don't use religion as a verbal weapon and think that all Muslims are like this and that Islam teaches us to act this way.

[Kc yea]

09:03 PM on 10/17/2010

Wow! What a great outcome to such a horrid story. Everyday I find something to complain about with my life then I remember these stories and think to myself what do I have to complain about!!!

[immortal]

10:08 AM on 10/17/2010

Lets hope they don't send her back to Afghanistan. To Bibi: Cheers!

[harrymudd]

08:37 AM on 10/16/2010

I want to see her Taliban husband kicked to Gitmo for a lifetime of prison.

[harrymudd]

07:47 AM on 10/16/2010

I am happy to see here restored to normal very attractive form. The Islamists are animals. I hope the left wing American supporters of the finally get it. This brutality is what some here want us to "make peace" with. Yeh right.

[MiraMcB]

07:38 PM on 10/14/2010

Love to see this. I am so happy for Bibi and hopeful for her future. I hope a way can be found for her to never have to return to Afghanistan. Beautiful, sweet girl and deserving of every opportunity.

[RegCorleonis]

09:36 AM on 10/14/2010

If cutting off noses and ears were a muslim or Taliban phenomenon, there would be thousands of women like this in Afghanistan. Just because Time magazine found one does not indict Islam or the Taliban, just as children incinerated by white phosphorus in Falluja or at Afghan weddings does not indict America as a whole. Bibi Aisha's story is tragic and her experience is wrong on so many levels. But it is not a pretext for the continued occupation, nor should it be exploited as an opportunity for such crass propaganda.

[MiraMcB]

07:34 PM on 10/14/2010

Obviously you need to better inform yourself. There are, indeed, thousands of women, young and old, just like Bibi in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries who have suffered this way. These cruel people not only enjoy cutting off noses and ears, but lips and gouging out eyes. Another popular technique is to throw acid into these girls/women's faces. Many do not survive that and, if they do, are most often horribly and irreparably disfigured. Shelters set up by foreign aid workers in Afghan are FULL of these women. Then there are the beatings, stonings, beheadings, shootings, stabbings, genital mutilations and more. The internet is FULL of testimonials from women who have suffered this way and from journalists and aid workers who have witness the results. Do a little homework.

[furby4]

02:27 AM on 10/15/2010

You don't have to go halfway around the world to find stuff like that. I once had a neighbor who beat his wife quite regularly, knocked the picture frames right off my wall when he threw her around. I would have helped but I'm a woman and I feared him. Police aren't able to protect anyone who interferes with a wife beater. I imagine there are also shelters and jails in the US full of thousands of these women. And those only the ones that got away. Then there are the thousands who suffer silently. So putting this woman in the spotlight is good for her, but it's also propaganda (notice the right wing politicians in the footage).

[General Armchair]

06:39 AM on 10/15/2010

From John Kerry's testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee in 1971:

"They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam,in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Here's the whole speech, worth a re-reading at this point in our history:

http://www.themoderntribune.com/john_kerry_speech_viet_nam_us_congress.htm

Too bad Kerry continues to support this particular mistake...sigh....

[harrymudd]

07:48 AM on 10/16/2010

There are thousands of them. I do indict Islam. I do indict their left wing supporters out here. Keep defending the indefensible.

[RegCorleonis]

11:41 AM on 10/16/2010

Harry, no one is defending this barbaric mutilation of a child. And, as it happens, there are not thousands of women walking around Afghanistan without noses, otherwise this type of propaganda would have been exploited long before Time Magazine did so in 2010. To indict Islam for this is just bigoted. To assume the Taliban as an organisation promoted or otherwise condoned this crime is pure ignorance. The CIA, on the other hand, are on record (thanks to Wikileaks) as advising their satraps in the military to exploit this kind of propaganda in order to manufacture consent for the war among people like harrymudd. The perpetrator of this horrific misdeed is a textbook CIA strawman. Also a matter of record is the following official statement released by the Talban on the subject of Bibi Aisha ...

"As far as the story of Aisha is concerned, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has condemned this barbaric, inhumane and unislamic act and declare that this case has never been forwarded to any court or persons of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. ... In sacred Islamic law, cutting of human ears and noses whether the human is alive or dead is illegal and prohibited. ... Under shariate law if someone carries out this heinous act, the same thing will be done to the criminal that carried out this act.”

[MARTYB]

06:22 AM on 10/14/2010

To all the people who made this happen for this woman, a heartfelt thank you.

[GerryS]

08:07 PM on 10/13/2010

you go girl--

[MAlas]

06:58 PM on 10/13/2010

I have never seen a culture of ppl that abhor their women more than anything...I call this insanity, I mean how do you treat your own mother, daughter, sister, and wife...worse than cow shit, I tell ya karma is a bitch when we see pics of Abu Gharib...or torture in Guantanamo...don't get me wrong, all I am saying is, as long as the a-holes continue to humiliate their women, don't expect bigger forces, like the US invasions to treat them any better...

What makes me even more angry in these cultural situations, is the mother in laws or the husbands family is on it, and encourage and join in on the abuse, even WORSE is the young victim cannot go back home, because its now b/w husband and wife...

I wont go on and rant about how this is unIslamic...I am Muslim, and blessed with two of the most humble men in the world, my father and older brother...however these barbarians unfortunately are Muslims, and decent and rational Muslims really need to pull up their sleeves, and get these ppl off their opium, and back to reality...

Its just mind blogging...

[smolensk-lies]

02:48 AM on 10/14/2010

i ask an honest question as someone who wants to understand more - why do muslim women not fight for their rights? why must outsiders fight for them? try cutting in line in front of an American woman at the local ice cream stand - and you will see a woman speak up for herself.

[Musa1]

07:18 PM on 10/14/2010

What exactly are you talking about by "fight for your rights"?

Are you asking why women are not doing what YOU think women should do?

Do you know anything about Afghanistan's past 50 years and the state of affairs after 40 years of occupation and insurgency, civil war, embargoes, and occupation and insurgency ?

What do you know about American women?
Are you an American woman?

[MiraMcB]

07:37 PM on 10/14/2010

Because they can't. They will be immediately taken out and killed, usually by some painful, cruel and horrific method. The only way this will stop is if the men in these countries rise up - enmasse - to protest it themselves and make a change. In fact, in Afghanistan, some men have tried in the recent past. They are now, themselves, dead.

[randy of the netses]

05:41 PM on 10/13/2010

This is a touching story. I hope that one day she will reach a point in her life when she can remove the scarf she is wearing ... and throw off that symbol of religious and cultural enslavement and stand before her God as the strong person she has become. She has earned such a day.

[MAlas]

07:07 PM on 10/13/2010

These women are still teated like shit...regardless, its a culture that is deeply embedded in the back of their minds...

The core problem is the man...aka bitch...and his ego...

Whether this man is moderate, nonreligious, religious, extreme, sinner, pious, secular....they just don't understand why women should equal men...that I don't know why...

She cannot run away from culture, but face it and fight it...its a hard one, but its much needed for the future generations...

[moflard]

09:56 AM on 10/14/2010

It's not *just* the men, the women are involved too. Look at female genital mutilation, it's mainly done by women and insisted upon by women.

[harrymudd]

07:52 AM on 10/16/2010

I agree. The hijab is worse than the mutilation because it is self inflicted.

[CoronaDischarge]

04:42 PM on 10/13/2010

Apparently she still has more work ahead for her. I hope the worst is behind though, and a lifetime of happiness ahead.

Godspeed.

[Luke Friesen]

03:54 PM on 10/13/2010

she is very pretty, she could even be a model

[RachelMc]

06:02 PM on 10/13/2010

for what when she could be a doctor, scientist, women rights leader, etc....

[immortal]

10:01 AM on 10/17/2010

Yeah, something other than A S*X Model. Thanks!

[MAlas]

06:47 PM on 10/13/2010

why not the president of Afghan, confront her abusers, fight back for her country, and freedom of her sisters...

smh

[nobodysgirl]

03:53 PM on 10/13/2010

Aisha, you are lovely beyond words! It's your beautiful soul shining through!

I'm so very happy for you.

[Mark Shotzberger]

03:44 PM on 10/13/2010

She is a lovely young lady. I hope she & her Family can stay here in the US.

Good luck to you Bibi!