starting to be talked about openly by individual prominent Moslems in the world.
We are not doing the local Islamic community in Australia any favours by avoiding the issues which are uppermost
on our minds re what is happening overseas. Howard, Costello and other politicians are also putting the cards on the table.
Protecting their fellow Islamists who are the moderates should be paramount on the agenda of the Australian community. Mahathir's daughter is speaking up (see below) and Dr. Sultan who was interviewed on Al Jazeera (also on JewsRead). Their lives are threatened and unless everone really supports the right to free-speech here and stops avoiding the various issues
which confront Islam today, nothing will change for
a) their women in the Islamic world; b) the poor people who are citizens of Islamic countries or fighting the Islamists;
c)for us all confronting Islamic terrorists & terrorism.
See http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000016.html
: "Who are the moderate Muslims, and why do they not speak up?" They are out there, and they are speaking up now. Too often we have read, in the writings of Zionist advocates, that Islam and democracy are incompatible, and that "Muslims" are uniformly intolerant. Perhaps it is true of many Muslims. Surely it is not true of all. The "Muslim world" today, after all, comprises over a billion and a quarter people. That is about as many people as there were in the entire world 150 years ago, and they are spread all over the globe, living in a variety of societies.
Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose. ... "I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.(Al Jazeera on MEMRI)
Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."
ETC>
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IMO
Protecting the indefensible just propagates more victimhood in the world. Let's avoid it in Australia. I have seen the avoidance of speaking-up about our concerns when we mix with Moslems in our community groups, which only makes them feel that we have something to be ashamed of rather than vice-versa! When we at tried to protest about the stoning to death of a poor-woman in Saudi Arabia through the Women's Movement, the Islamic women went on the defensive and put it as coming from an "anti-Islamic" website and "the Jews"! It's OK for them to be "anti-Zionists" but not for us to protest about the Islamists?
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From: Marina Mahathir <>
Date: Mar 7, 2006 4:16 PM
Subject: My column tomorrow censored!
To: Marina <>
Dear all,
For the first time in some 17 years, The Star is refusing to publish
my column tomorrow which is International Women's Day.
they said that the powers-that-be there think it's too tough on the government and
it's not the right platform etc etc...
So am sending it to you. You can pass it on wherever you like.
cheers,
marina
Subject: FW: FW: Fw: Marina Mahathir's column censored!
Date sent: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:03:52 +1000
To:
Marina Mahathir for The Star (Not published)
In 1948, one of humankind’s most despicable ideas, apartheid, was made into law in South Africa where racial discrimination was institutionalized. Race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of “white-only” jobs. Although there were 19 million blacks and only 4.5 million whites in South Africa, the majority population were forced to be second-class citizens in their homeland, banished to reserves and needing passports to travel outside them, even within their own country. It was only in 1990 that apartheid began to crumble and South Africans of all colours were finally free to live as equals in every way.
With the end of that racist system, people may be forgiven for thinking that apartheid does not exist anymore. While few countries practice any formal systems of discrimination, nevertheless you can find many forms of discrimination everywhere. In many cases, it is women who are discriminated against. In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women.
We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women who are arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women. Non-Muslim Malaysian women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the opposite has happened for Muslim women.
For instance, since the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, polygamy among non-Muslims was banned. Previously men could have as many wives as they wanted under customary laws. Men’s ability to unilaterally pronounce divorce on their wives was abolished and in its place, divorce happens by mutual consent or upon petition by either spouse in an equal process where the grounds are intolerable adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion of not less than two years, and living separately for not less than two years. Compare that to the lot of Muslim women abandoned but not divorced by their husbands.
Other progressive reforms in the civil family law in the late 1990s were amendments to the Guardianship Act and the Distribution Act. The Guardianship of Infants Act 1961 was amended to provide for equal guardianship for both father and mother, rather than the previous provision where only the father was the primary guardian of the children. In contrast, the Islamic Family Law still provides for the father as the sole primary guardian of his children although the mother is now allowed to sign certain forms for her children under an administrative directive.
The Distribution Act 1958 was also amended to provide for equal inheritance for widows and widowers, and also granted children the right to inherit from their mothers as well as from their fathers. Under the newly proposed amendments to the Islamic Family Law, the use of gender neutral language on the issue of matrimonial property is discriminatory on Muslim women when other provisions in the IFL are not gender-neutral. Muslim men may still contract polygamous marriages, may unilaterally divorce their wives for the most trivial of reasons (including by SMS, unique in the Muslim world) and are entitled to double shares of inheritance.
These differences between the lot of Muslim women and non-Muslim women beg the question: do we have two categories of citizenship in Malaysia, whereby most female citizens have less rights than others? As non-Muslim women catch up with women in the rest of the world, Muslim women here are only going backwards. We should also note that only in Malaysia are Muslim women regressing; in every other Muslim country in the world, women have been gaining rights, not losing them.
In this country, our leaders claim to stand for all citizens. Our Prime Minister is the Prime Minister of all Malaysians, our Ministers work for all Malaysians in their respective fields. There are two exceptions to this. The Minister for Islamic Affairs is obviously only for Muslims; even though some of the things he does affect others. While the Minister for Women purports to work for all Malaysian women, even though not all Malaysian women benefit from that work. Perhaps we should consolidate the apartheid of women in this country by having a Ministry for Non-Muslim Women which works to ensure that Non-Muslim women enjoy the benefits of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, a UN document which Malaysia signed and is legally bound to implement, and a Ministry for Muslim Women which works to gag and bind Muslim women more and more each day for the sake of political expediency under the guise of religion.
Today is International Women’s Day. Unfortunately only about 40% of the women in this country can celebrate. The rest can only look at their Non-Muslim sisters in despair and envy.
--ends—
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