Global prayer day nears
Christians in 170 nations taking part
Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald
Sunday, March 02, 2008
When Meta Lynas ponders what will happen around the globe next Friday, she smiles.
"What we'll be thinking and praying about in our Calgary churches, they will have prayed about in England seven hours before us. In Asia and Africa . . . the same message will be getting out there," says Lynas, a member of Valleyview Presbyterian Church.
Calgarians will gather in 17 area churches Friday for the World Day of Prayer, a Christian, interdenominational initiative that will be held in 170 nations. While each nation and individual church will put its own particular brand on the day, the same essential message will be repeated in an estimated 90 languages throughout the 24-hour cycle.
In Canada, more than 2,000 cities, towns and hamlets are scheduled to hold services.
World Day of Prayer gatherings are open to all, but they have been nurtured and powered by Christian women since the first Canadian event of its kind was held in 1920. The movement eventually went global in scope, with the first Friday in March chosen as the annual date.
"It was originally called the Women's World Day of Prayer and was developed as a response to the human toll of the First World War," says Kathy Chapman, who has been co-ordinating the Calgary and area program for the last five years.
"The movement's pioneers believed that prayer was an integral element of the work needed to build lasting peace in the world." Every four years, an international gathering of participating faith groups designates countries to create the service for a particular year and develop the overriding spiritual themes.
Women from the small South American nation of Guyana have written the 2008 service on the theme God's Wisdom Provides New Understanding. The service includes prayers, Bible readings and hymns, including one penned by a Guyanan musician.
Chapman says local committees like Calgary's receive an outline of the service the previous fall. A series of grassroots meetings then fleshes out the list of churches which will host World Day services, offering a variety of locations and times to cater to as broad an audience as possible.
Host churches then reach out to women from other neighbourhood denominations to join them on the day as active participants. Members from more than 80 congregations will be involved in local services Friday.
"That's one of the great attractions of the World Day for me, the camaraderie that develops," says Chapman.
"We tend to get so wrapped up in our our individual congregations and our internal issues. With World Day of Prayer, we get many women volunteering year after year because they truly enjoy this chance to meet and work with other Christians in this common cause," Chapman adds.
Kate Reeves of Wild Rose United Church says learning about the collective dreams and concerns of women around the world through their creation of the service is inspiring.
"The sisterhood is what drew me to this movement," says Reeves.
"Through the service, they are telling their story of what their daily life is like in countries like Guyana. And by praying together, we are making this spiritual effort to make things a little better in the world." World Day of Prayer services also focus on social justice issues confronting the particular nation. Chapman notes Guyana is struggling with poverty in the wake of devastating coastal flooding in 2005 and 2006 as well as the spread of HIV-AIDS and its links to violence against women.
Chapman says she's been surprised at the number of participating local churches reporting they have members who hail from Guyana, a nation with a population smaller than Calgary's.
Proceeds from collections taken at World Day of Prayer services go to social action projects in Canada and dozens of other countries.
Chapman admits she rarely gets through a World Day of Prayer service without a tear or two.
"It's a very spiritually moving experience. We're praying with and for women from around the world."
gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Women in Islam
Let's use China's Hui to build our Muslim model in Canada
SHEEMA KHAN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
E-mail
March 6, 2008 at 7:40 AM EST
"Seek knowledge, even if in China, for the seeking of knowledge is
incumbent upon every Muslim."
While Muslim scholars dispute the origin of this narration (or
hadith), often attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, they are
unanimous about its essence: Muslims (male and female) are obliged
to seek knowledge, even if it entails extensive travel. Incredibly,
this narration may point toward a successful integration model of
Muslim communities in the West.
Recent tensions prompt these questions: Can secular democracies
successfully integrate Muslims keen on asserting their religious
identity? Can Muslim minorities successfully adapt to their host
societies without compromising cherished values? The answers,
according to Umar Faruq Abd-Allah of the Nawawi Foundation in
Chicago, may be found by seeking knowledge in China.
In his view, the integration of China's Hui Muslim minority offers a
valuable template for Muslim diasporas in the West. For centuries,
the Hui enjoyed independence and economic strength, rooted in a
confident, indigenous Islamic culture. They have played an important
role in their country's history, while maintaining social solidarity
and a deep sense of being simultaneously Muslim and Chinese.
The Hui are culturally distinct from their Uighur co-religionists of
western China; their ingenuity lay in their ability to think outside
the Semitic Abrahamic box. Armed with deep knowledge of Islamic
tradition and ancient Chinese civilization, they found common ground
with Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. By doing so, they developed
language, cultural paradigms and institutions that bridged the two
worlds, thus paving the way for a vibrant culture that was wholly
Chinese and Muslim.
Notably, Hui scholars did not deconstruct Chinese ethos; rather,
they built on the best of Chinese traditions.
The 16th century saw the emergence of a unique institution: the
nusi - mosques for women, run by women. These continue to thrive
today, as do the ahong - Muslim female clerics (or imams) who
provide spiritual and educational guidance to men and women. The
ahong are trained in both Islamic knowledge and Chinese culture.
The evolution of the Hui reflects the cultural diversity of Muslims
worldwide. Wherever they went, Muslims formulated distinctive
indigenous forms of culture rooted in the teachings of their faith.
Some Muslims incorrectly assume that the only authentic form of
cultural expression is Middle Eastern.
The example of the Hui should impel Canadian Muslims to reflect on
the evolution of their institutions - many of which reflect the
mentality of "hislam" and autocracy prevalent in the Arab world and
South Asia. There are already signs of an impending collision
between gender equity and the authoritarian patriarchy entrenched in
many of the country's Muslim institutions.
Many Muslim women have embraced self-empowerment offered by Canadian
society, finding it wholly compatible with Islam. They are not
content to be shut out of community affairs. Some women are fighting
back with knowledge and research of Islamic tradition to demand a
more egalitarian practice. Others are turning away from institutions
that are dismissive, if not hostile, to their concerns.
The issue of gender equity is but one cultural value that will play
a key role in the establishment of an indigenous Canadian Muslim
culture. Freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, critical
inquiry and pluralism must be incorporated by Muslims if they are to
thrive in Canada. So must a respectful appreciation of the best
Canadian traditions. The good news is that classical Islamic thought
already provides the foundation to incorporate these fundamental
values into a paradigm that is Muslim and Canadian. The question is:
Who recognizes the urgency to do so?
SHEEMA KHAN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
March 6, 2008 at 7:40 AM EST
"Seek knowledge, even if in China, for the seeking of knowledge is
incumbent upon every Muslim."
While Muslim scholars dispute the origin of this narration (or
hadith), often attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, they are
unanimous about its essence: Muslims (male and female) are obliged
to seek knowledge, even if it entails extensive travel. Incredibly,
this narration may point toward a successful integration model of
Muslim communities in the West.
Recent tensions prompt these questions: Can secular democracies
successfully integrate Muslims keen on asserting their religious
identity? Can Muslim minorities successfully adapt to their host
societies without compromising cherished values? The answers,
according to Umar Faruq Abd-Allah of the Nawawi Foundation in
Chicago, may be found by seeking knowledge in China.
In his view, the integration of China's Hui Muslim minority offers a
valuable template for Muslim diasporas in the West. For centuries,
the Hui enjoyed independence and economic strength, rooted in a
confident, indigenous Islamic culture. They have played an important
role in their country's history, while maintaining social solidarity
and a deep sense of being simultaneously Muslim and Chinese.
The Hui are culturally distinct from their Uighur co-religionists of
western China; their ingenuity lay in their ability to think outside
the Semitic Abrahamic box. Armed with deep knowledge of Islamic
tradition and ancient Chinese civilization, they found common ground
with Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. By doing so, they developed
language, cultural paradigms and institutions that bridged the two
worlds, thus paving the way for a vibrant culture that was wholly
Chinese and Muslim.
Notably, Hui scholars did not deconstruct Chinese ethos; rather,
they built on the best of Chinese traditions.
The 16th century saw the emergence of a unique institution: the
nusi - mosques for women, run by women. These continue to thrive
today, as do the ahong - Muslim female clerics (or imams) who
provide spiritual and educational guidance to men and women. The
ahong are trained in both Islamic knowledge and Chinese culture.
The evolution of the Hui reflects the cultural diversity of Muslims
worldwide. Wherever they went, Muslims formulated distinctive
indigenous forms of culture rooted in the teachings of their faith.
Some Muslims incorrectly assume that the only authentic form of
cultural expression is Middle Eastern.
The example of the Hui should impel Canadian Muslims to reflect on
the evolution of their institutions - many of which reflect the
mentality of "hislam" and autocracy prevalent in the Arab world and
South Asia. There are already signs of an impending collision
between gender equity and the authoritarian patriarchy entrenched in
many of the country's Muslim institutions.
Many Muslim women have embraced self-empowerment offered by Canadian
society, finding it wholly compatible with Islam. They are not
content to be shut out of community affairs. Some women are fighting
back with knowledge and research of Islamic tradition to demand a
more egalitarian practice. Others are turning away from institutions
that are dismissive, if not hostile, to their concerns.
The issue of gender equity is but one cultural value that will play
a key role in the establishment of an indigenous Canadian Muslim
culture. Freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, critical
inquiry and pluralism must be incorporated by Muslims if they are to
thrive in Canada. So must a respectful appreciation of the best
Canadian traditions. The good news is that classical Islamic thought
already provides the foundation to incorporate these fundamental
values into a paradigm that is Muslim and Canadian. The question is:
Who recognizes the urgency to do so?
Saudi woman defies driving ban
Herald News Services
Monday, March 10, 2008
A Saudi woman activist marked this year's International Women's Day by defying a ban on women driving in the ultra-conservative kingdom and posted a video of her act on YouTube.
Wajiha Huwaidar, a leading activist in a campaign to allow women to get behind the wheel in the desert kingdom, confirmed to AFP on Sunday that it was her in the video posted on the popular website.
She said she recorded the video while she drove in a deserted area in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and posted it on the Internet on Saturday to mark International Women's Day.
In the video, Huwaidar appeared driving calmly as few cars passed by along the almost empty road.
"Women can drive in the countryside. There is no problem with that. Some women do the school run everyday without being obstructed," she claimed. "What is important is to allow women to drive in urban areas."
In September, more than 1,100 Saudi men and women signed a petition to King Abdullah urging him to lift the controversial ban on women driving in the kingdom.
A group of 47 women defied the ban on driving by roaming the streets of Riyadh in 15 cars in November 1990.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
****
Published on National Catholic Reporter Conversation Cafe
The world's greatest, untapped alternative resource: women
By Joan Chittister
Created Mar 6 2008 - 05:30
From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSBMarch 6, 2008
Vol. 5, No. 22
[Editor's Note: Sr. Chittister is in Jaipur, India, March 6-10, for the first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.]
I heard about a conversation last week that I thought explained just about everything we need to know about the current state of human affairs.
"Old woman," the young woman asked, "what is the heaviest burden a woman has to bear." And the old woman answered her, "Young woman, the heaviest burden a woman has to bear is to have no burden at all."
Whether or not that conversation really happened, I don't know. But I do know that the point of the story is all too true.
In a world where billions are poor and hungry, the world is now full of conferences intent on resolving problems that are crippling people's development.
Symposiums, think tanks and forums on global issues are being hosted everywhere.
A world whose favored thesis just a few years ago read, "the personal is political" is now chasing the idea that "the global is local." Conferences on global change, global development, global needs, global politics, global economics and global agendas swirl around the planet.
And yet, little changes.
The question is why? And the answer is hiding in plain sight.
These conferences will never solve the major problems facing the human community because half the human community is being left out of the conversation. Half the wisdom of the world is being ignored. Half the concerns of the human race are not even being taken into consideration. Half the resources of the world, women, are not being tapped to solve the problems that face us all.
Both halves are suffering from our failure to approach both problems and solutions from the vantage point of the entire human race.
The fact is that the experience and insights of women are glaringly and regularly absent from global conferences that purport to be concerned with both the problems the world faces and their possible solutions.
We are not going to change the world by repeating old and ineffective answers over and over again while leaving new ones out of consideration.
And yet we persist.
But not everywhere and not everyone.
Here in India -- the land of banyan trees whose roots speak of depth and endurance, of lotus flowers that speak of survival and beauty under the grimmest of circumstances, and of goddesses like Lakshmi who is concerned with human enrichment, both material and spiritual, of Durga who protects the righteous and of Sarasvati who brings learning and wisdom to the ignorant and superficial -- here the other half of the human race is gathering to be heard around the globe.
More than 450 women from more than 45 countries have come to Jaipur, India, to make a difference, to unmask the woeful absence of the other half of the human race in the resolution of the greatest issues facing the human condition -- to be the launching ground for another kind of reflection -- on the human condition, to raise the ideas of the invisible in clear cadence, and loud voice -- to give this eagle wings!
Have no doubt about it: This first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, "making way for the feminine for the benefit of the world community" is a potentially life-changing enterprise.
No matter what else happens as a result of this conference, it will transform each of us here in ways that touch the soul, if only to make us even more aware and more resolute, in our desire to awaken this world to the ideas, insights, energy, care, compassion, concern, intelligence and intent of women than we were before we came.
But we have the potential to transform many others, if we band together and trust in the support of one another. We can give others:
-The courage to speak because they will know someone has spoken for them;
-The strength to endure the heat of the public arena because they will know someone has stepped into the light before them.
-The freedom to think and trust those thoughts because they will know someone -- like us together -- has spoken first.
Indeed, such a gathering of women as this has the potential to change the world for women everywhere if we will only try, if we will only persist, if we will only risk raising the questions and concerns that remain unasked and unattended to by systems that ignore women.
Depending on your criteria and definition of a country, the current count of nations in the world ranges from 189 to 266. Of these self-governing bodies of people, only 13 have women presidents or prime ministers. The lack of emphasis on feminine concerns for equality, compassion, nurturance and community building is at the base of every major social problem on the planet.
Over 90 percent of those killed in war are now, in our century, civilians -- and most of those are women and children. Technology and power do not bring either peace or protection of the innocent when nations fight for dominance. What kind of protection of the righteous is that?
Over 1 billion people, 20 percent of the population of the globe lack access to clean drinking water and 2.6 billion, almost half the people of the world, lack adequate sanitation. As disease and dehydration spread illness and death, no amount of government concern for political power will be able to suppress the spread of wars for water.
Of the world's 781 million illiterate adults, 64% are women. the implications of figures like that for the education of children, the advancement of families and the development of nations is resoundingly negative, deeply depressing. but those figures, those concerns, seldom if ever get to the decision-making arenas of the male world where male control counts for more than female literacy. what kind of wisdom is it that refuses to educate half the world?
Two-thirds of children not attending school are girls. If women were to receive the same education as men, agricultural productivity would increase by seven percent to 23 percent. Families could grow; countries would thrive; emigration would decline and the strain on global resources and multiple national economies would decrease. What kind of material and spiritual enrichment is that?
Selective abortions, despite national laws to the contrary, continue because men are valued and women are not. So the world loses the very gentleness and care, the very compassion and concern for others that is the ground of world peace. We are literarily depriving ourselves of the intellectual and spiritual resources the world desperately needs to develop if we are to survive.
Clearly the world needs the presence and participation, the perspectives and vision of women to bring us all back from the brink of human degradation and extinction. But to do that, we need women of courage as well as men of conscience who are able to understand the world's need for women's insights, education, equality and voice.
The first international conference of the Women's Global Peace Initiative is not convened for the sake of celebrating femaleness for its own sake. It is to offer the world the missing resource of our time, the power of the feminine.
Most important of all, perhaps, this conference is not an exercise in anybody's chauvinism, national or local, female or male. This conference will raise women's voices in international affairs for the sake of the whole human race. Without an increase in the feminine qualities of compassion, care, human community and human support in both women and men in a world that gives power preference over preservation, we are all in danger.
Women from all over the world are coming to India, the home of the goddesses, to take their responsibility in bearing the burdens of the world -- whether anyone else yet has the sense to invite them to do their share of it or not.
Copyright 2006
The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company
115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111
Herald News Services
Monday, March 10, 2008
A Saudi woman activist marked this year's International Women's Day by defying a ban on women driving in the ultra-conservative kingdom and posted a video of her act on YouTube.
Wajiha Huwaidar, a leading activist in a campaign to allow women to get behind the wheel in the desert kingdom, confirmed to AFP on Sunday that it was her in the video posted on the popular website.
She said she recorded the video while she drove in a deserted area in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and posted it on the Internet on Saturday to mark International Women's Day.
In the video, Huwaidar appeared driving calmly as few cars passed by along the almost empty road.
"Women can drive in the countryside. There is no problem with that. Some women do the school run everyday without being obstructed," she claimed. "What is important is to allow women to drive in urban areas."
In September, more than 1,100 Saudi men and women signed a petition to King Abdullah urging him to lift the controversial ban on women driving in the kingdom.
A group of 47 women defied the ban on driving by roaming the streets of Riyadh in 15 cars in November 1990.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
****
Published on National Catholic Reporter Conversation Cafe
The world's greatest, untapped alternative resource: women
By Joan Chittister
Created Mar 6 2008 - 05:30
From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSBMarch 6, 2008
Vol. 5, No. 22
[Editor's Note: Sr. Chittister is in Jaipur, India, March 6-10, for the first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.]
I heard about a conversation last week that I thought explained just about everything we need to know about the current state of human affairs.
"Old woman," the young woman asked, "what is the heaviest burden a woman has to bear." And the old woman answered her, "Young woman, the heaviest burden a woman has to bear is to have no burden at all."
Whether or not that conversation really happened, I don't know. But I do know that the point of the story is all too true.
In a world where billions are poor and hungry, the world is now full of conferences intent on resolving problems that are crippling people's development.
Symposiums, think tanks and forums on global issues are being hosted everywhere.
A world whose favored thesis just a few years ago read, "the personal is political" is now chasing the idea that "the global is local." Conferences on global change, global development, global needs, global politics, global economics and global agendas swirl around the planet.
And yet, little changes.
The question is why? And the answer is hiding in plain sight.
These conferences will never solve the major problems facing the human community because half the human community is being left out of the conversation. Half the wisdom of the world is being ignored. Half the concerns of the human race are not even being taken into consideration. Half the resources of the world, women, are not being tapped to solve the problems that face us all.
Both halves are suffering from our failure to approach both problems and solutions from the vantage point of the entire human race.
The fact is that the experience and insights of women are glaringly and regularly absent from global conferences that purport to be concerned with both the problems the world faces and their possible solutions.
We are not going to change the world by repeating old and ineffective answers over and over again while leaving new ones out of consideration.
And yet we persist.
But not everywhere and not everyone.
Here in India -- the land of banyan trees whose roots speak of depth and endurance, of lotus flowers that speak of survival and beauty under the grimmest of circumstances, and of goddesses like Lakshmi who is concerned with human enrichment, both material and spiritual, of Durga who protects the righteous and of Sarasvati who brings learning and wisdom to the ignorant and superficial -- here the other half of the human race is gathering to be heard around the globe.
More than 450 women from more than 45 countries have come to Jaipur, India, to make a difference, to unmask the woeful absence of the other half of the human race in the resolution of the greatest issues facing the human condition -- to be the launching ground for another kind of reflection -- on the human condition, to raise the ideas of the invisible in clear cadence, and loud voice -- to give this eagle wings!
Have no doubt about it: This first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, "making way for the feminine for the benefit of the world community" is a potentially life-changing enterprise.
No matter what else happens as a result of this conference, it will transform each of us here in ways that touch the soul, if only to make us even more aware and more resolute, in our desire to awaken this world to the ideas, insights, energy, care, compassion, concern, intelligence and intent of women than we were before we came.
But we have the potential to transform many others, if we band together and trust in the support of one another. We can give others:
-The courage to speak because they will know someone has spoken for them;
-The strength to endure the heat of the public arena because they will know someone has stepped into the light before them.
-The freedom to think and trust those thoughts because they will know someone -- like us together -- has spoken first.
Indeed, such a gathering of women as this has the potential to change the world for women everywhere if we will only try, if we will only persist, if we will only risk raising the questions and concerns that remain unasked and unattended to by systems that ignore women.
Depending on your criteria and definition of a country, the current count of nations in the world ranges from 189 to 266. Of these self-governing bodies of people, only 13 have women presidents or prime ministers. The lack of emphasis on feminine concerns for equality, compassion, nurturance and community building is at the base of every major social problem on the planet.
Over 90 percent of those killed in war are now, in our century, civilians -- and most of those are women and children. Technology and power do not bring either peace or protection of the innocent when nations fight for dominance. What kind of protection of the righteous is that?
Over 1 billion people, 20 percent of the population of the globe lack access to clean drinking water and 2.6 billion, almost half the people of the world, lack adequate sanitation. As disease and dehydration spread illness and death, no amount of government concern for political power will be able to suppress the spread of wars for water.
Of the world's 781 million illiterate adults, 64% are women. the implications of figures like that for the education of children, the advancement of families and the development of nations is resoundingly negative, deeply depressing. but those figures, those concerns, seldom if ever get to the decision-making arenas of the male world where male control counts for more than female literacy. what kind of wisdom is it that refuses to educate half the world?
Two-thirds of children not attending school are girls. If women were to receive the same education as men, agricultural productivity would increase by seven percent to 23 percent. Families could grow; countries would thrive; emigration would decline and the strain on global resources and multiple national economies would decrease. What kind of material and spiritual enrichment is that?
Selective abortions, despite national laws to the contrary, continue because men are valued and women are not. So the world loses the very gentleness and care, the very compassion and concern for others that is the ground of world peace. We are literarily depriving ourselves of the intellectual and spiritual resources the world desperately needs to develop if we are to survive.
Clearly the world needs the presence and participation, the perspectives and vision of women to bring us all back from the brink of human degradation and extinction. But to do that, we need women of courage as well as men of conscience who are able to understand the world's need for women's insights, education, equality and voice.
The first international conference of the Women's Global Peace Initiative is not convened for the sake of celebrating femaleness for its own sake. It is to offer the world the missing resource of our time, the power of the feminine.
Most important of all, perhaps, this conference is not an exercise in anybody's chauvinism, national or local, female or male. This conference will raise women's voices in international affairs for the sake of the whole human race. Without an increase in the feminine qualities of compassion, care, human community and human support in both women and men in a world that gives power preference over preservation, we are all in danger.
Women from all over the world are coming to India, the home of the goddesses, to take their responsibility in bearing the burdens of the world -- whether anyone else yet has the sense to invite them to do their share of it or not.
Copyright 2006
The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company
115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111
March 26, 2008
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
LODI, Calif. — Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.
Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.
“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”
Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, as in Ms. Bibi’s, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.
About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here are home-schooled, though broader statistics on the number of Muslim children being home-schooled, and how well they do academically, are elusive. Even estimates on the number of all American children being taught at home swing broadly, from one million to two million.
No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.
“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”
Still, the subject of home schooling is a contentious one in various Muslim communities, with opponents arguing that Muslim children are better off staying in the system and, if need be, fighting for their rights.
Robina Asghar, a Muslim who does social work in Stockton, Calif., says the fact that her son was repeatedly branded a “terrorist” in school hallways sharpened his interest in civil rights and inspired a dream to become a lawyer. He now attends a Catholic high school.
“My son had a hard time in school, but every time something happened it was a learning moment for him,” Mrs. Asghar said. “He learned how to cope. A lot of people were discriminated against in this country, but the only thing that brings change is education.”
Many parents, however, would rather their children learn in a less difficult environment, and opt to keep them home.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar decided to tutor her three sons at home and to send them to a small Muslim school cooperative established by some 15 Bay Area families for subjects like Arabic, science and carpentry. She made up her mind after visiting her oldest son’s prospective public school kindergarten, where each pupil had assembled a scrapbook titled “Why I Like Pigs.” Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar read with dismay what the children had written about the delicious taste of pork, barred by Islam. “I remembered at that age how important it was to fit in,” she said.
Many Muslim parents contacted for this article were reluctant to talk, saying Muslim home-schoolers were often portrayed as religious extremists. That view is partly fueled by the fact that Adam Gadahn, an American-born spokesman for Al Qaeda, was home-schooled in rural California.
“There is a tendency to make home-schoolers look like antisocial fanatics who don’t want their kids in the system,” said Nabila Hanson, who argues that most home-schoolers, like herself, make an extra effort to find their children opportunities for sports, music or field trips with other people.
Lodi’s Muslims also attracted unwanted national attention when one local man, Hamid Hayat, was sentenced last year to 24 years in prison on a terrorism conviction that his relatives say was largely due to a fabricated confession. (Had he been more Americanized, they say, he would have known to ask for a lawyer as soon as the F.B.I. appeared.)
Parents who home-school tend to be converts, Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar said. Immigrant parents she has encountered generally oppose the idea, seeing educational opportunities in America as a main reason for coming.
If so, then Fawzia Mai Tung is an exception, a Chinese Muslim immigrant who home-schools three daughters in Phoenix. She spent many sleepless nights worried that her children would not excel on standardized tests, until she discovered how low the scores at the local schools were. Her oldest son, also home-schooled, is now applying to medical school.
In some cases, home-schooling is used primarily as a way to isolate girls like Miss Bibi, the Pakistani-American here in Lodi.
Some 80 percent of the city’s 2,500 Muslims are Pakistani, and many are interrelated villagers who try to recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home. A decade ago many girls were simply shipped back to their villages once they reached adolescence.
“Their families want them to retain their culture and not become Americanized,” said Roberta Wall, the principal of the district-run Independent School, which supervises home schooling in Lodi and where home-schooled students attend weekly hourlong tutorials.
Of more than 90 Pakistani or other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the Lodi district, 38 are being home-schooled. By contrast, just 7 of the 107 boys are being home-schooled, and usually the reason is that they were falling behind academically.
As soon as they finish their schooling, the girls are married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.
The parents “want their girls safe at home and away from evil things like boys, drinking and drugs,” said Kristine Leach, a veteran teacher with the Independent School.
The girls follow the regular high school curriculum, squeezing in study time among housework, cooking, praying and reading the Koran. The teachers at the weekly tutorials occasionally crack jokes of the “what, are your brothers’ arms broken?” variety, but in general they tread lightly, sensing that their students obey family and tradition because they have no alternative.
“I do miss my friends,” Miss Bibi said of fellow students with whom she once attended public school. “We would hang out and do fun things, help each other with our homework.”
But being schooled apart does have its benefit, she added. “We don’t want anyone to point a finger at us,” she said, “to say that we are bad.”
Mrs. Asghar, the Stockton woman who argues against home schooling, takes exception to the idea of removing girls from school to preserve family honor, calling it a barrier to assimilation.
“People who think like this are stuck in a time capsule,” she said. “When kids know more than their parents, the parents lose control. I think that is a fear in all of us.”
Aishah Bashir, now an 18-year-old Independent School student, was sent back to Pakistan when she was 12 and stayed till she was 16. She had no education there.
Asked about home schooling, she said it was the best choice. But she admitted that the choice was not hers and, asked if she would home-school her own daughter, stared mutely at the floor. Finally she said quietly: “When I have a daughter, I want her to learn more than me. I want her to be more educated.”
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
LODI, Calif. — Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.
Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.
“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”
Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, as in Ms. Bibi’s, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.
About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here are home-schooled, though broader statistics on the number of Muslim children being home-schooled, and how well they do academically, are elusive. Even estimates on the number of all American children being taught at home swing broadly, from one million to two million.
No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.
“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”
Still, the subject of home schooling is a contentious one in various Muslim communities, with opponents arguing that Muslim children are better off staying in the system and, if need be, fighting for their rights.
Robina Asghar, a Muslim who does social work in Stockton, Calif., says the fact that her son was repeatedly branded a “terrorist” in school hallways sharpened his interest in civil rights and inspired a dream to become a lawyer. He now attends a Catholic high school.
“My son had a hard time in school, but every time something happened it was a learning moment for him,” Mrs. Asghar said. “He learned how to cope. A lot of people were discriminated against in this country, but the only thing that brings change is education.”
Many parents, however, would rather their children learn in a less difficult environment, and opt to keep them home.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar decided to tutor her three sons at home and to send them to a small Muslim school cooperative established by some 15 Bay Area families for subjects like Arabic, science and carpentry. She made up her mind after visiting her oldest son’s prospective public school kindergarten, where each pupil had assembled a scrapbook titled “Why I Like Pigs.” Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar read with dismay what the children had written about the delicious taste of pork, barred by Islam. “I remembered at that age how important it was to fit in,” she said.
Many Muslim parents contacted for this article were reluctant to talk, saying Muslim home-schoolers were often portrayed as religious extremists. That view is partly fueled by the fact that Adam Gadahn, an American-born spokesman for Al Qaeda, was home-schooled in rural California.
“There is a tendency to make home-schoolers look like antisocial fanatics who don’t want their kids in the system,” said Nabila Hanson, who argues that most home-schoolers, like herself, make an extra effort to find their children opportunities for sports, music or field trips with other people.
Lodi’s Muslims also attracted unwanted national attention when one local man, Hamid Hayat, was sentenced last year to 24 years in prison on a terrorism conviction that his relatives say was largely due to a fabricated confession. (Had he been more Americanized, they say, he would have known to ask for a lawyer as soon as the F.B.I. appeared.)
Parents who home-school tend to be converts, Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar said. Immigrant parents she has encountered generally oppose the idea, seeing educational opportunities in America as a main reason for coming.
If so, then Fawzia Mai Tung is an exception, a Chinese Muslim immigrant who home-schools three daughters in Phoenix. She spent many sleepless nights worried that her children would not excel on standardized tests, until she discovered how low the scores at the local schools were. Her oldest son, also home-schooled, is now applying to medical school.
In some cases, home-schooling is used primarily as a way to isolate girls like Miss Bibi, the Pakistani-American here in Lodi.
Some 80 percent of the city’s 2,500 Muslims are Pakistani, and many are interrelated villagers who try to recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home. A decade ago many girls were simply shipped back to their villages once they reached adolescence.
“Their families want them to retain their culture and not become Americanized,” said Roberta Wall, the principal of the district-run Independent School, which supervises home schooling in Lodi and where home-schooled students attend weekly hourlong tutorials.
Of more than 90 Pakistani or other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the Lodi district, 38 are being home-schooled. By contrast, just 7 of the 107 boys are being home-schooled, and usually the reason is that they were falling behind academically.
As soon as they finish their schooling, the girls are married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.
The parents “want their girls safe at home and away from evil things like boys, drinking and drugs,” said Kristine Leach, a veteran teacher with the Independent School.
The girls follow the regular high school curriculum, squeezing in study time among housework, cooking, praying and reading the Koran. The teachers at the weekly tutorials occasionally crack jokes of the “what, are your brothers’ arms broken?” variety, but in general they tread lightly, sensing that their students obey family and tradition because they have no alternative.
“I do miss my friends,” Miss Bibi said of fellow students with whom she once attended public school. “We would hang out and do fun things, help each other with our homework.”
But being schooled apart does have its benefit, she added. “We don’t want anyone to point a finger at us,” she said, “to say that we are bad.”
Mrs. Asghar, the Stockton woman who argues against home schooling, takes exception to the idea of removing girls from school to preserve family honor, calling it a barrier to assimilation.
“People who think like this are stuck in a time capsule,” she said. “When kids know more than their parents, the parents lose control. I think that is a fear in all of us.”
Aishah Bashir, now an 18-year-old Independent School student, was sent back to Pakistan when she was 12 and stayed till she was 16. She had no education there.
Asked about home schooling, she said it was the best choice. But she admitted that the choice was not hers and, asked if she would home-school her own daughter, stared mutely at the floor. Finally she said quietly: “When I have a daughter, I want her to learn more than me. I want her to be more educated.”
Calgary woman becoming priest
Campaign for reform feels 'prophetic'
Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald
Sunday, May 04, 2008
On May 29, Monica Kilburn Smith of Calgary will be welcomed into the small worldwide community of female Roman Catholic priests.
Her ordination ceremony will take place in a United Church in Victoria and, of course, will not be recognized by the global Roman Catholic Church. However, Kilburn Smith and local supporters of major reform within the world's largest Christian church say it will be one more small step in a campaign to bring up questions, start discussion, open eyes and, eventually, win hearts.
"Many Catholics, both women and men, have been working for change within the church for centuries," says Kilburn Smith, a chaplain with the Calgary Health Region.
"But the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement is doing something tangible about it. It seems prophetic and courageous, something I feel called to be a part of."
The first ordinations of Catholic women as priests were held in 2002 in Europe. More than 50 women, including two other Canadians, have taken the bold step since then.
Kilburn Smith says she's eager to play a pastoral role for what she believes is a growing community of people who feel disconnected from the current church, but who remain Catholic at heart.
Local members of a group called Friends of Vatican II, who are working for reform within the Catholic church, say they don't hide their opinions when talking to other Catholics, but they don't actively try to proselytize.
"It comes up in conversations after church and in other settings," says Shelagh Mikulak.
"I think there are a lot of Catholics who wouldn't have a problem with female priests, but they don't feel comfortable to come out in the open with their support."
Those actively seeking reform have been holding silent vigils across the street from St. Mary's, the Calgary Catholic diocese cathedral, for the past few years during holy week.
Some women who have been ordained as priests have been excommunicated from the Catholic fold. Reform supporters say they're not looking to pick a fight with the Vatican, but they steadfastly maintain their position is an elemental matter of conscience and justice deeply rooted in their faith.
"It's not about being contentious, but we believe there's a need for reform within the church to welcome both women and married male priests," says Fred Williams.
"Clearly the law is unjust. These people want to follow their conscience and their spiritual calling and to deny that is wrong."
Kilburn Smith says she and other Roman Catholic women priests value the sacramental tradition of their church, but are practising a non-clerical, non-hierarchical form of ordained ministry.
"It's leadership modelled on Jesus' example of inclusivity and non-judgmental love," she says.
Kilburn Smith says her concept of a priest's role is, among other things, one who is "the holder of the sacred space" and who, like many, feels moved to use his or her God-given gifts in compassionate ministry.
"Jesus says the Kingdom of God is within you, and that statement doesn't just apply to men. We are each called to minister in our own way. I believe being a priest is my way."
Kilburn Smith says the historic Catholic rejection of
a female priesthood is akin to "gender apartheid" and amounts to a tragic waste of human potential at a time when many Catholic parishes worldwide are without priests.
Supporter Angelina Waldon draws a comparison to the American civil rights movement and its early pioneers who faced entrenched attitudes with courage.
"It's like Rosa Parks; someone, somewhere has to be the first to stand up for what is right," says Waldon.
Kilburn Smith says she and other Catholic women who aspire to the priesthood are often asked why they don't simply move to another Christian denomination, such as Anglican, United or Presbyterian, where female clergy are welcomed.
"I'm Catholic in my bones," she says. "If you want to bring about change, you have to stay within, not walk away and give up. If we didn't care about the church and its future, we wouldn't be doing this."
Supporter Catherine Williams adds, "We the people are the church, not the buildings or the hierarchy."
Will supporters of a female Catholic priesthood see their vision embraced by the church in their lifetime?
"I have to believe it will happen," says Mikulak. "Gender equality is now established in so many other segments of society. But it took courageous women, and courageous men who supported them, to make it happen."
As the spring sun warms the earth and thoughts turn to the leafy renewal of spring, Kilburn Smith is convinced a more inclusive Catholic Church will bloom in the years ahead.
"This is a transition time in the Catholic world. We've been a long time in that moist soil," Kilburn Smith says of those advocating for renewal.
"But now we are starting to sprout up. There is nothing that lives that does not change."
gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Campaign for reform feels 'prophetic'
Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald
Sunday, May 04, 2008
On May 29, Monica Kilburn Smith of Calgary will be welcomed into the small worldwide community of female Roman Catholic priests.
Her ordination ceremony will take place in a United Church in Victoria and, of course, will not be recognized by the global Roman Catholic Church. However, Kilburn Smith and local supporters of major reform within the world's largest Christian church say it will be one more small step in a campaign to bring up questions, start discussion, open eyes and, eventually, win hearts.
"Many Catholics, both women and men, have been working for change within the church for centuries," says Kilburn Smith, a chaplain with the Calgary Health Region.
"But the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement is doing something tangible about it. It seems prophetic and courageous, something I feel called to be a part of."
The first ordinations of Catholic women as priests were held in 2002 in Europe. More than 50 women, including two other Canadians, have taken the bold step since then.
Kilburn Smith says she's eager to play a pastoral role for what she believes is a growing community of people who feel disconnected from the current church, but who remain Catholic at heart.
Local members of a group called Friends of Vatican II, who are working for reform within the Catholic church, say they don't hide their opinions when talking to other Catholics, but they don't actively try to proselytize.
"It comes up in conversations after church and in other settings," says Shelagh Mikulak.
"I think there are a lot of Catholics who wouldn't have a problem with female priests, but they don't feel comfortable to come out in the open with their support."
Those actively seeking reform have been holding silent vigils across the street from St. Mary's, the Calgary Catholic diocese cathedral, for the past few years during holy week.
Some women who have been ordained as priests have been excommunicated from the Catholic fold. Reform supporters say they're not looking to pick a fight with the Vatican, but they steadfastly maintain their position is an elemental matter of conscience and justice deeply rooted in their faith.
"It's not about being contentious, but we believe there's a need for reform within the church to welcome both women and married male priests," says Fred Williams.
"Clearly the law is unjust. These people want to follow their conscience and their spiritual calling and to deny that is wrong."
Kilburn Smith says she and other Roman Catholic women priests value the sacramental tradition of their church, but are practising a non-clerical, non-hierarchical form of ordained ministry.
"It's leadership modelled on Jesus' example of inclusivity and non-judgmental love," she says.
Kilburn Smith says her concept of a priest's role is, among other things, one who is "the holder of the sacred space" and who, like many, feels moved to use his or her God-given gifts in compassionate ministry.
"Jesus says the Kingdom of God is within you, and that statement doesn't just apply to men. We are each called to minister in our own way. I believe being a priest is my way."
Kilburn Smith says the historic Catholic rejection of
a female priesthood is akin to "gender apartheid" and amounts to a tragic waste of human potential at a time when many Catholic parishes worldwide are without priests.
Supporter Angelina Waldon draws a comparison to the American civil rights movement and its early pioneers who faced entrenched attitudes with courage.
"It's like Rosa Parks; someone, somewhere has to be the first to stand up for what is right," says Waldon.
Kilburn Smith says she and other Catholic women who aspire to the priesthood are often asked why they don't simply move to another Christian denomination, such as Anglican, United or Presbyterian, where female clergy are welcomed.
"I'm Catholic in my bones," she says. "If you want to bring about change, you have to stay within, not walk away and give up. If we didn't care about the church and its future, we wouldn't be doing this."
Supporter Catherine Williams adds, "We the people are the church, not the buildings or the hierarchy."
Will supporters of a female Catholic priesthood see their vision embraced by the church in their lifetime?
"I have to believe it will happen," says Mikulak. "Gender equality is now established in so many other segments of society. But it took courageous women, and courageous men who supported them, to make it happen."
As the spring sun warms the earth and thoughts turn to the leafy renewal of spring, Kilburn Smith is convinced a more inclusive Catholic Church will bloom in the years ahead.
"This is a transition time in the Catholic world. We've been a long time in that moist soil," Kilburn Smith says of those advocating for renewal.
"But now we are starting to sprout up. There is nothing that lives that does not change."
gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Pope offers thanks to virgins
Herald News Services
Friday, May 16, 2008
Pope Benedict thanked consecrated women virgins gathering at the Vatican on Thursday for their "total gift" to Christ, praising a holy rite he recognized was difficult for some non-Catholics to understand.
"(Live your lives) in such a way that you always irradiate the dignity of being the wife of Christ," the pope said in an address to hundreds of consecrated virgins from dozens of countries meeting in Rome.
Consecrated virgins are women who take a vow of lifelong chastity in service of the Church. The Vatican says they are "betrothed mystically to Christ" through the holy rite.
Committed virgins were the forerunners of nuns in the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican revived the rite, not practiced for centuries, in 1970.
The pope said the womens' vocation was deeply meaningful, even if it may be seen as "dark and useless" by some of those who don't share the Catholic faith.
A U.S. group which attended the conference estimated there are more than 3,000 consecrated Catholic virgins worldwide.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Herald News Services
Friday, May 16, 2008
Pope Benedict thanked consecrated women virgins gathering at the Vatican on Thursday for their "total gift" to Christ, praising a holy rite he recognized was difficult for some non-Catholics to understand.
"(Live your lives) in such a way that you always irradiate the dignity of being the wife of Christ," the pope said in an address to hundreds of consecrated virgins from dozens of countries meeting in Rome.
Consecrated virgins are women who take a vow of lifelong chastity in service of the Church. The Vatican says they are "betrothed mystically to Christ" through the holy rite.
Committed virgins were the forerunners of nuns in the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican revived the rite, not practiced for centuries, in 1970.
The pope said the womens' vocation was deeply meaningful, even if it may be seen as "dark and useless" by some of those who don't share the Catholic faith.
A U.S. group which attended the conference estimated there are more than 3,000 consecrated Catholic virgins worldwide.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Al-Qaida's stance on women sparks extremist debate
By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 21 minutes ago
Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida's refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.
In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.
His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.
A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.
Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."
"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."
Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.
However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues — the Internet — for rights within a feudal version of Islam.
"Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahri said is not what's happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. "Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad."
It's not clear how far women play a role in al-Qaida because of the group's amorphous nature.
Terrorism experts believe there are no women in the core leadership ranks around bin Laden and al-Zawahri. But beyond that core, al-Qaida is really a movement with loosely linked offshoots in various countries and sympathizers who may not play a direct role. Women are clearly among these sympathizers, and some are part of the offshoot groups.
In the Iraq branch, for example, women have carried out or attempted at least 20 suicide bombings since 2003. Al-Qaida members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured in Iraq at least three times last year, the U.S. military has said.
Hamas, another militant group, is open about using women fighters and disagrees with al-Qaida's stated stance. At least 11 Palestinian women have launched suicide attacks in recent years.
"A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."
Al-Zawahri's remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida's attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.
Al-Zawahri's comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by al-Qaida sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should "be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her," but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian.
Al-Zawahri's stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. airstrike in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2001. He later accused the U.S. of intentionally targeting women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I say to you ... (I have) tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favorite wife's chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling," he wrote in a 2005 letter.
Al-Zawahri's question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al-Qaida's sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al-Qaida — in this case, women — a voice they never had before.
The Internet is the only "breathing space" for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, "Ossama2001" wrote. She said al-Zawahri's words "opened old wounds" and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.
Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: "I use my pen and words, my honest emotions ... Jihad is not exclusive to men."
Such women are al-Qaida sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
"The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they're hidden far from the world," he said.
Men have also responded to al-Zawahri's remarks. One male Internet poster named Hassan al-Saif asked: "Does our sheik mean that there is no need to use women in our current jihad? Why can we not use them?"
He was in the minority. Dozens of postings were signed by men who agreed with al-Zawahri that women should stick to supporting men and raising children according to militant Islam.
Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa" — named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle — has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women's information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women's terrorist training camps, according to SITE.
Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article "Biography of the Female Mujahedeen."
The article read:
"We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna (sayings) of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us."
_______
Associated Press writer Pakinam Amer contributed to this report from Cairo; AP writer Diaa Hadid contributed from the Gaza Strip; and AP writer Zeina Karam contributed from Beirut, Lebanon.
*****
Education and sex
Vital statistics
May 29th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading
TRADITION has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once produced a talking Barbie doll whose stock of phrases included “Math class is tough!”
Although much is made of differences between the brains of adult males and females, the sources of these differences are a matter of controversy. Some people put forward cultural explanations and note, for example, that when girls are taught separately from boys they often do better in subjects such as maths than if classes are mixed. Others claim that the differences are rooted in biology, are there from birth, and exist because girls' and boys' brains have evolved to handle information in different ways.
Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least. In this week's Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.
Dr Guiso took data from the 2003 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment. Some 276,000 15-year-olds from 40 countries sat the same maths and reading tests. The researchers compared the results, by country, with each other and with a number of different measures of social sexual equality. One measure was the World Economic Forum's gender-gap index, which reflects economic and political opportunities, education and well-being for women. Another was based on an index of cultural attitudes towards women. A third was the rate of female economic activity in a country, and the fourth measure looked at women's political participation.
On average, girls' maths scores were, as expected, lower than those of boys. However, the gap was largest in countries with the least equality between the sexes (by any score), such as Turkey. It vanished in countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the sexes are more or less on a par with one another. The researchers also did some additional statistical checks to ensure the correlation was material, and not generated by another, third variable that is correlated with sexual equality, such as GDP per person. They say their data therefore show that improvements in maths scores are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women.
The one mathematical gap that did not disappear was the differences between girls and boys in geometry. This seems to have no relation to sexual equality, and may allow men to cling on to their famed claim to be better at navigating than women are. However, the gap in reading scores not only remained, but got bigger as the sexes became more equal. Average reading scores were higher for girls than for boys in all countries. But in more equal societies, not only were the girls as good at maths as the boys, their advantage in reading had increased.
This suggests an interesting paradox. At first sight, girls' rise to mathematical equality suggests they should be invading maths-heavy professions such as engineering—and that if they are not, the implication might be that prejudice is keeping them out. However, as David Ricardo observed almost 200 years ago, economic optimisation is about comparative advantage. The rise in female reading scores alongside their maths scores suggests that female comparative advantage in this area has not changed. According to Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at Northwestern University in Illinois who is one of the paper's authors, that is just what has happened. Other studies of gifted girls, she says, show that even though the girls had the ability, fewer than expected ended up reading maths and sciences at university. Instead, they went on to be become successful in areas such as law.
In other words, girls may acquire an absolute advantage over boys as a result of equal treatment. This is something that society, more broadly, has not yet taken on board. Mattel may wish to take note that among Teen Talk Barbie's 270 phrases concerning shopping, parties and clothes, at least one might usefully have been, “Dostoevsky rocks!”
By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 21 minutes ago
Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida's refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.
In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.
His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.
A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.
Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."
"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."
Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.
However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues — the Internet — for rights within a feudal version of Islam.
"Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahri said is not what's happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. "Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad."
It's not clear how far women play a role in al-Qaida because of the group's amorphous nature.
Terrorism experts believe there are no women in the core leadership ranks around bin Laden and al-Zawahri. But beyond that core, al-Qaida is really a movement with loosely linked offshoots in various countries and sympathizers who may not play a direct role. Women are clearly among these sympathizers, and some are part of the offshoot groups.
In the Iraq branch, for example, women have carried out or attempted at least 20 suicide bombings since 2003. Al-Qaida members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured in Iraq at least three times last year, the U.S. military has said.
Hamas, another militant group, is open about using women fighters and disagrees with al-Qaida's stated stance. At least 11 Palestinian women have launched suicide attacks in recent years.
"A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."
Al-Zawahri's remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida's attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.
Al-Zawahri's comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by al-Qaida sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should "be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her," but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian.
Al-Zawahri's stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. airstrike in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2001. He later accused the U.S. of intentionally targeting women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I say to you ... (I have) tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favorite wife's chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling," he wrote in a 2005 letter.
Al-Zawahri's question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al-Qaida's sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al-Qaida — in this case, women — a voice they never had before.
The Internet is the only "breathing space" for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, "Ossama2001" wrote. She said al-Zawahri's words "opened old wounds" and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.
Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: "I use my pen and words, my honest emotions ... Jihad is not exclusive to men."
Such women are al-Qaida sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
"The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they're hidden far from the world," he said.
Men have also responded to al-Zawahri's remarks. One male Internet poster named Hassan al-Saif asked: "Does our sheik mean that there is no need to use women in our current jihad? Why can we not use them?"
He was in the minority. Dozens of postings were signed by men who agreed with al-Zawahri that women should stick to supporting men and raising children according to militant Islam.
Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa" — named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle — has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women's information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women's terrorist training camps, according to SITE.
Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article "Biography of the Female Mujahedeen."
The article read:
"We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna (sayings) of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us."
_______
Associated Press writer Pakinam Amer contributed to this report from Cairo; AP writer Diaa Hadid contributed from the Gaza Strip; and AP writer Zeina Karam contributed from Beirut, Lebanon.
*****
Education and sex
Vital statistics
May 29th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading
TRADITION has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once produced a talking Barbie doll whose stock of phrases included “Math class is tough!”
Although much is made of differences between the brains of adult males and females, the sources of these differences are a matter of controversy. Some people put forward cultural explanations and note, for example, that when girls are taught separately from boys they often do better in subjects such as maths than if classes are mixed. Others claim that the differences are rooted in biology, are there from birth, and exist because girls' and boys' brains have evolved to handle information in different ways.
Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least. In this week's Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.
Dr Guiso took data from the 2003 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment. Some 276,000 15-year-olds from 40 countries sat the same maths and reading tests. The researchers compared the results, by country, with each other and with a number of different measures of social sexual equality. One measure was the World Economic Forum's gender-gap index, which reflects economic and political opportunities, education and well-being for women. Another was based on an index of cultural attitudes towards women. A third was the rate of female economic activity in a country, and the fourth measure looked at women's political participation.
On average, girls' maths scores were, as expected, lower than those of boys. However, the gap was largest in countries with the least equality between the sexes (by any score), such as Turkey. It vanished in countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the sexes are more or less on a par with one another. The researchers also did some additional statistical checks to ensure the correlation was material, and not generated by another, third variable that is correlated with sexual equality, such as GDP per person. They say their data therefore show that improvements in maths scores are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women.
The one mathematical gap that did not disappear was the differences between girls and boys in geometry. This seems to have no relation to sexual equality, and may allow men to cling on to their famed claim to be better at navigating than women are. However, the gap in reading scores not only remained, but got bigger as the sexes became more equal. Average reading scores were higher for girls than for boys in all countries. But in more equal societies, not only were the girls as good at maths as the boys, their advantage in reading had increased.
This suggests an interesting paradox. At first sight, girls' rise to mathematical equality suggests they should be invading maths-heavy professions such as engineering—and that if they are not, the implication might be that prejudice is keeping them out. However, as David Ricardo observed almost 200 years ago, economic optimisation is about comparative advantage. The rise in female reading scores alongside their maths scores suggests that female comparative advantage in this area has not changed. According to Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at Northwestern University in Illinois who is one of the paper's authors, that is just what has happened. Other studies of gifted girls, she says, show that even though the girls had the ability, fewer than expected ended up reading maths and sciences at university. Instead, they went on to be become successful in areas such as law.
In other words, girls may acquire an absolute advantage over boys as a result of equal treatment. This is something that society, more broadly, has not yet taken on board. Mattel may wish to take note that among Teen Talk Barbie's 270 phrases concerning shopping, parties and clothes, at least one might usefully have been, “Dostoevsky rocks!”
Arab women push boundaries gently
Email Picture
Asmaa Waguih / For the Times
Columnist and editor Amy Mowafi, shown with an assistant at Enigma magazine, is the Muslim version of the Carrie Bradshaw character in “Sex and the City.”
Many have become opinion makers and talk openly about sex, politics and other topics.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 1, 2008
BEIRUT -- The censors didn't quite know what to do with Lina Khoury's play about sex, rape, menopause and a visit to the gynecologist, but Islamic hard-liners were pretty specific: One wanted to stone the 32-year-old writer; others accused her of being an Israeli agent planting immoral ideas in the Arab world.
The characters in "Women's Talk" share secrets only uttered when men aren't around. Riffs on pubic hairstyles and sexual desires may be a predictable story line in Hollywood, but here Western-influenced portrayals of women in the arts are condemned by clerics and conservatives as devil-inspired liberalism.
Role model
Khoury and her sharp-tongued alter egos are part of a coterie of real-life and fictional women across the Middle East who are pushing boundaries as political talk-show hosts, hip-hop divas, war correspondents, a defiantly divorced columnist and characters such as Vola, the red-haired eccentric of the Lebanese film "The Bus" who slips into an affair without any care of what society thinks.
They are at once liberated and repressed, devout and rebellious. Borrowing from Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce and even Hillary Rodham Clinton, they move between tribal and Islamic customs and media markets that are often layered in sexual innuendo.
In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive or vote, glimpsing equality only during vacations away from the kingdom. But many women in Islamic countries long ago broke through the image of the black-veiled wife peeking from behind courtyard walls. Venture beyond the scrim of conservatism to the film studios of Lebanon, where the diva pose, seductively articulated by Haifa Wehbe, a Shiite Muslim model-actress-singer, is calculated down to the curl of an eyelash.
The crosscurrent of cultures is apparent in Khoury's "Women's Talk," a Middle East version of the Broadway play "The Vagina Monologues" that has turned the diarist into an unwitting Dr. Ruth for women who wear low-cut blouses and slit skirts and also for those draped in niqabs, or face veils, and abayas.
"In the Arab world, I've suddenly become an expert on women and sexuality. It's insane, hilarious. I write plays. I'm not a therapist," said Khoury, whose play closed in February after a two-year run. "Some men are saying that I'm breaking the rules of society and religion. . . .
Sexuality and women's freedoms are threatening to men. Some actresses I wanted for the parts wouldn't take them. They were scared of what their husbands or boyfriends would say."
Tempering Western attitudes with Muslim sensibilities becomes a question of how far to push the Middle East's patriarchal societies. This is still a region, after all, where in some countries a wife can be stoned for committing adultery and women make up 9% of lawmakers in Arab parliaments and 33% of the workforce, the lowest percentage in the world.
The candor in Khoury's play is comical and acerbic; one character says her parents would handle an Israeli invasion of Lebanon better than news of her divorce. A more salacious take on women's rights and sexual freedom is Beirut's music-video market that beams seduction into Arab living rooms.
The tension underlying both sides can be spotted on this city's streets where posters of Kalashnikov assault rifles and martyrs for the militant group Hezbollah peek out amid billboards of women who appear as though they've slipped off the pages of Vanity Fair.
"The sexy look in Beirut is provocative and plastic," said Khoury, who was born into a Christian family during Lebanon's civil conflict in the 1980s. "It all grows out of a restricted society of sexual repression. And when this freedom finally does come out, it comes out very dramatically in a concentrated, almost pornographic look."
Out of the shadow
But if you turn off the "bimbos, you see a lot of positive women role models in the media," said Dima Dabbous-Sensenig, head of the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World at Lebanese American University in Beirut. "Lebanon's July 2006 war with Israel was covered by women television correspondents in their 20s. They were going everywhere. They were braver than men."
Women have become important opinion makers in news and talk shows that borrow heavily from Western programming. In 2003, the Algerian newscaster Khadija Ben Ganna became the first anchor on Al Jazeera to wear the hijab on air, a gesture denounced by secularists as a symbol of Islamic revival. In Cairo,the unveiled Mona El Shazly has risen in the ratings with "Ten O'Clock," a show that asks tough questions on politics, social unrest and other sensitive topics.
The cultural terrain between the veil and free-flowing hair has led to contentious debate within Islam over virtue and image. Many Muslim women choose to wear the hijab as an emblem of their religion, a sign of humility to God. Others regard it a fashion accouterment. But growing Islamic devotion in countries such as Egypt has led to an increase in the number of women wearing hijabs, and those who don't often feel societal and family pressures.
An illustration of this dilemma is the cover of Amy Mowafi's new book, "Fe-Mail: The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Good Egyptian Girl," which features a drawing of an unveiled woman in stiletto boots with a halo and a devil's tail. An editor and columnist in Cairo, Mowafi is the Muslim version of the Carrie Bradshaw character in "Sex and the City." Mowafi is not as explicit as the TV show's foursome in New York, but she is unabashed as she stumbles, if not in Manolo Blahniks, "along that precarious line between East and West."
She writes: "And so now I find myself a divorcee, with that big dramatic D word marked upon my forehead. I find myself stranded in this sort of weird wasteland between virgin and whore. I was married, I've obviously been there and done 'it' and enough times to have had the innocence which Arab men so desperately crave thoroughly wiped away . . . or sullied . . . or whatever."
'Good girl syndrome'
The daughter of an Egyptian investment banker and businesswoman, Mowafi was raised in a moderately religious home in England. Her 2002 move to Egypt, where she writes for the lifestyle magazine Enigma, led her to an Islamic society of nosy doormen, evangelical preachers and encounters with men who proclaimed to be pious but used professional meetings as a chance to flirt. In Britain, she could date and not worry about where it would lead; in Cairo, the rules were different.
"We're out on a date and it's fun, but is he going to marry me? I'm in Egypt. I'm a Muslim. He just can't be my boyfriend," Mowafi said the other day over coffee in a haunt that clicked with computers and the whispered buzz of young love.
Single Page
|
1
|
2
|
Next »
Hasni Essa
Peace & Pluralism
Email Picture
Asmaa Waguih / For the Times
Columnist and editor Amy Mowafi, shown with an assistant at Enigma magazine, is the Muslim version of the Carrie Bradshaw character in “Sex and the City.”
Many have become opinion makers and talk openly about sex, politics and other topics.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 1, 2008
BEIRUT -- The censors didn't quite know what to do with Lina Khoury's play about sex, rape, menopause and a visit to the gynecologist, but Islamic hard-liners were pretty specific: One wanted to stone the 32-year-old writer; others accused her of being an Israeli agent planting immoral ideas in the Arab world.
The characters in "Women's Talk" share secrets only uttered when men aren't around. Riffs on pubic hairstyles and sexual desires may be a predictable story line in Hollywood, but here Western-influenced portrayals of women in the arts are condemned by clerics and conservatives as devil-inspired liberalism.
Role model
Khoury and her sharp-tongued alter egos are part of a coterie of real-life and fictional women across the Middle East who are pushing boundaries as political talk-show hosts, hip-hop divas, war correspondents, a defiantly divorced columnist and characters such as Vola, the red-haired eccentric of the Lebanese film "The Bus" who slips into an affair without any care of what society thinks.
They are at once liberated and repressed, devout and rebellious. Borrowing from Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce and even Hillary Rodham Clinton, they move between tribal and Islamic customs and media markets that are often layered in sexual innuendo.
In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive or vote, glimpsing equality only during vacations away from the kingdom. But many women in Islamic countries long ago broke through the image of the black-veiled wife peeking from behind courtyard walls. Venture beyond the scrim of conservatism to the film studios of Lebanon, where the diva pose, seductively articulated by Haifa Wehbe, a Shiite Muslim model-actress-singer, is calculated down to the curl of an eyelash.
The crosscurrent of cultures is apparent in Khoury's "Women's Talk," a Middle East version of the Broadway play "The Vagina Monologues" that has turned the diarist into an unwitting Dr. Ruth for women who wear low-cut blouses and slit skirts and also for those draped in niqabs, or face veils, and abayas.
"In the Arab world, I've suddenly become an expert on women and sexuality. It's insane, hilarious. I write plays. I'm not a therapist," said Khoury, whose play closed in February after a two-year run. "Some men are saying that I'm breaking the rules of society and religion. . . .
Sexuality and women's freedoms are threatening to men. Some actresses I wanted for the parts wouldn't take them. They were scared of what their husbands or boyfriends would say."
Tempering Western attitudes with Muslim sensibilities becomes a question of how far to push the Middle East's patriarchal societies. This is still a region, after all, where in some countries a wife can be stoned for committing adultery and women make up 9% of lawmakers in Arab parliaments and 33% of the workforce, the lowest percentage in the world.
The candor in Khoury's play is comical and acerbic; one character says her parents would handle an Israeli invasion of Lebanon better than news of her divorce. A more salacious take on women's rights and sexual freedom is Beirut's music-video market that beams seduction into Arab living rooms.
The tension underlying both sides can be spotted on this city's streets where posters of Kalashnikov assault rifles and martyrs for the militant group Hezbollah peek out amid billboards of women who appear as though they've slipped off the pages of Vanity Fair.
"The sexy look in Beirut is provocative and plastic," said Khoury, who was born into a Christian family during Lebanon's civil conflict in the 1980s. "It all grows out of a restricted society of sexual repression. And when this freedom finally does come out, it comes out very dramatically in a concentrated, almost pornographic look."
Out of the shadow
But if you turn off the "bimbos, you see a lot of positive women role models in the media," said Dima Dabbous-Sensenig, head of the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World at Lebanese American University in Beirut. "Lebanon's July 2006 war with Israel was covered by women television correspondents in their 20s. They were going everywhere. They were braver than men."
Women have become important opinion makers in news and talk shows that borrow heavily from Western programming. In 2003, the Algerian newscaster Khadija Ben Ganna became the first anchor on Al Jazeera to wear the hijab on air, a gesture denounced by secularists as a symbol of Islamic revival. In Cairo,the unveiled Mona El Shazly has risen in the ratings with "Ten O'Clock," a show that asks tough questions on politics, social unrest and other sensitive topics.
The cultural terrain between the veil and free-flowing hair has led to contentious debate within Islam over virtue and image. Many Muslim women choose to wear the hijab as an emblem of their religion, a sign of humility to God. Others regard it a fashion accouterment. But growing Islamic devotion in countries such as Egypt has led to an increase in the number of women wearing hijabs, and those who don't often feel societal and family pressures.
An illustration of this dilemma is the cover of Amy Mowafi's new book, "Fe-Mail: The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Good Egyptian Girl," which features a drawing of an unveiled woman in stiletto boots with a halo and a devil's tail. An editor and columnist in Cairo, Mowafi is the Muslim version of the Carrie Bradshaw character in "Sex and the City." Mowafi is not as explicit as the TV show's foursome in New York, but she is unabashed as she stumbles, if not in Manolo Blahniks, "along that precarious line between East and West."
She writes: "And so now I find myself a divorcee, with that big dramatic D word marked upon my forehead. I find myself stranded in this sort of weird wasteland between virgin and whore. I was married, I've obviously been there and done 'it' and enough times to have had the innocence which Arab men so desperately crave thoroughly wiped away . . . or sullied . . . or whatever."
'Good girl syndrome'
The daughter of an Egyptian investment banker and businesswoman, Mowafi was raised in a moderately religious home in England. Her 2002 move to Egypt, where she writes for the lifestyle magazine Enigma, led her to an Islamic society of nosy doormen, evangelical preachers and encounters with men who proclaimed to be pious but used professional meetings as a chance to flirt. In Britain, she could date and not worry about where it would lead; in Cairo, the rules were different.
"We're out on a date and it's fun, but is he going to marry me? I'm in Egypt. I'm a Muslim. He just can't be my boyfriend," Mowafi said the other day over coffee in a haunt that clicked with computers and the whispered buzz of young love.
Single Page
|
1
|
2
|
Next »
Hasni Essa
Peace & Pluralism
June 11, 2008
Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and SOUAD MEKHENNET
PARIS — The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées
involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a
discounted fee of $2,900.
But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan
descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the
key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.
Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a
hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that
normally breaks in the first act of intercourse.
"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student,
perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. "Right
now, virginity is more important to me than life."
As Europe's Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are
caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the
deep-rooted traditions of their parents' and grandparents'
generations.
Gynecologists say that in the past few years, more Muslim women are
seeking certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That
in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen
replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be
detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding
night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical
tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is
less expensive.
"If you're a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in
Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage," said Dr.
Hicham Mouallem, who is based in London and performs the
operation. "So if you're looking to marry a Muslim and don't want to
have problems, you'll try to recapture your virginity."
No reliable statistics are available, because the procedure is
mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-
financed insurance plans.
But hymen repair is talked about so much that it is the subject of a
film comedy that opens in Italy this week. "Women's Hearts," as the
film's title is translated in English, tells the story of a Moroccan-
born woman living in Italy who goes to Casablanca for the operation.
One character jokes that she wants to bring her odometer count back
down to "zero."
"We realized that what we thought was a sporadic practice was
actually pretty common," said Davide Sordella, the film's
director. "These women can live in Italy, adopt our mentality and
wear jeans. But in the moments that matter, they don't always have
the strength to go against their culture."
The issue has been particularly charged in France, where a renewed
and fierce debate has occurred about a prejudice that was supposed
to have been buried with the country's sexual revolution 40 years
ago: the importance of a woman's virginity.
The furor followed the revelation two weeks ago that a court in
Lille, in northern France, had annulled the 2006 marriage of two
French Muslims because the groom found his bride was not the virgin
she had claimed to be.
The domestic drama has gripped France. The groom, an unidentified
engineer in his 30s, left the nuptial bed and announced to the still
partying wedding guests that his bride had lied. She was delivered
that night to her parents' doorstep.
The next day, he approached a lawyer about annulling the marriage.
The bride, then a nursing student in her 20s, confessed and agreed
to an annulment.
The court ruling did not mention religion. Rather, it cited breach
of contract, concluding that the engineer had married her after "she
was presented to him as single and chaste." In secular, republican
France, the case touches on several delicate subjects: the intrusion
of religion into daily life; the grounds for dissolution of a
marriage; and the equality of the sexes.
There were calls in Parliament this week for the resignation of
Rachida Dati, France's justice minister, after she initially upheld
the ruling. Ms. Dati, who is a Muslim, backed down and ordered an
appeal.
Some feminists, lawyers and doctors warned that the court's
acceptance of the centrality of virginity in marriage would
encourage more Frenchwomen from Arab and African Muslim backgrounds
to have their hymens restored. But there is much debate about
whether the procedure is an act of liberation or repression
"The judgment was a betrayal of France's Muslim women," said
Elisabeth Badinter, the feminist writer. "It sends these women a
message of despair by saying that virginity is important in the eyes
of the law. More women are going to say to themselves, `My God, I'm
not going to take that risk. I'll recreate my virginity.' "
The plight of the rejected bride persuaded the Montpellier student
to have the operation.
She insisted that she had never had intercourse and only discovered
her hymen was torn when she tried to obtain a certificate of
virginity to present to her boyfriend and his family.She says she
bled after an accident on a horse when she was 10.
The trauma from realizing that she could not prove her virginity was
so intense, she said, that she quietly borrowed money to pay for the
procedure.
"All of a sudden, virginity is important in France," she said. "I
realized that I could be seen like that woman everyone is talking
about on television."
Those who perform the procedure say they are empowering patients by
giving them a viable future and preventing them from being abused —
or even killed — by their fathers or brothers.
"Who am I to judge?" asked Dr. Marc Abecassis, who restored the
Montpellier student's hymen. "I have colleagues in the United States
whose patients do this as a Valentine's present to their husbands.
What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don't
have a choice if they want to find serenity — and husbands."
A specialist in what he calls "intimate" surgery, including penile
enhancement, Dr. Abecassis says he performs two to four hymen
restorations per week.
The French College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians opposes the
procedure on moral, cultural and health grounds.
"We had a revolution in France to win equality; we had a sexual
revolution in 1968 when women fought for contraception and
abortion," said Dr. Jacques Lansac, the group's leader. "Attaching
so much importance to the hymen is regression, submission to the
intolerance of the past."
But the stories of the women who have had the surgery convey the
complexity and raw emotion behind their decisions.
One Muslim born in Macedonia said she opted for the operation to
avoid being punished by her father after an eight-year relationship
with her boyfriend.
"I was afraid that my father would take me to a doctor and see
whether I was still a virgin," said the woman, 32, who owns a small
business and lives on her own in Frankfurt. "He told me, `I will
forgive everything but not if you have thrown dirt on my honor.' I
wasn't afraid he would kill me, but I was sure he would have beaten
me."
In other cases, the woman and her partner decide for her to have the
operation. A 26-year-old French woman of Moroccan descent said she
lost her virginity four years ago when she fell in love with the man
she now plans to marry. But she and her fiancé decided to share the
cost of her $3,400 operation in Paris.
She said his conservative extended family in Morocco was requiring
that a gynecologist — and family friend — there examine her for
proof of virginity before the wedding.
"It doesn't matter for my fiancé that I am not a virgin — but it
would pose a huge problem for his family," she said. "They know that
you can pour blood on the sheets on the wedding night, so I have to
have better proof."
The lives of the French couple whose marriage was annulled are on
hold. The Justice Ministry has sought an appeal, arguing that the
decision has "provoked a heated social debate" that "touched all
citizens of our country and especially women."
At the Islamic Center of Roubaix, the Lille suburb where the wedding
took place, there is sympathy for the woman.
"The man is the biggest of all the donkeys," said Abdelkibir Errami,
the center's vice president. "Even if the woman was no longer a
virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam
teaches. It teaches forgiveness."
Katrin Bennhold contributed reporting from Paris, and Elisabetta
Povoledo from Rome.
Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and SOUAD MEKHENNET
PARIS — The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées
involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a
discounted fee of $2,900.
But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan
descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the
key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.
Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a
hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that
normally breaks in the first act of intercourse.
"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student,
perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. "Right
now, virginity is more important to me than life."
As Europe's Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women are
caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the
deep-rooted traditions of their parents' and grandparents'
generations.
Gynecologists say that in the past few years, more Muslim women are
seeking certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That
in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen
replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be
detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding
night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical
tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is
less expensive.
"If you're a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in
Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage," said Dr.
Hicham Mouallem, who is based in London and performs the
operation. "So if you're looking to marry a Muslim and don't want to
have problems, you'll try to recapture your virginity."
No reliable statistics are available, because the procedure is
mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-
financed insurance plans.
But hymen repair is talked about so much that it is the subject of a
film comedy that opens in Italy this week. "Women's Hearts," as the
film's title is translated in English, tells the story of a Moroccan-
born woman living in Italy who goes to Casablanca for the operation.
One character jokes that she wants to bring her odometer count back
down to "zero."
"We realized that what we thought was a sporadic practice was
actually pretty common," said Davide Sordella, the film's
director. "These women can live in Italy, adopt our mentality and
wear jeans. But in the moments that matter, they don't always have
the strength to go against their culture."
The issue has been particularly charged in France, where a renewed
and fierce debate has occurred about a prejudice that was supposed
to have been buried with the country's sexual revolution 40 years
ago: the importance of a woman's virginity.
The furor followed the revelation two weeks ago that a court in
Lille, in northern France, had annulled the 2006 marriage of two
French Muslims because the groom found his bride was not the virgin
she had claimed to be.
The domestic drama has gripped France. The groom, an unidentified
engineer in his 30s, left the nuptial bed and announced to the still
partying wedding guests that his bride had lied. She was delivered
that night to her parents' doorstep.
The next day, he approached a lawyer about annulling the marriage.
The bride, then a nursing student in her 20s, confessed and agreed
to an annulment.
The court ruling did not mention religion. Rather, it cited breach
of contract, concluding that the engineer had married her after "she
was presented to him as single and chaste." In secular, republican
France, the case touches on several delicate subjects: the intrusion
of religion into daily life; the grounds for dissolution of a
marriage; and the equality of the sexes.
There were calls in Parliament this week for the resignation of
Rachida Dati, France's justice minister, after she initially upheld
the ruling. Ms. Dati, who is a Muslim, backed down and ordered an
appeal.
Some feminists, lawyers and doctors warned that the court's
acceptance of the centrality of virginity in marriage would
encourage more Frenchwomen from Arab and African Muslim backgrounds
to have their hymens restored. But there is much debate about
whether the procedure is an act of liberation or repression
"The judgment was a betrayal of France's Muslim women," said
Elisabeth Badinter, the feminist writer. "It sends these women a
message of despair by saying that virginity is important in the eyes
of the law. More women are going to say to themselves, `My God, I'm
not going to take that risk. I'll recreate my virginity.' "
The plight of the rejected bride persuaded the Montpellier student
to have the operation.
She insisted that she had never had intercourse and only discovered
her hymen was torn when she tried to obtain a certificate of
virginity to present to her boyfriend and his family.She says she
bled after an accident on a horse when she was 10.
The trauma from realizing that she could not prove her virginity was
so intense, she said, that she quietly borrowed money to pay for the
procedure.
"All of a sudden, virginity is important in France," she said. "I
realized that I could be seen like that woman everyone is talking
about on television."
Those who perform the procedure say they are empowering patients by
giving them a viable future and preventing them from being abused —
or even killed — by their fathers or brothers.
"Who am I to judge?" asked Dr. Marc Abecassis, who restored the
Montpellier student's hymen. "I have colleagues in the United States
whose patients do this as a Valentine's present to their husbands.
What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don't
have a choice if they want to find serenity — and husbands."
A specialist in what he calls "intimate" surgery, including penile
enhancement, Dr. Abecassis says he performs two to four hymen
restorations per week.
The French College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians opposes the
procedure on moral, cultural and health grounds.
"We had a revolution in France to win equality; we had a sexual
revolution in 1968 when women fought for contraception and
abortion," said Dr. Jacques Lansac, the group's leader. "Attaching
so much importance to the hymen is regression, submission to the
intolerance of the past."
But the stories of the women who have had the surgery convey the
complexity and raw emotion behind their decisions.
One Muslim born in Macedonia said she opted for the operation to
avoid being punished by her father after an eight-year relationship
with her boyfriend.
"I was afraid that my father would take me to a doctor and see
whether I was still a virgin," said the woman, 32, who owns a small
business and lives on her own in Frankfurt. "He told me, `I will
forgive everything but not if you have thrown dirt on my honor.' I
wasn't afraid he would kill me, but I was sure he would have beaten
me."
In other cases, the woman and her partner decide for her to have the
operation. A 26-year-old French woman of Moroccan descent said she
lost her virginity four years ago when she fell in love with the man
she now plans to marry. But she and her fiancé decided to share the
cost of her $3,400 operation in Paris.
She said his conservative extended family in Morocco was requiring
that a gynecologist — and family friend — there examine her for
proof of virginity before the wedding.
"It doesn't matter for my fiancé that I am not a virgin — but it
would pose a huge problem for his family," she said. "They know that
you can pour blood on the sheets on the wedding night, so I have to
have better proof."
The lives of the French couple whose marriage was annulled are on
hold. The Justice Ministry has sought an appeal, arguing that the
decision has "provoked a heated social debate" that "touched all
citizens of our country and especially women."
At the Islamic Center of Roubaix, the Lille suburb where the wedding
took place, there is sympathy for the woman.
"The man is the biggest of all the donkeys," said Abdelkibir Errami,
the center's vice president. "Even if the woman was no longer a
virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam
teaches. It teaches forgiveness."
Katrin Bennhold contributed reporting from Paris, and Elisabetta
Povoledo from Rome.
Women in Islam
by Seyedeh Dr. Nahid Angha
The following article written by Seyedeh Dr. Nahid Angha is taken from the journal Sufism: An Inquiry.
In the west, the common picture of a Muslim woman is the stereotype of a woman hidden behind a veil, a voiceless, silent figure, bereft of rights. It is a picture familiar to all of us, in large part because this is invariably how the western media portrays women in Islam.
Islam covers many lands with many diverse cultures. From the borders of Arabia to the coasts of Africa, from Bosnia to Indonesia, large groups of people practice Islam. Islam is growing in European and American countries. Each one of these Islamic nations has its own distinct culture; there is a great diversity of cultures within Islam. One cannot bring all these cultures, political systems, national heritage, belief systems, geographical locations, historical backgrounds, and the peoples who embody them under one uniform category or think of them as one system. Islam is practiced in each nation according to those nations characteristics. And nations are, by existing as nations, distinct and different from one another. No two cultures are alike.
Conceptual Issues
Nations in the Middle East, among many other Muslim countries, have long been notorious for their unequal treatment of women especially among the Western nations. Catching a glimpse of a special on Middle Eastern women while channel surfing or reading from the Middle Eastern chapter in history books is the furthest most people have gone to research the role of women in Islam. Images of submissive, timid women covered in black veils are there to be found -- and, with such a unanimity of popular information, what point could there be in understanding the subject more thoroughly? What I will provide here is just an outline, a brief summary, as Islam is, in fact, more than just a name, a religion, a social movement. It is recognizing the essence of Divine permeating all there is; it is timeless, priceless, beyond cultures, traditions, and all human limitations. There are few scholars who have described women in Islam without prejudice or some inclination towards either side of the extreme. In order to understand the role of women in Islam and to learn how the rules of Islam apply to them, we need to become familiar with Islam, apart from politics practiced in Muslim nations, and to examine the place of women in the pre-Islamic era, the rules and regulations of Islam, and the cultural backgrounds of the countries that are the base of our research, and finally to compare the position of women in the Muslim world with the position of women in western cultures.
Position of Women Before the Advent of Islam
Islam was born in the Arabia Peninsula, now Saudi Arabia, in the seventh century AD. The pre-Islamic era dates back to more than 1400 years ago. Many cultures, nations and countries, other than Arabia, existed during that time. Let's begin with a review on the Arabian culture. In that era, in the tribal culture of Arabs, women were not equal to men with respect to many social and personal conditions and systems, such as marriage, inheritance or education, among other areas. Women did not have businesses, own property, or have independent legal rights. Even though we read about Khadijeh (who later became a wife of the Prophet (swa), and the first Muslim woman) who owned her own business, which is an indication that there are always exceptions in any recorded history. In Arabia, female infants were often abandoned or buried alive; and the practice of polygamy was common. The position of women, in countries other than Arabia, in the 7th century, was not much different. In Europe, it was not until the turn of the century (13 centuries later) that French women became legally able to sell property without the permission of their husbands. In many nations, sons would inherit the name, wealth and position of the family and daughters were hoped to marry rich. In many western or eastern countries, women could not chose their husbands, and, widows were expected to mourn for their husbands until the end of their lives (still practiced in some countries).
Standards Set by Islam
One cannot emphasize enough the influence of the teachings of the Prophet (swa) and the verses of the Qur'an upon the advancement of civilization. In the history of humankind, none worked so much to protect human rights, especially women's, with such integrity, strength, strategic genius, beauty and divinity, or to honor humanity, by freeing it from the chains of prejudice, manipulations, personal and social injustice. His teachings regarding education, social and political rights, property rights, and ultimately human rights, are among the most valuable chapter in the book of civilization. Education: "The pursuit of knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, man and woman", said the Prophet (swa). With this instruction it became a religious duty of Muslims to educate themselves, their families, and their societies. Education and learning became a religious duty, no Muslim could prevent another human being from the pursuit of knowledge. Gender or race, culture or tradition could not become the cause for prohibiting a person from educating one's self. Pursuit of knowledge became a religious law, therefore necessary to attain. With such instruction, the Prophet (swa) not only created an equal right to education, but also opened the door to a better understanding.
Social and Political Rights
"Paradise lies under the feet of mothers", announced the Prophet (swa). With this instruction, a Divine law, it became a religious responsibility, a praiseworthy act, to respect and honor women. "Men are support for women," "Among the praiseworthy acts to Allah is to treat your mother with honor and respect," "Be just among your children, daughters and sons, provide them good education and proper upbringing." Narrated from the Prophet (swa). With these Divine laws, it became religious duty for every Muslim, male or female, to honor women, treat sons and daughters justly, and for male to provide support, not obstacles, for women and their achievements.
There are many recorded historical references that at the beginning of Islam, at the time of the Prophet (swa), Muslim men or women chose to join the Prophet's army to fight against his enemies, leading wars after his passing. There are also recorded in the history of Islam that men and women, equally, would take bayat (agreement) with the Prophet, voting and choosing him as a political leader. Such positions, rights and equality among all were the result of the support and the teachings of the Prophet (swa). Women could take part in social, political, and military affairs. The result of his teachings was not only promoted human rights but also encouraging individuals to stand for their own rights.
Fatima, daughter of the Prophet (swa), was well educated and highly respected. It is said that whenever Fatima entered the room, the Prophet would stand and give his seat to her. Her sacrifices to protect and support human rights were among the most praiseworthy acts.
Property Rights
Under the laws of Islam, women have obtained the right to sell and buy properties, own business, take legal actions, vote, and participate in political affairs. Inheritance law was/is also among the most important rights. According to Islam, a woman inherits, half the share of her brother. At the same time a daughter, can chose but has no the obligation to support her parents or children, while her brother does. A man, a brother, has the obligation, by the rules of Islam, to support his mother, wife, children, sisters, and the children of his sisters if necessary. If a woman, a mother, a sister did not have the wealth or the desire to support her children, it would become the duty of her brother to support them. The Prophet (swa) has introduced the rules and the laws for humanity, some honor the rules and some chose not to. Under Islamic law, women also have control not only over their property but also dowry claims. Once she is married, she may demand her dowry from her husband at any time, and in the case of divorce, she would receive her share of the property.
Marriage and the Right to Divorce
According to the laws of Islam a man and a woman have the right to choose their partner and they should not be forced into marriage. Fatima, the Prophet's daughter was educated, beautiful and respectful. It is narrated that when Amir al momenin Ali asked for Fatima's hand in marriage Prophet (swa) did not respond to Ali until he asked Fatima for her decision. Divorce is permitted in Islam under specific terms and conditions. According to the laws of Islam one may end a marriage by divorce if there is a definite cause for such an action.
Polygamy is a tradition practiced in many cultures, yet Islam restricted it by setting regulations. These regulations are very severe, and a very few can practice it. Quran (IV:3) reads: "If you feel that you will be able to deal justly with orphans, marry the women of your choice one, two, three, or four. But if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them, then marry only one." The verse emphasize being just not only to the women but also to their children, who would, otherwise, remain fatherless after their mothers became widowed -- a frequent occurrence during the early centuries of Islam, when men were often killed in wars. "Deal justly" refers to equal treatment, not only emotionally but also financially. The particular historical context of polygamy in Islam followed one of the harshest wars, where many men were killed, leaving a multitude of women widowed, fatherless, and without support. Also a Muslim man cannot marry a second wife without the permission of the first wife. With all these restricted regulations, according to the Islamic law, polygamy is possible but rare in practice.
Post Islamic Expectations Set by Political Entities
A few centuries after the Prophet (swa) many of these rules changed into cultural, national, or political regulations.
Islam entered different cultures and each culture embraced it according to its own traditions. Even in its homeland, rules and regulations changed according to the political rulers and the traditional culture of the land within one or two centuries after the passing of the Prophet (swa). Let us examine a few of these changes: Prophet had said (Quran, XXIV:30, 31): "Tell believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty, that will make for greater purity for them and say to the believing women to lower their gaze and guard their modesty and they should not display their beauty and ornaments...." In the course of time, this law changed into the rule that women should wear veils, covering themselves from head to toe. Being modest changed into a dress code. Yet this dress code was not applied to the "believing men", and did not become a cause for their social or economical oppressions. Women, who at the beginning of Islam, were leading armies and making political decisions, were now, a few centuries later, expected to sit separately from men in mosques and in prayer ceremonies. A similar situation also obtain in non-Islamic countries. For example a century ago, when the World Anti-Slavery Association met in England, the women delegates were refused seats. They had to sit silently behind the curtain in the balcony. That, of course, led to Seneca Falls Convention that eventually gained a few rights for women such as becoming able to sell properties, the right to education, and the like. The Prophet instructed that women have the right to own property, to choose their own partners, and have equal rights to education. In accordance with prevailing culture, these rights became transformed into the duties of women to take care of children and remain in the house. This is not all that different than a century ago in America where women were expected the duties of "Republican Motherhood," which did not take them beyond the household sphere.
To justify the prejudice held against women, we can blame a religion, we can blame a culture, we can blame a system, and we can even blame women themselves. Yet these superficial "making you feel better" justifications will not remove the responsibility from generations of humanity. While it is true that the media misleads people, political leaders mislead people, and superficial ideology misleads people -- yet people remain in a state of being misled. The guilt of the oppressor is not lesser that the guilt of the oppressed, said the Prophet.
Islam is a religion where the standard for superiority is the level of ones knowledge, where human being was created in the best figure, and thus where advancing knowledge is a duty. According to Islam, the human being has the potentiality to ascend to the level of the Divine, knowledge of the law of the existence is the right of every human being.
Islam is a religion where your temple is not a building but your heart; your preacher is not a priest but your intellect; and if your religion is founded upon mere imitation, you are a blasphemer. In Islam, ignorance is an unforgivable sin, so is your evasion of responsibility for yourself as well as towards all the members of the living world, past and present. It is incorrect to blame such Islam for the shortcomings of its followers, which are the failings of most of mankind. A religion that is centered on the rights of human being, and sets both men and women free from the chains of bondage should not be used in propaganda for the sake of condemnation.
It is not Muslim women as such, but women everywhere who have been imprisoned by prejudice and cruelty. This form of prejudice that goes beyond simple racial or national boundaries, is sexual in nature. Whether women are constantly being held to an impossible standard, or subject to discrimination solely based on the fact that they are not equal to men, they are, by far, the group most affected by this form of prejudice. Depending on the society women may be seen as having the wrong weight, the wrong height, the wrong level of intelligence, or the wrong religion. We can conclude that women have yet to be welcomed with open arms into countries that they have been a part of from the beginning. True equality becomes a characteristic of Utopia and seems almost impossible to achieve in the society in which we live in. The question that remains is one of personal morals. Do we, as small pieces of society, have the capacity to interlock and form a beautiful mosaic? I have to say it takes more than just a few to fulfill a dream that is centuries old.
by Seyedeh Dr. Nahid Angha
The following article written by Seyedeh Dr. Nahid Angha is taken from the journal Sufism: An Inquiry.
In the west, the common picture of a Muslim woman is the stereotype of a woman hidden behind a veil, a voiceless, silent figure, bereft of rights. It is a picture familiar to all of us, in large part because this is invariably how the western media portrays women in Islam.
Islam covers many lands with many diverse cultures. From the borders of Arabia to the coasts of Africa, from Bosnia to Indonesia, large groups of people practice Islam. Islam is growing in European and American countries. Each one of these Islamic nations has its own distinct culture; there is a great diversity of cultures within Islam. One cannot bring all these cultures, political systems, national heritage, belief systems, geographical locations, historical backgrounds, and the peoples who embody them under one uniform category or think of them as one system. Islam is practiced in each nation according to those nations characteristics. And nations are, by existing as nations, distinct and different from one another. No two cultures are alike.
Conceptual Issues
Nations in the Middle East, among many other Muslim countries, have long been notorious for their unequal treatment of women especially among the Western nations. Catching a glimpse of a special on Middle Eastern women while channel surfing or reading from the Middle Eastern chapter in history books is the furthest most people have gone to research the role of women in Islam. Images of submissive, timid women covered in black veils are there to be found -- and, with such a unanimity of popular information, what point could there be in understanding the subject more thoroughly? What I will provide here is just an outline, a brief summary, as Islam is, in fact, more than just a name, a religion, a social movement. It is recognizing the essence of Divine permeating all there is; it is timeless, priceless, beyond cultures, traditions, and all human limitations. There are few scholars who have described women in Islam without prejudice or some inclination towards either side of the extreme. In order to understand the role of women in Islam and to learn how the rules of Islam apply to them, we need to become familiar with Islam, apart from politics practiced in Muslim nations, and to examine the place of women in the pre-Islamic era, the rules and regulations of Islam, and the cultural backgrounds of the countries that are the base of our research, and finally to compare the position of women in the Muslim world with the position of women in western cultures.
Position of Women Before the Advent of Islam
Islam was born in the Arabia Peninsula, now Saudi Arabia, in the seventh century AD. The pre-Islamic era dates back to more than 1400 years ago. Many cultures, nations and countries, other than Arabia, existed during that time. Let's begin with a review on the Arabian culture. In that era, in the tribal culture of Arabs, women were not equal to men with respect to many social and personal conditions and systems, such as marriage, inheritance or education, among other areas. Women did not have businesses, own property, or have independent legal rights. Even though we read about Khadijeh (who later became a wife of the Prophet (swa), and the first Muslim woman) who owned her own business, which is an indication that there are always exceptions in any recorded history. In Arabia, female infants were often abandoned or buried alive; and the practice of polygamy was common. The position of women, in countries other than Arabia, in the 7th century, was not much different. In Europe, it was not until the turn of the century (13 centuries later) that French women became legally able to sell property without the permission of their husbands. In many nations, sons would inherit the name, wealth and position of the family and daughters were hoped to marry rich. In many western or eastern countries, women could not chose their husbands, and, widows were expected to mourn for their husbands until the end of their lives (still practiced in some countries).
Standards Set by Islam
One cannot emphasize enough the influence of the teachings of the Prophet (swa) and the verses of the Qur'an upon the advancement of civilization. In the history of humankind, none worked so much to protect human rights, especially women's, with such integrity, strength, strategic genius, beauty and divinity, or to honor humanity, by freeing it from the chains of prejudice, manipulations, personal and social injustice. His teachings regarding education, social and political rights, property rights, and ultimately human rights, are among the most valuable chapter in the book of civilization. Education: "The pursuit of knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, man and woman", said the Prophet (swa). With this instruction it became a religious duty of Muslims to educate themselves, their families, and their societies. Education and learning became a religious duty, no Muslim could prevent another human being from the pursuit of knowledge. Gender or race, culture or tradition could not become the cause for prohibiting a person from educating one's self. Pursuit of knowledge became a religious law, therefore necessary to attain. With such instruction, the Prophet (swa) not only created an equal right to education, but also opened the door to a better understanding.
Social and Political Rights
"Paradise lies under the feet of mothers", announced the Prophet (swa). With this instruction, a Divine law, it became a religious responsibility, a praiseworthy act, to respect and honor women. "Men are support for women," "Among the praiseworthy acts to Allah is to treat your mother with honor and respect," "Be just among your children, daughters and sons, provide them good education and proper upbringing." Narrated from the Prophet (swa). With these Divine laws, it became religious duty for every Muslim, male or female, to honor women, treat sons and daughters justly, and for male to provide support, not obstacles, for women and their achievements.
There are many recorded historical references that at the beginning of Islam, at the time of the Prophet (swa), Muslim men or women chose to join the Prophet's army to fight against his enemies, leading wars after his passing. There are also recorded in the history of Islam that men and women, equally, would take bayat (agreement) with the Prophet, voting and choosing him as a political leader. Such positions, rights and equality among all were the result of the support and the teachings of the Prophet (swa). Women could take part in social, political, and military affairs. The result of his teachings was not only promoted human rights but also encouraging individuals to stand for their own rights.
Fatima, daughter of the Prophet (swa), was well educated and highly respected. It is said that whenever Fatima entered the room, the Prophet would stand and give his seat to her. Her sacrifices to protect and support human rights were among the most praiseworthy acts.
Property Rights
Under the laws of Islam, women have obtained the right to sell and buy properties, own business, take legal actions, vote, and participate in political affairs. Inheritance law was/is also among the most important rights. According to Islam, a woman inherits, half the share of her brother. At the same time a daughter, can chose but has no the obligation to support her parents or children, while her brother does. A man, a brother, has the obligation, by the rules of Islam, to support his mother, wife, children, sisters, and the children of his sisters if necessary. If a woman, a mother, a sister did not have the wealth or the desire to support her children, it would become the duty of her brother to support them. The Prophet (swa) has introduced the rules and the laws for humanity, some honor the rules and some chose not to. Under Islamic law, women also have control not only over their property but also dowry claims. Once she is married, she may demand her dowry from her husband at any time, and in the case of divorce, she would receive her share of the property.
Marriage and the Right to Divorce
According to the laws of Islam a man and a woman have the right to choose their partner and they should not be forced into marriage. Fatima, the Prophet's daughter was educated, beautiful and respectful. It is narrated that when Amir al momenin Ali asked for Fatima's hand in marriage Prophet (swa) did not respond to Ali until he asked Fatima for her decision. Divorce is permitted in Islam under specific terms and conditions. According to the laws of Islam one may end a marriage by divorce if there is a definite cause for such an action.
Polygamy is a tradition practiced in many cultures, yet Islam restricted it by setting regulations. These regulations are very severe, and a very few can practice it. Quran (IV:3) reads: "If you feel that you will be able to deal justly with orphans, marry the women of your choice one, two, three, or four. But if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with them, then marry only one." The verse emphasize being just not only to the women but also to their children, who would, otherwise, remain fatherless after their mothers became widowed -- a frequent occurrence during the early centuries of Islam, when men were often killed in wars. "Deal justly" refers to equal treatment, not only emotionally but also financially. The particular historical context of polygamy in Islam followed one of the harshest wars, where many men were killed, leaving a multitude of women widowed, fatherless, and without support. Also a Muslim man cannot marry a second wife without the permission of the first wife. With all these restricted regulations, according to the Islamic law, polygamy is possible but rare in practice.
Post Islamic Expectations Set by Political Entities
A few centuries after the Prophet (swa) many of these rules changed into cultural, national, or political regulations.
Islam entered different cultures and each culture embraced it according to its own traditions. Even in its homeland, rules and regulations changed according to the political rulers and the traditional culture of the land within one or two centuries after the passing of the Prophet (swa). Let us examine a few of these changes: Prophet had said (Quran, XXIV:30, 31): "Tell believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty, that will make for greater purity for them and say to the believing women to lower their gaze and guard their modesty and they should not display their beauty and ornaments...." In the course of time, this law changed into the rule that women should wear veils, covering themselves from head to toe. Being modest changed into a dress code. Yet this dress code was not applied to the "believing men", and did not become a cause for their social or economical oppressions. Women, who at the beginning of Islam, were leading armies and making political decisions, were now, a few centuries later, expected to sit separately from men in mosques and in prayer ceremonies. A similar situation also obtain in non-Islamic countries. For example a century ago, when the World Anti-Slavery Association met in England, the women delegates were refused seats. They had to sit silently behind the curtain in the balcony. That, of course, led to Seneca Falls Convention that eventually gained a few rights for women such as becoming able to sell properties, the right to education, and the like. The Prophet instructed that women have the right to own property, to choose their own partners, and have equal rights to education. In accordance with prevailing culture, these rights became transformed into the duties of women to take care of children and remain in the house. This is not all that different than a century ago in America where women were expected the duties of "Republican Motherhood," which did not take them beyond the household sphere.
To justify the prejudice held against women, we can blame a religion, we can blame a culture, we can blame a system, and we can even blame women themselves. Yet these superficial "making you feel better" justifications will not remove the responsibility from generations of humanity. While it is true that the media misleads people, political leaders mislead people, and superficial ideology misleads people -- yet people remain in a state of being misled. The guilt of the oppressor is not lesser that the guilt of the oppressed, said the Prophet.
Islam is a religion where the standard for superiority is the level of ones knowledge, where human being was created in the best figure, and thus where advancing knowledge is a duty. According to Islam, the human being has the potentiality to ascend to the level of the Divine, knowledge of the law of the existence is the right of every human being.
Islam is a religion where your temple is not a building but your heart; your preacher is not a priest but your intellect; and if your religion is founded upon mere imitation, you are a blasphemer. In Islam, ignorance is an unforgivable sin, so is your evasion of responsibility for yourself as well as towards all the members of the living world, past and present. It is incorrect to blame such Islam for the shortcomings of its followers, which are the failings of most of mankind. A religion that is centered on the rights of human being, and sets both men and women free from the chains of bondage should not be used in propaganda for the sake of condemnation.
It is not Muslim women as such, but women everywhere who have been imprisoned by prejudice and cruelty. This form of prejudice that goes beyond simple racial or national boundaries, is sexual in nature. Whether women are constantly being held to an impossible standard, or subject to discrimination solely based on the fact that they are not equal to men, they are, by far, the group most affected by this form of prejudice. Depending on the society women may be seen as having the wrong weight, the wrong height, the wrong level of intelligence, or the wrong religion. We can conclude that women have yet to be welcomed with open arms into countries that they have been a part of from the beginning. True equality becomes a characteristic of Utopia and seems almost impossible to achieve in the society in which we live in. The question that remains is one of personal morals. Do we, as small pieces of society, have the capacity to interlock and form a beautiful mosaic? I have to say it takes more than just a few to fulfill a dream that is centuries old.
July 5, 2008
Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAQUBA, Iraq — Wenza Ali Mutlaq walked a bit uncertainly up the long street near the main government offices here on June 22, the hot wind stirring her heavy black abaya. She passed the concrete barricades put up to ward off suicide car bombers and made her way alone, almost haphazardly.
Suddenly, a police car zoomed in. A policeman got out to talk with her. And then their lives were over — torn apart, along with 14 other people, by the huge blast of fire from her concealed explosive vest.
Ms. Mutlaq, who was in her 30s and whose attack was captured on a security video, was the 18th female suicide bomber of the war to strike in Diyala Province, which has been hit by female attackers much more frequently than any other province of Iraq, according to Iraqi police records and the American military. So far, 11 of the 20 suicide bombings carried out by women in Iraq this year have occurred in Diyala.
Why so many women? Why now? In a particularly painful twist, the phenomenon seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.
The women who become suicide bombers often have lost close male relatives — a husband, a brother, a son — in fighting, because they became suicide bombers themselves or because they were detained by American or Iraqi security forces.
Ms. Mutlaq was no exception: her older brother had already taken the same path, detonating a suicide vest on June 10 during a shootout with Iraqi government forces.
“If there’s one single trend that I see, it’s the women’s relationship with the male figures that were members of A.Q.I. and were captured or killed,” said a senior military analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing information that had not been released publicly.
The subordinate role of women in conservative, rural Sunni families in Diyala makes them particularly vulnerable to pressure, said Sajar Qaduri, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council and the only woman on its security committee.
“Although she is bombing herself and aiming to kill people, I feel these women are really victims of terrorism,” said Mrs. Qaduri, who is a Shiite and whose husband was kidnapped two years ago and has not been heard from since. “Only women in despair, in desperate situations, would do this. Dealing with such a phenomenon is not easy.”
She added: “Our Oriental society is not like your Western society. It seems in many of these cases the women have had their husband killed or sent to prison and she feels she has no choice, she is very depressed.”
Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total, according to the United States military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, suicide attacks by women did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq. All but one of the female bombers have been Iraqis and most are young, between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the police and American military analysts. Almost all the attacks have been attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Diyala has been a stronghold for the group since it was chased from Anbar Province in the west in 2004. The province’s attraction was clear: it offers easy hiding places in its palm groves and orchards, and a Sunni-majority population that includes many people who supported Saddam Hussein and are sympathetic to the insurgency.
But in the past year, American and Iraqi forces have had much greater success in killing and detaining the group’s members in the province, as well as thwarting many of its bigger attack plots. The rise in female suicide bombings has directly coincided with the timing, and the locations, of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s biggest loss of manpower in Diyala, Baghdad and Anbar.
“Al Qaeda is always innovating: finding new ways to work,” said Ghanem al-Khoreishi, the police chief of Diyala. “When we destroyed them in fighting, they started to use new methods. And because they knew that women are treated more gently than men, they began to use them.
“The people don’t search them so well even at checkpoints.”
Interviews with police officers and politicians, American military analysts and Iraqi women yield different views of the phenomenon. But many agree that the province’s traditional, conservative and still largely rural society is a factor.
In Diyala’s countryside, most women cannot imagine the world beyond the date palms they see on the horizon. It might be an hourlong walk to the next village, there are no telephones, and cellphones often do not work. Most of the women cannot read.
“Most of the women who have killed themselves are from the villages,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie, the head of the Iraqi Army operations center in Diyala. “She is living a very traditional life. She has no rights.”
“For that reason,” he added, “her ideas are very small.”
During Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s big push to take over Diyala villages, starting in late 2004, many families yielded to the extremists to protect themselves. Wide networks of villages that support Al Qaeda were created when subtribes, and sometimes even whole tribes, embraced the movement.
“In these families, they are terrorists: the conversations at dinner are about suicide bombs, about explosives, about improvised explosive devices,” said Col. Ali Ismari Fateh, a police commander who has been involved in hundreds of interrogations of people suspected of being insurgents.
Mrs. Qaduri, the provincial council member, said she believed that an element of sexual abuse may be involved as well. Many families marry their daughters off to local Qaeda leaders, known as emirs, at age 14 or 15. In some cases the girls are forced into marriage contracts in which they are married to a local emir, but if he dies or is captured, they are obligated to marry his successor and if he is captured or killed, that one’s successor.
At the same time, Diyala residents and officials say, militants from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago, they began holding religion classes for men and women.
“Even in Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who also serves on Diyala’s provincial council.
“They gathered people in the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lectures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had a long beard and a sword with him.”
Insurgent recruiters and religion instructors add promises to the threats, too, assuring people that they will go to paradise if they die fighting for Islam — a sometimes alluring dream for many in their largely poor, uneducated audience, said police officials and politicians in Diyala.
In some cases, it may not just be a matter of co-opting or persuading vulnerable women. In one case in April recounted by Police Chief Khoreishi, a woman came to the station asking for protection; she was being forced to become a suicide bomber and trained to use an explosive belt by two members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, one of them a close relative. The police now have her in protective custody, and two people suspected of being group members are in detention.
Iraqi police officials also say that a few of the bombings involved women wearing vests that were exploded by remote control, though it is unclear exactly how many because explosions usually destroy telltale design details about the detonators.
“There are two ways a suicide vest can work: there is a button they can push themselves and there is a remote control detonation,” Colonel Fateh said. “They follow her and if they think she is afraid to do it, then they will do it for her.”
Mrs. Qaduri believes that knowing the basic profile of the women who tend to become suicide bombers can inform policing: if a woman has a male family member who kills himself or is killed in the name of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or one of its sister organizations, it should be a warning sign that she or other close female relatives are at risk of becoming bombers.
Her dream is to start an intervention program that would take the women out of their homes and put them in shelters where they could not harm themselves or anyone else.
“We can predict that such a woman is ready to be used as a suicide bomber,” she said. “But at the same time, we don’t have any concrete proof that we can use to detain these women.”
Ms. Mutlaq’s life and death track the profile described by Mrs. Qaduri and others.
A native of the rural area south of Buhriz in southern Diyala, about 40 minutes northeast of Baghdad, she grew up in a landscape of date palms and orange orchards fed by irrigation canals.
Her tribe aligned itself early on with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and her brother and husband became influential emirs, officials said. Buhriz was one of the most violent areas of Diyala in 2005 and 2006, with periods when there were nearly weekly bombings.
Last June, her husband was killed while fighting in Baquba, the province’s capital, around the time that the American offensive in the city began, according to Baquba police officials. Almost exactly a year after that, her brother detonated his suicide vest during fighting with government forces.
Twelve days later, she walked alone past the barricades.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Diyala Province.
Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAQUBA, Iraq — Wenza Ali Mutlaq walked a bit uncertainly up the long street near the main government offices here on June 22, the hot wind stirring her heavy black abaya. She passed the concrete barricades put up to ward off suicide car bombers and made her way alone, almost haphazardly.
Suddenly, a police car zoomed in. A policeman got out to talk with her. And then their lives were over — torn apart, along with 14 other people, by the huge blast of fire from her concealed explosive vest.
Ms. Mutlaq, who was in her 30s and whose attack was captured on a security video, was the 18th female suicide bomber of the war to strike in Diyala Province, which has been hit by female attackers much more frequently than any other province of Iraq, according to Iraqi police records and the American military. So far, 11 of the 20 suicide bombings carried out by women in Iraq this year have occurred in Diyala.
Why so many women? Why now? In a particularly painful twist, the phenomenon seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.
The women who become suicide bombers often have lost close male relatives — a husband, a brother, a son — in fighting, because they became suicide bombers themselves or because they were detained by American or Iraqi security forces.
Ms. Mutlaq was no exception: her older brother had already taken the same path, detonating a suicide vest on June 10 during a shootout with Iraqi government forces.
“If there’s one single trend that I see, it’s the women’s relationship with the male figures that were members of A.Q.I. and were captured or killed,” said a senior military analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing information that had not been released publicly.
The subordinate role of women in conservative, rural Sunni families in Diyala makes them particularly vulnerable to pressure, said Sajar Qaduri, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council and the only woman on its security committee.
“Although she is bombing herself and aiming to kill people, I feel these women are really victims of terrorism,” said Mrs. Qaduri, who is a Shiite and whose husband was kidnapped two years ago and has not been heard from since. “Only women in despair, in desperate situations, would do this. Dealing with such a phenomenon is not easy.”
She added: “Our Oriental society is not like your Western society. It seems in many of these cases the women have had their husband killed or sent to prison and she feels she has no choice, she is very depressed.”
Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total, according to the United States military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, suicide attacks by women did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq. All but one of the female bombers have been Iraqis and most are young, between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the police and American military analysts. Almost all the attacks have been attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Diyala has been a stronghold for the group since it was chased from Anbar Province in the west in 2004. The province’s attraction was clear: it offers easy hiding places in its palm groves and orchards, and a Sunni-majority population that includes many people who supported Saddam Hussein and are sympathetic to the insurgency.
But in the past year, American and Iraqi forces have had much greater success in killing and detaining the group’s members in the province, as well as thwarting many of its bigger attack plots. The rise in female suicide bombings has directly coincided with the timing, and the locations, of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s biggest loss of manpower in Diyala, Baghdad and Anbar.
“Al Qaeda is always innovating: finding new ways to work,” said Ghanem al-Khoreishi, the police chief of Diyala. “When we destroyed them in fighting, they started to use new methods. And because they knew that women are treated more gently than men, they began to use them.
“The people don’t search them so well even at checkpoints.”
Interviews with police officers and politicians, American military analysts and Iraqi women yield different views of the phenomenon. But many agree that the province’s traditional, conservative and still largely rural society is a factor.
In Diyala’s countryside, most women cannot imagine the world beyond the date palms they see on the horizon. It might be an hourlong walk to the next village, there are no telephones, and cellphones often do not work. Most of the women cannot read.
“Most of the women who have killed themselves are from the villages,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie, the head of the Iraqi Army operations center in Diyala. “She is living a very traditional life. She has no rights.”
“For that reason,” he added, “her ideas are very small.”
During Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s big push to take over Diyala villages, starting in late 2004, many families yielded to the extremists to protect themselves. Wide networks of villages that support Al Qaeda were created when subtribes, and sometimes even whole tribes, embraced the movement.
“In these families, they are terrorists: the conversations at dinner are about suicide bombs, about explosives, about improvised explosive devices,” said Col. Ali Ismari Fateh, a police commander who has been involved in hundreds of interrogations of people suspected of being insurgents.
Mrs. Qaduri, the provincial council member, said she believed that an element of sexual abuse may be involved as well. Many families marry their daughters off to local Qaeda leaders, known as emirs, at age 14 or 15. In some cases the girls are forced into marriage contracts in which they are married to a local emir, but if he dies or is captured, they are obligated to marry his successor and if he is captured or killed, that one’s successor.
At the same time, Diyala residents and officials say, militants from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago, they began holding religion classes for men and women.
“Even in Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who also serves on Diyala’s provincial council.
“They gathered people in the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lectures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had a long beard and a sword with him.”
Insurgent recruiters and religion instructors add promises to the threats, too, assuring people that they will go to paradise if they die fighting for Islam — a sometimes alluring dream for many in their largely poor, uneducated audience, said police officials and politicians in Diyala.
In some cases, it may not just be a matter of co-opting or persuading vulnerable women. In one case in April recounted by Police Chief Khoreishi, a woman came to the station asking for protection; she was being forced to become a suicide bomber and trained to use an explosive belt by two members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, one of them a close relative. The police now have her in protective custody, and two people suspected of being group members are in detention.
Iraqi police officials also say that a few of the bombings involved women wearing vests that were exploded by remote control, though it is unclear exactly how many because explosions usually destroy telltale design details about the detonators.
“There are two ways a suicide vest can work: there is a button they can push themselves and there is a remote control detonation,” Colonel Fateh said. “They follow her and if they think she is afraid to do it, then they will do it for her.”
Mrs. Qaduri believes that knowing the basic profile of the women who tend to become suicide bombers can inform policing: if a woman has a male family member who kills himself or is killed in the name of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or one of its sister organizations, it should be a warning sign that she or other close female relatives are at risk of becoming bombers.
Her dream is to start an intervention program that would take the women out of their homes and put them in shelters where they could not harm themselves or anyone else.
“We can predict that such a woman is ready to be used as a suicide bomber,” she said. “But at the same time, we don’t have any concrete proof that we can use to detain these women.”
Ms. Mutlaq’s life and death track the profile described by Mrs. Qaduri and others.
A native of the rural area south of Buhriz in southern Diyala, about 40 minutes northeast of Baghdad, she grew up in a landscape of date palms and orange orchards fed by irrigation canals.
Her tribe aligned itself early on with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and her brother and husband became influential emirs, officials said. Buhriz was one of the most violent areas of Diyala in 2005 and 2006, with periods when there were nearly weekly bombings.
Last June, her husband was killed while fighting in Baquba, the province’s capital, around the time that the American offensive in the city began, according to Baquba police officials. Almost exactly a year after that, her brother detonated his suicide vest during fighting with government forces.
Twelve days later, she walked alone past the barricades.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Diyala Province.
Birth control vital to poor nations
Education of girls, women key to long-term health
Karin Zeitvogel
Agence France - Presse
Friday, July 11, 2008
Giving women in poor nations better access to birth control and education would help prevent millions of unwanted births in the developing world, the World Bank said Thursday.
"Fifty-one million unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur every year to women not using contraception," the World Bank said on the eve of World Population Day.
Birth rates have fallen in the past 30 years. But in 35 countries -- 31 in sub-Saharan Africa and East Timor, Afghanistan, Djibouti and Yemen -- birth rates are more than five children per mother.
A global approach encompassing not only contraception, but also better access to education, is needed to bring down the fertility rate in countries where it is still too high and puts the lives of women at risk, said Sadia Chowdhury, senior reproductive and child health specialist at the World Bank.
"Girls' and women's education is just as important in reducing birth rates as supplying contraception," said Chowdhury, a pediatrician.
"Women's education provides life-saving knowledge, builds job skills that allow her to join the workforce and marry later in life, gives her the power to say how many children she wants and when.
"These are enduring qualities she will hand down to her daughters as well," said Chowdhury, co-author of a World Bank report on contraception and unintended pregnancies in Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia.
Countries with a high birth rate also tend to have high maternal mortality, infant mortality and poverty, and poor education, health care, and nutrition, Chowdhury said.
Women who have poor access to contraception often turn to abortion as a means of birth control, the report said.
But according to the report, around half the 42 million abortions performed annually are unsafe and some 68,000 women die each year. Another 5.3 million suffer temporary or permanent disability. Abortion also costs more than contraceptive services, the report says.
"Findings from . . . Nigeria suggest that the annual cost of post-abortion care (estimated at $19 million) is approximately four times the cost of contraceptive services (estimated at $4.5 million) to prevent induced abortions; and it consumes about 3.4 per cent of total health expenditures," the report says.
"If contraception were provided to the 137 million women who lack access, maternal mortality would decline by 25-35 per cent ," it says.
Among the benefits of readily available, correctly practiced birth control would be fewer maternal and infant deaths and a reduction in the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the bank said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Education of girls, women key to long-term health
Karin Zeitvogel
Agence France - Presse
Friday, July 11, 2008
Giving women in poor nations better access to birth control and education would help prevent millions of unwanted births in the developing world, the World Bank said Thursday.
"Fifty-one million unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur every year to women not using contraception," the World Bank said on the eve of World Population Day.
Birth rates have fallen in the past 30 years. But in 35 countries -- 31 in sub-Saharan Africa and East Timor, Afghanistan, Djibouti and Yemen -- birth rates are more than five children per mother.
A global approach encompassing not only contraception, but also better access to education, is needed to bring down the fertility rate in countries where it is still too high and puts the lives of women at risk, said Sadia Chowdhury, senior reproductive and child health specialist at the World Bank.
"Girls' and women's education is just as important in reducing birth rates as supplying contraception," said Chowdhury, a pediatrician.
"Women's education provides life-saving knowledge, builds job skills that allow her to join the workforce and marry later in life, gives her the power to say how many children she wants and when.
"These are enduring qualities she will hand down to her daughters as well," said Chowdhury, co-author of a World Bank report on contraception and unintended pregnancies in Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia.
Countries with a high birth rate also tend to have high maternal mortality, infant mortality and poverty, and poor education, health care, and nutrition, Chowdhury said.
Women who have poor access to contraception often turn to abortion as a means of birth control, the report said.
But according to the report, around half the 42 million abortions performed annually are unsafe and some 68,000 women die each year. Another 5.3 million suffer temporary or permanent disability. Abortion also costs more than contraceptive services, the report says.
"Findings from . . . Nigeria suggest that the annual cost of post-abortion care (estimated at $19 million) is approximately four times the cost of contraceptive services (estimated at $4.5 million) to prevent induced abortions; and it consumes about 3.4 per cent of total health expenditures," the report says.
"If contraception were provided to the 137 million women who lack access, maternal mortality would decline by 25-35 per cent ," it says.
Among the benefits of readily available, correctly practiced birth control would be fewer maternal and infant deaths and a reduction in the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the bank said.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Female to lead Anglicans: cleric
Former Edmonton bishop triggers uproar at gathering
Randy Boswell
Canwest News Service
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Canada's leading female Anglican cleric has courted controversy at a major church conference in Britain by predicting the eventual rise of a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury.
"The signposts are pointing in one direction," former Edmonton bishop Victoria Matthews told Reuters on Tuesday during a global gathering of Anglican bishops at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference. "I would be very surprised if it wasn't accepted worldwide."
Matthews, whose recent selection as bishop of Christchurch sparked an uproar among conservative Anglicans in New Zealand, also shot back at Vatican officials who have complained the Church of England's July 8 decision to begin appointing female bishops poses "a further obstacle for reconciliation" between Catholics and Anglicans.
"With the greatest respect, the Vatican has to understand the Anglican communion is not synonymous with the Church of England," she said. "The Anglican communion has had women in the episcopate for about 20 years. They really need to do their homework and realize that the communion is 38 provinces and not one with satellites. That is a pretty significant error."
More than 650 bishops, including Archbishop Fred Hilz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, are attending the conference hosted by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams -- the symbolic head of the world's 77 million Anglicans.
Matthews, 54, said "it would be difficult to say the timeline" for when a woman might lead the church. Archdeacon Michael Pollesel, general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Canwest News Service it's conceivable a Canadian woman could become Archbishop of Canterbury one day.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Former Edmonton bishop triggers uproar at gathering
Randy Boswell
Canwest News Service
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Canada's leading female Anglican cleric has courted controversy at a major church conference in Britain by predicting the eventual rise of a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury.
"The signposts are pointing in one direction," former Edmonton bishop Victoria Matthews told Reuters on Tuesday during a global gathering of Anglican bishops at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference. "I would be very surprised if it wasn't accepted worldwide."
Matthews, whose recent selection as bishop of Christchurch sparked an uproar among conservative Anglicans in New Zealand, also shot back at Vatican officials who have complained the Church of England's July 8 decision to begin appointing female bishops poses "a further obstacle for reconciliation" between Catholics and Anglicans.
"With the greatest respect, the Vatican has to understand the Anglican communion is not synonymous with the Church of England," she said. "The Anglican communion has had women in the episcopate for about 20 years. They really need to do their homework and realize that the communion is 38 provinces and not one with satellites. That is a pretty significant error."
More than 650 bishops, including Archbishop Fred Hilz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, are attending the conference hosted by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams -- the symbolic head of the world's 77 million Anglicans.
Matthews, 54, said "it would be difficult to say the timeline" for when a woman might lead the church. Archdeacon Michael Pollesel, general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Canwest News Service it's conceivable a Canadian woman could become Archbishop of Canterbury one day.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
August 2, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb
By LINDSEY O’ROURKE
Chicago
FOUR more Iraqi women carried out suicide bombings in Iraq this week, bringing to at least 27 the number of such attacks this year in that country involving female terrorists. Anyone reading the newspapers or watching television has been treated to a flurry of popular misconceptions about the root causes of female suicide terrorism.
Women, we are told, become suicide bombers out of despair, mental illness, religiously mandated subordination to men, frustration with sexual inequality and a host of other factors related specifically to their gender. Indeed, the only thing everyone can agree on is that there is something fundamentally different motivating men and women to become suicide attackers.
The only problem: There is precious little evidence of uniquely feminine motivations driving women’s attacks.
I have spent the last few years surveying all known female suicide attacks throughout the world since 1981 — incidents in Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Uzbekistan. In order to determine these women’s motives, I compared the data with a database of all known suicide attacks over that period compiled by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
This research led to a clear conclusion: the main motives and circumstances that drive female suicide attackers are quite similar to those that drive men. Still, investigating the dynamics governing female attackers not only helps to correct common misperceptions but also reveals important characteristics about suicide terrorism in general.
To begin with, there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers. From the unmarried communists who first adopted suicide terrorism to expel Israeli troops from Lebanon in the 1980s, to the so-called Black Widows of Chechnya who commit suicide attacks after the combat deaths of their husbands, to the longtime adherents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the biographies of female suicide attackers reveal a wide variety of personal experiences and ideologies.
Likewise, while stories of young, psychologically disturbed women being coerced into their attacks makes for compelling news (and rightly emphasizes the barbarity of the terrorist organizations), they represent a small minority of cases. For example, female suicide attackers are significantly more likely to be in their mid-20s and older than male attackers.
Additionally, claims of coercion are largely exaggerated. For instance, the well-publicized claims that two women who killed dozens in blowing up a Baghdad pet market were mentally retarded were later revealed to be unfounded.
Blaming Islamic fundamentalism is also wrongheaded. More than 85 percent of female suicide terrorists since 1981 committed their attacks on behalf of secular organizations; many grew up in Christian and Hindu families. Further, Islamist groups commonly discourage and only grudgingly accept female suicide attackers. At the start of the second intifada in 2000, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, claimed: “A woman martyr is problematic for Muslim society. A man who recruits a woman is breaking Islamic law.” Hamas actually rejected Darin Abu Eisheh, the second Palestinian female attacker, who carried out her 2002 bombing on behalf of the secular Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
So, what does motivate female suicide attackers? Surprisingly similar motives driving men to blow themselves up on terrorist missions.
For one, 95 percent of female suicide attacks occurred within the context of a military campaign against foreign occupying forces, suggesting that, at a macro level, the main strategic logic is to create or maintain territorial sovereignty for their ethnic group. Correspondingly, the primary individual motivation for both male and female suicide bombers is a deep loyalty to their communities combined with a variety of personal grievances against enemy forces.
Terrorist organizations are well aware of the variety of individual motives for male and female attackers. As such, recruitment tactics aimed specifically at women often involve numerous, even contradictory, arguments: feminist appeals for equal participation, using a suicide attack as a way to redeem a woman’s honor for violations of the gender roles of her community, revenge, nationalism and religion — almost any personal motive that does not contradict the main strategic objective of combating a foreign military presence.
All secular organizations that employ suicide bombings have used female attackers early and often. For instance, 76 percent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey have been women, as have 66 percent of those from Chechen separatist groups, 45 percent of the Syrian Socialist National Party’s and a quarter of those from the Tamil Tigers.
Religious groups only came to realize the strategic value of female bombers after seeing secular groups’ success. For example, in a 2003 interview, a female Al Qaeda agent calling herself Um Osama told a Saudi newspaper that “the idea of women kamikazes came from the success of martyr operations carried out by young Palestinian women in the occupied territories.”
Why use women?
Paradoxically, the strategic appeal of female attacks stems from the rules about women’s behavior in the societies where these attacks take place. Given their second-class citizenship in many of these countries, women generate less suspicion and are better able to conceal explosives. Moreover, since female attacks are considered especially shocking, they are more likely to generate significant news media attention for both domestic and foreign audiences.
In a similar vein, my research showed that women were much more likely than men to be used for single-target assassination suicide attacks. Perhaps the most famous of these was the 1991 assassination of India’s prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, by Thenmuli Rajaratnam, a Tamil Tiger. Although women make up roughly 15 percent of the suicide bombers within the groups that employ females, they were responsible for an overwhelming 65 percent of assassinations; one in every five women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose of assassinating a specific individual, compared with one in every 25 for the male attackers.
Yes, many female suicide terrorists are motivated by revenge for close family members or friends killed by occupation forces. But so too are males. Indeed, there are so many known instances of personal revenge driving both sexes to strike, and so much missing data about the friendship and extended family circles of suicide attackers, that it is simply impossible to say one sex cares more about others.
So, how can we defend against the spate of female suicide attacks in Iraq? The logical first step is to better screen women at key security checkpoints. Coincidentally, American officials recently started a “Daughters of Iraq” program to train Iraqi women to search for female attackers. However, the program is unlikely to have a substantial effect for three reasons: First, the program is very small; only about 30 women initially graduated from the course, and each is expected to work only a few days a month. Second, since the root cause of suicide terrorism appears to be anger at occupying forces, we risk blowback if we are seen as trying to buy loyalty from Iraqi women. Third, the fact that religious groups changed their position on employing women attackers illustrates their willingness to develop new tactics to overcome security measures — thus efforts like the Daughters of Iraq are probably stopgap measures at best.
In the long run, decreasing female suicide attacks depends upon an American strategy that minimizes the presence of United States troops in what Iraqis consider their private sphere, while simultaneously providing material support that will improve the quality of life for all Iraqis. For now, however, given the strategic desirability of female attackers, we’re likely to see an increasing number of Iraqi women killing themselves and their countrymen in an effort to end what they see as the occupation of their nation.
Lindsey O’Rourke is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago.
Op-Ed Contributor
Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb
By LINDSEY O’ROURKE
Chicago
FOUR more Iraqi women carried out suicide bombings in Iraq this week, bringing to at least 27 the number of such attacks this year in that country involving female terrorists. Anyone reading the newspapers or watching television has been treated to a flurry of popular misconceptions about the root causes of female suicide terrorism.
Women, we are told, become suicide bombers out of despair, mental illness, religiously mandated subordination to men, frustration with sexual inequality and a host of other factors related specifically to their gender. Indeed, the only thing everyone can agree on is that there is something fundamentally different motivating men and women to become suicide attackers.
The only problem: There is precious little evidence of uniquely feminine motivations driving women’s attacks.
I have spent the last few years surveying all known female suicide attacks throughout the world since 1981 — incidents in Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Uzbekistan. In order to determine these women’s motives, I compared the data with a database of all known suicide attacks over that period compiled by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
This research led to a clear conclusion: the main motives and circumstances that drive female suicide attackers are quite similar to those that drive men. Still, investigating the dynamics governing female attackers not only helps to correct common misperceptions but also reveals important characteristics about suicide terrorism in general.
To begin with, there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers. From the unmarried communists who first adopted suicide terrorism to expel Israeli troops from Lebanon in the 1980s, to the so-called Black Widows of Chechnya who commit suicide attacks after the combat deaths of their husbands, to the longtime adherents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the biographies of female suicide attackers reveal a wide variety of personal experiences and ideologies.
Likewise, while stories of young, psychologically disturbed women being coerced into their attacks makes for compelling news (and rightly emphasizes the barbarity of the terrorist organizations), they represent a small minority of cases. For example, female suicide attackers are significantly more likely to be in their mid-20s and older than male attackers.
Additionally, claims of coercion are largely exaggerated. For instance, the well-publicized claims that two women who killed dozens in blowing up a Baghdad pet market were mentally retarded were later revealed to be unfounded.
Blaming Islamic fundamentalism is also wrongheaded. More than 85 percent of female suicide terrorists since 1981 committed their attacks on behalf of secular organizations; many grew up in Christian and Hindu families. Further, Islamist groups commonly discourage and only grudgingly accept female suicide attackers. At the start of the second intifada in 2000, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, claimed: “A woman martyr is problematic for Muslim society. A man who recruits a woman is breaking Islamic law.” Hamas actually rejected Darin Abu Eisheh, the second Palestinian female attacker, who carried out her 2002 bombing on behalf of the secular Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
So, what does motivate female suicide attackers? Surprisingly similar motives driving men to blow themselves up on terrorist missions.
For one, 95 percent of female suicide attacks occurred within the context of a military campaign against foreign occupying forces, suggesting that, at a macro level, the main strategic logic is to create or maintain territorial sovereignty for their ethnic group. Correspondingly, the primary individual motivation for both male and female suicide bombers is a deep loyalty to their communities combined with a variety of personal grievances against enemy forces.
Terrorist organizations are well aware of the variety of individual motives for male and female attackers. As such, recruitment tactics aimed specifically at women often involve numerous, even contradictory, arguments: feminist appeals for equal participation, using a suicide attack as a way to redeem a woman’s honor for violations of the gender roles of her community, revenge, nationalism and religion — almost any personal motive that does not contradict the main strategic objective of combating a foreign military presence.
All secular organizations that employ suicide bombings have used female attackers early and often. For instance, 76 percent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey have been women, as have 66 percent of those from Chechen separatist groups, 45 percent of the Syrian Socialist National Party’s and a quarter of those from the Tamil Tigers.
Religious groups only came to realize the strategic value of female bombers after seeing secular groups’ success. For example, in a 2003 interview, a female Al Qaeda agent calling herself Um Osama told a Saudi newspaper that “the idea of women kamikazes came from the success of martyr operations carried out by young Palestinian women in the occupied territories.”
Why use women?
Paradoxically, the strategic appeal of female attacks stems from the rules about women’s behavior in the societies where these attacks take place. Given their second-class citizenship in many of these countries, women generate less suspicion and are better able to conceal explosives. Moreover, since female attacks are considered especially shocking, they are more likely to generate significant news media attention for both domestic and foreign audiences.
In a similar vein, my research showed that women were much more likely than men to be used for single-target assassination suicide attacks. Perhaps the most famous of these was the 1991 assassination of India’s prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, by Thenmuli Rajaratnam, a Tamil Tiger. Although women make up roughly 15 percent of the suicide bombers within the groups that employ females, they were responsible for an overwhelming 65 percent of assassinations; one in every five women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose of assassinating a specific individual, compared with one in every 25 for the male attackers.
Yes, many female suicide terrorists are motivated by revenge for close family members or friends killed by occupation forces. But so too are males. Indeed, there are so many known instances of personal revenge driving both sexes to strike, and so much missing data about the friendship and extended family circles of suicide attackers, that it is simply impossible to say one sex cares more about others.
So, how can we defend against the spate of female suicide attacks in Iraq? The logical first step is to better screen women at key security checkpoints. Coincidentally, American officials recently started a “Daughters of Iraq” program to train Iraqi women to search for female attackers. However, the program is unlikely to have a substantial effect for three reasons: First, the program is very small; only about 30 women initially graduated from the course, and each is expected to work only a few days a month. Second, since the root cause of suicide terrorism appears to be anger at occupying forces, we risk blowback if we are seen as trying to buy loyalty from Iraqi women. Third, the fact that religious groups changed their position on employing women attackers illustrates their willingness to develop new tactics to overcome security measures — thus efforts like the Daughters of Iraq are probably stopgap measures at best.
In the long run, decreasing female suicide attacks depends upon an American strategy that minimizes the presence of United States troops in what Iraqis consider their private sphere, while simultaneously providing material support that will improve the quality of life for all Iraqis. For now, however, given the strategic desirability of female attackers, we’re likely to see an increasing number of Iraqi women killing themselves and their countrymen in an effort to end what they see as the occupation of their nation.
Lindsey O’Rourke is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago.
Break from tradition: Shia woman Performs Nikah of Sunni Bride & Groom
14 Aug 2008, 0327 hrs IST, Manajri Mishra,TNN
LUCKNOW: A Shia woman solemnizing marriage of a Sunni couple. If that was not enough, the nikah that made Lucknow sit up in disbelief, was to have only women as witnesses. Twenty-nine could be a trifle young to make history, but then Naish Hasan, an economics post-graduate and a woman rights activist managed to do it within half-an-hour on Monday night by opting for an "all- women" nikah even as maulvis scoffed and scowled in the background.
"Someone has to make a beginning and break the shackles of male dominance in Islam. I have volunteered," Naish told TOI. "I consider myself fortunate for there are not many who can practise what they preach," she added. "This is a message I want to send across to young girls and a protest I want to lodge against subjugation of women."
Her conditions were no less unusual. "I have told Imran I will not dress up as a traditional bride. There will be no vidai; there will be no barat and no dowry will be given," she said. The nikahnama she proudly displayed, categorically mentioned that the husband will not have the right to pronounce triple talaq at a sitting and the wife will also have a right to pronounce talaq if she so desired. "My humble attempt to demolish the patriarchal mind set," she smiled.
"Don't expect any frills. It will be a simple ceremony," she had forewarned. So the only concession Naish made for the occasion was donning an embroidered maroon sari. Surrounded by co-workers from Tahrir and Indian Muslim Women Movement, she looked a little edgy when Sayda Hamid, member, Planning Commission and her role model who was to double up as a maulvi for the D-day got a little delayed. Groom Imran, a PhD from Aligarh Muslim University, looked a little lost yet contented. And some of the guests were betting if Naish would cover her head or not at the ceremony.
Hamid began by reading out Qoranic verses about equality among mates and sanctity of the union. All murmuring stopped and in the pin-drop silence she asked the man and the wife to be if they accepted a 'meher' set for Rs 51,000? They both loudly declared their acceptance as cameras rolled and flashbulbs popped. The only deviation was adding a male witnesses to all women club. This was necessitated with the clerics pronouncement that the nikah would be null and void if not witnessed by a man.
As per her conditions, Naish will not leave her city and keep working. Having a woman officiating at the nikah is "impractical and therefore not advisable", said Maulana Khalid Rahsid, a cleric from Firangi Mahal of Lucknow.
14 Aug 2008, 0327 hrs IST, Manajri Mishra,TNN
LUCKNOW: A Shia woman solemnizing marriage of a Sunni couple. If that was not enough, the nikah that made Lucknow sit up in disbelief, was to have only women as witnesses. Twenty-nine could be a trifle young to make history, but then Naish Hasan, an economics post-graduate and a woman rights activist managed to do it within half-an-hour on Monday night by opting for an "all- women" nikah even as maulvis scoffed and scowled in the background.
"Someone has to make a beginning and break the shackles of male dominance in Islam. I have volunteered," Naish told TOI. "I consider myself fortunate for there are not many who can practise what they preach," she added. "This is a message I want to send across to young girls and a protest I want to lodge against subjugation of women."
Her conditions were no less unusual. "I have told Imran I will not dress up as a traditional bride. There will be no vidai; there will be no barat and no dowry will be given," she said. The nikahnama she proudly displayed, categorically mentioned that the husband will not have the right to pronounce triple talaq at a sitting and the wife will also have a right to pronounce talaq if she so desired. "My humble attempt to demolish the patriarchal mind set," she smiled.
"Don't expect any frills. It will be a simple ceremony," she had forewarned. So the only concession Naish made for the occasion was donning an embroidered maroon sari. Surrounded by co-workers from Tahrir and Indian Muslim Women Movement, she looked a little edgy when Sayda Hamid, member, Planning Commission and her role model who was to double up as a maulvi for the D-day got a little delayed. Groom Imran, a PhD from Aligarh Muslim University, looked a little lost yet contented. And some of the guests were betting if Naish would cover her head or not at the ceremony.
Hamid began by reading out Qoranic verses about equality among mates and sanctity of the union. All murmuring stopped and in the pin-drop silence she asked the man and the wife to be if they accepted a 'meher' set for Rs 51,000? They both loudly declared their acceptance as cameras rolled and flashbulbs popped. The only deviation was adding a male witnesses to all women club. This was necessitated with the clerics pronouncement that the nikah would be null and void if not witnessed by a man.
As per her conditions, Naish will not leave her city and keep working. Having a woman officiating at the nikah is "impractical and therefore not advisable", said Maulana Khalid Rahsid, a cleric from Firangi Mahal of Lucknow.
New Sharia law marriage contract gives Muslim women rights
Muslim women are to be guaranteed equal rights in marriage under a new wedding contract negotiated by leading Islamic organisations and clerics in Britain.
By Urmee Khan
Last Updated: 5:47PM BST 08 Aug 2008
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute and author of the contract Photo: PA
Hailed as the biggest change in Sharia law in Britain for 100 years, a married Muslim couple will now have equal rights. A husband will have to waive his right to polygamy, allowed under Islamic law, in the new contract which has been described as "revolutionary".
Currently Muslims in Britain have an Islamic ceremony called a nikah (a non register office marriage) which, although it is guaranteed under Sharia law, is not legally binding and does not provide a woman with written proof of the marriage and of the terms and conditions agreed between the spouses.
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute and one of the authors of the contract, told The Daily Telegraph: "The document is a challenge to various sharia councils who don't believe in gender equality but the world has changed and Islamic law has to be renegotiated."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was criticised earlier this year when he called for greater recognition of Sharia in British civil legislature, a view that was echoed recently by the Lord Chief Justice Phillips.
Ann Cryer, a Labour MP who has campaigned for the rights of Muslim women, welcomed today's change, saying: "This document has been carefully researched over a four year period and I feel confident in recommending its findings to women (and men) of the Muslim Faith contemplating Marriage."
In cases of divorces, the absence of such proof, has meant that many Muslim women have been denied financial rights.
The new Muslim marriage contract does not require a 'marriage guardian' (wali) for the bride, and also makes delegation of the right of divorce to the wife (talaq-i-tafweeed) automatic.
This right does not affect the husband's right of talaq but enables the wife to initiate divorce and retain all her financial rights agreed in the marriage contract. These provisions reflect a recognition of changes in the Muslim world, including women's greater public roles, educational achievements and financial autonomy.
Drawn up by the Muslim Institute, the contract has taken four years to negotiate and create. It is supported by leading Muslim organisations including the Imams & Mosques Council (UK), Muslim Council of Britain, The Muslim Law (Shariah) Council UK, Utrujj Foundation, and The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain.
According to its authors, the new contract "brings Muslim marriages in Britain into line with positive developments in Muslim family law across the Muslim world".
Dr Siddiqui said "A lot of people come to us and the Islamic Shari 'ah Council for advice and we realised that Islamic marriage had lots of problems.
"Many Muslims in this country have a 'village' background, with Muslims from Sylhet in Bangladesh or in Pakistan where the local Imam performs a nikah, without proper registration or properly recording that such a ceremony has taken place.
"But in Britain, more marriages are breaking down and young people have said that we need to update things."
Dr Siddique outlined several cases where the cleric was a friend of the husband and there were no witnesses present.
"In many cases, Muslim men have put a woman on 'trial' to see 'if a marriage works out' and will not agree to have a civil ceremony" he said.
"One woman told me that she came home one day to find the locks had changed and there was a note saying ' your stuff is at my sisters house'.
"This contract is revolutionary and will lead the way in addressing problems that exist under sharia law. Although it is only the tip of the iceberg, it is a revolutionary step, nothing like this has happened in 100 years. The adoption of this model will change everything and force people to talk about the issues."
Religious leaders and community groups have also said the document will be useful in securing rights for Muslim women.
Dr Usama Hasan, director of The City Circle, an organisation for British Muslim professionals, said: "Too many fathers have abused their right of wilayah (guardianship) over their daughters and too many husbands have abused their right of initiating divorce for us to continue with law rooted in patriarchal societies. It is high time that Muslim women enjoy the same rights and freedoms under Islamic law as they do under present legal systems in the UK."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... ights.html
Muslim women are to be guaranteed equal rights in marriage under a new wedding contract negotiated by leading Islamic organisations and clerics in Britain.
By Urmee Khan
Last Updated: 5:47PM BST 08 Aug 2008
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute and author of the contract Photo: PA
Hailed as the biggest change in Sharia law in Britain for 100 years, a married Muslim couple will now have equal rights. A husband will have to waive his right to polygamy, allowed under Islamic law, in the new contract which has been described as "revolutionary".
Currently Muslims in Britain have an Islamic ceremony called a nikah (a non register office marriage) which, although it is guaranteed under Sharia law, is not legally binding and does not provide a woman with written proof of the marriage and of the terms and conditions agreed between the spouses.
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute and one of the authors of the contract, told The Daily Telegraph: "The document is a challenge to various sharia councils who don't believe in gender equality but the world has changed and Islamic law has to be renegotiated."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was criticised earlier this year when he called for greater recognition of Sharia in British civil legislature, a view that was echoed recently by the Lord Chief Justice Phillips.
Ann Cryer, a Labour MP who has campaigned for the rights of Muslim women, welcomed today's change, saying: "This document has been carefully researched over a four year period and I feel confident in recommending its findings to women (and men) of the Muslim Faith contemplating Marriage."
In cases of divorces, the absence of such proof, has meant that many Muslim women have been denied financial rights.
The new Muslim marriage contract does not require a 'marriage guardian' (wali) for the bride, and also makes delegation of the right of divorce to the wife (talaq-i-tafweeed) automatic.
This right does not affect the husband's right of talaq but enables the wife to initiate divorce and retain all her financial rights agreed in the marriage contract. These provisions reflect a recognition of changes in the Muslim world, including women's greater public roles, educational achievements and financial autonomy.
Drawn up by the Muslim Institute, the contract has taken four years to negotiate and create. It is supported by leading Muslim organisations including the Imams & Mosques Council (UK), Muslim Council of Britain, The Muslim Law (Shariah) Council UK, Utrujj Foundation, and The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain.
According to its authors, the new contract "brings Muslim marriages in Britain into line with positive developments in Muslim family law across the Muslim world".
Dr Siddiqui said "A lot of people come to us and the Islamic Shari 'ah Council for advice and we realised that Islamic marriage had lots of problems.
"Many Muslims in this country have a 'village' background, with Muslims from Sylhet in Bangladesh or in Pakistan where the local Imam performs a nikah, without proper registration or properly recording that such a ceremony has taken place.
"But in Britain, more marriages are breaking down and young people have said that we need to update things."
Dr Siddique outlined several cases where the cleric was a friend of the husband and there were no witnesses present.
"In many cases, Muslim men have put a woman on 'trial' to see 'if a marriage works out' and will not agree to have a civil ceremony" he said.
"One woman told me that she came home one day to find the locks had changed and there was a note saying ' your stuff is at my sisters house'.
"This contract is revolutionary and will lead the way in addressing problems that exist under sharia law. Although it is only the tip of the iceberg, it is a revolutionary step, nothing like this has happened in 100 years. The adoption of this model will change everything and force people to talk about the issues."
Religious leaders and community groups have also said the document will be useful in securing rights for Muslim women.
Dr Usama Hasan, director of The City Circle, an organisation for British Muslim professionals, said: "Too many fathers have abused their right of wilayah (guardianship) over their daughters and too many husbands have abused their right of initiating divorce for us to continue with law rooted in patriarchal societies. It is high time that Muslim women enjoy the same rights and freedoms under Islamic law as they do under present legal systems in the UK."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... ights.html
There are other related articles linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world ... &th&emc=th
September 19, 2008
Dammam Journal
Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah.
It’s my favorite time of day.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world ... &th&emc=th
September 19, 2008
Dammam Journal
Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah.
It’s my favorite time of day.”
Why gender equity trumps religious rights
Janet Keeping
For The Calgary Herald
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Freedom of religion is an important principle in a free society, but it should not override the rights of women.
From rapes that go unreported because the victim is a female Muslim to the legal enforcement of arbitrations based on religions which seriously disadvantage women in matters such as divorce and child custody, we have seen increased tension between accommodation of religious difference and women's right to equality in our laws, public institutions and society more broadly.
This increased tension is due, in part, to greater religious diversity in Canada. Many of the religious groups which have grown in recent years -- for example, some Muslim and Evangelical Christian sects -- don't hold as progressive views on women's rights as some of those that have historically been dominant in Canada, such as the United Church.
But the increased tension is also due to the "global resurgence of religious orthodoxy."
Janice Stein, political scientist at University of Toronto, says this should not surprise us. "When rights in a liberal democratic state bump up against deeply embedded religious-cultural traditions, the hot spot of contention is the rights of women."
This is not a slam against Islam. As Stein also points out: "The three great monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- all have foundational texts which are profoundly patriarchal . . . which profoundly discriminate against women."
The question is not, why do some religious groups oppress women? That's easy -- their religion tells them to: women can't be priests or bishops or conduct prayer. Women can't enter the temple during menstruation. Women must defer to their male relatives. Women must "dress modestly." We are all aware of the gender discrimination that passes for religion, but as Stein observes, "We rarely speak in public about the coincidence that it is women who are covered, not men, irrespective of religious tradition. Nor do we talk about the belief, common to all religions, that it is women who are responsible for inciting lust or violence in men."
Nor is this a slam against religion per se. Our social institutions might have evolved differently, as in some cultures they did. But facts are facts -- historically most religions have greatly disadvantaged women.
Nor does freedom of religion help out here. Freedom of religion and conscience has usually been seen as a way of keeping government from meddling in religion, not as an excuse for religion to dictate to our public institutions.
Besides, in a multicultural society, how could laws and public policy be subject to religion? Which religion, when there is such a variety of them and many people who are not at all religious?
The real question is, what kind of thinking leads a person to conclude that gender equality in our public institutions could ever yield to religious belief?
The answer is "bad" thinking, which -- sadly enough -- comes in many forms. For example, it is bad thinking to shy away from the truth that some religious traditions are more humane than others. Some Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups are leaders in the advancement of women's rights. They don't try to bend laws to oppress women -- quite the contrary. But it is just a fact that others treat women as the property of their male relatives. Some practices -- such as "honour" killings of women who have "strayed" -- must never be allowed to influence Canadian laws so as to accommodate these murders.
It is also bad thinking to claim that, generally speaking, women have "made it" in Canada and so compromise with religious fundamentalists on the rights of "their" women is no big deal. (Think of recently arrived burka-clad immigrants or refugees who may be subject to genital mutilation.) Whether in terms of incomes earned, adequacy of child-care facilities or representation in government or on the boards of major corporations, Canadian women are a long, long way from equality. Any loss of ground is a major deal, and "their" rights are just as important as mine.
Not many of our laws state a simple, unassailable moral truth. But Section 28 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does just that. It says that all rights protected by the charter are, "notwithstanding anything else in this charter," "guaranteed equally to male and female persons." When it comes to our laws and public institutions, gender equity must always trump religious doctrine that discriminates against women. In ethics and law, women are entitled to an equal shot at a life worth living.
Janet Keeping is president of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, which is hosting a symposium on diversity issues, Identity and Polarization: Implications for our Ability to Live Well
Together, on Oct. 3 and 4 in Calgary. Janice Gross Stein will speak on religion and women's rights. www.chumirethicsfoundation.ca
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Janet Keeping
For The Calgary Herald
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Freedom of religion is an important principle in a free society, but it should not override the rights of women.
From rapes that go unreported because the victim is a female Muslim to the legal enforcement of arbitrations based on religions which seriously disadvantage women in matters such as divorce and child custody, we have seen increased tension between accommodation of religious difference and women's right to equality in our laws, public institutions and society more broadly.
This increased tension is due, in part, to greater religious diversity in Canada. Many of the religious groups which have grown in recent years -- for example, some Muslim and Evangelical Christian sects -- don't hold as progressive views on women's rights as some of those that have historically been dominant in Canada, such as the United Church.
But the increased tension is also due to the "global resurgence of religious orthodoxy."
Janice Stein, political scientist at University of Toronto, says this should not surprise us. "When rights in a liberal democratic state bump up against deeply embedded religious-cultural traditions, the hot spot of contention is the rights of women."
This is not a slam against Islam. As Stein also points out: "The three great monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- all have foundational texts which are profoundly patriarchal . . . which profoundly discriminate against women."
The question is not, why do some religious groups oppress women? That's easy -- their religion tells them to: women can't be priests or bishops or conduct prayer. Women can't enter the temple during menstruation. Women must defer to their male relatives. Women must "dress modestly." We are all aware of the gender discrimination that passes for religion, but as Stein observes, "We rarely speak in public about the coincidence that it is women who are covered, not men, irrespective of religious tradition. Nor do we talk about the belief, common to all religions, that it is women who are responsible for inciting lust or violence in men."
Nor is this a slam against religion per se. Our social institutions might have evolved differently, as in some cultures they did. But facts are facts -- historically most religions have greatly disadvantaged women.
Nor does freedom of religion help out here. Freedom of religion and conscience has usually been seen as a way of keeping government from meddling in religion, not as an excuse for religion to dictate to our public institutions.
Besides, in a multicultural society, how could laws and public policy be subject to religion? Which religion, when there is such a variety of them and many people who are not at all religious?
The real question is, what kind of thinking leads a person to conclude that gender equality in our public institutions could ever yield to religious belief?
The answer is "bad" thinking, which -- sadly enough -- comes in many forms. For example, it is bad thinking to shy away from the truth that some religious traditions are more humane than others. Some Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups are leaders in the advancement of women's rights. They don't try to bend laws to oppress women -- quite the contrary. But it is just a fact that others treat women as the property of their male relatives. Some practices -- such as "honour" killings of women who have "strayed" -- must never be allowed to influence Canadian laws so as to accommodate these murders.
It is also bad thinking to claim that, generally speaking, women have "made it" in Canada and so compromise with religious fundamentalists on the rights of "their" women is no big deal. (Think of recently arrived burka-clad immigrants or refugees who may be subject to genital mutilation.) Whether in terms of incomes earned, adequacy of child-care facilities or representation in government or on the boards of major corporations, Canadian women are a long, long way from equality. Any loss of ground is a major deal, and "their" rights are just as important as mine.
Not many of our laws state a simple, unassailable moral truth. But Section 28 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does just that. It says that all rights protected by the charter are, "notwithstanding anything else in this charter," "guaranteed equally to male and female persons." When it comes to our laws and public institutions, gender equity must always trump religious doctrine that discriminates against women. In ethics and law, women are entitled to an equal shot at a life worth living.
Janet Keeping is president of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, which is hosting a symposium on diversity issues, Identity and Polarization: Implications for our Ability to Live Well
Together, on Oct. 3 and 4 in Calgary. Janice Gross Stein will speak on religion and women's rights. www.chumirethicsfoundation.ca
© The Calgary Herald 2008
There is a related multimedia and a video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/world ... amian.html
October 6, 2008
In Poverty and Strife, Women Test Limits
By CARLOTTA GALL
BAMIAN, Afghanistan — Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.
Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.
In many ways this province, Bamian, is unique. A half-dozen years of relative peace in this part of the country since the fall of the Taliban and a lessening of lawlessness and disorder have allowed women to push the boundaries here.
Most of the people in Bamian are ethnic Hazaras, Shiite Muslims who are in any case more open than most Afghans to the idea of women working outside the home.
But the changes in women’s lives here are also an enormous step for Afghanistan as a whole. And they may point the way to broader possibilities for women, eventually, if peace can be secured in this very conservative Muslim society, which has been dominated by militia commanders and warlords during the last 30 years of war.
In a country with low rankings on many indicators of social progress, women and girls are the most disadvantaged.
More than 80 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Women’s life expectancy is only 45 years, lower than that of men, mostly because of the very high rates of death during pregnancy. Forced marriage and under-age marriage are common for girls, and only 13 percent of girls complete primary school, compared with 32 percent of boys.
The cult of war left women particularly vulnerable. For years now they have been the victims of abduction and rape. Hundreds of thousands were left war widows, mired in desperate poverty. Particularly in the last years of Taliban rule, even widows, who had no one to provide for them, were not allowed to work or leave the home unaccompanied by a male relative.
Fear of armed militiamen left women afraid even to walk in front of the police station in the town of Bamian, recalled Nahida Rezai, 25, the first woman to join the police force here. “And I came right into the police station,” she said, admitting to some fears.
At the beginning, she had some problems. “I received some threats by telephone,” she said. “But now I am working as a police officer, I think nothing can deter me.”
Nekbakht, 20, joined the police force, too, and now helps her father, a casual laborer, support the family. They live in a single room tucked into the cliff face of Bamian valley, where homeless refugees have found shelter in caves inhabited centuries ago by Buddhist pilgrims.
“It was very difficult to find a job,” she said. “We had economic problems, and with the high prices life was difficult. Finally, I decided if I could not find another job, I should go into the police.” After joining nine months ago, she likes the job so much she says she is encouraging other women to join, too.
Indeed, growing economic hardship has helped drive some women to join the work force or to take other bold steps as they try to help their families cope with a severe drought, rising food prices and unemployment.
That was the case for Zeinab Husseini, 19. Her father, with seven daughters and no sons, says he had little choice when he needed a second driver to help at home.
“I like driving,” she said, seated at the wheel of her family’s minibus. “I was interested from childhood to learn to drive and to buy a car. I was the first woman in Bamian to drive.”
But over all, it is the return to relative peace here that has allowed for women’s progress, said the governor, Habiba Sarabi, a doctor and educator who ran underground literacy classes during the Taliban regime.
“If the general situation improves, it can improve the situation for women,” she said. She pushed to have policewomen so they could handle women’s cases, and there are now 14 women on the force, she said.
Some of the changes in Bamian have been echoed in more conservative parts of Afghanistan. But even the success stories sometimes end up showing the continuing dangers for women who take jobs to improve their lot. In Kandahar Province, one of the most noted female police officials in the country, Capt. Malalai Kakar, was gunned down on her way to work on Sept. 28.
In Bamian Province, Mrs. Sarabi, 52, has been the driving force behind women’s progress in public life. Her appointment by President Hamid Karzai three years ago as governor of Bamian was a bold move when jihadi leaders were still so powerful in the towns and countryside.
Some opponents are still agitating for her removal, Mrs. Sarabi said. “It is not only because they are against women,” she said, “but they do not want to lose power, so they make trouble for the governor.”
She mentioned her problems to Laura Bush, the first lady, who visited Bamian in June to show support for education and women’s projects in Afghanistan. Mrs. Bush’s visit prompted Mr. Karzai to make a visit of his own to Bamian to inaugurate the construction of a district road.
The people of Bamian say they accepted a woman as governor in the hope that an English-speaking, development-oriented technocrat like Mrs. Sarabi would deliver jobs and prosperity.
In fact, the success of women’s Community Development Councils here has caught the attention of the World Bank, which has been a major donor to the programs and is looking to develop them further. Around the country there are 17,000 such councils, which choose local development projects and could be expanded to work on district and regional levels, said the bank’s president, Robert B. Zoellick, who visited Bamian this year.
“They are very effective,” he said of the councils in a recent interview. “People feel they have an influence in the future.”
The quiet work being done by women on the councils and in other jobs has helped turn things around for many in Bamian.
Najiba, 48, is a woman in Yakowlang District who lost her husband in the notorious massacre by Taliban forces there in the winter of 2000-1.
The Taliban fighters came on horseback, forcing the villagers and townspeople to flee in the night, leaving everything behind. Their shops and homes were set on fire while they sought refuge in the mountains.
After the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, they returned home to nothing, not even a roof over their heads.
“I just had one skirt, and I was always patching it,” Najiba said.
As the government began development programs in the provinces, Najiba was elected head of a newly formed women’s development council, representing her village and the neighboring village. Its job was to plan how to spend a government development grant.
The men’s council decided the area needed a road, and flood barriers to save the farming land near the river. The women’s council wanted instead to buy livestock for each family, traditionally the women’s domain in Afghan households, to improve the food supply for families.
The men won that debate. “We did not get the farming project,” Najiba said. “We are still suggesting it was valuable; we are trying to work on our projects so we don’t have to depend on the men.”
The women got their way with the next project: solar panels to provide light to groups of four houses. That project has opened up all sorts of ideas, for computers, televisions and educational and election programs, she said.
Women have participated in literacy and tailoring training programs, too. Najiba laughed as she explained: “We have changed our way of life. Now I have lots of skirts.”
She added, “It all comes down to the council.”
Now, women are taking courses run by nongovernmental organizations, getting educated and learning ways to improve their family incomes. Most important, the women have won over the men, she said.
“Their minds have changed,” Najiba said. “They want to share decisions, not too far, but they want to give us some share.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/world ... amian.html
October 6, 2008
In Poverty and Strife, Women Test Limits
By CARLOTTA GALL
BAMIAN, Afghanistan — Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.
Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.
In many ways this province, Bamian, is unique. A half-dozen years of relative peace in this part of the country since the fall of the Taliban and a lessening of lawlessness and disorder have allowed women to push the boundaries here.
Most of the people in Bamian are ethnic Hazaras, Shiite Muslims who are in any case more open than most Afghans to the idea of women working outside the home.
But the changes in women’s lives here are also an enormous step for Afghanistan as a whole. And they may point the way to broader possibilities for women, eventually, if peace can be secured in this very conservative Muslim society, which has been dominated by militia commanders and warlords during the last 30 years of war.
In a country with low rankings on many indicators of social progress, women and girls are the most disadvantaged.
More than 80 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Women’s life expectancy is only 45 years, lower than that of men, mostly because of the very high rates of death during pregnancy. Forced marriage and under-age marriage are common for girls, and only 13 percent of girls complete primary school, compared with 32 percent of boys.
The cult of war left women particularly vulnerable. For years now they have been the victims of abduction and rape. Hundreds of thousands were left war widows, mired in desperate poverty. Particularly in the last years of Taliban rule, even widows, who had no one to provide for them, were not allowed to work or leave the home unaccompanied by a male relative.
Fear of armed militiamen left women afraid even to walk in front of the police station in the town of Bamian, recalled Nahida Rezai, 25, the first woman to join the police force here. “And I came right into the police station,” she said, admitting to some fears.
At the beginning, she had some problems. “I received some threats by telephone,” she said. “But now I am working as a police officer, I think nothing can deter me.”
Nekbakht, 20, joined the police force, too, and now helps her father, a casual laborer, support the family. They live in a single room tucked into the cliff face of Bamian valley, where homeless refugees have found shelter in caves inhabited centuries ago by Buddhist pilgrims.
“It was very difficult to find a job,” she said. “We had economic problems, and with the high prices life was difficult. Finally, I decided if I could not find another job, I should go into the police.” After joining nine months ago, she likes the job so much she says she is encouraging other women to join, too.
Indeed, growing economic hardship has helped drive some women to join the work force or to take other bold steps as they try to help their families cope with a severe drought, rising food prices and unemployment.
That was the case for Zeinab Husseini, 19. Her father, with seven daughters and no sons, says he had little choice when he needed a second driver to help at home.
“I like driving,” she said, seated at the wheel of her family’s minibus. “I was interested from childhood to learn to drive and to buy a car. I was the first woman in Bamian to drive.”
But over all, it is the return to relative peace here that has allowed for women’s progress, said the governor, Habiba Sarabi, a doctor and educator who ran underground literacy classes during the Taliban regime.
“If the general situation improves, it can improve the situation for women,” she said. She pushed to have policewomen so they could handle women’s cases, and there are now 14 women on the force, she said.
Some of the changes in Bamian have been echoed in more conservative parts of Afghanistan. But even the success stories sometimes end up showing the continuing dangers for women who take jobs to improve their lot. In Kandahar Province, one of the most noted female police officials in the country, Capt. Malalai Kakar, was gunned down on her way to work on Sept. 28.
In Bamian Province, Mrs. Sarabi, 52, has been the driving force behind women’s progress in public life. Her appointment by President Hamid Karzai three years ago as governor of Bamian was a bold move when jihadi leaders were still so powerful in the towns and countryside.
Some opponents are still agitating for her removal, Mrs. Sarabi said. “It is not only because they are against women,” she said, “but they do not want to lose power, so they make trouble for the governor.”
She mentioned her problems to Laura Bush, the first lady, who visited Bamian in June to show support for education and women’s projects in Afghanistan. Mrs. Bush’s visit prompted Mr. Karzai to make a visit of his own to Bamian to inaugurate the construction of a district road.
The people of Bamian say they accepted a woman as governor in the hope that an English-speaking, development-oriented technocrat like Mrs. Sarabi would deliver jobs and prosperity.
In fact, the success of women’s Community Development Councils here has caught the attention of the World Bank, which has been a major donor to the programs and is looking to develop them further. Around the country there are 17,000 such councils, which choose local development projects and could be expanded to work on district and regional levels, said the bank’s president, Robert B. Zoellick, who visited Bamian this year.
“They are very effective,” he said of the councils in a recent interview. “People feel they have an influence in the future.”
The quiet work being done by women on the councils and in other jobs has helped turn things around for many in Bamian.
Najiba, 48, is a woman in Yakowlang District who lost her husband in the notorious massacre by Taliban forces there in the winter of 2000-1.
The Taliban fighters came on horseback, forcing the villagers and townspeople to flee in the night, leaving everything behind. Their shops and homes were set on fire while they sought refuge in the mountains.
After the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, they returned home to nothing, not even a roof over their heads.
“I just had one skirt, and I was always patching it,” Najiba said.
As the government began development programs in the provinces, Najiba was elected head of a newly formed women’s development council, representing her village and the neighboring village. Its job was to plan how to spend a government development grant.
The men’s council decided the area needed a road, and flood barriers to save the farming land near the river. The women’s council wanted instead to buy livestock for each family, traditionally the women’s domain in Afghan households, to improve the food supply for families.
The men won that debate. “We did not get the farming project,” Najiba said. “We are still suggesting it was valuable; we are trying to work on our projects so we don’t have to depend on the men.”
The women got their way with the next project: solar panels to provide light to groups of four houses. That project has opened up all sorts of ideas, for computers, televisions and educational and election programs, she said.
Women have participated in literacy and tailoring training programs, too. Najiba laughed as she explained: “We have changed our way of life. Now I have lots of skirts.”
She added, “It all comes down to the council.”
Now, women are taking courses run by nongovernmental organizations, getting educated and learning ways to improve their family incomes. Most important, the women have won over the men, she said.
“Their minds have changed,” Najiba said. “They want to share decisions, not too far, but they want to give us some share.”
Muslim service led by woman in UK draws protests
The Associated Press
Friday, October 17, 2008
OXFORD, England: A handful of protesters demonstrated Friday against a woman leading a Muslim prayer service — the first time such a service has been held publicly in Britain.
U.S. scholar Amina Wadud led about a dozen male and female worshippers in prayer at a conference hall in Oxford. The service took place before a university conference on women and Islam.
Critics said Wadud shouldn't have led the service, because she is a woman and because men and women attended. Muslim practice holds only men should lead services in which men are present.
Wadud, an author and scholar at a seminary in Berkeley, California, received death threats for conducting a similar service at a church in New York three years ago.
Muslim leaders in Oxford urged people not to demonstrate publicly Friday, saying that doing so would give Wadud publicity. Though few protesters turned out, several people voiced their opposition to Wadud's actions in interviews.
"When prayers are offered by Muslims and other religious people, we believe they should be offered in the divine way he (God) has prescribed," said Mokhtar Badri, vice president of the Muslim Association of Great Britain. "As far as we know — in all our scripts, in all our mosques, in all the different continents where Muslims exist, women do not lead the prayer."
He pointed out that other religions, including Catholicism, also give men and women different roles.
Wadud has her defenders, including Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Education Center of Oxford. The group is sponsoring the event.
"There was a specific example during the life of the prophet himself where he let a woman lead a mixed-congregation prayer," Hargey said. "The lady was Umm Waraqah. She was also one of the first women who memorized the entire Quran. Certainly she was a woman who was learned, erudite in religion and a devoted follower. The Prophet Muhammad allowed her to lead the prayers in her neighborhood."
___
Associated Press writer Elle Moxley contributed to this report from London.
The Associated Press
Friday, October 17, 2008
OXFORD, England: A handful of protesters demonstrated Friday against a woman leading a Muslim prayer service — the first time such a service has been held publicly in Britain.
U.S. scholar Amina Wadud led about a dozen male and female worshippers in prayer at a conference hall in Oxford. The service took place before a university conference on women and Islam.
Critics said Wadud shouldn't have led the service, because she is a woman and because men and women attended. Muslim practice holds only men should lead services in which men are present.
Wadud, an author and scholar at a seminary in Berkeley, California, received death threats for conducting a similar service at a church in New York three years ago.
Muslim leaders in Oxford urged people not to demonstrate publicly Friday, saying that doing so would give Wadud publicity. Though few protesters turned out, several people voiced their opposition to Wadud's actions in interviews.
"When prayers are offered by Muslims and other religious people, we believe they should be offered in the divine way he (God) has prescribed," said Mokhtar Badri, vice president of the Muslim Association of Great Britain. "As far as we know — in all our scripts, in all our mosques, in all the different continents where Muslims exist, women do not lead the prayer."
He pointed out that other religions, including Catholicism, also give men and women different roles.
Wadud has her defenders, including Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Education Center of Oxford. The group is sponsoring the event.
"There was a specific example during the life of the prophet himself where he let a woman lead a mixed-congregation prayer," Hargey said. "The lady was Umm Waraqah. She was also one of the first women who memorized the entire Quran. Certainly she was a woman who was learned, erudite in religion and a devoted follower. The Prophet Muhammad allowed her to lead the prayers in her neighborhood."
___
Associated Press writer Elle Moxley contributed to this report from London.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... _most.html
Faith-Based Feminism: The Most Powerful Model
If God had desired to exclude women from equal relationship with the Divine and essential participation in fashioning human societies, God would have created an all-male humanity. Of course, God did not. Instead, from the beginning of time, women have served indispensable and instrumental roles in founding religions, spreading justice, and building civilizations. It is this legacy that we draw upon for faith-based activism.
My faith empowers me as a woman, and it inspires my activism. I am not alone. In fact, I consider myself one humble inheritor of the grand legacy of American women's faith-based activism. From Harriet Tubman to Susan B. Anthony to Amelia Boynton Robinson, faithful women throughout American history have shaken up the status quo, driving some of our country's most remarkable examples of broad political and social change, including the abolitionist, women's suffrage, and civil rights movements. This great American story of women compelled by their faith to struggle for their freedoms, as well as the freedoms of others, continues today with Muslim women's faith-based activism.
Unfortunately, many Americans assume that Islam oppresses women or renders them of lower value. On the contrary, my faith unequivocally declares my equal value as a woman. Islam instituted revolutionary change in women's status and rights. The Prophet Muhammad was a radical feminist of his time and an ardent activist for women's improved position in his Arabian society, advocating for their right to own property, obtain divorce, and procure inheritance, just to name a few. Similarly, Islamic history is full of powerful, influential, and exemplary women. In the Prophet's own life, one finds his wife Khadijah, who supported him - emotionally and economically - during the most difficult years after the religion was founded, and 'Aishah, whose political activism and religious knowledge left an indelible stamp on the tradition.
The remarkable contributions of women as scholars and teachers of sacred text is an impressive record reflected throughout Islamic history. For example, in Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam, Oxford University scholar Dr. Muhammad Akram Nadwi demonstrates how over eight-thousand prominent Muslim women scholars shaped early Islamic thought. Even today, Muslim women in both Muslim-majority countries and as part of minority communities have a rich legacy of excellence in their roles as political, social, and spiritual leaders, artists, professionals, scholars, activists, and caregivers. Many Americans would be surprised to know that five Muslim-majority countries have been led by Muslim women since 1990.
Nevertheless, I would be naïve to contend that Muslim women do not face gender-based inequality in various cultures. Yet, we must be careful to avoid conflating Islam and its core teachings on women with the actions of some Muslims. I do not blame people for this misconception because I recognize that the ignorance or misinterpretation of Islam frequently results in the discrimination and disempowerment of women. However, what we have seen in places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan is the exploitation and deep misunderstanding of Islam and the prophets' teachings.
In response, we can witness an important revival in Muslim women's face-based activism. One such example is an initiative I have spearheaded: the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (http://www.asmasociety.org/wise/). WISE represents a global, diverse movement of Muslim women that are using their faith in Islam, both as inspiration and justification, to empower Muslim women. WISE is one manifestation of this larger trend.
Like innumerable women in this country, my faith has compelled me to assertively and unapologetically pursue peace and justice, both as an empowered woman to secure women's human rights and as an active citizen for the betterment of society and humanity. In doing so, I walk in the giant footsteps of Tubman, Anthony, and Robinson, and Khadijah, 'Aishah, and the muhaddithat.
Please e-mail On Faith if you'd like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
Faith-Based Feminism: The Most Powerful Model
If God had desired to exclude women from equal relationship with the Divine and essential participation in fashioning human societies, God would have created an all-male humanity. Of course, God did not. Instead, from the beginning of time, women have served indispensable and instrumental roles in founding religions, spreading justice, and building civilizations. It is this legacy that we draw upon for faith-based activism.
My faith empowers me as a woman, and it inspires my activism. I am not alone. In fact, I consider myself one humble inheritor of the grand legacy of American women's faith-based activism. From Harriet Tubman to Susan B. Anthony to Amelia Boynton Robinson, faithful women throughout American history have shaken up the status quo, driving some of our country's most remarkable examples of broad political and social change, including the abolitionist, women's suffrage, and civil rights movements. This great American story of women compelled by their faith to struggle for their freedoms, as well as the freedoms of others, continues today with Muslim women's faith-based activism.
Unfortunately, many Americans assume that Islam oppresses women or renders them of lower value. On the contrary, my faith unequivocally declares my equal value as a woman. Islam instituted revolutionary change in women's status and rights. The Prophet Muhammad was a radical feminist of his time and an ardent activist for women's improved position in his Arabian society, advocating for their right to own property, obtain divorce, and procure inheritance, just to name a few. Similarly, Islamic history is full of powerful, influential, and exemplary women. In the Prophet's own life, one finds his wife Khadijah, who supported him - emotionally and economically - during the most difficult years after the religion was founded, and 'Aishah, whose political activism and religious knowledge left an indelible stamp on the tradition.
The remarkable contributions of women as scholars and teachers of sacred text is an impressive record reflected throughout Islamic history. For example, in Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam, Oxford University scholar Dr. Muhammad Akram Nadwi demonstrates how over eight-thousand prominent Muslim women scholars shaped early Islamic thought. Even today, Muslim women in both Muslim-majority countries and as part of minority communities have a rich legacy of excellence in their roles as political, social, and spiritual leaders, artists, professionals, scholars, activists, and caregivers. Many Americans would be surprised to know that five Muslim-majority countries have been led by Muslim women since 1990.
Nevertheless, I would be naïve to contend that Muslim women do not face gender-based inequality in various cultures. Yet, we must be careful to avoid conflating Islam and its core teachings on women with the actions of some Muslims. I do not blame people for this misconception because I recognize that the ignorance or misinterpretation of Islam frequently results in the discrimination and disempowerment of women. However, what we have seen in places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan is the exploitation and deep misunderstanding of Islam and the prophets' teachings.
In response, we can witness an important revival in Muslim women's face-based activism. One such example is an initiative I have spearheaded: the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (http://www.asmasociety.org/wise/). WISE represents a global, diverse movement of Muslim women that are using their faith in Islam, both as inspiration and justification, to empower Muslim women. WISE is one manifestation of this larger trend.
Like innumerable women in this country, my faith has compelled me to assertively and unapologetically pursue peace and justice, both as an empowered woman to secure women's human rights and as an active citizen for the betterment of society and humanity. In doing so, I walk in the giant footsteps of Tubman, Anthony, and Robinson, and Khadijah, 'Aishah, and the muhaddithat.
Please e-mail On Faith if you'd like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba817e72-a9d1 ... 07658.html
Saudi women critical to development
By Abeer Allam
Published: November 3 2008 18:31 | Last updated: November 3 2008 18:31
Just over a decade ago, Sabria Jawhar enrolled in a masters programme at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca with a dozen other women. Five years later, she graduated with a degree in linguistic phonology. She was the only woman to finish the programme.
Outdated libraries, poor resources and constant bureaucratic battles, such as obtaining approval from male guardians each step of the way, posed persistent challenges to all the women – and left most with no option but to give up their dream of higher education. As a relatively affluent woman, Ms Jawhar was able to travel to western universities for research or to obtain advanced degrees. But most Saudi women have lacked access to higher education and face daily prejudices to do even the most basic of chores in the ultraconservative nation.
Attitudes are, however, slowly beginning to change as more women graduate from high schools and universities – often outperforming male students. Last week, King Abdullah laid the cornerstone for the construction of the Princess Noura Bint Abdelrahman University, a $5bn female-only university in Riyadh.
The university, expected to be completed in two years, is the first to be named after a woman. It will host 13 colleges, including medicine, business administration, computer science, graphic design, social sciences and pharmacy.
Improving the role of women in society has been an important priority of King Abdullah since he ascended the throne in 2005 and analysts say getting more women into the workplace is critical to the kingdom's development. But reforms in the strictly regulated country face strong resistance from the powerful religious establishment and are, at best, slow-moving. Women are not permitted to drive, cannot work without consent of a male relative and are segregated in most areas, including the workplace. At universities, male lecturers cannot stand before a classroom of Saudi women, causing lectures to be delivered through closed circuit television.
Until 2006, control over women's higher education was supervised by clerics rather than the education ministry, and the religious establishment has long considered education as a key area of influence. Many Saudis believed the goal of the religious authorities was to prepare women for roles as "an ideal housewife", and they represent a meagre 16 per cent of the workforce.
But more qualified women are pressing for equal job opportunities in fields beyond traditional roles such as teaching and medicine – fields that were deemed by clerics as "suitable for their nature".
"The sheer amount of money spent on women reflects King Abdullah's positive attitude toward women, something we badly need,'' says Ms Jawhar, who is pursuing a doctorate at the UK's Newcastle upon Tyne University thanks to a government scholarship. "This opens a door that has been shut for so long. But I wonder if the graduates will join the unemployment club."
In 2008, female students won 2,585 scholarships for overseas universities out of a total of 4,779 awarded in a programme sponsored by King Abdullah. Women also won 86 out of 127 slots for doctoral programmes. Amira Kashgary, professor of linguistics at the Girls College in Jeddah, believes women now need to be given equal opportunities to study law, engineering and media inside the kingdom.
"The job market demand has changed," Ms Kashgary says. "Output (at universities) did not contribute to the job market and the graduates could not find jobs. The process of critical changes in university education has begun but the pace of reform is slow.''
Experts claim Saudi education needs an overhaul, saying it suffers from poor teaching and too much focus on the arts and religious studies rather than providing the skills graduates need for jobs. Since 2004, the government has opened 100 universities, colleges and institutes that are funded by a $15bn budget, which has tripled since 2004.
But many barriers remain for women in all walks of life. In spite of calls for change, many Saudis defend restrictions as necessary to protect women from what are deemed by some to be decadent ways of the west.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Saudi women critical to development
By Abeer Allam
Published: November 3 2008 18:31 | Last updated: November 3 2008 18:31
Just over a decade ago, Sabria Jawhar enrolled in a masters programme at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca with a dozen other women. Five years later, she graduated with a degree in linguistic phonology. She was the only woman to finish the programme.
Outdated libraries, poor resources and constant bureaucratic battles, such as obtaining approval from male guardians each step of the way, posed persistent challenges to all the women – and left most with no option but to give up their dream of higher education. As a relatively affluent woman, Ms Jawhar was able to travel to western universities for research or to obtain advanced degrees. But most Saudi women have lacked access to higher education and face daily prejudices to do even the most basic of chores in the ultraconservative nation.
Attitudes are, however, slowly beginning to change as more women graduate from high schools and universities – often outperforming male students. Last week, King Abdullah laid the cornerstone for the construction of the Princess Noura Bint Abdelrahman University, a $5bn female-only university in Riyadh.
The university, expected to be completed in two years, is the first to be named after a woman. It will host 13 colleges, including medicine, business administration, computer science, graphic design, social sciences and pharmacy.
Improving the role of women in society has been an important priority of King Abdullah since he ascended the throne in 2005 and analysts say getting more women into the workplace is critical to the kingdom's development. But reforms in the strictly regulated country face strong resistance from the powerful religious establishment and are, at best, slow-moving. Women are not permitted to drive, cannot work without consent of a male relative and are segregated in most areas, including the workplace. At universities, male lecturers cannot stand before a classroom of Saudi women, causing lectures to be delivered through closed circuit television.
Until 2006, control over women's higher education was supervised by clerics rather than the education ministry, and the religious establishment has long considered education as a key area of influence. Many Saudis believed the goal of the religious authorities was to prepare women for roles as "an ideal housewife", and they represent a meagre 16 per cent of the workforce.
But more qualified women are pressing for equal job opportunities in fields beyond traditional roles such as teaching and medicine – fields that were deemed by clerics as "suitable for their nature".
"The sheer amount of money spent on women reflects King Abdullah's positive attitude toward women, something we badly need,'' says Ms Jawhar, who is pursuing a doctorate at the UK's Newcastle upon Tyne University thanks to a government scholarship. "This opens a door that has been shut for so long. But I wonder if the graduates will join the unemployment club."
In 2008, female students won 2,585 scholarships for overseas universities out of a total of 4,779 awarded in a programme sponsored by King Abdullah. Women also won 86 out of 127 slots for doctoral programmes. Amira Kashgary, professor of linguistics at the Girls College in Jeddah, believes women now need to be given equal opportunities to study law, engineering and media inside the kingdom.
"The job market demand has changed," Ms Kashgary says. "Output (at universities) did not contribute to the job market and the graduates could not find jobs. The process of critical changes in university education has begun but the pace of reform is slow.''
Experts claim Saudi education needs an overhaul, saying it suffers from poor teaching and too much focus on the arts and religious studies rather than providing the skills graduates need for jobs. Since 2004, the government has opened 100 universities, colleges and institutes that are funded by a $15bn budget, which has tripled since 2004.
But many barriers remain for women in all walks of life. In spite of calls for change, many Saudis defend restrictions as necessary to protect women from what are deemed by some to be decadent ways of the west.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Canada must lose muzzle, condemn honour killings
Naomi Lakritz
Calgary Herald
Friday, November 21, 2008
Maybe it's because we live in comfortable Canada that we can afford to play stupid games with words, tripping all over ourselves to find new ways of not having to say some practices carried out by cultures not our own are wrong. In Third World countries, they don't have that luxury, so they tend to cut right to the chase.
When 1,000 men in the Kurdistan town of Mosul stoned to death 16-year-old Doa Khalil last year, for the crime of having fallen in love with a Muslim boy, the Kurdish Women's Rights Watch group had no trouble calling a spade a spade. They didn't hesitate to say the teen, a member of the Yezidi minority, was the victim of an honour killing. They didn't mince words at all as they described how this poor girl was crying for help as she was murdered, and how local police stood by and did nothing.
Three years ago, when Heshu Yones' father chased her through their London house, cornered her in the bathroom and slit her throat over the tub, British police also didn't hesitate to call it an honour killing. Her father, a Kurd from Iraq, told police Heshu needed to die because she had gone on a date without first asking his permission. Nor were words minced in Berlin when a Turkish woman, Hatun Surucu, 23, was slain by her brothers for supposedly living too much of a western-style life. She had obtained a divorce from the cousin her family had forced her to marry at 16,was studying to be an electrician and was dating a German man.
Diana Nammi, founder of the International Campaign Against Honour Killings, told Christine Spolar, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, "No one could believe that it could happen, but we kept giving evidence that honour killings are here. We told police: 'Immigrants come here and they bring traditions, all their traditions.' "
Last month, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, 13, was stoned to death in Somalia as a crowd of 1,000 watched. She was ordered killed by Islamic fundamentalist rebels for having committed "adultery" after she was raped--thereby dishonouring her family. UN statistics reveal approximately 5,000 girls and women die annually worldwide in honour killings, and that includes some in Canada. Unfortunately, Canada, as well as the U. S., is becoming so mired in the quicksand of political correctness that using the term "honour killing" is seen as racism. Even the FBI bowed to political correctness, according to the National Post this week, when it hung up a wanted poster for Yasser Abdel Said, a Texan who is alleged to have killed both his teenage daughters because they had non-Muslim boyfriends. The girls' great-aunt called it an honour killing, and expressed her amazement at the FBI's fudging of language, including an apology from an FBI spokesman for "the misunderstanding" the phrase could cause.
Closer to home in Toronto, the same debate is being played out around the death of Mississauga, Ont., teen Aqsa Parvez, whose father and brother have been charged with murder. Parvez was allegedly killed for becoming too westernized and reportedly refusing to wear her hijab. When Toronto Life magazine did a story on her in their December issue and talked of honour killings, the politically correct were incensed. Among the outraged was Michelle Cho of Toronto's Urban Alliance on Race Relations, who said the article "feeds into fearmongering driven by an us-versus-them mentality suggesting that embracing diversity is like a runaway train leading to the death of liberalism as we know it."Whew. There's a fire-breathing mouthful of rhetoric for you. Now for some plain talk, let's turn to Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy, who last month completed a cross-Canada multi-faith walk against violence.
"I believe it is honour killing. That is not something that can be denied. But it is un-Islamic. It has nothing to do with my religion, and I strongly condemn it. The people doing these heinous things should be punished," Soharwardy said in an interview Thursday. Soharwardy tells of the discovery of a cemetery near where he grew up in Pakistan, where the graves of 100 women and girls were unearthed: "They had been buried by their own families, all killed in the name of honour. The Pakistani government does nothing about these honour killings, nothing at all."
Soharwardy says the notion of families forcing girls into arranged marriages is not condoned by Islam: "Not many Muslims know that, but marrying a partner of your choice is a requirement, for both the boy and girl."He agrees if evil is to be rooted out, then it has to be labelled for what it is. If we are reluctant to look evil in the face or we try to divert attention from it by accusing those who are being forthright about it of racism, then we can't fight it. People who come from cultures where honour killing occurs don't hesitate to call this evil by its name. They don't see it as a blanket condemnation of their culture, race or religion; they see it for what it is, a crime that must be stopped and whose perpetrators must be punished.
There is nothing wrong with saying that someone from another culture is doing something wrong. Canadians can continue playing a game of political correctness, but the only ones who pay the price for it will be the very women who need help the most.
nlakritz@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Naomi Lakritz
Calgary Herald
Friday, November 21, 2008
Maybe it's because we live in comfortable Canada that we can afford to play stupid games with words, tripping all over ourselves to find new ways of not having to say some practices carried out by cultures not our own are wrong. In Third World countries, they don't have that luxury, so they tend to cut right to the chase.
When 1,000 men in the Kurdistan town of Mosul stoned to death 16-year-old Doa Khalil last year, for the crime of having fallen in love with a Muslim boy, the Kurdish Women's Rights Watch group had no trouble calling a spade a spade. They didn't hesitate to say the teen, a member of the Yezidi minority, was the victim of an honour killing. They didn't mince words at all as they described how this poor girl was crying for help as she was murdered, and how local police stood by and did nothing.
Three years ago, when Heshu Yones' father chased her through their London house, cornered her in the bathroom and slit her throat over the tub, British police also didn't hesitate to call it an honour killing. Her father, a Kurd from Iraq, told police Heshu needed to die because she had gone on a date without first asking his permission. Nor were words minced in Berlin when a Turkish woman, Hatun Surucu, 23, was slain by her brothers for supposedly living too much of a western-style life. She had obtained a divorce from the cousin her family had forced her to marry at 16,was studying to be an electrician and was dating a German man.
Diana Nammi, founder of the International Campaign Against Honour Killings, told Christine Spolar, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, "No one could believe that it could happen, but we kept giving evidence that honour killings are here. We told police: 'Immigrants come here and they bring traditions, all their traditions.' "
Last month, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, 13, was stoned to death in Somalia as a crowd of 1,000 watched. She was ordered killed by Islamic fundamentalist rebels for having committed "adultery" after she was raped--thereby dishonouring her family. UN statistics reveal approximately 5,000 girls and women die annually worldwide in honour killings, and that includes some in Canada. Unfortunately, Canada, as well as the U. S., is becoming so mired in the quicksand of political correctness that using the term "honour killing" is seen as racism. Even the FBI bowed to political correctness, according to the National Post this week, when it hung up a wanted poster for Yasser Abdel Said, a Texan who is alleged to have killed both his teenage daughters because they had non-Muslim boyfriends. The girls' great-aunt called it an honour killing, and expressed her amazement at the FBI's fudging of language, including an apology from an FBI spokesman for "the misunderstanding" the phrase could cause.
Closer to home in Toronto, the same debate is being played out around the death of Mississauga, Ont., teen Aqsa Parvez, whose father and brother have been charged with murder. Parvez was allegedly killed for becoming too westernized and reportedly refusing to wear her hijab. When Toronto Life magazine did a story on her in their December issue and talked of honour killings, the politically correct were incensed. Among the outraged was Michelle Cho of Toronto's Urban Alliance on Race Relations, who said the article "feeds into fearmongering driven by an us-versus-them mentality suggesting that embracing diversity is like a runaway train leading to the death of liberalism as we know it."Whew. There's a fire-breathing mouthful of rhetoric for you. Now for some plain talk, let's turn to Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy, who last month completed a cross-Canada multi-faith walk against violence.
"I believe it is honour killing. That is not something that can be denied. But it is un-Islamic. It has nothing to do with my religion, and I strongly condemn it. The people doing these heinous things should be punished," Soharwardy said in an interview Thursday. Soharwardy tells of the discovery of a cemetery near where he grew up in Pakistan, where the graves of 100 women and girls were unearthed: "They had been buried by their own families, all killed in the name of honour. The Pakistani government does nothing about these honour killings, nothing at all."
Soharwardy says the notion of families forcing girls into arranged marriages is not condoned by Islam: "Not many Muslims know that, but marrying a partner of your choice is a requirement, for both the boy and girl."He agrees if evil is to be rooted out, then it has to be labelled for what it is. If we are reluctant to look evil in the face or we try to divert attention from it by accusing those who are being forthright about it of racism, then we can't fight it. People who come from cultures where honour killing occurs don't hesitate to call this evil by its name. They don't see it as a blanket condemnation of their culture, race or religion; they see it for what it is, a crime that must be stopped and whose perpetrators must be punished.
There is nothing wrong with saying that someone from another culture is doing something wrong. Canadians can continue playing a game of political correctness, but the only ones who pay the price for it will be the very women who need help the most.
nlakritz@theherald.canwest.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008
There is a related video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opini ... &th&emc=th
November 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism That’s Personal
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Terrorism in this part of the world usually means bombs exploding or hotels burning, as the latest horrific scenes from Mumbai attest. Yet alongside the brutal public terrorism that fills the television screens, there is an equally cruel form of terrorism that gets almost no attention and thrives as a result: flinging acid on a woman’s face to leave her hideously deformed.
Here in Pakistan, I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region.
This month in Afghanistan, men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school. One of the girls, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, told reporters from her hospital bed: “I will go to my school even if they kill me. My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”
When I met Naeema Azar, a Pakistani woman who had once been an attractive, self-confident real estate agent, she was wearing a black cloak that enveloped her head and face. Then she removed the covering, and I flinched.
Acid had burned away her left ear and most of her right ear. It had blinded her and burned away her eyelids and most of her face, leaving just bone.
Six skin grafts with flesh from her leg have helped, but she still cannot close her eyes or her mouth; she will not eat in front of others because it is too humiliating to have food slip out as she chews.
“Look at Naeema, she has lost her eyes,” sighed Shahnaz Bukhari, a Pakistani activist who founded an organization to help such women, and who was beginning to tear up. “She makes me cry every time she comes in front of me.”
Ms. Azar had earned a good income and was supporting her three small children when she decided to divorce her husband, Azar Jamsheed, a fruit seller who rarely brought money home. He agreed to end the (arranged) marriage because he had his eye on another woman.
After the divorce was final, Mr. Jamsheed came to say goodbye to the children, and then pulled out a bottle and poured acid on his wife’s face, according to her account and that of their son.
“I screamed,” Ms. Azar recalled. “The flesh of my cheeks was falling off. The bones on my face were showing, and all of my skin was falling off.”
Neighbors came running, as smoke rose from her burning flesh and she ran about blindly, crashing into walls. Mr. Jamsheed was never arrested, and he has since disappeared. (I couldn’t reach him for his side of the story.)
Ms. Azar has survived on the charity of friends and with support from Ms. Bukhari’s group, the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org). Ms. Bukhari is raising money for a lawyer to push the police to prosecute Mr. Jamsheed, and to pay for eye surgery that — with a skilled surgeon — might be able to restore sight to one eye.
Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face.
Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: they are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.
Since 1994, Ms. Bukhari has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.
For the last two years, Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have co-sponsored an International Violence Against Women Act, which would adopt a range of measures to spotlight such brutality and nudge foreign governments to pay heed to it. Let’s hope that with Mr. Biden’s new influence the bill will pass in the next Congress.
That might help end the silence and culture of impunity surrounding this kind of terrorism.
The most haunting part of my visit with Ms. Azar, aside from seeing her face, was a remark by her 12-year-old son, Ahsan Shah, who lovingly leads her around everywhere. He told me that in one house where they stayed for a time after the attack, a man upstairs used to beat his wife every day and taunt her, saying: “You see the woman downstairs who was burned by her husband? I’ll burn you just the same way.”
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Frank Rich is off today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opini ... &th&emc=th
November 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism That’s Personal
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Terrorism in this part of the world usually means bombs exploding or hotels burning, as the latest horrific scenes from Mumbai attest. Yet alongside the brutal public terrorism that fills the television screens, there is an equally cruel form of terrorism that gets almost no attention and thrives as a result: flinging acid on a woman’s face to leave her hideously deformed.
Here in Pakistan, I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region.
This month in Afghanistan, men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school. One of the girls, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, told reporters from her hospital bed: “I will go to my school even if they kill me. My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”
When I met Naeema Azar, a Pakistani woman who had once been an attractive, self-confident real estate agent, she was wearing a black cloak that enveloped her head and face. Then she removed the covering, and I flinched.
Acid had burned away her left ear and most of her right ear. It had blinded her and burned away her eyelids and most of her face, leaving just bone.
Six skin grafts with flesh from her leg have helped, but she still cannot close her eyes or her mouth; she will not eat in front of others because it is too humiliating to have food slip out as she chews.
“Look at Naeema, she has lost her eyes,” sighed Shahnaz Bukhari, a Pakistani activist who founded an organization to help such women, and who was beginning to tear up. “She makes me cry every time she comes in front of me.”
Ms. Azar had earned a good income and was supporting her three small children when she decided to divorce her husband, Azar Jamsheed, a fruit seller who rarely brought money home. He agreed to end the (arranged) marriage because he had his eye on another woman.
After the divorce was final, Mr. Jamsheed came to say goodbye to the children, and then pulled out a bottle and poured acid on his wife’s face, according to her account and that of their son.
“I screamed,” Ms. Azar recalled. “The flesh of my cheeks was falling off. The bones on my face were showing, and all of my skin was falling off.”
Neighbors came running, as smoke rose from her burning flesh and she ran about blindly, crashing into walls. Mr. Jamsheed was never arrested, and he has since disappeared. (I couldn’t reach him for his side of the story.)
Ms. Azar has survived on the charity of friends and with support from Ms. Bukhari’s group, the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org). Ms. Bukhari is raising money for a lawyer to push the police to prosecute Mr. Jamsheed, and to pay for eye surgery that — with a skilled surgeon — might be able to restore sight to one eye.
Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face.
Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: they are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.
Since 1994, Ms. Bukhari has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.
For the last two years, Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have co-sponsored an International Violence Against Women Act, which would adopt a range of measures to spotlight such brutality and nudge foreign governments to pay heed to it. Let’s hope that with Mr. Biden’s new influence the bill will pass in the next Congress.
That might help end the silence and culture of impunity surrounding this kind of terrorism.
The most haunting part of my visit with Ms. Azar, aside from seeing her face, was a remark by her 12-year-old son, Ahsan Shah, who lovingly leads her around everywhere. He told me that in one house where they stayed for a time after the attack, a man upstairs used to beat his wife every day and taunt her, saying: “You see the woman downstairs who was burned by her husband? I’ll burn you just the same way.”
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Frank Rich is off today.
Best Countries For Women
Matthew Kirdahy 11.12.08, 12:01 AM ET
Female empowerment is embraced more today than any other time in world history. And in the global push for gender equality in everything from business to politics, education to health, it's Europe that has made the greatest strides to close the so-called gender gap.
Norway, Finland and Sweden are ranked the best countries for gender equality, according to a recent study from the World Economic Forum, the nonprofit organization known for its annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, for global leaders. Those Nordic countries and their Western European neighbors account for 16 of the top 30 countries with the greatest gender parity in the world.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ranked surprisingly low at No. 27, behind Lesotho (No. 16), Mozambique (No. 18) and Moldova (No. 20). Not surprisingly, the worst-ranked countries were sprinkled throughout the Middle East and Asia. Garden spots like Chad (129th), Saudi Arabia (128th) and Pakistan (127th) populated the bottom of the list. Yemen ranked absolutely worst at No. 130.
By The Numbers: Best Countries For Women
Video: Best Places For Working Women
http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/ ... nder111208
The Global Gender Gap Report measures the size of the gender gap--the disparity in opportunities available for men and women--for 130 countries in four critical areas: economic participation and opportunity, health and survival, educational attainment, and political empowerment. A country's rank is based on the overall score, which is expressed in a percent. The score represents how much of the gender gap the country has been able to close. A score of 100% would represent perfect equality. The majority of the data come from various non-government organizations, such as the International Labor Organization, United Nations Development Program and the World Health Organization.
Norway, ranked No. 1, scored 82%. Finland came in second place with an estimated 82%, while Sweden posted a score of 81.4%. The U.S. has closed 72% of its gender gap, according to the study, while Yemen has closed 47%.
Other countries in the top 10 include Iceland (80%), New Zealand (79%), the Philippines (76%), Denmark (75%) and the Netherlands (74%). The U.K. ranked 13th (74%), while Canada ranked 31st (71%), hurt by poor showings in educational attainment and political empowerment.
"Personally, the U.S. was a surprise," said Saadia Zahidi, one of the study's authors. According to Zahidi, much of the year-to-year fluctuations in the list depend on politics. An election year could easily change a country's overall score depending on how many women are elected to public office.
Among the four ranking categories, the U.S. scored lowest in "political empowerment." Finland's score was helped by Tarja Halonen, its female president.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, ranked No. 19, had the highest score, thanks to lots of female elected officals. Barbados, included for the first time this year, ranked a surprisingly high 26th.
Israel was the highest-ranked country in the Middle East and North Africa region, at 56th. And in Asia and Oceania, the Philippines and Sri Lanka scored spots in the top 20 for the third straight year.
Matthew Kirdahy 11.12.08, 12:01 AM ET
Female empowerment is embraced more today than any other time in world history. And in the global push for gender equality in everything from business to politics, education to health, it's Europe that has made the greatest strides to close the so-called gender gap.
Norway, Finland and Sweden are ranked the best countries for gender equality, according to a recent study from the World Economic Forum, the nonprofit organization known for its annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, for global leaders. Those Nordic countries and their Western European neighbors account for 16 of the top 30 countries with the greatest gender parity in the world.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ranked surprisingly low at No. 27, behind Lesotho (No. 16), Mozambique (No. 18) and Moldova (No. 20). Not surprisingly, the worst-ranked countries were sprinkled throughout the Middle East and Asia. Garden spots like Chad (129th), Saudi Arabia (128th) and Pakistan (127th) populated the bottom of the list. Yemen ranked absolutely worst at No. 130.
By The Numbers: Best Countries For Women
Video: Best Places For Working Women
http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/ ... nder111208
The Global Gender Gap Report measures the size of the gender gap--the disparity in opportunities available for men and women--for 130 countries in four critical areas: economic participation and opportunity, health and survival, educational attainment, and political empowerment. A country's rank is based on the overall score, which is expressed in a percent. The score represents how much of the gender gap the country has been able to close. A score of 100% would represent perfect equality. The majority of the data come from various non-government organizations, such as the International Labor Organization, United Nations Development Program and the World Health Organization.
Norway, ranked No. 1, scored 82%. Finland came in second place with an estimated 82%, while Sweden posted a score of 81.4%. The U.S. has closed 72% of its gender gap, according to the study, while Yemen has closed 47%.
Other countries in the top 10 include Iceland (80%), New Zealand (79%), the Philippines (76%), Denmark (75%) and the Netherlands (74%). The U.K. ranked 13th (74%), while Canada ranked 31st (71%), hurt by poor showings in educational attainment and political empowerment.
"Personally, the U.S. was a surprise," said Saadia Zahidi, one of the study's authors. According to Zahidi, much of the year-to-year fluctuations in the list depend on politics. An election year could easily change a country's overall score depending on how many women are elected to public office.
Among the four ranking categories, the U.S. scored lowest in "political empowerment." Finland's score was helped by Tarja Halonen, its female president.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, ranked No. 19, had the highest score, thanks to lots of female elected officals. Barbados, included for the first time this year, ranked a surprisingly high 26th.
Israel was the highest-ranked country in the Middle East and North Africa region, at 56th. And in Asia and Oceania, the Philippines and Sri Lanka scored spots in the top 20 for the third straight year.
December 22, 2008
Generation Faithful
Some Arab Women Find Freedom in the Skies
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Marwa Abdel Aziz Fathi giggled self-consciously as she looked down at the new wing-shaped brooch on the left breast pocket of her crisp gray uniform, then around the room at the dozens of other Etihad flight attendants all chatting and eating canapés around her.
It was graduation day at Etihad Training Academy, where the national airline of the United Arab Emirates holds a seven-week training course for new flight attendants. Downstairs are the cavernous classrooms where Ms. Fathi and other trainees rehearsed meal service plans in life-size mockups of planes and trained in the swimming pool, where they learned how to evacuate passengers in the event of an emergency landing over water.
Despite her obvious pride, Ms. Fathi, a 22-year-old from Egypt, was amazed to find herself here.
“I never in my life thought I’d work abroad,” said Ms. Fathi, who was a university student in Cairo when she began noticing newspaper advertisements recruiting young Egyptians to work at airlines based in the Persian Gulf. “My family thought I was crazy. But then some families don’t let you leave at all.”
A decade ago, unmarried Arab women like Ms. Fathi, working outside their home countries, were rare. But just as young men from poor Arab nations flocked to the oil-rich Persian Gulf states for jobs, more young women are doing so, sociologists say, though no official statistics are kept on how many.
Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.
The dormitory here where the Etihad flight attendants live after training looks much like the city’s many 1970s-style office blocks, its windows iridescent like gasoline on a puddle. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Anyone who tries to sneak a man back to one of the simply furnished two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.
In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, gulf states like Abu Dhabi — which offer freedoms and opportunities nearly unimaginable elsewhere in the Middle East — have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the experience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.
Photo and more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/world ... ?th&emc=th
Generation Faithful
Some Arab Women Find Freedom in the Skies
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Marwa Abdel Aziz Fathi giggled self-consciously as she looked down at the new wing-shaped brooch on the left breast pocket of her crisp gray uniform, then around the room at the dozens of other Etihad flight attendants all chatting and eating canapés around her.
It was graduation day at Etihad Training Academy, where the national airline of the United Arab Emirates holds a seven-week training course for new flight attendants. Downstairs are the cavernous classrooms where Ms. Fathi and other trainees rehearsed meal service plans in life-size mockups of planes and trained in the swimming pool, where they learned how to evacuate passengers in the event of an emergency landing over water.
Despite her obvious pride, Ms. Fathi, a 22-year-old from Egypt, was amazed to find herself here.
“I never in my life thought I’d work abroad,” said Ms. Fathi, who was a university student in Cairo when she began noticing newspaper advertisements recruiting young Egyptians to work at airlines based in the Persian Gulf. “My family thought I was crazy. But then some families don’t let you leave at all.”
A decade ago, unmarried Arab women like Ms. Fathi, working outside their home countries, were rare. But just as young men from poor Arab nations flocked to the oil-rich Persian Gulf states for jobs, more young women are doing so, sociologists say, though no official statistics are kept on how many.
Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.
The dormitory here where the Etihad flight attendants live after training looks much like the city’s many 1970s-style office blocks, its windows iridescent like gasoline on a puddle. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Anyone who tries to sneak a man back to one of the simply furnished two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.
In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, gulf states like Abu Dhabi — which offer freedoms and opportunities nearly unimaginable elsewhere in the Middle East — have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the experience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.
Photo and more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/world ... ?th&emc=th
January 2, 2009
Editorial
The Woman the Mullahs Fear
Men hold all of the meaningful levers of political power in Iran, but it is a woman they fear. If not, why is the mullah-led government trying to shut down the operations of Shirin Ebadi?
Ms. Ebadi, a lawyer and her country’s leading human rights activist, is the first Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. On Monday, the authorities stormed her private office, seizing her computers and her clients’ documents. A week earlier, they closed her Center for Defenders of Human Rights, a coalition of human rights groups and other activists whose members had planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
When she was awarded the peace prize in 2003, the Nobel committee called Ms. Ebadi “a courageous person” for standing up against Iran’s bullying government. In the years since, she has endured repeated death threats from radical groups and regular government intimidation. That courage has never faltered.
With presidential elections scheduled for June, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies apparently decided they could not risk letting Ms. Ebadi continue the work she has done with distinction (and without pay) for the past 15 years — exposing government violations of human rights and defending human rights and democracy activists.
No doubt the authorities were unhappy with a report produced by her center that was cited recently by the United Nations’ secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, when the General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution condemning Iran’s human rights record. But we suspect their ambitions go far beyond trying to suppress one report. They are clearly hoping to intimidate Ms. Ebadi and all other independent voices in Iran. That must not be allowed to happen.
We condemn Tehran’s mistreatment of this woman of extraordinary honor and courage. We urge the United States, Europe and other major powers to keep pressure on Iran to ensure that no further harm comes to Ms. Ebadi and that she remains free to do her essential work.
If Tehran wants relief from international criticism about its human rights record, it must start by adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and respecting the rights of all of its citizens.
Editorial
The Woman the Mullahs Fear
Men hold all of the meaningful levers of political power in Iran, but it is a woman they fear. If not, why is the mullah-led government trying to shut down the operations of Shirin Ebadi?
Ms. Ebadi, a lawyer and her country’s leading human rights activist, is the first Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. On Monday, the authorities stormed her private office, seizing her computers and her clients’ documents. A week earlier, they closed her Center for Defenders of Human Rights, a coalition of human rights groups and other activists whose members had planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
When she was awarded the peace prize in 2003, the Nobel committee called Ms. Ebadi “a courageous person” for standing up against Iran’s bullying government. In the years since, she has endured repeated death threats from radical groups and regular government intimidation. That courage has never faltered.
With presidential elections scheduled for June, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies apparently decided they could not risk letting Ms. Ebadi continue the work she has done with distinction (and without pay) for the past 15 years — exposing government violations of human rights and defending human rights and democracy activists.
No doubt the authorities were unhappy with a report produced by her center that was cited recently by the United Nations’ secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, when the General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution condemning Iran’s human rights record. But we suspect their ambitions go far beyond trying to suppress one report. They are clearly hoping to intimidate Ms. Ebadi and all other independent voices in Iran. That must not be allowed to happen.
We condemn Tehran’s mistreatment of this woman of extraordinary honor and courage. We urge the United States, Europe and other major powers to keep pressure on Iran to ensure that no further harm comes to Ms. Ebadi and that she remains free to do her essential work.
If Tehran wants relief from international criticism about its human rights record, it must start by adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and respecting the rights of all of its citizens.
Workshop on women entrepreneurship
KARACHI—A day-long moot on women entrepreneurship was organized on Monday. The workshop was held under the auspices of the Women’s Activity Portfolio (WAP) of the Aga Khan Council in collaboration with Shell Tameer. According to organizers, as many as 50 women in the age group between 18 to 32 years attended. The workshop addressed women who have either started their own business or are aspiring to do so. It was also aimed at making these entrepreneurs rethink or re-evaluate their existing business ventures. The moot enabled the entrepreneurs to share opinions and gather new ideas for their businesses. The audience was addressed by members of First Micro Finance Bank, SMEDA, Business Mentors and Role Models. The workshop also provided learning and customizing concepts of branding, planning, marketing, leadership, financial management solutions and asset management. Dr. Rafat Jan, President of the Aga Khan Council for Karachi andBalochistan, was the chief guest on the Speaking at the ceremony.
KARACHI—A day-long moot on women entrepreneurship was organized on Monday. The workshop was held under the auspices of the Women’s Activity Portfolio (WAP) of the Aga Khan Council in collaboration with Shell Tameer. According to organizers, as many as 50 women in the age group between 18 to 32 years attended. The workshop addressed women who have either started their own business or are aspiring to do so. It was also aimed at making these entrepreneurs rethink or re-evaluate their existing business ventures. The moot enabled the entrepreneurs to share opinions and gather new ideas for their businesses. The audience was addressed by members of First Micro Finance Bank, SMEDA, Business Mentors and Role Models. The workshop also provided learning and customizing concepts of branding, planning, marketing, leadership, financial management solutions and asset management. Dr. Rafat Jan, President of the Aga Khan Council for Karachi andBalochistan, was the chief guest on the Speaking at the ceremony.
To Fix Islam, Start From the Inside
The best way to fight radicalism is to empower Muslim women worldwide.
Irshad Manji
NEWSWEEK
America's 44th President will not need any 3 a.m. phone calls to keep him awake. Figuring out how to restore the United States' moral authority in the Islamic world —while encouraging Muslims to reform themselves—would stop anyone from sleeping soundly.
The solution will require more than success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories. After all, most Muslims live outside the Middle East, and Washington must learn to acknowledge their worth. Doing so demands a foreign-policy rethink. Instead of being driven strictly by counterterrorism, the United States' approach to Muslims should be complemented by a universal human-rights thrust—a cooperative strategy that recognizes ordinary Muslims, especially women, to be immediate targets of jihadism, as well as indispensable partners in the fight against it.
Such a foreign policy would not only improve the United States' global image, it would also allow Americans to form smart alliances and make even smarter use of tools like microcredit. And it would intensify the U.S. pursuit of rights-abusing thugs—those who bomb, behead, bury alive or beat up civilians. Not coincidentally, these are often the same criminals who threaten U.S. security. A textbook example is the Iranian government, which makes everyday Muslims its first victims. Last year the regime arrested Zohreh and Azar Kabiri, 20-something mothers, on charges of adultery. The sisters got 99 lashes each before being sentenced to be draped in white sheets, lowered into dirt pits and stoned to death with fist-size rocks.
Islamic law can be brutal; no amount of cultural theorizing erases this fact. But as a faithful, feminist Muslim, I know that seventh-century cruelty is not inevitable in the 21st century. Human interpretations of divinely inspired words are exactly that—human, fallible and subject to reversal. In October, during the United Nations' annual debate about children's rights, Iran announced its intention to reduce juvenile executions. Campaigns in more than 80 countries and local activists prodded Tehran to that point. The next step is follow-through, and savvy pressure by the United States and other nations can help. The trick for Washington is to listen and learn: listen to dissidents who seek support, respect those who do not and learn from those with a track record of triumph.
Let the record show that human dignity can win. Ahmad Batebi is an Iranian democracy advocate who has faced certain execution more than once over the past decade. A 1999 photo of him—captured in the midst of a bloody protest—circulated worldwide on the cover of a Western magazine. The fallout apparently induced cold feet at the gallows. Batebi's execution was postponed long enough for him to flee to the United States, where he now lives. Western attention also advanced the recent case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped, then threatened with jail for "dishonoring" her community. Late last year a media uproar amplified by U.S. broadcasters compelled King Abdullah to take the extraordinary step of pardoning her.
Given these nonviolent victories, why do citizens and governments of the West often bristle at the notion of getting involved? Put bluntly, too many freeze in fear of being deemed racists for taking up "other" people's business. But as the economy has rudely reminded us, ours is an interdependent age in which the "other" is a mirage. Muslims inhabit the same world as non-Muslims. No wonder a rising number of Islamic scholars—such as Prof. Bassam Tibi of Germany and Abhdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, a Sudanese-American and renowned expert in Sharia—argue that everyone should enjoy the same freedoms of thought, conscience and expression.
This is not to counsel more military invasions to rescue Muslims from each other. Exactly the opposite: Washington's fixation on counterterrorism reduces Muslims to the status of perceived anti-American conspirators, creating enemies out of those who ought to be Lady Liberty's fiercest allies. Foremost among them are Muslim women, who have the most to gain from reform within Islam. Ultimately, it is women who will help Muslims help themselves. The new U.S. president can benefit the Islamic world by engaging the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women.
Enter a tiny miracle known as microcredit.
In this season of financial turmoil, it takes chutzpah, I confess, to propose more lending as the answer to anything. But extending minuscule loans to Muslim villagers has demonstrated its worth time and again, inspiring near-perfect repayment rates that shame today's industrial banks. Better yet, microcredit has the backing of Islam. Khadija, beloved first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, was a self-made merchant who employed her husband for many years. If Muslim men are serious about emulating the life of Islam's messenger, they should have no qualms about letting their wives work for themselves. Moreover, according to traditional Islamic teachings, when a woman earns assets, she may spend 100 percent of them as she sees fit. Through microloans, Muslim women can launch community businesses that build profits and, ultimately, change cultures.
I know of a woman in Afghanistan who accepted a $200 microloan, started a candle-making venture, and used some of the returns to pay for reading lessons. She found female-friendly verses in the Qur'an and recited them to her still-illiterate husband. When he realized that these words came from God's book rather than a secular declaration of human rights, he immediately stopped beating her. Not exactly paradise, but no longer the pit of hell.
Microloans would also equip Muslim women to establish their own schools. That, too, is happening in parts of Kabul, where handwritten signs proclaim, "Educate a boy and you educate only that boy. But educate a girl and you educate her entire family." A sign aimed at the U.S. president might read: "Remember the multiplier effect of investing in Muslim women."
To be sure, Washington cannot neglect the Arab states—nor would it by embracing this approach. If anything, the baby boom in today's Middle East illuminates the urgency of microloans for Muslim women there. About 60 percent of Arabs are now under 20 years old (compared with 29 percent of Americans). In one decade (or just over two U.S. presidential terms), Arab Muslim numbers are projected to increase to 430 million. Plenty of young Arabs have college degrees, yet no prospects for work. The idle often gravitate to radical organizations. Deny this growing generation an opportunity to participate economically, and the chaos could convulse our planet.
Here again, microcredit offers a way forward: Muslim businesswomen can save not only their families and neighborhoods but also people and places beyond. Entrepreneurial mothers create spaces of commerce—and imagination—for their children. The ensuing sense of possibility will stem the globalization of grievance. That is why microcredit for Muslim women would fit seamlessly into a foreign policy that balances counterterrorism with human rights.
In adopting this policy, the new president should ally with other countries, each of which would shave a sliver of its annual security budget and pool the proceeds into a coherent microloan program. Bye-bye to the Coalition of the Willing. Hello, salaam, and possibly shalom to the Alliance of the Interdependent.
Western nations ought to join the alliance, but Muslim countries, particularly the royally rich Gulf states, must also pull their weight. The next U.S. president can whisper into the ears of emirs his respect for the Qu'ran's message of personal responsibility. Islam's scripture tells Muslims that "God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." Translation for Muslim leaders: put your money where your moderation is.
In the same spirit, the president should push for a Muslim country to spearhead this alliance. Turkey—a trusted U.S. ally, a veteran NATO member and a functioning democracy—seems a natural candidate, but its ardent desire to become part of the European Union incites suspicion in the rest of the Islamic world. I thus nominate Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country on earth. Its 17,000 islands bustle with as many believers as the entire Middle East. Unlike most of the Middle East, however, Indonesia is an electoral democracy with a secular Constitution that celebrates "unity in diversity." It is a nation forged from 300 ethnicities, scores of languages and a history of tolerance among Muslims, Christians, Hindus and animists. Indonesia faces its own extremist threat. But if the United States welcomed Indonesia's stewardship on behalf of all Muslims, especially before next year's national elections there, the gesture could go far to ensuring that pluralistic Islam carries the day.
Even with Indonesia at the helm, some will smear the Alliance of the Interdependent as a handmaiden of U.S. imperialism; such a rhetorical cudgel is just too convenient to be abandoned. But the new cooperator in chief can draw strength—and inspiration—from language Martin Luther King Jr. once used when accused by eight Alabama clergymen of being an "outsider." As the civil-rights icon replied, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea."
So it must be in our day, when citizenship is that much more global. Islamist radicals do not give a fig for moderate Muslims—whom they term the "near enemy"—or for Westerners, the "far enemy." We wear the same garment. All the more reason to treat universal human rights as a link between our mutual security interests: the bridge that will return America not just to dry land, but to higher ground.
Manji, creator of the PBS documentary “Faith Without Fear,” is a scholar with the European Foundation for Democracy and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177388
The best way to fight radicalism is to empower Muslim women worldwide.
Irshad Manji
NEWSWEEK
America's 44th President will not need any 3 a.m. phone calls to keep him awake. Figuring out how to restore the United States' moral authority in the Islamic world —while encouraging Muslims to reform themselves—would stop anyone from sleeping soundly.
The solution will require more than success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories. After all, most Muslims live outside the Middle East, and Washington must learn to acknowledge their worth. Doing so demands a foreign-policy rethink. Instead of being driven strictly by counterterrorism, the United States' approach to Muslims should be complemented by a universal human-rights thrust—a cooperative strategy that recognizes ordinary Muslims, especially women, to be immediate targets of jihadism, as well as indispensable partners in the fight against it.
Such a foreign policy would not only improve the United States' global image, it would also allow Americans to form smart alliances and make even smarter use of tools like microcredit. And it would intensify the U.S. pursuit of rights-abusing thugs—those who bomb, behead, bury alive or beat up civilians. Not coincidentally, these are often the same criminals who threaten U.S. security. A textbook example is the Iranian government, which makes everyday Muslims its first victims. Last year the regime arrested Zohreh and Azar Kabiri, 20-something mothers, on charges of adultery. The sisters got 99 lashes each before being sentenced to be draped in white sheets, lowered into dirt pits and stoned to death with fist-size rocks.
Islamic law can be brutal; no amount of cultural theorizing erases this fact. But as a faithful, feminist Muslim, I know that seventh-century cruelty is not inevitable in the 21st century. Human interpretations of divinely inspired words are exactly that—human, fallible and subject to reversal. In October, during the United Nations' annual debate about children's rights, Iran announced its intention to reduce juvenile executions. Campaigns in more than 80 countries and local activists prodded Tehran to that point. The next step is follow-through, and savvy pressure by the United States and other nations can help. The trick for Washington is to listen and learn: listen to dissidents who seek support, respect those who do not and learn from those with a track record of triumph.
Let the record show that human dignity can win. Ahmad Batebi is an Iranian democracy advocate who has faced certain execution more than once over the past decade. A 1999 photo of him—captured in the midst of a bloody protest—circulated worldwide on the cover of a Western magazine. The fallout apparently induced cold feet at the gallows. Batebi's execution was postponed long enough for him to flee to the United States, where he now lives. Western attention also advanced the recent case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped, then threatened with jail for "dishonoring" her community. Late last year a media uproar amplified by U.S. broadcasters compelled King Abdullah to take the extraordinary step of pardoning her.
Given these nonviolent victories, why do citizens and governments of the West often bristle at the notion of getting involved? Put bluntly, too many freeze in fear of being deemed racists for taking up "other" people's business. But as the economy has rudely reminded us, ours is an interdependent age in which the "other" is a mirage. Muslims inhabit the same world as non-Muslims. No wonder a rising number of Islamic scholars—such as Prof. Bassam Tibi of Germany and Abhdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, a Sudanese-American and renowned expert in Sharia—argue that everyone should enjoy the same freedoms of thought, conscience and expression.
This is not to counsel more military invasions to rescue Muslims from each other. Exactly the opposite: Washington's fixation on counterterrorism reduces Muslims to the status of perceived anti-American conspirators, creating enemies out of those who ought to be Lady Liberty's fiercest allies. Foremost among them are Muslim women, who have the most to gain from reform within Islam. Ultimately, it is women who will help Muslims help themselves. The new U.S. president can benefit the Islamic world by engaging the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women.
Enter a tiny miracle known as microcredit.
In this season of financial turmoil, it takes chutzpah, I confess, to propose more lending as the answer to anything. But extending minuscule loans to Muslim villagers has demonstrated its worth time and again, inspiring near-perfect repayment rates that shame today's industrial banks. Better yet, microcredit has the backing of Islam. Khadija, beloved first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, was a self-made merchant who employed her husband for many years. If Muslim men are serious about emulating the life of Islam's messenger, they should have no qualms about letting their wives work for themselves. Moreover, according to traditional Islamic teachings, when a woman earns assets, she may spend 100 percent of them as she sees fit. Through microloans, Muslim women can launch community businesses that build profits and, ultimately, change cultures.
I know of a woman in Afghanistan who accepted a $200 microloan, started a candle-making venture, and used some of the returns to pay for reading lessons. She found female-friendly verses in the Qur'an and recited them to her still-illiterate husband. When he realized that these words came from God's book rather than a secular declaration of human rights, he immediately stopped beating her. Not exactly paradise, but no longer the pit of hell.
Microloans would also equip Muslim women to establish their own schools. That, too, is happening in parts of Kabul, where handwritten signs proclaim, "Educate a boy and you educate only that boy. But educate a girl and you educate her entire family." A sign aimed at the U.S. president might read: "Remember the multiplier effect of investing in Muslim women."
To be sure, Washington cannot neglect the Arab states—nor would it by embracing this approach. If anything, the baby boom in today's Middle East illuminates the urgency of microloans for Muslim women there. About 60 percent of Arabs are now under 20 years old (compared with 29 percent of Americans). In one decade (or just over two U.S. presidential terms), Arab Muslim numbers are projected to increase to 430 million. Plenty of young Arabs have college degrees, yet no prospects for work. The idle often gravitate to radical organizations. Deny this growing generation an opportunity to participate economically, and the chaos could convulse our planet.
Here again, microcredit offers a way forward: Muslim businesswomen can save not only their families and neighborhoods but also people and places beyond. Entrepreneurial mothers create spaces of commerce—and imagination—for their children. The ensuing sense of possibility will stem the globalization of grievance. That is why microcredit for Muslim women would fit seamlessly into a foreign policy that balances counterterrorism with human rights.
In adopting this policy, the new president should ally with other countries, each of which would shave a sliver of its annual security budget and pool the proceeds into a coherent microloan program. Bye-bye to the Coalition of the Willing. Hello, salaam, and possibly shalom to the Alliance of the Interdependent.
Western nations ought to join the alliance, but Muslim countries, particularly the royally rich Gulf states, must also pull their weight. The next U.S. president can whisper into the ears of emirs his respect for the Qu'ran's message of personal responsibility. Islam's scripture tells Muslims that "God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." Translation for Muslim leaders: put your money where your moderation is.
In the same spirit, the president should push for a Muslim country to spearhead this alliance. Turkey—a trusted U.S. ally, a veteran NATO member and a functioning democracy—seems a natural candidate, but its ardent desire to become part of the European Union incites suspicion in the rest of the Islamic world. I thus nominate Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country on earth. Its 17,000 islands bustle with as many believers as the entire Middle East. Unlike most of the Middle East, however, Indonesia is an electoral democracy with a secular Constitution that celebrates "unity in diversity." It is a nation forged from 300 ethnicities, scores of languages and a history of tolerance among Muslims, Christians, Hindus and animists. Indonesia faces its own extremist threat. But if the United States welcomed Indonesia's stewardship on behalf of all Muslims, especially before next year's national elections there, the gesture could go far to ensuring that pluralistic Islam carries the day.
Even with Indonesia at the helm, some will smear the Alliance of the Interdependent as a handmaiden of U.S. imperialism; such a rhetorical cudgel is just too convenient to be abandoned. But the new cooperator in chief can draw strength—and inspiration—from language Martin Luther King Jr. once used when accused by eight Alabama clergymen of being an "outsider." As the civil-rights icon replied, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea."
So it must be in our day, when citizenship is that much more global. Islamist radicals do not give a fig for moderate Muslims—whom they term the "near enemy"—or for Westerners, the "far enemy." We wear the same garment. All the more reason to treat universal human rights as a link between our mutual security interests: the bridge that will return America not just to dry land, but to higher ground.
Manji, creator of the PBS documentary “Faith Without Fear,” is a scholar with the European Foundation for Democracy and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177388
There is a related multimedia linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world ... dahar.html
January 14, 2009
Afghan Girls, Scarred by Acid, Defy Terror, Embracing School
By DEXTER FILKINS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.
“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”
In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.
The girls burst through the school’s walled compound, many of them flinging off head-to-toe garments, bounding, cheering and laughing in ways that are inconceivable outside — for girls and women of any age. Mirwais has no regular electricity, no running water, no paved streets. Women are rarely seen, and only then while clad in burqas that make their bodies shapeless and their faces invisible.
And so it was especially chilling on Nov. 12, when three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst.
The attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that is battling the government and the American-led coalition. Banning girls from school was one of the most notorious symbols of the Taliban’s rule before they were ousted from power in November 2001.
Building new schools and ensuring that children — and especially girls — attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Some of the students at the Mirwais school are in their late teens and early 20s, attending school for the first time. Yet at the same time, in the guerrilla war that has unfolded across southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have made schools one of their special targets.
But exactly who was behind the acid attack is a mystery. The Taliban denied any part in it. The police arrested eight men and, shortly after that, the Ministry of Interior released a video showing two men confessing. One of them said he had been paid by an officer with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to carry out the attack.
But at a news conference last week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said there was no such Pakistani involvement.
One thing is certain: in the months before the attack, the Taliban had moved into the Mirwais area and the rest of Kandahar’s outskirts. As they did, posters began appearing in local mosques.
“Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School,” one of them said.
In the days after the attack, the Mirwais School for Girls stood empty; none of the parents would let their daughters venture outside. That is when the headmaster, Mahmood Qadari, got to work.
After four days of staring at empty classrooms, Mr. Qadari called a meeting of the parents. Hundreds came to the school — fathers and mothers — and Mr. Qadari implored them to let their daughters return. After two weeks, a few returned.
So, Mr. Qadari, whose three daughters live abroad, including one in Virginia, enlisted the support of the local government. The governor promised more police officers, a footbridge across a busy nearby road and, most important, a bus. Mr. Qadari called another meeting and told the parents that there was no longer any reason to hold their daughters back.
“I told them, if you don’t send your daughters to school, then the enemy wins,” Mr. Qadari said. “I told them not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”
The adults of Mirwais did not need much persuading. Neither the bus nor the police nor the bridge has materialized, but the girls started showing up anyway. Only a couple of dozen girls regularly miss school now; three of them are girls who had been injured in the attack.
“I don’t want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives,” said Ghulam Sekhi, an uncle of Shamsia and her sister, Atifa, age 14, who was also burned.
For all the uncertainty outside its walls, the Mirwais school brims with life. Its 40 classrooms are so full that classes are held in four tents, donated by Unicef, in the courtyard. The Afghan Ministry of Education is building a permanent building as well.
The past several days at the school have been given over to examinations. In one classroom, a geography class, a teacher posed a series of questions while her students listened and wrote their answers on paper.
“What is the capital of Brazil?” the teacher, named Arja, asked, walking back and forth.
“Now, what are its major cities?”
“By how many times is America larger than Afghanistan?”
At a desk in the front row, Shamsia, the girl with the burned face, pondered the questions while cupping a hand over her largest scar. She squinted down at the paper, rubbed her eyes, wrote something down.
Doctors have told Shamsia that her face may need plastic surgery if there is to be any chance of the scars disappearing. It is a distant dream: Shamsia’s village does not even have regular electricity, and her father is disabled.
After class, Shamsia blended in with the other girls, standing around, laughing and joking. She seemed un-self-conscious about her disfigurement, until she began to recount her ordeal.
“The people who did this,” she said, “do not feel the pain of others.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world ... dahar.html
January 14, 2009
Afghan Girls, Scarred by Acid, Defy Terror, Embracing School
By DEXTER FILKINS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.
“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”
In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.
The girls burst through the school’s walled compound, many of them flinging off head-to-toe garments, bounding, cheering and laughing in ways that are inconceivable outside — for girls and women of any age. Mirwais has no regular electricity, no running water, no paved streets. Women are rarely seen, and only then while clad in burqas that make their bodies shapeless and their faces invisible.
And so it was especially chilling on Nov. 12, when three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst.
The attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that is battling the government and the American-led coalition. Banning girls from school was one of the most notorious symbols of the Taliban’s rule before they were ousted from power in November 2001.
Building new schools and ensuring that children — and especially girls — attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Some of the students at the Mirwais school are in their late teens and early 20s, attending school for the first time. Yet at the same time, in the guerrilla war that has unfolded across southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have made schools one of their special targets.
But exactly who was behind the acid attack is a mystery. The Taliban denied any part in it. The police arrested eight men and, shortly after that, the Ministry of Interior released a video showing two men confessing. One of them said he had been paid by an officer with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to carry out the attack.
But at a news conference last week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said there was no such Pakistani involvement.
One thing is certain: in the months before the attack, the Taliban had moved into the Mirwais area and the rest of Kandahar’s outskirts. As they did, posters began appearing in local mosques.
“Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School,” one of them said.
In the days after the attack, the Mirwais School for Girls stood empty; none of the parents would let their daughters venture outside. That is when the headmaster, Mahmood Qadari, got to work.
After four days of staring at empty classrooms, Mr. Qadari called a meeting of the parents. Hundreds came to the school — fathers and mothers — and Mr. Qadari implored them to let their daughters return. After two weeks, a few returned.
So, Mr. Qadari, whose three daughters live abroad, including one in Virginia, enlisted the support of the local government. The governor promised more police officers, a footbridge across a busy nearby road and, most important, a bus. Mr. Qadari called another meeting and told the parents that there was no longer any reason to hold their daughters back.
“I told them, if you don’t send your daughters to school, then the enemy wins,” Mr. Qadari said. “I told them not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”
The adults of Mirwais did not need much persuading. Neither the bus nor the police nor the bridge has materialized, but the girls started showing up anyway. Only a couple of dozen girls regularly miss school now; three of them are girls who had been injured in the attack.
“I don’t want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives,” said Ghulam Sekhi, an uncle of Shamsia and her sister, Atifa, age 14, who was also burned.
For all the uncertainty outside its walls, the Mirwais school brims with life. Its 40 classrooms are so full that classes are held in four tents, donated by Unicef, in the courtyard. The Afghan Ministry of Education is building a permanent building as well.
The past several days at the school have been given over to examinations. In one classroom, a geography class, a teacher posed a series of questions while her students listened and wrote their answers on paper.
“What is the capital of Brazil?” the teacher, named Arja, asked, walking back and forth.
“Now, what are its major cities?”
“By how many times is America larger than Afghanistan?”
At a desk in the front row, Shamsia, the girl with the burned face, pondered the questions while cupping a hand over her largest scar. She squinted down at the paper, rubbed her eyes, wrote something down.
Doctors have told Shamsia that her face may need plastic surgery if there is to be any chance of the scars disappearing. It is a distant dream: Shamsia’s village does not even have regular electricity, and her father is disabled.
After class, Shamsia blended in with the other girls, standing around, laughing and joking. She seemed un-self-conscious about her disfigurement, until she began to recount her ordeal.
“The people who did this,” she said, “do not feel the pain of others.”