A Revolution Named Zahra:
by Kathleen Parker .
In some parts of the world, a woman can be destroyed at a man's whim without consequence.
There's a "new" old name suddenly in circulation that is both filled with ancient history and ripe with a revolutionary spirit for today's game-changing events.
Zahra.
Well known to Muslims, Fatima az-Zahra was one of four daughters of the prophet Muhammad. Today, Zahra is also the name of two important, outspoken women of Iran.
One is Zahra Rahnavard, the courageous and charismatic wife of the allegedly defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. The other is Zahra Khanum, the equally courageous and charismatic woman portrayed in a new movie, "The Stoning of Soraya M.," about the death of an Iranian woman on trumped-up charges of adultery.
Begging forgiveness for this confederacy of cliches, but we seem to have a perfect storm of tipping points.
Beneath the surface of news blasts covering Iran's tainted elections, riots, protester deaths and government crackdowns, a subtext of women's rights is emerging. It is a subtext only to the extent that women's oppression isn't often acknowledged directly -- not even by the leader of the free world. But human rights are at the core of what is occurring now.
A government that oppresses its people can only sustain itself with violence, as the world is witnessing yet again as thousands take to Iran's streets. And, in Iran as elsewhere in the Muslim world, violence against women -- as well as against homosexuals and others considered inferior according to the mullahs' masculinist standards -- isn't only permitted but justified with religious doctrine.
Mousavi challenged these notions -- and the government, apparently, saw fit that he lose. Even in the midst of so much heat, Mousavi's wife, Zahra, on Monday urged students at a Tehran University protest to hold fast in their resistance. Climb to the rooftops, she said, and shout, "God is great!"
Zahra R., who holds a PhD in political science and was an adviser to former president Mohammad Khatami, also has been vocal in urging reforms that would eliminate "morality police" as well as end discrimination against women.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that monument to self-confident masculinity, reportedly was so undone by Zahra's power on the campaign trail that he questioned whether her doctorate was legitimate.
Americans will begin getting a glimpse of the other Zahra as soon as "The Stoning" opens in select cities. Based on a true story, the movie is adapted from French Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam's 1994 novel of the same name.
In the film, produced by Stephen McEveety ("Braveheart" and "The Passion of the Christ"), the journalist-author is stranded in a small village when his car breaks down. Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo) dodges the threatening stares of her fellow villagers and persuades the reporter to come to her house and record her story. Evil has visited her village, she tells him, and she wants the world to know.
Briefly, Zahra's niece Soraya, mother of four, had been accused of adultery by her abusive, unfaithful husband. The truth was that he wanted a divorce so he could marry another. When Soraya refused, he and the village mullah conspired to accuse her of adultery.
As the title suggests, Soraya was convicted and condemned to death by stoning.
I saw a rough cut of this film several months ago. Since that time, I've been unable to shake the story or images that I suspect will haunt me forever. Be forewarned: It is brutal. McEveety and director Cyrus Nowrasteh felt that the stoning scene needed to be accurately portrayed or the film would be an insult to Soraya's suffering.
It will be hard for many to get through to the end, but staying with the movie brings a reward. Despite the brutality, the film is also beautiful and true. It reminds us that a woman in some parts of the world can be destroyed at a man's whim without consequence. The beauty is that truth will out.
"The Stoning," which will be in most theaters June 26, was intentionally timed for release after Iran's elections. Dennis Rice, charged with promoting the movie, figured the election would help create interest, but he didn't anticipate the serendipitous intersection of the two Zahras. "Irony?" he asks. "I think not."
In Arabic, Zahra means "The Shining One."
In English, we'd call that a beacon.
-------------------------------------------------------------
This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
See this article online:
http://www.aish.com/societyWork/arts/A_Revolution_Named_Zahra.asp
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Monday, June 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
WHAT’S IN A DRESS CODE ? Bare or burkha?
Baring it all or covering up,- is that the question for women of the world today?
I recently read a newspaper article by an Australian journalist who after traveling for a couple of weeks through Morocco where she wore loose clothing masking her body shape to conform with the local customs where women were totally covered up,- she then returned to Italy to find herself being taken aback by the open sexuality which is normal in that country. The contrast suddenly made her feel almost prudish and she wondered whether to return to wearing her usual figure-hugging jeans!
Questioning the Islamic way of covering up their women,- from just the hair, to almost totally as in Afghanistan,- whether it is a liberating experience or a form of enslavement for the women, the journalist was trying to justify those burkha-clad women who claimed that they prefer their dress code to the Western one. This is where we start to go from one extreme to the other. Head coverings,- whether with wigs or scarves or saris,- are common in many cultures. Observant orthodox Jewish women, moderate Moslem women, as well as many religious sects in many countries, will traditionally cover their hair in some fashion, while also dressing modestly to cover-up most of their figures. These women will often claim to make a “statement” through this form of dress,- i.e. they openly declare their faith or culture to the world at large. But if someone doesn't like this form of dress, they should be able to declare their dislike without being labelled "anti-Semitic" or just "racist".We all have freedom of choice in a democracy, including the likes and dislikes of other people's form of dress, particularly in public places of employment.
The rest of women’s attire should also reflect the traditions of the country in which they live, not the one from which they or their previous generations may have originated. For example, covering up of women in Sharia-Islamic countries seems to be not a matter of choice but of strict official control. Where there is no freedom of choice it is obviously a form of subservience for the women at the behest of their patriarchal and theocratic societies. The men must become totally lascivious as a result of not seeing any other female forms except their own families in their own homes’ - unless they travel to the West (or frequent brothels, which probably abound aplenty in those countries)! With polygamy allowed and practiced under Sharia law in many Islamic countries, not to mention child-brides and so called “honour killings” if any female even dares to question her fate, it is no wonder those men want to maintain their hegemony over their womenfolk.
One reads of frequent rapes in such countries which on top of it, are then blamed on the poor female victims because “she must have asked for it”! There is in addition, still the barbaric slave trade where young girls are sold by their poverty-stricken families in many third-world countries, while the trafficking of women and girls is a growing menace in most parts of the world. Most of these archaic trades in human lives are happening in countries where women are kept covered up from head to toe, in public.
DRESS FOR RESPECT.
Such covering-up of females in Western societies is totally uncalled-for and should be also unacceptable for those who immigrate from other cultures.. This does not mean that some amount of self-control should not be exercised even in our cultures in the democratic West, by choosing the appropriate form of dress to suit the climate, the environment in which one finds oneself and respect for the effect one’s attire has on others. Flaunting one’s bodily assets in public by the very young, is not a sign of freedom of expression in appearance but an attention-seeker, while a more mature approach requires a modicum of common sense. The former may attract perhaps some unwanted attention, while the latter should command respect
As they say “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”,- unless a woman wants to draw attention to herself. Then she must ask herself,- what is the kind of attention that she seeks.By avoiding the extremes, no one will question her,- but the wrong dress on the wrong person in the wrong place may have unpleasant consequences! Women, particularly the young don’t have to go the extreme of baring it all, nor covering up in burkhas in our Western democracies. Our men have to learn self-control and our women, independent self-respect.
MM
I recently read a newspaper article by an Australian journalist who after traveling for a couple of weeks through Morocco where she wore loose clothing masking her body shape to conform with the local customs where women were totally covered up,- she then returned to Italy to find herself being taken aback by the open sexuality which is normal in that country. The contrast suddenly made her feel almost prudish and she wondered whether to return to wearing her usual figure-hugging jeans!
Questioning the Islamic way of covering up their women,- from just the hair, to almost totally as in Afghanistan,- whether it is a liberating experience or a form of enslavement for the women, the journalist was trying to justify those burkha-clad women who claimed that they prefer their dress code to the Western one. This is where we start to go from one extreme to the other. Head coverings,- whether with wigs or scarves or saris,- are common in many cultures. Observant orthodox Jewish women, moderate Moslem women, as well as many religious sects in many countries, will traditionally cover their hair in some fashion, while also dressing modestly to cover-up most of their figures. These women will often claim to make a “statement” through this form of dress,- i.e. they openly declare their faith or culture to the world at large. But if someone doesn't like this form of dress, they should be able to declare their dislike without being labelled "anti-Semitic" or just "racist".We all have freedom of choice in a democracy, including the likes and dislikes of other people's form of dress, particularly in public places of employment.
The rest of women’s attire should also reflect the traditions of the country in which they live, not the one from which they or their previous generations may have originated. For example, covering up of women in Sharia-Islamic countries seems to be not a matter of choice but of strict official control. Where there is no freedom of choice it is obviously a form of subservience for the women at the behest of their patriarchal and theocratic societies. The men must become totally lascivious as a result of not seeing any other female forms except their own families in their own homes’ - unless they travel to the West (or frequent brothels, which probably abound aplenty in those countries)! With polygamy allowed and practiced under Sharia law in many Islamic countries, not to mention child-brides and so called “honour killings” if any female even dares to question her fate, it is no wonder those men want to maintain their hegemony over their womenfolk.
One reads of frequent rapes in such countries which on top of it, are then blamed on the poor female victims because “she must have asked for it”! There is in addition, still the barbaric slave trade where young girls are sold by their poverty-stricken families in many third-world countries, while the trafficking of women and girls is a growing menace in most parts of the world. Most of these archaic trades in human lives are happening in countries where women are kept covered up from head to toe, in public.
DRESS FOR RESPECT.
Such covering-up of females in Western societies is totally uncalled-for and should be also unacceptable for those who immigrate from other cultures.. This does not mean that some amount of self-control should not be exercised even in our cultures in the democratic West, by choosing the appropriate form of dress to suit the climate, the environment in which one finds oneself and respect for the effect one’s attire has on others. Flaunting one’s bodily assets in public by the very young, is not a sign of freedom of expression in appearance but an attention-seeker, while a more mature approach requires a modicum of common sense. The former may attract perhaps some unwanted attention, while the latter should command respect
As they say “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”,- unless a woman wants to draw attention to herself. Then she must ask herself,- what is the kind of attention that she seeks.By avoiding the extremes, no one will question her,- but the wrong dress on the wrong person in the wrong place may have unpleasant consequences! Women, particularly the young don’t have to go the extreme of baring it all, nor covering up in burkhas in our Western democracies. Our men have to learn self-control and our women, independent self-respect.
MM
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
The Ambiguous Status of Women in Religion
The importance of the separation between Religion and State for women’s human rights today.
At a recent concert, I was listening to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” and reading the program notes which stated:
“The Sultan Shahriyar, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, had vowed to slay each of his wives after the first night. The Sultana Scheherazade, however, saved her life by the expedient of recounting to the Sultan a succession of tales over 1001 nights.”
In this one paragraph I one reads about: 1. the power of the male over life and death of his women; 2. the implication that all women are “duplicitous and unfaithful”; 3. the woman’s cleverness and cunning,- albeit used to save her own life, but males,- beware!
Traditionally, women were always viewed with ambiguity in religion... On the one hand, in the Torah we read Solomon’s verses: “who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” This is followed by a list of all the wonderful tasks this virtuous woman whose price is above rubies (it would need to be!) would perform. Her reward? “Her husband is known in the gates, when he siteth among the elders in the land.”
Whether in the Bible, old or new Testament, or the Qur’an, women not only have their place alongside and belonging to a male, but the men are admonished to punish them if they “overstep the mark” as it were. In addition, the punishments are described in detail for each offence in the scriptures as though they were God-ordained. Unfortunately, they are humanly imposed. In this way, male power over females is still exercised in many Theocracies and religious fundamentalist communities today. Some of their women, perhaps secure in happy relationships themselves, will assert to be willing participants in such an imposed social order within their communities. Their religious leaders will claim that their religion is protective of women. But are these latter claims genuine and universal? If they were, there would not have been a Holocaust and other atrocities! While for those who do not subscribe to these benign theories, or chained within unhappy relationships, can they opt out? On whose side is the State and its laws?
I pondered on the above when reading extracts of Benazir Bhutto’s book, Reconciliation, which she had just finished before her assassination and as published in The Australian on February 11th, 2008. Under the chapter “Jihad for Women’s Rights”, she stated:
‘Special attention should be paid to organizing women as political, social and economic players in each society. This is especially true for the Islamic world, where women often faced subjugation. This subjugation came not from the message of Islam, which proclaimed the equality of men and women, but from narrow interpretations of Sharia that deliberately promoted subjugation and from political exploitation by ideological clerics.’
This article was followed shortly afterwards by a widely reported comment by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who argued during a lecture, for some elements of Sharia law to be introduced alongside British laws. His comments were greeted by universal condemnation and alarm,- not just criticism,- in the world’s English-language media. In light of the above, women were the first to react in absolute horror at the suggestion. While supposedly meant as an individual optional alternative, the women would be the first to be held to ransom within their communities to be bound by their restrictive Sharia laws within the secular Western democracy of Britain.
Why would anyone want that?
The protection of women’s human rights today is dependent upon the separation of religion and State. For this reason in particular, when Justice Elizabeth Evatt chaired a Government Inquiry into “Multiculturalism and the Law in Australia” , NCJWA in 1990 made a submission not to introduce religious exceptions in areas of marriage and divorce to suit particular ethnic groups, (there were even submissions for legalizing polygamy) because where this separation of religion and State does not exist,- women are almost as badly off today as they would have been in the dark ages.
The Americans are absolutely paranoid about their Constitutional right with respect to the separation of religion and State, even though their Constitution invokes the name of ‘God’. However Religion per se is not mentioned. Their Founding Fathers had fled from European Church-inspired persecutions for their religious beliefs. Therefore while they included their belief in “God” within the State’s Constitution, they avoided mentioning the word Religion in all its various human applications. As the recent visiting philosophy lecturer Dr. Zohar Raviv of Israel stated,- belief in a supreme being, i.e. belief in God is not the same as organized religion,- (which he termed to be “dogma” and human inspired, but still important in conveying moral values and promoting social harmony, perpetuating family traditions and so on. )
Today, people are drawn to religion and religious observance more than ever,- particularly since the downfall of Soviet Communism and the rise of globalization with all its uncertainties. Still, there are many areas of conflict between particularly women’s human rights and the various religions’ laws,- especially in the areas of personal status. We find religious restrictions on women’s dress, including their hair and hair coverings; the various marriage and divorce laws; restrictions on women’s inheritance, on their participation in the ceremonial and hierarchical structures of all orthodox religions., etc. There are also many ‘customary laws’ versed in religious terms such as contraception, and female circumcision, abortion, so that women in countries where there are no State laws on any of these issues.Women need to have the means of redress and escape from their fate, ( unless they are wealthy enough to go elsewhere!) .
This is why many immigrant younger women in England whose families escaped from the tyranny of some of the most repressive religious laws in other countries, have reacted with absolute alarm at the comments made by Archbishop Williams. Islamic laws have not been revised since the first millennium and are ruthlessly imposed on the populations of many countries, including stoning to death on accusations of adultery and jailing women for showing their ankles (Iran) and even jailing a woman for being raped, (Saudi Arabia),- all ordered by the Islamic Courts administering Sharia laws. Then there are African countries suffering the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, where the use of condoms for protection of their sexual partners from being infected. is prohibited by the Catholic Church. Infected males therefore offer no protection to their sexual partners from contagion. Interestingly, the Vatican recently announced the modern version of today’s “7 deadly sins”, but infecting one’s partner with the AIDS virus wasn’t among them!
For devout Jews, religious divorce can be very problematic when there is no ‘Get’ granted by either partner, but usually by the male who can use blackmail to gain financial advantages in the divorce process. There are many “‘chained women”’ as a result, ‘agunot’ in Hebrew,- particularly in Israel where all laws of personal status are regulated by the Rabbinate. Many women’s groups are working very hard to get this anomaly rectified from within the religion, particularly the International Council of Jewish Women and all its affiliates around the world. Sadly, the religious male supremacy in the political structure of the State makes it virtually impossible to shift the Rabbinate,- claiming divine authority in the Torah for this law. However, the Israeli State judiciary does have the means to impose heavy penalties on recalcitrant spouses who refuse to grant a Get to their partners.
In Turkey, it has recently been announced that a review of Islamic traditions (apparently not their laws) is being undertaken with a view to bring them up-to-date, i.e. up to modern standards of women’s and all human rights. Turkey is also struggling to maintain its strict separation between the dominant Islamic religion and a secular Constitution established by Gamal Ataturk in the early1920s and jealously guarded by the military.
Tradition, tradition, tradition, -as Tevyeh the milkman cried out. While it is important to maintain our traditions for future generations, we must recognize that some archaic customs and traditions are not worth preserving. The State should guard against them. Unlike Archbishop Dr. Williams, I believe that religion and traditions are the domains of the individual. The democratic State is the repository of the laws to protect our human rights (not always successfully e.g in dictatorships) and the rule of law must reign above all.
Long live our liberal democracies where this exists and women should be particularly thankful to be living in Australia today.
See the transcript of the ABC Radio National 'Background Briefing' program of 13/4/08
Haredi community in Israel.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2211143.htm
At a recent concert, I was listening to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” and reading the program notes which stated:
“The Sultan Shahriyar, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, had vowed to slay each of his wives after the first night. The Sultana Scheherazade, however, saved her life by the expedient of recounting to the Sultan a succession of tales over 1001 nights.”
In this one paragraph I one reads about: 1. the power of the male over life and death of his women; 2. the implication that all women are “duplicitous and unfaithful”; 3. the woman’s cleverness and cunning,- albeit used to save her own life, but males,- beware!
Traditionally, women were always viewed with ambiguity in religion... On the one hand, in the Torah we read Solomon’s verses: “who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” This is followed by a list of all the wonderful tasks this virtuous woman whose price is above rubies (it would need to be!) would perform. Her reward? “Her husband is known in the gates, when he siteth among the elders in the land.”
Whether in the Bible, old or new Testament, or the Qur’an, women not only have their place alongside and belonging to a male, but the men are admonished to punish them if they “overstep the mark” as it were. In addition, the punishments are described in detail for each offence in the scriptures as though they were God-ordained. Unfortunately, they are humanly imposed. In this way, male power over females is still exercised in many Theocracies and religious fundamentalist communities today. Some of their women, perhaps secure in happy relationships themselves, will assert to be willing participants in such an imposed social order within their communities. Their religious leaders will claim that their religion is protective of women. But are these latter claims genuine and universal? If they were, there would not have been a Holocaust and other atrocities! While for those who do not subscribe to these benign theories, or chained within unhappy relationships, can they opt out? On whose side is the State and its laws?
I pondered on the above when reading extracts of Benazir Bhutto’s book, Reconciliation, which she had just finished before her assassination and as published in The Australian on February 11th, 2008. Under the chapter “Jihad for Women’s Rights”, she stated:
‘Special attention should be paid to organizing women as political, social and economic players in each society. This is especially true for the Islamic world, where women often faced subjugation. This subjugation came not from the message of Islam, which proclaimed the equality of men and women, but from narrow interpretations of Sharia that deliberately promoted subjugation and from political exploitation by ideological clerics.’
This article was followed shortly afterwards by a widely reported comment by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who argued during a lecture, for some elements of Sharia law to be introduced alongside British laws. His comments were greeted by universal condemnation and alarm,- not just criticism,- in the world’s English-language media. In light of the above, women were the first to react in absolute horror at the suggestion. While supposedly meant as an individual optional alternative, the women would be the first to be held to ransom within their communities to be bound by their restrictive Sharia laws within the secular Western democracy of Britain.
Why would anyone want that?
The protection of women’s human rights today is dependent upon the separation of religion and State. For this reason in particular, when Justice Elizabeth Evatt chaired a Government Inquiry into “Multiculturalism and the Law in Australia” , NCJWA in 1990 made a submission not to introduce religious exceptions in areas of marriage and divorce to suit particular ethnic groups, (there were even submissions for legalizing polygamy) because where this separation of religion and State does not exist,- women are almost as badly off today as they would have been in the dark ages.
The Americans are absolutely paranoid about their Constitutional right with respect to the separation of religion and State, even though their Constitution invokes the name of ‘God’. However Religion per se is not mentioned. Their Founding Fathers had fled from European Church-inspired persecutions for their religious beliefs. Therefore while they included their belief in “God” within the State’s Constitution, they avoided mentioning the word Religion in all its various human applications. As the recent visiting philosophy lecturer Dr. Zohar Raviv of Israel stated,- belief in a supreme being, i.e. belief in God is not the same as organized religion,- (which he termed to be “dogma” and human inspired, but still important in conveying moral values and promoting social harmony, perpetuating family traditions and so on. )
Today, people are drawn to religion and religious observance more than ever,- particularly since the downfall of Soviet Communism and the rise of globalization with all its uncertainties. Still, there are many areas of conflict between particularly women’s human rights and the various religions’ laws,- especially in the areas of personal status. We find religious restrictions on women’s dress, including their hair and hair coverings; the various marriage and divorce laws; restrictions on women’s inheritance, on their participation in the ceremonial and hierarchical structures of all orthodox religions., etc. There are also many ‘customary laws’ versed in religious terms such as contraception, and female circumcision, abortion, so that women in countries where there are no State laws on any of these issues.Women need to have the means of redress and escape from their fate, ( unless they are wealthy enough to go elsewhere!) .
This is why many immigrant younger women in England whose families escaped from the tyranny of some of the most repressive religious laws in other countries, have reacted with absolute alarm at the comments made by Archbishop Williams. Islamic laws have not been revised since the first millennium and are ruthlessly imposed on the populations of many countries, including stoning to death on accusations of adultery and jailing women for showing their ankles (Iran) and even jailing a woman for being raped, (Saudi Arabia),- all ordered by the Islamic Courts administering Sharia laws. Then there are African countries suffering the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, where the use of condoms for protection of their sexual partners from being infected. is prohibited by the Catholic Church. Infected males therefore offer no protection to their sexual partners from contagion. Interestingly, the Vatican recently announced the modern version of today’s “7 deadly sins”, but infecting one’s partner with the AIDS virus wasn’t among them!
For devout Jews, religious divorce can be very problematic when there is no ‘Get’ granted by either partner, but usually by the male who can use blackmail to gain financial advantages in the divorce process. There are many “‘chained women”’ as a result, ‘agunot’ in Hebrew,- particularly in Israel where all laws of personal status are regulated by the Rabbinate. Many women’s groups are working very hard to get this anomaly rectified from within the religion, particularly the International Council of Jewish Women and all its affiliates around the world. Sadly, the religious male supremacy in the political structure of the State makes it virtually impossible to shift the Rabbinate,- claiming divine authority in the Torah for this law. However, the Israeli State judiciary does have the means to impose heavy penalties on recalcitrant spouses who refuse to grant a Get to their partners.
In Turkey, it has recently been announced that a review of Islamic traditions (apparently not their laws) is being undertaken with a view to bring them up-to-date, i.e. up to modern standards of women’s and all human rights. Turkey is also struggling to maintain its strict separation between the dominant Islamic religion and a secular Constitution established by Gamal Ataturk in the early1920s and jealously guarded by the military.
Tradition, tradition, tradition, -as Tevyeh the milkman cried out. While it is important to maintain our traditions for future generations, we must recognize that some archaic customs and traditions are not worth preserving. The State should guard against them. Unlike Archbishop Dr. Williams, I believe that religion and traditions are the domains of the individual. The democratic State is the repository of the laws to protect our human rights (not always successfully e.g in dictatorships) and the rule of law must reign above all.
Long live our liberal democracies where this exists and women should be particularly thankful to be living in Australia today.
See the transcript of the ABC Radio National 'Background Briefing' program of 13/4/08
Haredi community in Israel.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2211143.htm
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
ASSASSINATED BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN
THE AUSTRALIAN
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22995050-7583,00.html
Pamela Bone |
January 02, 2008
ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn't. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery.
She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said.
Nevertheless it was a reminder of what we face. Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.
"I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa'ida, most fear," she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. "I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan."
Yes, fear is the right word. The fear of women, of women's freedom, and most of all, of women's sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. "The issue of women is not marginal," writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. "It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism)."
It is the "deep, ignored issue", writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?
To call these warriors for God sexually repressed is to absurdly understate it. Consider Mohammad Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers who -- despite having spent his last nights in the US going to strip clubs -- wrote in his will that no pregnant woman or other "unclean person" should come to his funeral and that no woman should visit his grave.
Or Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian philosopher, one of the chief inspirations for al-Qa'ida, who, during a visit to the US in 1948, wrote home about the "seductiveness' of young women he saw dancing at a church hall (to the song, Baby It's Cold Outside), about the "shocking sensuality" of women everywhere he went in the country.
Consider that in parts of Afghanistan still controlled by the Taliban, so great is the need to keep women powerless, silent and invisible that girls' schools are burned down and a male schoolteacher who defied an order to stop educating girls was last year killed and dismembered.
No wonder they hated Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim country, who was not only brave and strong but physically beautiful, her loosely draped Islamic headscarf more an object of adornment than of modesty. No wonder Islamist militants had been trying to kill her for more than a decade.
(Ramzi Yousef, now in prison in the US for his part in the first attempt to blow up the twin towers in 1993, had earlier attempted to assassinate her.)
Now they have succeeded. Her murder is most likely the work of al-Qa'ida or its allies inside Pakistan. Certainly, they've expressed glee at her death.
If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.
One wonders why the Western powers don't make a co-ordinated effort to defoliate Afghanistan's opium fields.
Al-Qa'ida has made it perfectly clear that its aim is an Islamic caliphate, first in all nominally Muslim countries and ultimately in the whole world. The jihadis would, if they could, impose the same rampant misogyny on women worldwide as was, and still is to a large extent, imposed on the women of Afghanistan.
They can't win. No one, apart from extremists like themselves, wants the kind of society they envisage. But they could, if the West fails in its determination, win enough to make life very unpleasant for millions of women for a generation or more.
The best hope is that Bhutto's assassination will galvanise opposition to Islamism in Pakistan and elsewhere. It is a small hope. At present, the Islamists are triumphant and energised.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the very people who once would have fought against everything the Islamists stand for are instead obsessed with showing their support for David Hicks, that very stupid young man who once trained on the Islamists' side.
Could the murder of Bhutto be enough to wake up Western women to the fact that the war being waged by the Islamists is very much about them? Could the modern Left be persuaded that the people who killed Bhutto are the ones we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places across the world? Can we, in our niceness, stop telling ourselves they are justified in their hatred of us?
Maybe they are. God knows the West has made more than enough blunders, supporting corrupt dictators wherever it deemed it suitable. But as British writer Nick Cohen notes, what the Islamists hate is not the worst of us but the best of us: human rights, the rule of law, the equality of women and all those other freedoms we take so much for granted.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone as usual puts it the way it is.
MM-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22995050-7583,00.html
Pamela Bone |
January 02, 2008
ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn't. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery.
She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said.
Nevertheless it was a reminder of what we face. Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.
"I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa'ida, most fear," she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. "I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan."
Yes, fear is the right word. The fear of women, of women's freedom, and most of all, of women's sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. "The issue of women is not marginal," writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. "It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism)."
It is the "deep, ignored issue", writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?
To call these warriors for God sexually repressed is to absurdly understate it. Consider Mohammad Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers who -- despite having spent his last nights in the US going to strip clubs -- wrote in his will that no pregnant woman or other "unclean person" should come to his funeral and that no woman should visit his grave.
Or Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian philosopher, one of the chief inspirations for al-Qa'ida, who, during a visit to the US in 1948, wrote home about the "seductiveness' of young women he saw dancing at a church hall (to the song, Baby It's Cold Outside), about the "shocking sensuality" of women everywhere he went in the country.
Consider that in parts of Afghanistan still controlled by the Taliban, so great is the need to keep women powerless, silent and invisible that girls' schools are burned down and a male schoolteacher who defied an order to stop educating girls was last year killed and dismembered.
No wonder they hated Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim country, who was not only brave and strong but physically beautiful, her loosely draped Islamic headscarf more an object of adornment than of modesty. No wonder Islamist militants had been trying to kill her for more than a decade.
(Ramzi Yousef, now in prison in the US for his part in the first attempt to blow up the twin towers in 1993, had earlier attempted to assassinate her.)
Now they have succeeded. Her murder is most likely the work of al-Qa'ida or its allies inside Pakistan. Certainly, they've expressed glee at her death.
If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.
One wonders why the Western powers don't make a co-ordinated effort to defoliate Afghanistan's opium fields.
Al-Qa'ida has made it perfectly clear that its aim is an Islamic caliphate, first in all nominally Muslim countries and ultimately in the whole world. The jihadis would, if they could, impose the same rampant misogyny on women worldwide as was, and still is to a large extent, imposed on the women of Afghanistan.
They can't win. No one, apart from extremists like themselves, wants the kind of society they envisage. But they could, if the West fails in its determination, win enough to make life very unpleasant for millions of women for a generation or more.
The best hope is that Bhutto's assassination will galvanise opposition to Islamism in Pakistan and elsewhere. It is a small hope. At present, the Islamists are triumphant and energised.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the very people who once would have fought against everything the Islamists stand for are instead obsessed with showing their support for David Hicks, that very stupid young man who once trained on the Islamists' side.
Could the murder of Bhutto be enough to wake up Western women to the fact that the war being waged by the Islamists is very much about them? Could the modern Left be persuaded that the people who killed Bhutto are the ones we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places across the world? Can we, in our niceness, stop telling ourselves they are justified in their hatred of us?
Maybe they are. God knows the West has made more than enough blunders, supporting corrupt dictators wherever it deemed it suitable. But as British writer Nick Cohen notes, what the Islamists hate is not the worst of us but the best of us: human rights, the rule of law, the equality of women and all those other freedoms we take so much for granted.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Bone as usual puts it the way it is.
MM-------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
TWO TV PROGRAMS ABOUT CULTURAL DIVERSITY.
Culture test -- Insight Program (SBS -- 18 September 2007)
I didn't watch this program,- usually I do watch Insight,- but quite frankly, I didn't miss anything, from reading the transcript. It's everything I and my New-Australian friends all went through when we arrived to this country and started growing up here, then going out and going to Uni. etc.The older, "new-aAustralian" generation is trying to hang on to their kids and to their culture. It's a worry,- big worry!
I often found my mother pacing up and down the street outside our home at 1 or 2 am, in her dressing gown, talking to herself - "please God, let my child be OK"!!! I must have been already driving and at Uni., going out with my future husband even! She worried in case I'll ‘marry out’ (of my faith), in case I have an accident,- when our kids came along, she worried about them,- driving us all mad with her "Jewish mama's" worries!!! So what's new,- if the Moslems feel the same?
My generation was far more relaxed and the next is even more so!
Those first generation Muslim kids will be OK if they break loose from their parents a little,- the ones to worry about are the ones who think that their parents have strayed too far away from their religion, e.g.Islam,- unhappy perhaps with their own lives, these kids often revert back, sometimes to a much stricter form of their religion and who knows what else they might do! It happens among us Jews,- but at least our Jews are not dangerous. Fundamentalist Islam, may be very dangerous indeed!
RE "Australian values",- is an idea which I have been promoting for ages,- but should be more designed and targeted to the prospective immigrants to this country. That is,- they need to know more about what to expect when they get here. They think that they can just come to Australia, make money and live the same way forever as they did in Bangladesh, say. By the time they get here and find out that their children adopt a different lifestyle, -it's a bit late to complain.
But coping with growing kids is a problem for everyone,- we have all had to go through this phase with them. I also had to advise my Greek cleaning lady about her teenage son who was rebelling (now a well-to-do professional father of two) and some African Moslem women who came to our community, wanting to know how we keep our children from assimilating instead of integrating! We told them that like everyone else, we have failures and successes! We have to try to do our best for them, help them to remain in the fold.
But being an Australian or any other nationality as well as a Jew does not pose any problems or conflicts. Intermarriage with other faiths, does. One or the other may have to lose his or her previous faith-identity. There are no particular problems for us as women, except in the areas of religious divorce, should this occur. The strictly religious Jews, like all strictly religious people of other faiths, do have more rigid moral codes to which girls and women have to conform if they want to remain within their family and community circles. Of course, they may also encounter intergenerational conflicts as a result. For that reason, a minority of ultra-orthodox communities even forbid interactions for their kids with the outside world,- no TV, internet, socializing, etc.
But when immigrants from countries such as Afghanistan and similar come to a free and democratic society such as ours,- how can they adjust? From totally covered-up wives whom no other male is allowed to see,- to our freedom-loving flesh-showing females in Australia or USA,- then they have to try to keep their youngsters in check? Or will they try to convert all of us to their level?
(See below).
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: 4CORNERS PROGRAM, ABC TV.(Monday, 24/9)
I gave up watching the shocking documentary on 4Corners in disgust! The lives of the women and girls count for naught still today after supposedly being "liberated" from the Taliban. Their PARTICULAR culture and fundamentalist Islamic religion are the absolute 'pits' where women and children are concerned!
Anyone trying to tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance;-as though it's a universal truth can fool themselves, not most of us women! If any of their men come to Australia thinking that they'll control their daughters or wives in the same manner, they should stay where they are! Let the women come here on their own and live in freedom and let those "testosterone hyped males" (as the brave interviewer said,- "it must be something in the water here!"),- leave them to rot over there. They don't deserve to live here,- their poor women are emolating themselves at an incredible rate. We should be trying to save them and leave their bastard menfolk behind to become Taliban on their own!
You should read all the comments on the 4Corners Guestbook.
For further information on how to offer support to the women and children of Afghanistan, go to the following websites:
Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan Aus
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
The interesting issue however is that all the Australian peak Women's groups refuse to help whenever we asked them to assist overseas Islamic women from being stoned to death, for example.. They are intimidated by the local Islamic women's organizations who claim that it is all a Zionist plot to denigrate Islam!
It is time for true feminist Islamic NGOs to work hand in hand with all other women’s groups and stop being in-denial about Islamic teachings and life-styles all over the world and the non-status of their women!
(MM)
I didn't watch this program,- usually I do watch Insight,- but quite frankly, I didn't miss anything, from reading the transcript. It's everything I and my New-Australian friends all went through when we arrived to this country and started growing up here, then going out and going to Uni. etc.The older, "new-aAustralian" generation is trying to hang on to their kids and to their culture. It's a worry,- big worry!
I often found my mother pacing up and down the street outside our home at 1 or 2 am, in her dressing gown, talking to herself - "please God, let my child be OK"!!! I must have been already driving and at Uni., going out with my future husband even! She worried in case I'll ‘marry out’ (of my faith), in case I have an accident,- when our kids came along, she worried about them,- driving us all mad with her "Jewish mama's" worries!!! So what's new,- if the Moslems feel the same?
My generation was far more relaxed and the next is even more so!
Those first generation Muslim kids will be OK if they break loose from their parents a little,- the ones to worry about are the ones who think that their parents have strayed too far away from their religion, e.g.Islam,- unhappy perhaps with their own lives, these kids often revert back, sometimes to a much stricter form of their religion and who knows what else they might do! It happens among us Jews,- but at least our Jews are not dangerous. Fundamentalist Islam, may be very dangerous indeed!
RE "Australian values",- is an idea which I have been promoting for ages,- but should be more designed and targeted to the prospective immigrants to this country. That is,- they need to know more about what to expect when they get here. They think that they can just come to Australia, make money and live the same way forever as they did in Bangladesh, say. By the time they get here and find out that their children adopt a different lifestyle, -it's a bit late to complain.
But coping with growing kids is a problem for everyone,- we have all had to go through this phase with them. I also had to advise my Greek cleaning lady about her teenage son who was rebelling (now a well-to-do professional father of two) and some African Moslem women who came to our community, wanting to know how we keep our children from assimilating instead of integrating! We told them that like everyone else, we have failures and successes! We have to try to do our best for them, help them to remain in the fold.
But being an Australian or any other nationality as well as a Jew does not pose any problems or conflicts. Intermarriage with other faiths, does. One or the other may have to lose his or her previous faith-identity. There are no particular problems for us as women, except in the areas of religious divorce, should this occur. The strictly religious Jews, like all strictly religious people of other faiths, do have more rigid moral codes to which girls and women have to conform if they want to remain within their family and community circles. Of course, they may also encounter intergenerational conflicts as a result. For that reason, a minority of ultra-orthodox communities even forbid interactions for their kids with the outside world,- no TV, internet, socializing, etc.
But when immigrants from countries such as Afghanistan and similar come to a free and democratic society such as ours,- how can they adjust? From totally covered-up wives whom no other male is allowed to see,- to our freedom-loving flesh-showing females in Australia or USA,- then they have to try to keep their youngsters in check? Or will they try to convert all of us to their level?
(See below).
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: 4CORNERS PROGRAM, ABC TV.(Monday, 24/9)
I gave up watching the shocking documentary on 4Corners in disgust! The lives of the women and girls count for naught still today after supposedly being "liberated" from the Taliban. Their PARTICULAR culture and fundamentalist Islamic religion are the absolute 'pits' where women and children are concerned!
Anyone trying to tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance;-as though it's a universal truth can fool themselves, not most of us women! If any of their men come to Australia thinking that they'll control their daughters or wives in the same manner, they should stay where they are! Let the women come here on their own and live in freedom and let those "testosterone hyped males" (as the brave interviewer said,- "it must be something in the water here!"),- leave them to rot over there. They don't deserve to live here,- their poor women are emolating themselves at an incredible rate. We should be trying to save them and leave their bastard menfolk behind to become Taliban on their own!
You should read all the comments on the 4Corners Guestbook.
For further information on how to offer support to the women and children of Afghanistan, go to the following websites:
Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan Aus
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
The interesting issue however is that all the Australian peak Women's groups refuse to help whenever we asked them to assist overseas Islamic women from being stoned to death, for example.. They are intimidated by the local Islamic women's organizations who claim that it is all a Zionist plot to denigrate Islam!
It is time for true feminist Islamic NGOs to work hand in hand with all other women’s groups and stop being in-denial about Islamic teachings and life-styles all over the world and the non-status of their women!
(MM)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Women in Islam. (Wafa Sultan & the debate about Islam)
Breakout from Islam’s mental prisonby Janet Albrechtsen
Wednesday August 22, 2007
from the Australian
I AM sitting in a small book-lined room in Sydney's eastern suburbs with a petite woman in her late 40s dressed in a neat suit and sensible shoes.
Can this be the woman recently described as an "international sensation"? The woman who drove an American rabbi to publicly accuse her of being "Islam's Ann Coulter"? The woman who last year made it on to Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people? Is she really the "uncompromising firebrand in the defence of reason and liberty". Yes, she is. Meet Wafa Sultan.
Last year, the Syrian-born psychiatrist, who has lived in the US for almost 20 years, catapulted herself into the centre of the critical issue of our time: how will Islam embrace modernity? She entered the battle of ideas in a fiery debate with an Islamic scholar on Al Jazeera television when she criticised Islam for its backwardness, for shunning knowledge and progress, for propagating a "mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages".
One question not often asked is why a growing number of Muslim women are speaking out, demanding a reformation of Islam. And the next question is why these brave women are not hailed as heroes and champions by Western leaders at the highest levels. They operate at the fringes on the right side of a crucial battle of ideas. It's still just a handful. Women such Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalia-born former Dutch MP and author of Infidel, and Irshad Manji, African-born Canadian Muslim and author of The Trouble with Islam. And Sultan.
The answer to the latter question is one for us to ponder. Sultan is unapologetically curt as to why Muslim women are rising to the challenge: "Muslim women have lost everything. They have nothing to lose by speaking up." The security surrounding her visit to Australia last week attests to the fact women such as Sultan have, on the contrary, plenty to lose. They risk their lives when they speak out. Whether you agree with Sultan or not, her arguments about Islam ought to be met with words, not violence. Yet Sultan is used to constant security, FBI visits and daily death threats.
Late on Sunday evening she sent me a collection of them, including this: "I'm warning you to back up or the sword will cut off you're neck."
A crackpot, perhaps. But the slaughter of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh in The Netherlands, the heart of multicultural Europe no less, is a reminder that some crackpots deliver on their violent threats. Yet, for Sultan, the choice was obvious. She eschews Islam because, she says, it has so little to offer women. She describes Islam as a war against women, perverted by fear of sex and sexuality that mandates the mistreatment of women.
Sultan spoke to The Australian about her life. "I remember as a little girl trying hard to avoid passing by my father while he was praying because Mohammed once said that if a dog or a woman passes by a man while he was praying he had to rewash himself and pray again, otherwise his prayer wouldn't be accepted.
"I remember hearing as an eight-year-old girl that a woman is nothing but shame. Her marriage will cover up one-tenth of her shame and her grave will cover up the rest of it. Can you imagine, at eight, being consumed by shame just because you are female?" she asks.
Many find Sultan's message too confrontational. Her friends have asked her to soften her words. But she refuses, arguing that her experience as an Arab Muslim woman needs to be exposed. She says that before the Al Jazeera interview, her focus was on educating people in the Arabic world.
"In my (Arabic) writing, I always compare my life in Syria and my life in America, and I let my readers reach a conclusion ... they have never heard such voices as mine."
She receives hundreds of emails each week and thousands of people in Arabic countries click on to her website. She describes the world as a small village, thanks to the internet, where others have the chance to hear and understand what is going on
They see how women in the West are treated. "When they compare it with themselves, they question: 'Why? Why only us? Why don't we enjoy our lives they same way Western women do?"'
The Al Jazeera interview was the West's formal introduction to Sultan. And she attracts her fair share of Western critics. She is, some say, manipulated by Jews and Americans. But, as she points out, "the Islamic media introduced me to the West, not the other way around. Prior to my interview, I didn't have any Jewish friends. I said it because I believe it."
The American rabbi who walked out on Sultan at a conference complained that she failed to allude to a healthy, peaceful Islamic alternative.
Yet Sultan is certain that Islam can reform and will reform if exposed to enough information and if Muslims are able to make choices.
"Human beings look for the best, but many Muslims don't know the best ... they are hostages of their own belief system for many centuries and now I believe, because of the internet, they are exposed to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems ... if they are given the freedom to choose, I believe they are ready to mix Islam with other thoughts, to improve it," she says in a voice filled with passion.
But it will be a long battle of ideas.
"Look at any Islamic country. Tell me what you see. Poverty, backwardness, oppression, dictatorship, miserable lives. Somehow we have to help them change their way of thinking, their way of life. We have to re-create a new generation clean of hatred. We have been consumed by hatred. We are not practising our humanity. It's very sad."
Her message is clear. The West must be more confident about espousing its own values. And Islam must accept criticism as a sign of intellectual rigour if it is to reform into a belief system that embraces freedom and progress for its followers. Sultan is full of hope that the information revolution has cracked the wall around the Islamic prison. Not just for Muslim women.
I read another email she has translated from a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Ramallah: "Without you, I would have been a suicide bomber. They taught me how to bomb, instead of teaching me to listen to music, or to enjoy looking at a beautiful painting. I don't believe you're human, you're a god."
Say what you will about Sultan's uncompromising message. She is part of a brigade of women, each in their own way dragging Islam into the 21stcentury.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell us what you think
"What an amazing and courageous woman. May her words be taken to heart!"
People quote the Koran for evidence of incitement to jihad, killing, dying and terrorism to become rulers of the world.
It is not just the books that are the cause of the problems today. Our ancient texts when read by themselves can be just as vicious, The difference is that our fundamentalists are not the mainstream, while theirs are.They have millions, but so have we.We have to insist that they discard the evil parts of the Quran and concentrate on the good parts. Dogma has to be replaced by theology!
Posted by MM
There is no doubt that Islam is a religion which may inculcate in some of its followers a desire to kill and die for Allah! But I strongly believe that their religion alone is not the cause of their current inability to come to terms with the 21st Century and modernity in terms of human relations! I believe that they use their religion as an excuse to hold onto power: the power of the Fundamentalists over the people; the power of the political leadership who use the religious leadership to hold on to their dictatorships; and finally the power of men over women. We are not going to change their religion. What we can do is take them away from its evil teachings and from their evil leaderships. The softest targets are our Muslims in the West,- particularly their women. But as long as the West pursues an agenda of "political correctness",- e.g. Islam is a religion of peace, etc.- then let us tell them: prove it!
. My plan would be:1.Stop feeling sorry for the "poor Palestinians".An article by Thomas Friedman about Israel's modern high-tech lifestyle produced a reply that Israelis have the same dream as the Americans have. Yes, they of course they do,-but it sure is different to what those Arabs can produce,- "because they are occupied"? What a pitiful excuse for laziness, stupidity and "dhimmitude",- the sheer Islamic fundamentalist attitude to not allowing infidels to show them up! Some of our people and the Western world feel sorry for them? Why do the Palestinians deserve more than the millions of other Arabs living in the same miserable conditions? Because those guys can't rise above their miserable cultural dependency on the 'powers above' and on the female subjugation beneath? I only feel sorry for the poor Israelis who have to control them in order for Israel to survive.I feel sorry for all of us who have to live in fear of their terrorism. 2. All regular columnists and NGOs should start writing and targeting the wrong parts of a culture that glorifies death, subjugates its women and shuns education and democracy and glorifies theocracy. 3.Forget "political correctness" and make everyone conform to the same standards of peaceful coexistence in our multicultural societies. 4.Make sure that those who promote notions of a "caliphate","dhimmitude" and sim. mores become outcasts in their society! 5. Don't be intimidated by the Islamists. Learn from the Israelis,- they have to survive in a their midst and they do it day-in and day-out! We have the brains and the brawn to overcome them.
MM
I find arguments about the details of the Islamic religion not constructive nor productive. All religions can be picked to pieces when their texts are read. It is what their leaders and particularly the fundamentalists teach their flock that makes a difference. We are not able to influence anyone in the Islamic world, but we can do so among our citizens in the Western countries. The Janet Albrechstens and Pamela Bones of our country and Wafa Sultan and the few other Moslem women in the West who dare to speak out, must be supported and then more will follow them. "Political correctness" stops the Western women's Movement from supporting these women,- while the Moslem women feel under threat and become defensive. It's the old story of our Western "Women's Liberation Movement" of the '60s and '70s and the mainstream women who were virulently against them.The "housewives" felt under threat! It's no longer an issue and the same will happen to the Moslem women, as long as we all are not afraid to encourage their liberation! The Islamic world's women may then be emboldened and supported by their sisters in the West to become more liberated. Then we may see a shift in the fundamentalists' hold on power! Nazism failed,Communism failed,Islamism will also fail,- but the human cost is unfortunately too high. The women though definitely hold the key to Islamic enlightenment.
MM
The debate among Moslem women who keep their old traditions and the modern Moslem generation as well as with the Western world as a whole,is very much like the "women's liberation movement" of the '60s and '70s with the traditional stay-at-home wife and mother of that era, who felt threatened and inferior to the working-wives & mums! Among Western Moslem women, things will change in another generation,- even the young educated girls of today, while still yearning for their menfolk's approval, I hope won't tolerate their sexist attitudes, no matter what their chauvinistic Imams may inculcate in their male flocks.
MM
Waleed Aly says: Certainly, though, the intellectual battle - call it a gender jihad, if you must - is indispensable for change. But it is a battle that must be won in the West as much as the East. Only when Muslim women are treated as human beings whose views matter and who are valued in their own right will we have cause for optimism. As long as they remain symbols, and as long as those symbols are invoked by opposing sides in obnoxious rhetorical wars of culture, they will continue to be little more than a battlefield. Relentlessly discussed, never consulted, invariably exploited. Waleed Aly | August 25, 2007 From: The Australian
MM
Wednesday August 22, 2007
from the Australian
I AM sitting in a small book-lined room in Sydney's eastern suburbs with a petite woman in her late 40s dressed in a neat suit and sensible shoes.
Can this be the woman recently described as an "international sensation"? The woman who drove an American rabbi to publicly accuse her of being "Islam's Ann Coulter"? The woman who last year made it on to Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people? Is she really the "uncompromising firebrand in the defence of reason and liberty". Yes, she is. Meet Wafa Sultan.
Last year, the Syrian-born psychiatrist, who has lived in the US for almost 20 years, catapulted herself into the centre of the critical issue of our time: how will Islam embrace modernity? She entered the battle of ideas in a fiery debate with an Islamic scholar on Al Jazeera television when she criticised Islam for its backwardness, for shunning knowledge and progress, for propagating a "mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages".
One question not often asked is why a growing number of Muslim women are speaking out, demanding a reformation of Islam. And the next question is why these brave women are not hailed as heroes and champions by Western leaders at the highest levels. They operate at the fringes on the right side of a crucial battle of ideas. It's still just a handful. Women such Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalia-born former Dutch MP and author of Infidel, and Irshad Manji, African-born Canadian Muslim and author of The Trouble with Islam. And Sultan.
The answer to the latter question is one for us to ponder. Sultan is unapologetically curt as to why Muslim women are rising to the challenge: "Muslim women have lost everything. They have nothing to lose by speaking up." The security surrounding her visit to Australia last week attests to the fact women such as Sultan have, on the contrary, plenty to lose. They risk their lives when they speak out. Whether you agree with Sultan or not, her arguments about Islam ought to be met with words, not violence. Yet Sultan is used to constant security, FBI visits and daily death threats.
Late on Sunday evening she sent me a collection of them, including this: "I'm warning you to back up or the sword will cut off you're neck."
A crackpot, perhaps. But the slaughter of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh in The Netherlands, the heart of multicultural Europe no less, is a reminder that some crackpots deliver on their violent threats. Yet, for Sultan, the choice was obvious. She eschews Islam because, she says, it has so little to offer women. She describes Islam as a war against women, perverted by fear of sex and sexuality that mandates the mistreatment of women.
Sultan spoke to The Australian about her life. "I remember as a little girl trying hard to avoid passing by my father while he was praying because Mohammed once said that if a dog or a woman passes by a man while he was praying he had to rewash himself and pray again, otherwise his prayer wouldn't be accepted.
"I remember hearing as an eight-year-old girl that a woman is nothing but shame. Her marriage will cover up one-tenth of her shame and her grave will cover up the rest of it. Can you imagine, at eight, being consumed by shame just because you are female?" she asks.
Many find Sultan's message too confrontational. Her friends have asked her to soften her words. But she refuses, arguing that her experience as an Arab Muslim woman needs to be exposed. She says that before the Al Jazeera interview, her focus was on educating people in the Arabic world.
"In my (Arabic) writing, I always compare my life in Syria and my life in America, and I let my readers reach a conclusion ... they have never heard such voices as mine."
She receives hundreds of emails each week and thousands of people in Arabic countries click on to her website. She describes the world as a small village, thanks to the internet, where others have the chance to hear and understand what is going on
They see how women in the West are treated. "When they compare it with themselves, they question: 'Why? Why only us? Why don't we enjoy our lives they same way Western women do?"'
The Al Jazeera interview was the West's formal introduction to Sultan. And she attracts her fair share of Western critics. She is, some say, manipulated by Jews and Americans. But, as she points out, "the Islamic media introduced me to the West, not the other way around. Prior to my interview, I didn't have any Jewish friends. I said it because I believe it."
The American rabbi who walked out on Sultan at a conference complained that she failed to allude to a healthy, peaceful Islamic alternative.
Yet Sultan is certain that Islam can reform and will reform if exposed to enough information and if Muslims are able to make choices.
"Human beings look for the best, but many Muslims don't know the best ... they are hostages of their own belief system for many centuries and now I believe, because of the internet, they are exposed to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems ... if they are given the freedom to choose, I believe they are ready to mix Islam with other thoughts, to improve it," she says in a voice filled with passion.
But it will be a long battle of ideas.
"Look at any Islamic country. Tell me what you see. Poverty, backwardness, oppression, dictatorship, miserable lives. Somehow we have to help them change their way of thinking, their way of life. We have to re-create a new generation clean of hatred. We have been consumed by hatred. We are not practising our humanity. It's very sad."
Her message is clear. The West must be more confident about espousing its own values. And Islam must accept criticism as a sign of intellectual rigour if it is to reform into a belief system that embraces freedom and progress for its followers. Sultan is full of hope that the information revolution has cracked the wall around the Islamic prison. Not just for Muslim women.
I read another email she has translated from a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Ramallah: "Without you, I would have been a suicide bomber. They taught me how to bomb, instead of teaching me to listen to music, or to enjoy looking at a beautiful painting. I don't believe you're human, you're a god."
Say what you will about Sultan's uncompromising message. She is part of a brigade of women, each in their own way dragging Islam into the 21stcentury.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell us what you think
"What an amazing and courageous woman. May her words be taken to heart!"
People quote the Koran for evidence of incitement to jihad, killing, dying and terrorism to become rulers of the world.
It is not just the books that are the cause of the problems today. Our ancient texts when read by themselves can be just as vicious, The difference is that our fundamentalists are not the mainstream, while theirs are.They have millions, but so have we.We have to insist that they discard the evil parts of the Quran and concentrate on the good parts. Dogma has to be replaced by theology!
Posted by MM
There is no doubt that Islam is a religion which may inculcate in some of its followers a desire to kill and die for Allah! But I strongly believe that their religion alone is not the cause of their current inability to come to terms with the 21st Century and modernity in terms of human relations! I believe that they use their religion as an excuse to hold onto power: the power of the Fundamentalists over the people; the power of the political leadership who use the religious leadership to hold on to their dictatorships; and finally the power of men over women. We are not going to change their religion. What we can do is take them away from its evil teachings and from their evil leaderships. The softest targets are our Muslims in the West,- particularly their women. But as long as the West pursues an agenda of "political correctness",- e.g. Islam is a religion of peace, etc.- then let us tell them: prove it!
. My plan would be:1.Stop feeling sorry for the "poor Palestinians".An article by Thomas Friedman about Israel's modern high-tech lifestyle produced a reply that Israelis have the same dream as the Americans have. Yes, they of course they do,-but it sure is different to what those Arabs can produce,- "because they are occupied"? What a pitiful excuse for laziness, stupidity and "dhimmitude",- the sheer Islamic fundamentalist attitude to not allowing infidels to show them up! Some of our people and the Western world feel sorry for them? Why do the Palestinians deserve more than the millions of other Arabs living in the same miserable conditions? Because those guys can't rise above their miserable cultural dependency on the 'powers above' and on the female subjugation beneath? I only feel sorry for the poor Israelis who have to control them in order for Israel to survive.I feel sorry for all of us who have to live in fear of their terrorism. 2. All regular columnists and NGOs should start writing and targeting the wrong parts of a culture that glorifies death, subjugates its women and shuns education and democracy and glorifies theocracy. 3.Forget "political correctness" and make everyone conform to the same standards of peaceful coexistence in our multicultural societies. 4.Make sure that those who promote notions of a "caliphate","dhimmitude" and sim. mores become outcasts in their society! 5. Don't be intimidated by the Islamists. Learn from the Israelis,- they have to survive in a their midst and they do it day-in and day-out! We have the brains and the brawn to overcome them.
MM
I find arguments about the details of the Islamic religion not constructive nor productive. All religions can be picked to pieces when their texts are read. It is what their leaders and particularly the fundamentalists teach their flock that makes a difference. We are not able to influence anyone in the Islamic world, but we can do so among our citizens in the Western countries. The Janet Albrechstens and Pamela Bones of our country and Wafa Sultan and the few other Moslem women in the West who dare to speak out, must be supported and then more will follow them. "Political correctness" stops the Western women's Movement from supporting these women,- while the Moslem women feel under threat and become defensive. It's the old story of our Western "Women's Liberation Movement" of the '60s and '70s and the mainstream women who were virulently against them.The "housewives" felt under threat! It's no longer an issue and the same will happen to the Moslem women, as long as we all are not afraid to encourage their liberation! The Islamic world's women may then be emboldened and supported by their sisters in the West to become more liberated. Then we may see a shift in the fundamentalists' hold on power! Nazism failed,Communism failed,Islamism will also fail,- but the human cost is unfortunately too high. The women though definitely hold the key to Islamic enlightenment.
MM
The debate among Moslem women who keep their old traditions and the modern Moslem generation as well as with the Western world as a whole,is very much like the "women's liberation movement" of the '60s and '70s with the traditional stay-at-home wife and mother of that era, who felt threatened and inferior to the working-wives & mums! Among Western Moslem women, things will change in another generation,- even the young educated girls of today, while still yearning for their menfolk's approval, I hope won't tolerate their sexist attitudes, no matter what their chauvinistic Imams may inculcate in their male flocks.
MM
Waleed Aly says: Certainly, though, the intellectual battle - call it a gender jihad, if you must - is indispensable for change. But it is a battle that must be won in the West as much as the East. Only when Muslim women are treated as human beings whose views matter and who are valued in their own right will we have cause for optimism. As long as they remain symbols, and as long as those symbols are invoked by opposing sides in obnoxious rhetorical wars of culture, they will continue to be little more than a battlefield. Relentlessly discussed, never consulted, invariably exploited. Waleed Aly | August 25, 2007 From: The Australian
MM
Friday, June 22, 2007
Jewish Women's Talkfest in Sydney, June 16-21, 2007.
IN OUR OWN RIGHT.
National Council of Jewish Women of Australia 28th Conference.
For over 80 years Jewish women in Australia, starting in Sydney then spreading all over the country, have taken the initiative to act, support and initiate all kinds of programs and activities in their communities through the NCJWA.
At a time when women throughout the world were not really engaged in much more than in supporting roles for the menfolk in their communities as well as within their own families, one woman took it upon herself to change this attitude and perception among the women in their Jewish communities. Dr. Fanny Reading MBE was not only a pioneer and activist among the Australian Jewish women, but also a pioneer in her medical profession, being the first female medical graduate at Melbourne University.
At the 28th National Conference ( previously triennial, now quadrennial) held in Sydney 17-20 June, 2007, the Victorian Section led the way in all areas. The newly elected National President is the Victorian past President, Mrs. Rysia Rozen OAM. In other areas of membership, programming, new and invigorating leadership teams and recognition of its past leaders’ contributions, the Victorians starred although the Canberra Section of NCJWA recorded exciting new initiatives and an actual increase in numbers of members, becoming the recipients of “The Presidents’ Membership Trophy”.
Susie Ivany, the President of NCJWA (Vic.) Inc., brought home the “Israel Projects” shield for its highest pro-rata fundraising for all the major NCJWA Israel Projects, which includes the KKL Yarkon river development; Haifa University Ethiopian women’s scholarships, the Haifa Rape Crisis Centre, the ILAN Tel Aviv centre for the disabled children from cerebral palsy and other projects.
The Hon/ Treasurer from Victoria, Mrs. Beverly Walters received Council’s highest volunteer award, the Honour Badge which is awarded only at Conferences, while the National Board elevated past National presidents, Malvina Malinek OAM and Dr.Geulah Solomon OAM.to the position of Hon. Life Governors of NCJWA. Longstanding Gold Coast (Queensland) Section President, Barabar Stewart-Kann OAM was also awarded an Hon. National Life Vice Presidency and Carolyn Goldsmith of Brisbane Section an Hon. Life Membership of the National Executive.
Retiring National President, Robyn Lenn OAM of Sydney and her committee worked tirelessly to provide the delegates from all over Australia with a superb program over 5 days of intense activities and discussions on issues of “Modern Medical Interventions” for health and bioethics; challenges ahead in (post) Multicultural Australia; anti-Semitism and racism; “The Jewish Woman,- status, rights and education”; and “Jewish women around the world” with the International President, Leah Aharonov from Israel as the main guest speaker at the conference.
The Opening and Closing Dinners held at ”NCJW’s own Council House in Woollahra, were attended by the leaders of the community and members of Parliament, with the “NCJWA WOMAN OF ACHIEVEMNT AWARD” presented to Prue Goward MP, in the presence of Israeli Ambassador Mr. Naftali Tamir and the Mayor of Waverly, Mr. George Newhouse.
For the next four years, the national headquarters of NCJWA will be at the “Annia Castan and Sadie Fink” NCJW Council House in Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia.
Website, www.ncjw.org.au
MM
National Council of Jewish Women of Australia 28th Conference.
For over 80 years Jewish women in Australia, starting in Sydney then spreading all over the country, have taken the initiative to act, support and initiate all kinds of programs and activities in their communities through the NCJWA.
At a time when women throughout the world were not really engaged in much more than in supporting roles for the menfolk in their communities as well as within their own families, one woman took it upon herself to change this attitude and perception among the women in their Jewish communities. Dr. Fanny Reading MBE was not only a pioneer and activist among the Australian Jewish women, but also a pioneer in her medical profession, being the first female medical graduate at Melbourne University.
At the 28th National Conference ( previously triennial, now quadrennial) held in Sydney 17-20 June, 2007, the Victorian Section led the way in all areas. The newly elected National President is the Victorian past President, Mrs. Rysia Rozen OAM. In other areas of membership, programming, new and invigorating leadership teams and recognition of its past leaders’ contributions, the Victorians starred although the Canberra Section of NCJWA recorded exciting new initiatives and an actual increase in numbers of members, becoming the recipients of “The Presidents’ Membership Trophy”.
Susie Ivany, the President of NCJWA (Vic.) Inc., brought home the “Israel Projects” shield for its highest pro-rata fundraising for all the major NCJWA Israel Projects, which includes the KKL Yarkon river development; Haifa University Ethiopian women’s scholarships, the Haifa Rape Crisis Centre, the ILAN Tel Aviv centre for the disabled children from cerebral palsy and other projects.
The Hon/ Treasurer from Victoria, Mrs. Beverly Walters received Council’s highest volunteer award, the Honour Badge which is awarded only at Conferences, while the National Board elevated past National presidents, Malvina Malinek OAM and Dr.Geulah Solomon OAM.to the position of Hon. Life Governors of NCJWA. Longstanding Gold Coast (Queensland) Section President, Barabar Stewart-Kann OAM was also awarded an Hon. National Life Vice Presidency and Carolyn Goldsmith of Brisbane Section an Hon. Life Membership of the National Executive.
Retiring National President, Robyn Lenn OAM of Sydney and her committee worked tirelessly to provide the delegates from all over Australia with a superb program over 5 days of intense activities and discussions on issues of “Modern Medical Interventions” for health and bioethics; challenges ahead in (post) Multicultural Australia; anti-Semitism and racism; “The Jewish Woman,- status, rights and education”; and “Jewish women around the world” with the International President, Leah Aharonov from Israel as the main guest speaker at the conference.
The Opening and Closing Dinners held at ”NCJW’s own Council House in Woollahra, were attended by the leaders of the community and members of Parliament, with the “NCJWA WOMAN OF ACHIEVEMNT AWARD” presented to Prue Goward MP, in the presence of Israeli Ambassador Mr. Naftali Tamir and the Mayor of Waverly, Mr. George Newhouse.
For the next four years, the national headquarters of NCJWA will be at the “Annia Castan and Sadie Fink” NCJW Council House in Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia.
Website, www.ncjw.org.au
MM
Thursday, June 07, 2007
DESPERATE FOR ENLIGHTMENT (re Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Australian)
THE AUSTRALIAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESPERATE FOR ENLIGHTMENT.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the voice of reason and confrontation, is part of a growing movement that seeks to shape the future of Islam, and her message needs to be more widely heard, writes Janet Albrechtsen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
06jun07
"A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings ... A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development ... You submit; that is the literal meaning of Islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet on the inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind. - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel"
HIRSI Ali makes headlines wherever she goes. In Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival, she provided a finale on a brisk Sunday evening unusual at such events where a heady concoctions of anti-Western sentiments tend to prevail. Hirsi Ali encouraged her audience to espouse their Western values louder than those who espouse Islam. There was, she said, "always an infidel in me" as she grew to detest the submission of free will at the heart of Islam. Dressed in a black dress and knee-high boots, Hirsi Ali glided off the stage just as the polite applause grew more rapturous, with the audience standing to mark their appreciation.
Alas, there were no Muslim women in the audience dressed in hijabs or chadors. Hirsi Ali was preaching, if not to the converted then at least to the curious: those who wanted to catch a glimpse of this tall, beautiful, brave woman, who implored her audience not to abandon the child brides who could be found in the suburbs.
The 37-year-old Somali-born former Dutch MP has not always been applauded. Even before she arrived in Australia she was told to stay home. University of Technology Sydney Islamic law lecturer Jamila Hussain said Hirsi Ali's ideas were "narrow and radical" and she did not agree with them. Fair enough. But then Hussain added: "I think she'd be better staying where she came from." You have to admire academe for its censorship chutzpah. More from Nada Roude, of the NSW Islamic Council, who said Hirsi Ali's comments on the prophet Mohammed were a "no-go zone".
It won't faze Hirsi Ali, a woman surrounded by security to protect her from those who would resort to violence to fend off ideas. By blowing the lid on the treatment of some women within Muslim communities, she has nettled an even broader coalition of progressives who embrace cultural rights as a higher paragon than, say, those of women's rights.
In Infidel, she recounts the harrowing experience of genital mutilation, inflicted on her and her friends. And one friend, Sahra, described what it was like when her husband tried to penetrate her after they were married, "pushing his way into her, trying to tear open the scar between her legs, how much it hurt. She said Abdullah (her husband) had wanted to cut her open with a knife because she was sewn so tight ... I suppose he felt pity for that poor 14-year-old child (his wife), because he agreed to take her to the hospital to be cut."
The bind for progressives was obvious. Would they hail Hirsi Ali's expose of the inequality and mistreatment of Muslim women? Or would they defend cultural sensitivities? They opted for the latter, a choice imbued more with anti-Western sentiment than logic given that the past 40 years have been devoted to fighting for the sorts of freedoms - for women, for gays, for non-conformists - that Islamic societies openly spurn. Normally only too eager to denounce the stifling role of Christianity, many Western European secularists found her discussion of Islam a bridge too far. And her embrace of Western culture tended to show up their own loathing towards the West.
And so it falls to brave women such as Hirsi Ali to break the silence. In Infidel she traces how a spark of independence in a young, obedient Muslim girl matured into a determination to escape the shackles of Islam. Deserting an arranged marriage, she arrived in The Netherlands, where she discovered freedom, but it was tainted by what she found: Muslim girls suffering the same injustices meted out in Muslim countries. When she started talking, The Netherlands would never be the same.
Tolerance-laden Dutch society had turned a blind eye to barbarity committed in the name of culture. It became a snapshot of the West's future confronted with Islamic fundamentalism: a confrontation sharpened by the sheer power of demography.
Western feminists have largely ignored Hirsi Ali's call for female emancipation in Muslim communities. In an interview with The Australian yesterday, Hirsi Ali lamented the fact that such women gave up on universal human rights and pursued relativist rights. "Western feminism jumped on the multiculturalism wagon" forgetting that "human beings are equal. Ideas and values are not equal".
Critics who denounce Hirsi Ali as a Western fundamentalist have similarly adopted a moral equivalence that beggars belief. As she says in her book: "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation." She acknowledges the West is not perfect, "but this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved", she says.
In March, Ali joined a small group of "believers, doubters and unbelievers" in Florida who are calling for an Islamic Enlightenment. Ignored by the Australian media, signatories to what is called the StPetersburg Declaration called for an end to sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule and state-sanctioned religion, the elimination of female circumcision, honour killings and forced marriages, the removal of penalties for blasphemy and apostasy.
In short, they are asking for "an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation", releasing Islam from its captive embrace by "the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men". Their aim is for Islam to have a noble future as a personal faith, not a political doctrine.
Achieving that goal will depend on two things. First, whether other Muslims will recognise the need for Islam to be reinterpreted in a way that embraces liberty, rationality and tolerance. Canadian author Irshad Manji, a practising Muslim whose house has bulletproof windows and a locked mailbox to prevent letter bombs, told CNN we must draw a distinction between Muslim moderates and Muslim reformers. "Moderates denounce terror, to be sure, but they say Islam has nothing to do with it," she said. "Reform-minded Muslims, of which I consider myself one, denounce terror and acknowledge that the manipulation of religion does play a role."
The second challenge is for the rest of us. When reform-minded Muslims step up to the plate, they ought to be treated as champions, lauded as heroes. That may encourage more to come forward in a cause that will determine the future course of the West.
[janeta@bigpond.net.au]
privacy terms © The Australian
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESPERATE FOR ENLIGHTMENT.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the voice of reason and confrontation, is part of a growing movement that seeks to shape the future of Islam, and her message needs to be more widely heard, writes Janet Albrechtsen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
06jun07
"A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings ... A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development ... You submit; that is the literal meaning of Islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet on the inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind. - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel"
HIRSI Ali makes headlines wherever she goes. In Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival, she provided a finale on a brisk Sunday evening unusual at such events where a heady concoctions of anti-Western sentiments tend to prevail. Hirsi Ali encouraged her audience to espouse their Western values louder than those who espouse Islam. There was, she said, "always an infidel in me" as she grew to detest the submission of free will at the heart of Islam. Dressed in a black dress and knee-high boots, Hirsi Ali glided off the stage just as the polite applause grew more rapturous, with the audience standing to mark their appreciation.
Alas, there were no Muslim women in the audience dressed in hijabs or chadors. Hirsi Ali was preaching, if not to the converted then at least to the curious: those who wanted to catch a glimpse of this tall, beautiful, brave woman, who implored her audience not to abandon the child brides who could be found in the suburbs.
The 37-year-old Somali-born former Dutch MP has not always been applauded. Even before she arrived in Australia she was told to stay home. University of Technology Sydney Islamic law lecturer Jamila Hussain said Hirsi Ali's ideas were "narrow and radical" and she did not agree with them. Fair enough. But then Hussain added: "I think she'd be better staying where she came from." You have to admire academe for its censorship chutzpah. More from Nada Roude, of the NSW Islamic Council, who said Hirsi Ali's comments on the prophet Mohammed were a "no-go zone".
It won't faze Hirsi Ali, a woman surrounded by security to protect her from those who would resort to violence to fend off ideas. By blowing the lid on the treatment of some women within Muslim communities, she has nettled an even broader coalition of progressives who embrace cultural rights as a higher paragon than, say, those of women's rights.
In Infidel, she recounts the harrowing experience of genital mutilation, inflicted on her and her friends. And one friend, Sahra, described what it was like when her husband tried to penetrate her after they were married, "pushing his way into her, trying to tear open the scar between her legs, how much it hurt. She said Abdullah (her husband) had wanted to cut her open with a knife because she was sewn so tight ... I suppose he felt pity for that poor 14-year-old child (his wife), because he agreed to take her to the hospital to be cut."
The bind for progressives was obvious. Would they hail Hirsi Ali's expose of the inequality and mistreatment of Muslim women? Or would they defend cultural sensitivities? They opted for the latter, a choice imbued more with anti-Western sentiment than logic given that the past 40 years have been devoted to fighting for the sorts of freedoms - for women, for gays, for non-conformists - that Islamic societies openly spurn. Normally only too eager to denounce the stifling role of Christianity, many Western European secularists found her discussion of Islam a bridge too far. And her embrace of Western culture tended to show up their own loathing towards the West.
And so it falls to brave women such as Hirsi Ali to break the silence. In Infidel she traces how a spark of independence in a young, obedient Muslim girl matured into a determination to escape the shackles of Islam. Deserting an arranged marriage, she arrived in The Netherlands, where she discovered freedom, but it was tainted by what she found: Muslim girls suffering the same injustices meted out in Muslim countries. When she started talking, The Netherlands would never be the same.
Tolerance-laden Dutch society had turned a blind eye to barbarity committed in the name of culture. It became a snapshot of the West's future confronted with Islamic fundamentalism: a confrontation sharpened by the sheer power of demography.
Western feminists have largely ignored Hirsi Ali's call for female emancipation in Muslim communities. In an interview with The Australian yesterday, Hirsi Ali lamented the fact that such women gave up on universal human rights and pursued relativist rights. "Western feminism jumped on the multiculturalism wagon" forgetting that "human beings are equal. Ideas and values are not equal".
Critics who denounce Hirsi Ali as a Western fundamentalist have similarly adopted a moral equivalence that beggars belief. As she says in her book: "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation." She acknowledges the West is not perfect, "but this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved", she says.
In March, Ali joined a small group of "believers, doubters and unbelievers" in Florida who are calling for an Islamic Enlightenment. Ignored by the Australian media, signatories to what is called the StPetersburg Declaration called for an end to sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule and state-sanctioned religion, the elimination of female circumcision, honour killings and forced marriages, the removal of penalties for blasphemy and apostasy.
In short, they are asking for "an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation", releasing Islam from its captive embrace by "the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men". Their aim is for Islam to have a noble future as a personal faith, not a political doctrine.
Achieving that goal will depend on two things. First, whether other Muslims will recognise the need for Islam to be reinterpreted in a way that embraces liberty, rationality and tolerance. Canadian author Irshad Manji, a practising Muslim whose house has bulletproof windows and a locked mailbox to prevent letter bombs, told CNN we must draw a distinction between Muslim moderates and Muslim reformers. "Moderates denounce terror, to be sure, but they say Islam has nothing to do with it," she said. "Reform-minded Muslims, of which I consider myself one, denounce terror and acknowledge that the manipulation of religion does play a role."
The second challenge is for the rest of us. When reform-minded Muslims step up to the plate, they ought to be treated as champions, lauded as heroes. That may encourage more to come forward in a cause that will determine the future course of the West.
[janeta@bigpond.net.au]
privacy terms © The Australian
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