In The Red Zone

No picnic

They say freedom means they can do what they want. This is not freedom. Freedom does not mean you can transgress traditions. There are traditions and rules in an Eastern society that are different from a Western society. Every Iraqi has a right to act against these transgressions.

-- Heider Jabari, spokesman for Moqtada al-Sadr

They focused on the women.  They were beating them viciously.

-- Basra student Osama Adnan

(Anthony Shadid, Washington Post)

Thus the reaction from Moqtada al-Sadr's religious goon squad to a gathering of some 700 students in a Basra park on March 15.  Outraged at the sight of young people picnicking, listening to music and freely intermingling--worse, many women were not wearing hejab--between 20-40 of Sadr's blackshirts attacked the Springtime fete with guns, sticks and heavy electrical cables, injuring and robbing several, hauling at least 10 away in pick-up trucks. 

The assault triggered several days of protests by students and their families, who demanded an apology and the disbanding of the school's morality police.  Surprised at the public outcry, Sadr's office issued an apology--of sorts.  "There was a mistake in our execution, but we had the right to intervene," said Mr. Jabari.

Mr. Shadid notes that despite the fright and injuries the students suffered in the melee, they have

managed what no local party or politician has yet done:  They interrupted, if briefly, a tide of religious conservatism that has shuttered liquor stores in a city that once had dozens, meted out arbitrary justice and encouraged women to wear a veil and dress in a way considered modest.

"The students broke through the barriers of fear," said Ali Abbas Khafif, a 55-year-old writer and union organizer jailed for 23 years under former president Saddam Hussein. "This was the first mass response to religious power."

Still, unlike what we've seen across the Middle East (I refer you to my piece in Monday's National Review Online), the Basra students' rebellion against tribal Islam may be fleeting "in a city," Mr. Shadid writes, "where Islamic activism and guns go hand in hand.  Even in their moment of triumph, many secular students acknowledge they are fighting a losing battle; some suggest it is already lost."

(Beginning next month I will be in Basra, where I will observe and report on these developments first hand.)

But let's parse these events and see what we can make of them.   Oppression thrives in secret; exposure to the light of public scrutiny reveals the true face of illegitimate power and constellates perhaps the most potent and revolutionary reaction to its brutality--revulsion.   No doubt many Basrans and Iraqis view Sadr's actions as necessary, if not admirable.  But most, I'll wager, interpret the sight of masked armed men publicly beating helpless students--helpless female students--as despicable, contemptible, pathetic.  The noble and strong do not act this way; the craven and cowardly do.  Cravenness, cowardice--these are taboo, psychic stains to be avoided.  Despite being armed with guns, truncheons and public sentiment that was hostile to civil rights, the reactionaries lost on the day that Bull Connor unleashed his dogs on peaceful marchers of Birmingham.  Moqtada al-Sadr has taken another step into the barren wastes of Connor Country.  It will take time, but he, like the Alabama sheriff and his ilk, will shrivel and die as well.

Nor should we overlook the fact that his Al Mahdi Army seized the opportunity to exercise their righteous might on females.  More than a vile display of bullying, these actions expose the misogyny that lies at the base of religious oppression.  The image of the park, the spring weather, the relaxed and natural fellowship among young people and the intimations of erotic interplay between them--disrupted suddenly by black-clad men brandishing weapons and spouting religious slogans:  it is, in a microcosm, the very essence of the patriarchal psyche that structures its existence, power and raison d'etre on the suppression of the female spirit. They call it tradition, they call it religious piety, but strip away the moralistic cant and intimidating rhetoric and its true nature becomes clear: fear and loathing of women. 

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Democratic Divas

Ah, the inscrutable East.  Or in this case, Middle East.  In Baghdad, I'd often go down to my hotel lobby to find men seated before the television set smoking cigarettes and drinking tea, watching with rapt attention as some dark-eyed houri shimmied in come-and-get-me lasciviousness to the strains of an Arabic pop song.  Fifty feet past the lobby and its luxurious canopy of air conditioning, Iraqi women trudged down the street in blinding sun and 130-degree-heat, their bodies encased in stifling head-to-toe black robes.  The only bumps-and-grinds they were going to experience were from the bundles in their hands, the kids on their arms and the grit in their eyes from the noisome Baghdad smog.

The contrast between fantasy and reality seemed lost on the men, enthralled as they were by the latest music video from Lebanon or Egypt.  And they weren't the only ones, it seems.  These erotic--highly erotic, when you consider the puritanism of the surrounding Muslim society--images of female pop stars are becoming increasingly popular.  So much so, in fact, that in an article in Tuesday's Financial Times, Cairo-based reporter Heba Saleh notes a backlash is forming.  Or, as she quotes Mohammed Mursi, a Muslim Brotherhood member of the Egyptian parliament:

Music videos are a tool for moral destruction.  There is no doubt about that.  They are against our religion and our morals.

Seeing--but not often, I assure you--the nihilistic dreck that passes for "entertainment" on MTV, I'm not disinclined to agree with Mr. Mursi.

But we've already gone through our sexual revolution, and are now in our Thermidor phase.  The Middle East has yet to storm the Bastille of sexual repression and tribal-religious domination of women; this is one reason (besides the obvious) why the coarsely named "babe revolution" in Lebanon has seized the world's attention. Encoded in those images of attractive, laughing women, arms outstretched in gestures of freedom, is a visual language that spells more than just political freedom--but sexual liberation, as well. 

Cairo University student Mohammed Wagdi explains his fascination with images of performers like Lebanon's Nancy Ajram, Elissa and Haifa Wahby, in addition to the Egyptian star Ruby.

I like music vidoes, because they introduce me to fashion.  Not all of them are indecent.  I like watching the spectacle, though the music is not always that good.  But there should be no censorship, whoever wants to watch should be able to.  Just like on the internet.

That last line is interesting.  Someday, an enterprising scholar will have to research the impact of online pornography on the socio-political thinking of young Arab males (hint:  check the bookmarked sites on any Middle Eastern internet cafe that doesn't have blockers.)  But I digress...

Notes Khaled Agha, marketing director for Rotana, the region's largest music producer,

The success of the music video industry is a kind of reaction against sexual repression in the Arab world.  But the degree of openness that exists now has allowed some people who have no musical talents, but who look good, to become singers.

The same might be said of all the cookie-cutter bubbleheads who prance across the collective pop culture screen of America, but it's different in the Middle East.  Here, Ashlee Simpson exists mainly to introduce young girls into the soft-core delights of Capitalist society; there, Ruby and Nancy Ajram are awakening young men and women to the revolutionary power of women, sexual freedom and democracy.  There, the video is the political; the revolution is being televised.

But then there's the aforementioned backlash.  Apparently, a video of Ruby performing on an exercise bike created such outrage in Egypt that the country's musicians union tried to ban her from singing; Egyptian TV does not broadcast the singer's songs.  And one video was pulled from circulation, Ms. Saleh writes, for depicting "what was considered an indecent image of a horse."   One can only wonder...

Ms. Saleh closes her interesting piece with a quote from Amina Khairy, a "social commentator" for Egypt's Al-Hayat newspaper.

Music videos present an ideal world full of beautiful girls.  Most of them are shot in fantastic houses with wonderful gardens.  It's a virtual world, which fascinates just like American movies used to fascinate, but this one is closer because it is peopled by Arabs.

Today, however, with images of real women--many of them "beautiful girls"--seeming to blossom in the massive pro-democracy rallies in real-life downtown Beirut, this fascinating world of feminity, fashion, eroticism, excitement, a quickening of the pulse and spirit is moving from the video screen into real life.   As in the West during the 1960s, pop culture is becoming political.  We can only hope that they avoid the mistakes that we made, and that women in the region can someday feel free to throw off those obscene abiyas, chadors, burkhas and what have you, and finally feel the sun and breeze on their uncovered skin. 

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Free to be illiberal

Iraqi society is tribal, Islamic and very conservative.  Most people don't feel ownership to the existing secular famiily law, and we must change it to follow shari'a.  Forcing secularism on our society is also a form of dictatorship.

-- Women's rights activist Fatima Yaqoub, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal's Farnaz Fassihi

First, a word of explication.  Iraq's "existing secular family law" dates from 1959, and was--and in many ways still is--one of the most progressive, pro-feminist statutes promulgated by any Middle Eastern government. 

Second, we should not be surprised by Ms. Yaqoub's sentiments.  There are many feminists in Iraq who believe the Koran, and shari'a law, are the proper avenues for women's liberation.  Some argue that Islam provides women distinct rights which counter the patriarchal customs of tribalism.  Others--Ms. Yaqoub apparently among them--believe that women must not contravene Islamic law and, by extension, Allah.  Western reporters have tended to ignore voices like these, because they don't fit our concept of "feminism":  how can a woman be both for women's rights and affirm shari'a?  But there are many Iraqi women who agree with Ms. Yaqoub, more than we think, or wish.

Third, Mr. Fassihi puts his reportorial finger on an important point when he writes

Shiite politicians are already seeking ways to dampen opposition to changing family laws.  Some politicial analysts say the Kurds may look the other way if the constitution guarantees them continued autonomy.  Shiites also have said they would support exemptions for religious minorities such as Christians.

In other words, the Shiites seem ready to bargain away many chits in return for their right to control the lives of Muslim women.  It is that important to them.  As I've argued before, we face a situation similar to the Reconstruction Era when, in order to assure nationwide stability and expedite the end of an unpopular occupation, the North abandoned the Abolitionist cause and allowed the South to re-enslave its black citizens.  No doubt Washington will look the other way again.  African-Americans were expendable over a century ago; today, in another time, and another land, it is women.  But the result is the same.  In the name of order and stability, freedom for an entire class of people will be deferred for an indefinite period of time--or until the next revolution occurs.

Let's close with another quote from the redoubtable Ms. Yaqoub, as she explains the advice she gave a young Iraqi woman::

I told her that our country has had three wars and there are not enough men for every woman to marry.  So she should not be so selfish and share her husband like a good Muslim wife.  I reminded her that God had allowed men to take more than one wife and you don't defy God's orders.

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Paki-bashing

In 2002, a  Pakistani man is accused of having an illicit affair with a woman.  His punishment?  The man's village council orders the gang rape of his sister.  The assault outrages world opinion and a Pakistani court convincts and sentences six men to death.  Yesterday, Pakistan's High Court overturned the convictions of five of the men, citing a "technicality."  According to the New York Times' Salman Masood (reg. req.) when the rape victim, Mukhtar Mai, heard of the acquital, she broke into tears.

Nor is that the only affront to women's dignity perpetrated by Islamabad: Honor killing legislation quashed as being "un-Islamic; "Hudood Ordinances" allowed to stand because they are "Islamic."  What does that tell us about...Islam? 

And this:  why does the plight of Palestinians cause Muslims worldwide to quiver with outrage and indignation--yet the far more pervasive and lethal oppressive of Muslim women engenders only a few muted cries from human rights organizations?

And where are American feminists on this issue?  Check out the play that NOW's website gives the issue of honor killing.  (Hint:  none.) 

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It's linked via Instapundit, so you've probably seen it already, but its worth checking out what's happening to Muslim women in Berlin.  And follow this link, too.  Multiculturalists, take note.

Why the civilized world does not stand up en masse and say enough! to this barbaric tradition beggars the imagination.

*

Union leaders.  Women.  Lesbians.  Gays.  If this were happening in a Central American country--where all good activists want to pen their motorcycle diaries--the Left would be up in arms.  Alas, it is only Iraq, only Arabs.  And it's Bush's war.

*

But this is part of Bush's war, too.

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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

-- Frederick Douglass, "Letter to an Abolitionist associate," 1853

The photo in February 24th's New York Post shows a beautiful Iraqi woman with a proud smile and a dyed index fingertip.  This is the face of Iraqi democracy, the image seems to say.  The fact that she appears sans voile indicates that she is probably an ex-pat who voted beyond the borders of Iraq.  And that's important, because the caption of the photo reads:  "Iraqi voter:  she's not worse off."

If this unidentified Iraqi woman lives in North America or Europe, no doubt that is true.  But if she lives in Iraq--sorry, Mr. Murdoch, she is worse off. 

The photo illustrated "Democracy v. Women?"an op-ed piece by Collin Levey.  In the piece, Levey, an assistant editor for the Wall Street Journal, takes issue with a recent Amnesty International Report entitled Iraq:  Decades of Suffering.  Rather than criticize the report directly, however, she notes two newspaper headlines:  the Toronto Star's, "Rights Reduced, Security Worse since Occupation," and Al Jazeera's "Iraqi Women Still subject to Abuse."  As Levey asserts,

In each case, the subtext was clear:  Things have gotten worse for Iraqi women and America is to blame.

This is a classic rhetorical technique, perfected by Rush Limbaugh, and used by many pundits (including this one).  Instead of analyzing a particular issue or position, you attack press coverage of the issue, which gives the appearance of a critique of the issue itself.  In this case, Levey picks on two headlines to assert that the Amnesty International report is wrong, and that women, in fact, are not worse off today than under Saddam.  But that just ain't so.  Read AI's report.

I discovered this inconvenient truth for myself in the fall of 2003.  Because of crime and spotty electricity, which turned city streets into menacing gauntlets for anyone out past sunset, women could not venture out of doors as much as they did under the fascist Baathist regime.  (You can read my story written from Baghdad at the time here.) "You should have been here in the 1970s!" they would tell me.  "We could stay out until three, four in the morning!"  When I returned to Iraq a few months later, the situation had worsened:  now women feared not only criminals, but terrorists and the growing power of fundamentalist religious parties.  Today, my Iraqi female friends tell me that when it comes to safety and general freedom of activity, their lives are much more circumscribed than before the fall of Saddam.  And a large portion of the fault for this debacle has to go to the United States of America.

My credentials as an advocate for the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq hardly need establishing.  But I believe, as I wrote in In the Red Zone, that supporting the war does not mean ignoring or sugar-coating problems the conflict has inflicted on the Iraqi people.  The plight of women is one of those problems.  Not only has the end of Saddam made the day-to-day lives of Arab (as opposed to Kurdish) women more difficult, the rise of the Shia religious establishment promises to make their existence even more onerous through shari'a law.  (I refer the reader to my post last month, "Left Behind.")

Despite the manifold evils of their regime, the Baathists brought economic and social advancement for women.  After seizing power in 1968, the Nazi-inspired party declared its commitment to equal rights. Article 12 of its constitution states

The Arab woman enjoys the full rights of citizenship. The Party struggles for elevating woman's standard until she becomes worthy to enjoy these rights.

Most amazingly, the constitution tackled perhaps the primary social phenomenon that limits women's lives, freedom and futures:  tribalism.  According to article 43:

Bedouin life is a primitive social status that undermines the national production and renders a large portion of the nation paralyzed. It is a factor that precludes the development and progress of the nation. The party is striving to modernize Bedouin life and give Bedouins lands together with the cancellation of the tribal system and the enforcement of the State's laws on them.

Who on the right or left says today?

In 1970, Baathists declared women equal to men under the law, even as the Party drove down literacy rates and brought females into the work force.  In 1980, one year after Saddam seized absolute power, women won the right to vote.  Within a few years, their participation in the civil service rose to 40 percent.  By 1987, women held 13 percent of the seats in the National Assembly (an unheard of percentage then in the Middle East); in 1990, they made up 22 percent of university teaching positions and 13 percent of administrative and managerial jobs. 

Today in nearly every category (except, interestingly, the number of seats in parliament), the condition of women has deteriorated.   This is particularly true in literacy, health and crime rates.  To be fair, this problem began years before the U.S. invasion:  in the 1980s, as Saddam began to lose the Iran-Iraq war, he turned to support from his country's tribal sheiks, re-introducing patriarchal social customs the Baathists had tried to suppress.  Worse, as his regime begun to crumble in the mid-1990s, the tyrant attempted to garner support from the Shia by allowing shari'a regulations regarding women and family life to permeate, and in some cases, supplant Iraqi laws. 

Again, I am no apologist for the Saddam years.  And to be sure, many Iraqi women prefer the chaos of today to the "stability" of the past.  "What kind of freedom did we have under Saddam?  The freedom of the grave," Baghdad feminist Hanaa Edwar told me. 

Still, we must be honest here.  By destroying Baathist authority and letting the Shia genie out of the bottle, the U.S. has exacerbated social tendencies and conditions that impact women's lives for the worse.  This is the cost--or perhaps the birth pangs--of democracy, one might say, and I believe the Iraqi people will bear them, as they have so many other disappointments, setbacks and torments.  But for right-wing pundits to declare victory and ignore what this new Iraqi society means for females, seems shallow and morally questionable. 

A century ago, the North abandoned the cause of black enfranchisement in the years after the Civil War and allowed apartheid to resettle in the southern United States.  We have far less influence over Iraq, of course, but we must take steps to insure a similar catastrophe does not take place in that newly liberated land.  If the plow of democracy only churns up the topsoil of Iraqi society, and does not dig deep into the substrata of tribalism and patriarchal domination, then our efforts in that land will be half-measures at best.  We must continue, in modern form, Douglass' concept of abolitionist "agitation."  Women must be free--religious and social customs be damned.

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Raid Quisti, who writes for one of my favorite newspapers, the Arab News, seems like a decent guy with an unenviable task.  Here he is again, explaining why females shouldn't have the vote in Saudi Arabia.  I offer a large excerpt of his piece because it seems so revealing about social norms in House of Saud.      

Would a Saudi woman actually want to place her picture and her full name on a street advertisement or in a newspaper advertisement? She wouldn’t. And even if she were allowed to do so by the authorities, only a handful of the female community would actually consider doing it. If we open our daily newspapers and read columns by female journalists, we will see that the writers are faceless. Not because the law prevents a woman from putting her photo beside her column but because she chooses not to for social and cultural reasons.

Hypothetically, let us say that women did not need to place street advertisements or advertisements in newspapers. How else would they reach the public? Would they set up tents like their male counterparts? And even if they did, since the religious leaders here deem mixing sinful, how would she receive men and women who are curious to ask about her platform? Would the tents be split in half, one side for men and the other for women? Would she even allow herself to go to the male’s side to address them and answer questions?

Or would it all have to be done over microphones or split units? And continuing hypothetically, let us say one of the women won a seat on the council. She then becomes an official. Would our society accept the fact of a woman appearing in public in a press conference, talking to the media and making official announcements, as is the case in neighboring Gulf states? And what about the municipality itself? How would male and female colleagues within the municipality interact since they would have to be in separate buildings or departments; would all contact be over the phone?

Clearly that would be the only possibility since mixing the sexes is considered sinful.

Winding up on a rueful note, Quisti observes,

As long as traditions and customs that are not universal in the 21st century prevail in the Kingdom and as long as we continue to teach in our universities that “Listening to a woman’s voice is sinful,” women who honestly believe they have a role in our society’s development will be either labeled “brainwashed by the West” or “sinners.”

How about "prisoners of tribal Islam?"

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We'll start with an e-mail I recently received from Xena, a Baghdadi housewife with three children.  Among other news, she writes

Winter arrived here over a month ago, and now it's really cold, hard to imagine after such hot weather.  Life here is at its toughest.  The lines for petrol are unbelievable and for us girls no hope at all [note:  women used to receive preferential treatment in gas lines, but no longer]. 

We have electricity maybe one to two hours a day.  The private generators for which we pay massive amounts are not working as we have no diesel fuel.  Kerosene for heaters is 3,000 dinars [$2.05] for a three liter container (the usual cost is 300 dinars).  But it's not available anyway.  The cooking gas cylinders are now 7,000 dinars [$4.79], when at most they used to be 1,000 dinars. 

It's doom and gloom for the next few months.  The election is fast approaching and the incidents of insurgency are still happening very frequently.  Lots of explosions and mortars, car bombs.

Thus the situation in Baghdad from one woman's perspective.

Still, given Xena's downbeat communication, it's downright amazing what we find in a recent report issued by the Baghdad group Women for Women.  Entitled "Windows of Opportunity:  the Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-war Iraq" ,  the report, based on a survey of 1,000 women in seven Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, revealed that 90.6% of respondents viewed the future of Iraq with optimism.  (So much for the terror campaigns of the fascist counter-liberation.)  Other highlights included these findings:

84.3% of Iraqi women want the right to vote on the final constitution.

Nearly 80% believe in unlimited participation in local and national councils. 

56.8% felt that women should have no restrictions on employment.  Of the respondents who thought restrictions should exist, only 15% based their opinion on "custom or tradition," while the vast majority cited security concerns as reason to limit female participation in the workplace.

95.1% believe there should be no restrictions on women's education.  Of those who thought there should be restrictions, 55% cited security concerns. 

Some of the findings bear further exploration (or perhaps explanation); for example

16% felt that the government had done something to make their lives "much worse" in the past year, while only 5.5% thought the government had improved their lives.  By the same token, 8.4% blamed "worsening conditions" on religious institutions, while  12.7% believed religious groups had made their lives better.

Then there were these statistics that showed the kind of privations Iraqis endure:

95% felt their families did not receive enough electricity.

63.5% claimed insufficient access to water.

39.5% believed they received insufficient food.

57.1% claimed inadequate health care.

49% complained of poor or inadequate housing.

Xena, I know, views her future prospects with a kind of grim optimism.  (It's an Iraqi thing.)  And when you consider that despite the difficulties these people endure--and no survey can quantify the degree of fear, uncertainty, anxiety, frustration, sorrow and rage they experience--over 90 percent believe their lives will improve, it is truly inspiring.  A lesson in the unquenchable hope of human beings.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We'll start with an e-mail I recently received from Xena, a Baghdadi housewife with three children.  Among other news, she writes

Winter arrived here over a month ago, and now it's really cold, hard to imagine after such hot weather.  Life here is at its toughest.  The lines for petrol are unbelievable and for us girls no hope at all [note:  women used to receive preferential treatment in gas lines, but no longer]. 

We have electricity maybe one to two hours a day.  The private generators for which we pay massive amounts are not working as we have no diesel fuel.  Kerosene for heaters is 3,000 dinars [$2.05] for a three liter container (the usual cost is 300 dinars).  But it's not available anyway.  The cooking gas cylinders are now 7,000 dinars [$4.79], when at most they used to be 1,000 dinars. 

It's doom and gloom for the next few months.  The election is fast approaching and the incidents of insurgency are still happening very frequently.  Lots of explosions and mortars, car bombs.

Thus the situation in Baghdad from one woman's perspective.

Still, given Xena's downbeat communication, it's downright amazing what we find in a recent report issued by the Baghdad group Women for Women.  Entitled "Windows of Opportunity:  the Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-war Iraq" ,  the report, based on a survey of 1,000 women in seven Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, revealed that 90.6% of respondents viewed the future of Iraq with optimism.  (So much for the terror campaigns of the fascist counter-liberation.)  Other highlights included these findings:

84.3% of Iraqi women want the right to vote on the final constitution.

Nearly 80% believe in unlimited participation in local and national councils. 

56.8% felt that women should have no restrictions on employment.  Of the respondents who thought restrictions should exist, only 15% based their opinion on "custom or tradition," while the vast majority cited security concerns as reason to limit female participation in the workplace.

95.1% believe there should be no restrictions on women's education.  Of those who thought there should be restrictions, 55% cited security concerns. 

Some of the findings bear further exploration (or perhaps explanation); for example

16% felt that the government had done something to make their lives "much worse" in the past year, while only 5.5% thought the government had improved their lives.  By the same token, 8.4% blamed "worsening conditions" on religious institutions, while  12.7% believed religious groups had made their lives better.

Then there were these statistics that showed the kind of privations Iraqis endure:

95% felt their families did not receive enough electricity.

63.5% claimed insufficient access to water.

39.5% believed they received insufficient food.

57.1% claimed inadequate health care.

49% complained of poor or inadequate housing.

Xena, I know, views her future prospects with a kind of grim optimism.  (It's an Iraqi thing.)  And when you consider that despite the difficulties these people endure--and no survey can quantify the degree of fear, uncertainty, anxiety, frustration, sorrow and rage they experience--over 90 percent believe their lives will improve, it is truly inspiring.  A lesson in the unquenchable hope of human beings.

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He's young, Shia and pro-American.  As profiled in a recent Wall  Street Journal article, Farqad Qizwini is a moderate, Thomas Jefferson-loving cleric who runs a radio station that broadcasts election information and a university for "humanistic studies" in central Iraq.  In short, he's everything America yearns to see arise from the ranks of Iraq's Shia leadership.  There's just one hitch:  he's against women's rights.

As the Journal notes, Qizwini opposes U.S. efforts to ensure more female participation in Iraq's new government, and once declared that women judges are "unacceptable under Islamic law."  He's not alone--most members of the Shia religious establishment reject Western-style notions of women's equality.  "Islam is specific on men's authority: man leads and women follow," Sheik Ahmed Darwash al-Kinani told me over tea one afternoon in Baghdad.  Ayatollah Sistani himself has decreed such unfeminist judgments--for example, forbidding women from shaking mens' hands, leaving home without male permission, or forming friendships with non-family-related men.  Even secular Shia profess "unprogressive" beliefs.  As an Oxford-educated academic in Basra informed me, "Man's task is to work in the outside world.  Woman's is to keep house and raise children to be good Muslim citizens."

As Iraq's Shia slowly assume power, Western observers are scrutinizing their leaders' comments about America, the role of religion in government and relations with Iran.  Missing from that analysis, however, is concern about Shia attitudes toward women.  Unlike their apparently moderate positions on political matters, their stance on gender equality remains rooted in shari'a, or Islamic law.  In Basra, Sheikh Aodha al-Obaydi, of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) told me, "We believe women's rights must follow shari'a."  It's for their own good, al Kinani emphasized:  "Under shari'a, women are treated like precious gems in a jewel box."

More like prisoners in a theocratic cage.  From the Western perspective, shari'a is thoroughly anti-feminist.  For instance, the code permits men polygamy, divorce by repudiation and the right to inherit twice as much as females; the Shia version even allows religiously-sanctioned adultery, or muta'a ("temporary marriages"), in which married Muslim men can enjoy the conjugal benefits of another woman in return for furnishing her with money or property.  (Most cultures have another name for this arrangement.)  Conversely, the same code denies women the ability to choose husbands, travel freely, or wear anything but cloaks to cover their bodies.  "Shari'a oppresses women, it is against human rights," Iraqi feminist firebrand Yanar Mohammad once told me.

How serious are Shia leaders about imposing shari'a?  Serious enough to have nearly accomplished it.  On December 29, 2003, the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council passed Resolution 137, which would have replaced Iraq's relatively progressive 1959 "Family Law" regarding women with shari'a.  Fortunately. Paul Bremer refused to sign the measure, preventing its implementation.

But the story is not over. A major instigator behind Resolution 137 was SCIRI leader Abdul al-Hakim, who served at the time as the GC's chairman.  As I've noted before, SCIRI wields major influence in southern Iraq, where women are increasingly covering themselves, and conservatives frequently post signs with such exhortations as "Hejab is the most beautiful accessory for women."  Moreover, Hakim himself is the frontrunner to become Iraq's next prime minister after the January elections.  His postion on women's rights, the role of shari'a and whether he will agree to U.S. pressures to set aside 25 percent of Iraq's new parliament for women in ominously vague.

Many observers--such as myself--glean what little optimism we can about the upcoming elections mainly from Shia assurances of moderation.  These assurances, however, encourage us to perceive men like Qizwini, Sistani and Hakim as Western-style democrats.  They are not.  Especially when it comes to feminism, Shia leaders are products of their male-dominated religion   Modern democracy, however, transcends religion to include all men and women--something the West must stress to the January victors.

In the wake of the Civil War, the North found itself "occupying"--or reconstructing--the shattered Confederacy.  Weary of the cost, and eager to withdraw its troops, the Union ended its efforts to establish the rule of civil rights throughout the south with the so-called "Compromise of 1877."  Abandoned to white supremacy--a form of tribalism often supported from the pulpit--blacks had to struggle another century to achieve equality.  We must not repeat that mistake in Iraq.  Gender equality is the key to victory in the war against political Islam, from Baghdad to Jakarta to Riyadh.  In our rush to patch up a government and end the reconstruction of Iraq, we cannot abandon that nation's 16 million women, whose inferior status and second-class citizenship may worsen under the Shias' new "moderate" leadership.

Next:  shari'a in Canada--and what are those Islamic laws anyway?

Posted by Steven Vincent at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fodder of the Bride

We've all heard of the abominable practice of FGM, or female genital mutilation, but yesterday's Wall Street Journal acquainted us with an additional  horror inflicted upon women in Arab countries:  gavage.  Not the force-feeding of geese, but the intentional fattening of teen-age girls--particularly in the African country of Mauritania--in order to heighten their appeal as prospective brides.  The Journal's Gautam Naik reports the childhood experience of one Mauritanian woman.

When she was 8, her mother began to force-feed her.  [She] was required to consume a gallon of milk and porridge for lunch.  She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk followed by a pre-breakfast feeding at 6 a.m.

If she threw up, her mother forced her to eat the vomit.  Stretch marks appeared on her body and the skin on her upper arm and her thighs tore under the pressure.  If she balked at the feedings, her mother would squeeze her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable.

According to the Journal, Mauritania is--blessedly--the only country where gavage is systematically applied. (So-called "fattening huts," where women beef up before marriage are common in certain African tribal cultures in places like Nigeria)  As the paper explains,

In a land that suffers from a constant shortage of food, plump women are assumed to both wealthy and more likely to bear children.

A 2001 survey of 7,000 adult women carried out by the Mauritanian government (which also countences slavery, we should note) indicated that some 22 percent had been force-fed when young; 15 percent said that their "skin split as a result of over-eating;" 20 percent had their toes or fingers broken to make them eat. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, "most men in Mauritania are slim," the Journal observes.

Interestingly, the paper quotes a 19 year-old Mauritanian law student who is "slender by Western standards."  Her dieting secret?

exposure to Western TV show and magazines convinced her it's healthier to maintain a middling weight.

Television, it seems, is good for something.

Divorce, Egyptian style

From the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram we learn that a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report indicates that women suffer great inequalities under Egypt's divorce laws.  According to Al-Ahram writer Gihan Shahine, the report notes that Egyptian males enjoy

unilateral and unconditional right to divorce.  They do not even need to enter a courtroom in order to end their marriages.

Women, conversely, must either prove harm (supported by witnesses), or forfeit their financial rights in a kuhl, or "no-fault divorce."   Worse, they must take their case to court, navigating a generally hopeless course through complicated procedures and evidentiary requirements that the HRW report calls "inherently discriminatory."  As a result, the reports concludes, women

either remain in an unwanted marriage and possibly endure physical and psychological abuse, or beg their husbands to divorce them, giving up everything they own and cherish in return.

A woman who leaves her husband and files for divorce can find herself the subject of legal harassment from her spouse, in addition to being denied access to government assistance because she is still married.  Even after divorce, the Egyptian government often fails to enforce court rulings on alimony and child support.

One root of the problem is the co-existence of secular statutes and Islamic law called shari'a--which is other way of saying that Egyptian women suffer the lack of  separation between mosque and state.  The Egyptian constitution, for example, contains provisions for gender equality, and the government has signed international treaties observing equal rights.  By the same token, however, Article 60 of the  criminal code states

The provisions of the penal code shall not apply to any deed committed in good faith, pursuant to a right determined by virtue of the shari'a.

Translation:  in certain cases, if you've done something "in good faith" following Islamic law, it's not a crime.  And what are those certain cases where Allah gives you a "Get out of jail free" card?  An Egyptian member of the HRW teams tells Shahine

The government has been very selective in terms of where it requires shari'a to be the root of the law and where it doesn't.  This is, of course, a problem, because most of the places where the government requires shari'a...are those where women bear the main brunt of the effect.

Are we surprised? 

Article 60, the HRW contends, is "used to justify domestic violence," and creates a situation where Egyptian law actually sanctions  the "'disciplining' of 'disobedient' women."  (In case you're concerned about what kind of physical punishment shari'a allows, you'll be relieved to know that it cannot be 1) severe; 2) directed at a woman's face; and 3) aimed at a "fatal blow area.")  As the report quotes one male Cairo poltician, "A man has the right in shari'a to discipline his wife."

Unfortunately, If statistics are any measure, the politician's wife probably agrees.  Noting a 1995 government survey, the HRW comments, "violence is so normalized in Egyptian society" that

nearly 86 percent of the women surveyed thought that husbands were justified in beating their wives under certain circumstances. On average, 70 percent of the women surveyed between the ages of 15 to 49 felt that husbands were justified in beating wives who refused sex. An estimated 70 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 29 surveyed by the National Population Center said that violence was justified if a woman “talked back” to their husbands; 65 percent said a beating was justified for talking to another man; 42 percent for spending too much money; 26 percent for burning dinner; and 50 percent for neglecting the children.

Many women whom HRW interviewed "endorsed domestic violence as a legitimate form of punishment for disobedience."  Perhaps it's time we dust off the old Marxist notion of "false consciousness?"

Finally, the fact that America-based HRW would have the audacity to propose alternatives to Islamic law has enraged many Egyptians--especially since the group recently released a report on, Allah preserve us, homosexuality in Egypt.  According to Shahine, critics have accused HRW of having a "hidden agenda" linked to "U.S. social reform plans for the Middle East (if only; HRW denies this).  Not only that, but many conservative Muslims have denounced the report as--one guess--"anti-Islamic."

Are we surprised?

More:  Jamie Glazov at Frontpage Magazine tackles the volatile issue of feminism and Islam.  Check it out here.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cleared for Takeoff

 The skies have gotten friendlier for women--at least for one Saudi Arabian.  This photograph, by Ali Jarekji of the Reuters news service, introduces us to a young woman who--well, let's let the London Times' Michael Theodoulou tell the story, if nothing else than to enjoy his mordant lede:

Hanadi Hindi will not be allowed to drive to the airport, but when she gets there she will be able to fly jet aircraft.

The 26-year-old Saudi is to become the kingdom’s first accredited woman pilot after signing a contract with the fleet of Prince al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire Saudi businessman and nephew of King Fahd.

According to Theodoulous, Forbes magazine rates the reform-minded Prince as the world's fourth-richest man, with a net worth of over $21 billion.  Perhaps he could place some of that lucre at the service of his Kingdom's 4.7 million women--who make up more than half the number of Saudi university graduates, although only 5.5 percent of them are employed.  Meanwhile, our good Wahhabi ally bans women from driving, voting or traveling except when accompanied by a male relative. 

Apparently, Captain Hindi still has some flight instruction to finish in Jordan, after which she'll be taking wing sometime in the middle of next year.  What I want to know is, how are they going to fit a male relative in those crowded cockpits?

Berlin's Bartered Brides

With the prospect of Turkey's membership in the European Union--and the shockwaves of Theo van Gogh's murder still roiling the continent--many observers are taking a fresh and unsentimental look at certain age-old traditions common in the Muslim world.  Case in point, Richard Bernstein's December 19 article in the New York Times about "Jasmin," a Turkish girl in Berlin hiding from people who seek to murder her.

She is 18 years old, living in a shelter whose address cannot be disclosed, having...escaped from her Turkish-born parents.  The reason, she said, was that they were threatening to kill her unless she agreed to marry a man from Turkey whom she had never met.

"I had a German passport, and that made me very valuable," she told Bernstein, who continues,

She said her would-be betrothed in Turkey was wealthy and therefore able to pay a big price for a bride by which he could gain a German passport and German residency. 

Bernstein quotes a former commissioner for foreign affairs who argues that the number of girls fleeing arranged marriages in the country is a small percentage of Deutschland's overall Turkish population.  But Jasmin and social service workers disagree, claiming that "oppression and control of ethnic Turkish girls are widespread, perhaps even dominant."  Worse, Turkish men prefer arranged marriages over unions with German women. 

"The attitude of families is that a girl from Turkey will be innocent and pure and will just stay home and have babies," Jasmin said.  "Turkish girls who grew up in Turkey don't know German laws, so they don't know how to protect themselves, even if things go badly."

Fortunately, Bernstein observes, many Germans are rethinking multiculturalism--or "multi-kulti" as they call it.  In Jasmin's case, her German employer refused to turn her over to her parents, but instead found her sanctuary in a shelter which since 1986 has assisted 1,000 girls fleeing arranged marriages.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The key to winning the War on Terror--whether in Iraq, Ridyah or the American homeland--is women.  Liberated women will sweep away the claptrap of religious fascism faster than you can say Scheherazade and relegate the mullahs of every denomination to the status of soap-box preachers.  And across dar-al-Islam today, we see the issue of women's rights beginning to shake the self-conception of Muslim world with a force unheralded since Napoleon sailed into the harbor of Alexandria.  Adding our voices to the revolution is one small way we can help bring about a release of new energies across the Middle East and beyond. 

With that in mind, I thought we'd periodically examine topics pertaining to women in the Middle East.  Starting with this small, but interesting bit of good news (tip of the hat to Professor Roth) from the BBC.  Over the last month the Beeb has featured on-line voices from Iraq, including Sarab al-Delaymi, a Baghdad housewife, who recently wrote

Women in Baghdad are traditionally more open than women in the provinces, but we've recently started to notice the emergence of a new type of more emancipated women in the provinces. Many women are becoming more engaged and active in political debate and some of them even occupy high administrative and political positions. This makes me and others hopeful of a better future.

Indeed.

(Unfortunately, not all observations from the Beeb's participants are so upbeat.  But scroll down and read what Sarab has to say about schools and teachers' salaries.)

The Beeb also informs us of a radical event occurring in Egypt.  Seems medical doctor and  sociologist Nawal Saadawi has announced her intention to enter next year's presidential elections, making her the first woman to run for the top post.  Although her candidacy has no legal standing, Saadawi intends it as an consciousness-raising act. "I am going to stand in the presidential election, not to win but to get the Egyptian people moving in favour of a reform of the constitution and to oppose corruption and"--adding the obligatory coda--"American colonialism."  (Interestingly, Saadawi's anti-colonial ire did not prevent her in the 1990s from fleeing with her family to the Great Satan when religious fundamentalist threatened her life.  After teaching at Duke University and Washington State University, she returned to Egypt in 1996.)

Ms. Saadawi is a controversial figure in the Land of the Nile: author of 27 books--mostly about women's issues--and a political prisoner under Sadat, in 2001 she gave an interview in which she denounced the veil and polygamy, accused religious leaders of being more concerned with sex than Allah and posited the shocking theory that the Hajj contained paganistic elements.  Her comments blew the turbans off Egypt's religious establishment, who charged her with sexual licentiousness in inciting women to immoral behavior, declared her beyond the bounds of Islam and ordered the state to annul her 37 year marriage.  Authorities eventually dropped the case, largely due to pressure from international observers. 

More seriously, human rights observers have criticized Pakistan's first-ever legislation against karo kari, or the horrendous practice of "honor killings." which take the lives of hundreds of Pakistani women each year.  On first glance the bill--passed the Congress but awaiting President Musharraf's signature--is strong, prescribing a minimum of ten year imprisonment and a maximum of the death penalty for murdering women deemed to have "shamed" a family.  But it also allows killers to escape justice through qisas--convincing victims' families to pardon perpetrators--or by paying compensation, called dyat.  Critics note that qisas and dyat favor the rich and powerful who can intimidate families through social or economic pressure.   

Why the loopholes?  In 1990, Pakistan amended sections of its criminal code to reflect the so-called Qisas and Dyat Ordinances of Islamic law.  According to Pakistan's Daily Star, any legislation that seeks to abrogate or work around the Ordinance will "most likely be successfully challenged in a court of law as being repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah."  Indeed, Pakistan judges have already ruled that the Qisas and Dyat Ordinance cannot be by-passed because they are "part and parcel of Islamic common law."  Take a deep breath and repeat after me, separation of mosque and state..separation of mosque and state...

Women's rights in Islam (and not only Islam) is huge, of course, and I've only presented a merest skimming of the news.  If anyone has any tips or issues they'd like this site to raise, please let me know.  Until next time, let us ponder the words of the Holy Koran:

He created you from one being, then from that being He made its mate. (39.6) 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 05:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ABC News is reporting a truly disheartening account of the plight of many women in post-Taliban Afghanistan who are going to gruesome lengths to avoid being sold into marriage.  (Buying and selling human beings:  isn't that a definition of slavery?)

But even as Afghan females are finally enjoying basic human rights, such as the right to an education, to work and to vote.  Afghanistan remains a profoundly conservative Muslim nation.

Cultural transformation--including age-old honor-bound codes of conduct--still shackle and oppress women, especially those living outside Kabul.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of news reports about suicides by self-immolation among Afghan women.  Although nationwide statistics are hard to come by, hospitals and aid agencies in cities like Kabul and Herat in western Afghanistan have recorded a number of female burn cases.

Forced into marriages--often with older, richer men--and faced with a life of endless exploitation and drudgery, an untold number of Afghan females are dousing themselves with kerosene used in cooking stoves and setting themselves on fire.

The piece then quotes a Western aid worker with the World Medical Association: 

"There is an absolute level of despair, that you will never be able to make a choice about your life and that really there is no way out, and knowing that you will have to live with a man you have not chosen, who is probably older than you are, who is going to allow you to work, to go out of the house."

In case we don't grasp to what ends this "absolute level of despair" is driving women, ABC News observes

Self-immolation is a horrific act that often results in a slow, tortuous death in hospital burn wards even as medical officials desperately struggle to save lives.

Seems our work is far from done in Afghanistan.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jamie Glazov and the good folks at Frontpagemagazine.com give me the opportunity to express my views about Iraq, the War on Terror and the role of women, music and laughter in the fight against Islamofascism. 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 05:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)