Tag: feminism

It was an unremarkable village, the only thing different about it was that it was surrounded by mountains on three sides so that its main connection to the outside world was a pass. It was somewhat far from other centers of population, so for the purpose of this story it does not matter when this story took place, it could have taken place today, yesterday, a year ago, five years ago, a hundred or even five hundred years ago. The location is also of no consequence.

On that fateful day Fatima, the daughter of a poor farmer, got separated from the rest of her group while coming back from the fields. While trying to find her way back to the village she came across a group of men who had less than noble intentions. She cried for help and struggled but there is no person who could help her. After desecrating her body the men left her for dead. After many hours of searching her father and the village folk came across her and took her back. Fatima and her family were traumatized, but not completely broken even though people were saying 'things' and pointing fingers at her. She knew who were assailants were - the powerful and the influential in the community but she had faith in justice. The case was presented before the judge, the accused of course feigned ignorance and innocence. The qadi (judge) declared that Fatima should produce four witnesses otherwise the court has no doubt that she was involved in adultery and the society must be cleaned of her abominable presence. As expected, the two aggressors were set free by the qadi. Fatima insisted that this law was unislamic and that they were twisting the laws for their own benefit but her voice fell on deaf years.

Fatima was thus condemned to death by the court and abandoned by her family since it was now clear to everyone that she had dishonored her family and there is no other way for them to reclaim their honor. The next day she was brought to the main square to be stoned. She expected justice from men but men are imperfect and often times their justice is also imperfect. Dejected and wronged by her people Fatima turned to God, the only one who can deliver perfect justice and so right before breathing her last she asked God if the perpetrators of this crime would face the same humiliation that she had to face so that in the future men will think a million times before even thinking about desecrating a woman.

In a move that will stun the Muslim world, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt and one of the highest-ranking Sunni authorities, has said that hymen reconstruction surgery for women who have lost their virginity before marriage is halal (permissible) and that a man has no right to demand proof of a woman's virginity if he cannot provide proof of his own. In addition, the fatwa states that a woman who has had sex before marriage but has sincerely repented is under no obligation to inform her husband of her sexual status. 

The Daily Star has the full story.

This is brilliant: "It is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men," Gomaa says. (My emphasis.) For those who claim that logic is out of vogue in the corridors of Muslim power, prepare to revise. As far as I know, this is the first fatwa from a sheikh of this rank that declares the hymen an illegitimate 'sign' of virginity. Since the hymen of an active girl is often worn away by the time she reaches a marriageable age, this bodes well for millions of Muslim women around the world. Finally, reality-based physiology from the clerical class. 

The fatwa has been seconded by Azharite scholar Sheikh Khaled El Gindy, who, when challenged about 'traditional beliefs' which hold that a woman's virginity is sacrosanct while a man's is not, said "Islam does not care for the feelings of ignorant people, just as the law does not protect the idiots."

What is remarkable about this fatwa is that while it accepts the underground hymen-surgery racket, it does not endorse it; it considers the practice acceptable only because it protects a woman from potential violence. The real meat of the fatwa is in its de-emphasis of the need for proof of virginity--and in a region of the world where a woman is not considered a virgin unless she bleeds on her wedding night, this is a serious blow to entrenched un-Islamic misogynistic cultural practices.

In an interesting side-note, the hymen is mentioned nowhere in the Qur'an or the two commonly accepted books of hadith. Not once. The word for 'virgin' in Arabic--bikr--means simply 'unmarried woman'.  

Today is a very good day for women's rights in Islam. Alfa shokran, Sheikh Gomaa and Sheikh Gindy. 

Related: Azhar outlaws female circumcision. 

Especially among Muslim women. Thus, DC Muslims are creating a Muslim Women's Shelter. Via Tariq:

The project of a Muslim Women’s shelter has already been initiated by Asma Hanif, the owner of the Muslimat An-Nisaa, a holistic health and wellness center for the Muslim woman. Baitul An-Nisaa is an attempt of the Muslimat An-Nisaa to address the problem of homelessness within the Muslim community.

Hanif has compiled a comprehensive proposal which outlines every minor to major detail of her vision of a “safe haven” for the Muslim woman. Hanif has the plan, but she needs the funding. She has compiled an extensive amount of research on homelessness in the Baltimore Area and put together a proposal on how the Baitul An-Nisaa will be operated.

Make checks payable:

Muslimaat An-Nisaa | PO Box 31529, Gwynn Oak, MD 21027

Here the spearhead of this initiative leaves a painful message reminding how many of these women are often preyed upon by charlatan "brothers."

I recommend Sister Hanif also contact the local chapter of CAIR -- which just happens to be CAIR National -- and seeing if they got any money.

Also, I'd personally like to see the "comprehensive" proposal on a website somewhere so we can link to that as well. 

Sometimes a picture is not worth a thousand words; sometimes a thousand words are necessary to explain a picture. This one, which ran in the January 28 edition of the New York Times, needs at least that many, and what I will say will merely scratch the surface. 

I was alerted to this picture by my wonderful mother, who, like many non-Muslim friends and family who have spent any  length of time with me in the Middle East, now delights in opening up a magazine or newspaper and being able to read between the lines of reportage dealing with the Muslim world. I get a constant trickle of links to articles or pictures like this one, from colleagues and friends turned citizen journalists, with surprisingly astute commentary on aspects of a certain situation or idea that the writer of the article has missed. It gives me a boost of optimism; if ordinary people are this excited to understand what previously confused or frightened them, there's still hope left. A lot of hope.

What my mother understood, looking at this picture, was the following: while a girl in a headscarf looking at a display of lingerie is meant to appear as a contradiction (the accompanying article suggests that the increase in veiling in Egypt is a social and religiously cosmetic phenomenon), it isn't. Why? Because the hijab is not interchangeable with a nun's habit. It is not a western symbol, and cannot and must not be interpreted through a western social lens.

Crossposted at Samaha 

To the daughters that I turned my back to, the 15 daughters that died in March of 2002 a horrific death in the face of flames, in the name of a man-made Islam, to the three daughters Allah had gifted me, to all of my daughters reading this, and no I will not call you my sisters, as sisters grow up and we let them be women, daughters remain daughters forever under their mother’s protection, my dear daughters I apologize to you.

The prevalent Zeitgeist in the world these days is what can be termed as Scientism and its twin Objectivity. This world view seems to have penetrated culture to such an extent that a large number of religious people want to prove that their religion is “scientific” or “rational.” This worldview has been challenged by Feminist Epistemologists, the idea being that the rational vs. Irrational, nature vs. culture and masculine vs. feminine dualities that form part and parcel of the modernist programme are informed by constructs of rationality and objectivity that are rooted in notions of masculinity.

I want to begin with a story.

In the months leading up to the Egyptian presidential elections in 2005, I spent some time reporting on state media coverage of the increasingly frequent demonstrations and clashes between rival parties that accompanied the campaign season. Local state-controlled television channels were providing only cursory and contradictory information about these events, such that it was often impossible to know for certain what the aim and constituency of a demonstration was unless you had been standing in the thick of it yourself. This is exactly what I did on several occasions.

One incident, a protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that attracted hundreds of black-clad riot police, was difficult to pin down even then. State media outlets were claiming that it was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, and refused to cover the event on the grounds that the Ikhwan were an illegal party. The protest itself was so chaotic that it was difficult to make heads or tails of its ideological thrust.

I left and took the metro home, overheated and frustrated. In the women’s car, I ran into my cousin-in-law. We were surprised to see one another downtown at that time of day; we both lived on the southern outskirts of the city, I worked from home, and she was still a university student. She asked me what had brought me to Tahrir on such a hot afternoon. I hesitated before answering. She knew what I did for a living, but I had always thought it best to be discreet about the details of my work around our family. The prevalent opinion in the social strata we both inhabited was that a woman did not, strictly speaking, have the right to put herself in potential social, political or physical danger.

“Covering the protest,” I said finally, deciding the truth was simplest, “What about you?”

She looked me right in the eye. “Participating in the protest,” she said. And that is how I discovered my soft-spoken muhajeba cousin-in-law was an Al Ghad party member.

I am reminded of this incident whenever I read about the Plight of Muslim Women. I am rarely comfortable with the way in which the very serious issues facing modern Muslim women are rhetorically addressed, both within and without the community. Reformists have yet to paint a picture of the Plighted Muslima that describes my cousin, acknowledges her complexity, her agency, the breadth and depth she brings to the word ‘femininity’.

I will not argue the Stockholm Syndrome-esque position of some traditionalist Muslim women, and say she is in no way oppressed: she will have a curfew all her life, there are ideas that she will not be permitted to impart to her children, and her husband will have an absolute social right to veto clothing or friends or habits of hers that he finds unacceptable. There is no way to soften or rationalize this reality, nor should it be softened or rationalized.

What I will argue, however, is that ‘oppressed’ is not a sufficient description of the person she is, or of the life she is building for herself. Whether she had to lie to attend the protest, or reasoned or coaxed her way into permission, or simply held her chin up and left the house, she was an actor in her destiny that day. She is proof that a clever woman, a capable, kind, brave woman, is never ‘simply’ a victim, no matter how dire the circumstance in which she lives. My cousin isn’t alone, either. I have yet to meet an ordinary woman. I am beginning to think there are no ordinary women; only extraordinary women in excruciatingly ordinary circumstances.

The Grauniad reports:

Muslim women in Britain feel their views are being ignored because community leaders and male-dominated national Muslim organisations are failing to represent them, according to a government report published today.

The study, the most comprehensive attempt to represent the views of British Muslim women, found that women believe they are also widely misrepresented in the media, and end up as "pawns" in national debates on issues such as dress codes.

While the media is guilty of stereotyping women as oppressed and submissive, fuelling Islamophobia and even violence, the Muslim community itself silences women at national and local level, according to those joining a national "listening exercise" run by the Muslim Women's Network and Women's National Commission, both of which advise the government.

The government also comes in for some criticism with their instance on speaking only to certain groups like the MCB (although this should be less relevant now, since the MCB are being marginalised by the Labour government).