If ever there was a symbol of the conflict between female education and tradition in Central and South Asia, this was it.

One of my students from the slums of Mumbai (where full black burqas are not uncommon), 15-year-old “Sally” takes the train to school everyday. Her parents had no idea that she was secretly meeting a boy before and after school (or also, presumably, while skipping school).

Until her boyfriend, all of 16 or 17, showed up (drunk) at her house one day, asking for Sally.  With very conservative parents, in a society that frowns upon most marriages that aren’t arranged, Sally paid the price for her boyfriend’s stupidity. Her father beat her. Then he forbid her from attending school, and prepared to send her back to her rural village to live with relatives where she would learn to be a “respectable woman.”

Around the same time, another student, 13-year-old “Mary,” found herself in equally hot water for “talking to a boy.” Mary’s father followed much the same pattern. He beat her. He stopped her from going to school. He threatened to send her to the village where she would learn to be a “respectable wife.” Finally he decided just to marry her off to a man more than twice her age.

Both Mary and Sally’s families see female education as a threat to their traditional way of life. They believe that without education, their daughters would not be dishonoring their family; without the independence that school provides, Mary and Sally would not have the freedom to make choices – whether about their future or about talking to boys.  In the eyes of these two conservative families, education does not represent progress, but a degradation of their culture.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, while attending an opening of a girls school in northern Afghanistan with Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea), described the resentment and violence that female education generates in conservative societies.

“[S]ince 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls…

It’s about the war of ideas within Islam – a war between religious zealots who…want to keep Islam untouched by modernity…with its women disempowered…”

He goes on to defend the so-called “war on terror” as necessary in order to protect the young Afghan girls attending the schools that Mortenson helps build (more than 170 so far).

“America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change…a new generation – can be educated and raised differently.”

But Friedman, as usual, is wrong.

First, Mortenson was building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan before 9/11 and the U.S. military invasion. And, more to the point, Mortenson was succeeding in transforming attitudes, traditions, and culture. I’m not sure how having an armed, lethal, and an often indiscriminate American military lurking in the countryside makes Mortenson’s job any easier.

Secondly, Friedman blames religion. He views the repressive customs and patriarchal society of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where women are sometimes forced to wear the burqa, as an Islamic issue.

But consider my students “Sally and Mary” in Mumbai, India’s most cosmopolitan city. Both of them face the same oppressive culture as do girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the same aversion to female education within their families, the same suppression of choices, freedoms, and their future.

Yet neither Sally nor Mary wears the burqa. Neither do their mothers. They do not have fathers that use an 8th century literal interpretation of the Quran. Their struggle does not fit into the dichotomy of “moderate” versus “back-to-the-stone-age” Islam.

Because Sally and Mary are Hindu.

Many societies’ fear of female education is not rooted in religion, but culture. What we are seeing in Central and South Asia where women are oppressed is a struggle to adapt culture to modernity. The West has a positive role to play, as Mortenson has shown. But we must choose that role wisely.

There are four ways that the West tries to reconcile culture and modernity:

• First, we try to eliminate culture.

French President Sarkozy’s recent quest to ban the burqa is an example (France has already banned many religious items in public schools). The concept that simply banning a piece of clothing will somehow set women free is naïve.

Sally and Mary don’t wear the burqa. Are they any more free?

• Second, we try to impose culture on modernity.

Modern and enlightened science has proven the genetic basis for sexual orientation. Modernity demands equal rights, including gay marriage.

But Western society fights this form of modernization, and uses the power of public fear to impose antiquated, Christian culture that denies freedom to homosexuals.

• Third, we use violence to force modernity on culture.

The West believes secular democracy is the only way to structure society, and we use our military to force other societies to adopt our “modern” idea as their own. The illegal invasion of Iraq and the refusal to acknowledge democratic victories of Islamic politics in Palestine are examples of our unwillingness to accept other forms of government that don’t fit our “modern” mold.

Friedman’s argument that we need the U.S. military in Afghanistan to create more of Mortenson’s schools falls into this category. Remember, Mortenson was already building schools – and succeeding in building relationships that transcended religious and cultural differences – without the American military.

Mortenson’s pre-9/11 success perfectly illustrates the fourth way to reconcile culture and modernity:

• We can transform culture through peaceful human relationships.

Interaction, communication, respect, sharing of ideas, tolerance, and inclusion are the best ways to unite modern ideas and culture without creating hostility.

If our modern ideas about democracy, freedom, and human rights are really that virtuous – and I believe they are – there is no need to shove them down other people’s throat with the barrel of a gun. We don’t have to eliminate old traditions in the name of modernity. We don’t need to impose biblical fears and oppress human rights.

Friedman’s problem is he thinks military force is transformation, and he confuses culture with religion.  But as long as we are dropping bombs from unmanned drones on civilian villages, causing “collateral damage” and creating orphans and widows, any U.S. presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere will be seen as force – creating predictably violent reactions.

And as long as Hindu (and Christian) women in India – who have no visible burqa for the West to demonize – continue to face the same oppression, lack of freedoms, and denial of education, the struggle is about culture, not religion.