Women's Lib' the Muslim way

[NZman]

Threat to shoot Kashmir women


A militant Islamic group in Indian-administered Kashmir has threatened to shoot women who do not comply with an order to wear veils.
The group, Lashkar-e-Jabbar, made its latest threat through a local Urdu language newspaper, the Al-Safa News.
The Lashkar-e-Jabbar has been in the spotlight since it demanded, a few weeks ago, that Muslim women wear the veil.
It has asked the heads of all educational institutions, particularly a women's college in Srinagar, to persuade students to wear veils or face "serious consequences" after Friday.
Acid attack
Militants of the Lashkar-e-Jabbar threw acid on five women in Srinagar last month for not wearing veils.
The directive has been followed by about 60% but other women remain defiant.
The Lashkar-e-Jabbar has the full support of a hardline women's organisation, Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation).
The state's Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah, says the police have arrested some of the militants suspected of being involved campaign.
More arrests are likely in the next few days, he said.

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Kashmiri Islamic militants divide the sexes
A militant group in Indian-administered Kashmir has issued an order that men and women should be segregated on public buses.
The Lashkar-e-Jabbar militant group has asked bus operators to set aside half the number of seats on board for women passengers.
Members of the Lashkar-e-Jabbar were accused of throwing acid on women last month to enforce an Islamic dress code.
The incident led to the panic buying of veils by Kashmiri women to meet the 1 September deadline - which has since been extended to 10 September.
New demand
In its latest order - reported in a local newspaper, the Urdu-language Al-Safa News - the militant group has said that male and female passengers should sit separately on buses.
"It should be mandatory for men and women not to sit together, but to travel on separate seats," Lashkar-e-Jabbar leader Irfan Jameel told the newspaper.
The group is also said to have issued a warning to a well-known female correspondent working for the Star News channel, Barkha Dutt.
"The group has placed a complete ban on Barkha Dutt's entry into Kashmir," Mr Jameel told Al-Safa News.
She has been asked to "desist from her actions", but no further details have been disclosed.
Ms Dutt has often reported for her channel from Kashmir and is a familiar face on Indian television, having risen to prominence during the Kargil conflict in 1999.
Conservative campaign
The campaign has received support from a prominent hardline women's organisation - the Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith).
The Dukhtaran-e-Millat itself launched a campaign to force women in Srinagar to wear the veil over a decade ago.
Its activists threw paint on women who refused to comply.
Islamic militants have tried to enforce conservative standards several times in the past few years.
In one incident, girls wearing tight trousers were shot at, and beauty salon owners and cable operators have been similarly targeted.
At one point militants also banned the wearing of jeans by men.
It's like shoot fish in a barrel. They produce their propaganda, I comes back with the facts. I is off to bed now as it's well late over 'ere. Back to me good ole self be Thursday.
Silence is a killer
Love the NZman

[NZman]

Pakistani human rights report slams clerics

A report by an independent human rights group in Pakistan has accused the government of being a silent spectator to the rise in religious extremism.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has blamed Islamic extremists for an upsurge in violence against religious minorities and women.

According to its annual report, women in rural Pakistan are often killed by relatives for bringing shame on their families, known as{b] 'honour killings' [/b]-- which can mean a woman sitting next to a man who is not a relation.
The report said the government was colluding with extremists by not taking action. It accused clerics of spewing vicious hatred which it said had resulted in harassment and murder.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

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Religious extremism in Pakistan 'growing'
By Lipika Pelham
An independent human rights group in Pakistan has accused the government of being a "silent spectator" to the rise in religious extremism.
In its annual report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blamed Islamic extremists for an upsurge in violence against religious minorities and women.
The reports says women in rural Pakistan are often killed by relatives for tarnishing the family name.
Family members can carry out what's become known as "honour killings" against women for just talking to or sitting next to men who are not relatives.
But often the killers escape justice as the crime is regarded as a private matter between two families.
Pakistani newspapers have reported cases of more than 300 honour killings in eastern Punjab province in just a year.

Human rights activists in Pakistan say that around 700 such women were killed in 1999.

Blasphemy

The report also criticises Pakistan's blasphemy law, which allows the death penalty for insulting Islam.
It says an increasing number of cases of blasphemy filed against individuals last year shows growing religious intolerance.
In January, the authorities shut down an English-language daily newspaper in North West Frontier Province for printing a blasphemous letter against the Prophet Mohammad. That's Islamic freedom for you, there you go Billabong, how does you PC view deal with this

Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, last year offered some changes to the blasphemy law, but backed down after Islamic groups threatened to launch street demonstrations.

'Cold-blooded murder'

The report says the government has in fact been implicitly backing radical Islamists by not taking action.
It has accused clerics of propagating vicious hatred which it says has often resulted in harassment and cold-blooded murder.
According to the report, members of an offshoot Islamic sect, the Ahmadis, who have been declared as non-Muslim by the authorities, are often targeted by radical Muslim leaders.

Can't get to kip, so thought I'd have a look around... This is really just toooooooo easy.
The evidence is there,

Silence is a killer

Love the NZman

[ricknorth]

[

Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, last year offered some changes to the blasphemy law, but backed down after Islamic groups threatened to launch street demonstrations.

Silence is a killer

Love the NZman
[/quote]

Damn! Why didn't my parents give me a cool name like "Pervez Musharraf"!

Hey, didn't Clapton sing "I shot the Musharraf, but I did not shoot no deputy too".

rickster

[NZman]

When one dude wants to ban a way of thinkin' it's usually 'cos' they is tryin' ram another way down your throat.

Fact are a wonderful thing dudes

No compromise: Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi, feminist writer of more than 40 books
Egypt was once the tolerant face of the Arab world, but even before the terrorist attacks of 11 September an Islamic backlash had bred a new intolerance. The most recent victim of this intolerance is feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi.
by , Fiona Lloyd-Davies.
Nawal, is the first woman in Egyptian history to be threatened with a forced divorce for expressing her views. She was accused of apostasy - renouncing one's religion - for allegedly insulting Islam.
Apostasy is a crime in Islam and the consequences are serious. If found guilty Nawal would be forcibly divorced from Sherif, her husband of 37 years and face a three-year prison term.
Meeting Nawal
Here in this tower, as the Nile breeze relieves the heat of the desert and the dust of the city traffic, you feel you are in the heart of Cairo but distanced from it at the same time. Not unlike Nawal - an Arab and a Muslim but also a feminist fighting against convention for parity of the sexes.
Her eyes burn bright with an intensity and passion when we talk about rights - the right to express yourself, the right to think, the right to fight for an equal society.
Nawal and Sherif
Now, Nawal and Sherif are fighting a battle that threatens them both.
They first met after Sherif was released from 15 years' imprisonment for illegal leftist political activism. He was 40 and had spent his youth in solitary confinement and breaking rocks in a scalding desert prison known as "the Incinerator".
"We don't believe in just writing," says Sherif. "We think that writers should try to put what they say into some form of action.
"It's easy to write about justice, and beauty, and things like that but it's more difficult to do something about it. She's tried to put what she believes into action, and do something about it, and speak out and that's why she has all these problems."
Nawal's outspokenness has caused her many problems. As the first Arab woman to speak out against female circumcision 30 years ago Nawal was sacked from her ministerial job of Director of Public Health.
In 1981 after criticising Sadat's regime she was imprisoned. Nawal's name appeared on a fundamentalist death list and both she and Sherif were forced into exile.
But neither Nawal nor Sherif saw this latest battle looming.
The interview
It all started this March when Nawal agreed to be interviewed by Wahid Ra'fat, a journalist working for an Egyptian weekly, Al Maydan.
There was a lot to talk about - four of Nawal's books had just been banned at the Cairo Book Fair, not an unusual event in Egypt but certainly enough to cause comment.
It appeared that he knew her work, and Nawal talked about her well known and controversial feminist views on sex and religion. She constantly challenges attitudes to sexuality, the practices of veiling, female circumcision. She condemed the exploitation of religion for political ends.
"I spoke how social and economic changes are happening and how we have to modify these laws and to educate people more about the essence of Islam and to change some of the laws," she said. "I have written that many times and nothing happened."
What Nawal failed to take into account was how the current climate has changed so radically that even the freedom to speak openly is now in question.
Cairo may have the air of a Western city but a new, conservative Islam is catching the hearts and minds of ordinary people, stifling any social, cultural or religious questioning that might once have been allowed. Also, at the time of the interview, Muslims were returning from Hajj - the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.
It was in this atmosphere that Nawal spoke her "well-known" mind.
During the course of the interview, Nawal had referred to the historically accepted fact that elements of the Hajj, such as kissing the black stone had pre-Islamic, pagan roots.
The journalist couldn't believe his ears. All he heard was Nawal calling the Hajj pagan. "You're opening fire," he said to Nawal. "Yes" she replied, "but people should know".
The newspaper articles
Ra'fat returned to his editor, Mohamed Hassan Alafy, who saw immediately that the story would run and run. He led the front page that week with "Dr Nawal El Saadawi says Hajj is a remnant of paganism."
Readers of the newspaper were led to excerpts of Nawal's interview with the line: "She has exploded bombs by her inflammatory opinions."
Mr Alafy, an urbane man who speaks fluent English, looked at us with incredulity when we asked him why he published this. "We publish the newspaper to have a reaction - if you don't have a reaction you are a dead newspaper right?" And he got a reaction.
The next issue featured responses to Nawal's interview from Islamic scholars. Alongside them were printed four readers' letters, one of which called for Nawal to be beheaded. The reader had written: "Nawal Al Saadawi says things in her interview that don't just humiliate Islam but also don't respect Allah the greatest. We want her to be beheaded."
Next, the paper upped the stakes by taking the interview to the Grand Mufti, eager to get a fatwa. Four weeks after the first hysterical headlines the paper led with Nawal's story once more, but this time it read "Nawal angers Mufti..."
This was a green light. Now anyone who wanted to be seen as defender of the faith had legitimacy from the highest Islamic authority in the land. The Mufti had been clear - if Nawal had said what the paper claimed she had said, there was no doubt, she had rejected Islam.
The lawyer
One man, a lawyer named Nabih el Wahsh, decided to seize the moment, knowing that the situation was ripe for a public battle between the conservative interpretation of Islam and the more liberal attitudes towards freedom of speech.
Nabih was used to high profile cases. He had incurred a few wry column inches in the world press after the infamous case he brought against the British Royal family for orchestrating the death of Princess Diana. In Egypt's present climate his maverick court actions can do real harm.
What was it that had infuriated him so much? "Firstly, her denial of the Hajj, which is one pillar of Islam. She categorically said that Hajj and the kissing of the black stone are remnants of paganism. She also denied a verse in the Koran which says that men are entitled to twice the inheritance of women. Who is she to demand equality? Is she greater than God?"
In his self-appointed role as guardian of the faith, Nabih el Wahsh invoked the ancient Islamic law of Hisba. Under Hisba any individual can sue another if they believe they are harming a person or religion. Nawal found herself accused of insulting religion. "I am the only woman in Islamic history that they've applied Hisba to, it's ridiculous," she said.
Egypt was watching closely. While she was accused of religious dissent many journalists were sceptical of Wahsh's motives - was he really protecting Islam?
The verdict
Finally, after some prevarication, the court declared on 30th July that there was no case to answer. She will not go to prison and she and Sherif will not be forcibly divorced.
But she has a dilemma. Either she can leave the country and speak freely about the situation in Egypt or she can stay and face danger every time anybody chooses to exploit religion for personal or political gain.
Since the events of 11 September it has become even more difficult to criticise Islam from within, but Nawal El Sadaawi is determined to carry on her struggle.

Come on Mosh dude, defend or denounce these freedom lovin' Muslims.
You want this for the rest of the world If so defend or denouce it dude.

Silence is a Killer

Love the NZman

[Mink]

Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. {1 Tim 2:11-14}

All religions oppress women for the simple reason that all religions are created by men.

Personally, I'm waiting for a god who doesn't need a prophet to speak for it.

[NZman]

From the BBC.
Wednesday, 23 January, 2002, 23:32 GMT
Jordanian women fight 'honour killings'
By Caroline Hawley in Amman
Women activists in Jordan have expressed disappointment with a court verdict sentencing a man to just six months for killing his daughter for having sex before marriage.
Jordanian women activists have been campaigning for years to have honour killings de-legitimised.
Last month they won a small victory when the government cancelled an exemption from the death penalty for men who kill female relatives found committing adultery.
There are about 24 such murders in Jordan each year.
The new legal changes make it possible for women to divorce if they repay the dowry given by their husband.
They also require men who marry more than once, as Islam allows, to inform both their first and their new wives.
Women activists have welcomed these amendments but they say the legal changes on honour crimes do not go nearly far enough, because a man can still get a reduced sentence for acting in anger.
'No deterrent'
That is what has happened in the latest case.
The man, from a conservative rural area, is reported to have killed his daughter with an implement similar to a meat cleaver when he found out she had had sex before marriage.
Women activists say his six-month sentence offers no real deterrent to men who kill in the name of honour.
They plan to lobby the next parliament for a minimum five year sentence for honour crimes.
But they are already expecting to meet stiff resistance with many conservative MPs known to oppose their aims.

[nikolai]

I think that the best way muslims can defend their faith is by doing good deeds and not by speaking good words.

Words are cheap.

If muslim clerics declare a fatwa against those who kill women in the name of islam, then perhaps I would believe that such killings are done by infidels who have left their islamic faith.

But no such fatwas have been issued, and the killers are still accepted as muslims by the rest of the islamic community.

These facts speak for themselves.

And as long as muslims don't do anything about the killing of women in their midst, their good words defending islam will not convince anyone.