Who said the kingdom wasn't progressive?

"The authorities in Saudi Arabia have decided to end a ban on unaccompanied women staying in the country's hotels. A woman can now stay in a hotel alone as long as she carries identification."

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I thought this was quite an interesting article:

It's no wonder we face accusations of hypocrisy and cultural imperialism, when glossy magazines carry worthy articles about the horrors of FGM in the developing world on the one page, and advertisements offering the latest in designer vaginas in the classified section at the back.

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From Muslimah Media Watch:

In very recent times it seems that news about violence against Muslim women is everywhere. I was recently directed to a Boston Globe article entitled The Islamist War on Muslim Women by Jeff Jacoby. He describes the many recent inci:dents of violence, leading to death, against Muslim women in Muslim countries as well as in the West. Reading through it my stomach started turning with disgust. Of course I was disgusted by all the acts of violence against Muslim women. How dare men think they can hurt or kill women? Those horrible Muslim men and those horrible Muslims for allowing it to happen!

But wait a minute! My dad is a Muslim man, my brother is a Muslim man, and hey, so are my grandfather and my uncles and they’ve NEVER laid a hand on a woman. And, oh my! I’m a Muslim woman and I’ve never felt threatened by a Muslim man. And so my anger started to grow. And as I re-read the article I began to dissect why I was feeling angry.

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"It's time we took the honour out of honour crimes, and called it for what it really is." Finally a good article on the Guardian CiF. One of the commentators made a very good point which is worth bringing up. While one can argue that it is the patriarchal society which encourages such crimes, a lot of these acts have, in many cases, been ordered by women as well.

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On female circumcision, the headscarf and Rebels without a clue

One must always be weary of getting dragged into a debate and battle which is not his. There has been quite a lot of debate raging about a certain "writer" called Ayan Hirsi Ali, whose account Infidel is that of her life and the hardships she experienced growing up in Somalia (if I remember correctly), this is related to the huge furor being kicked up recently about the practice of female circumcision or "Female Genital Mutilation" as referred to by some. I've seen many Muslims jump up and defend it as a knee jerk reaction because they imagined it was attacking Islam, but I don't think they've really thought through what it is they are defending. I've never personally felt comfortable about it, I'd only even heard of it a few years ago, and I have to say that I personally find it revolting. I know that it was known during the time of the Prophet Muhammad but that it was not too widespread at the time, ie. if there was a particular reason (the female clitoris or labia were unusually large and might have caused discomfort or whatever other reason one might choose for this) they might have done it. He is recorded to have told one woman who did this as her job to not overdo it (remove too much or all of the bits) and have mercy on the child. It's interesting how people seem to think that the whatever the Prophet Muhammad had said is law when it wasn't. A lot of the things he reached conclusions on, like other men, was by consultation and deliberation when it wasn't to do with religion. People seem to forget that he was just a man. Frankly, it is a practice which is culturally rooted to eastern Africa and has no basis in religion whatsoever, unlike male circumcision which has it's roots in all three Abrahamic faiths. Female circumcision and indeed the Hejab itself, are cultural (In no way do I equate the two) and peculiar to a region and peoples of a different time, it serves no purpose whatsoever and if one wishes to tackle it, then this must be done by undermining the religious arguments put forth for it. For those of you who rush off and try to defend the indefensible, please do your research first and don't make fools of yourself.

I also had a long discussion with a friend of mine regarding the Hejab. I had already known that it is in fact obligatory in the Jewish faith and had been in the Christian faith until recently (Nuns in the Catholic church have only recently been allowed to go without one) but I had never been sure as to why or where it says women should be covered from head to toe in a black bag. In fact I've looked and the Quran only calls for decency in clothing and for non form revealing clothes, both for males and females, on no counts does it say women have to hide their faces or wear gloves. The full face cover idea was mostly for the wives of the Prophet (that has a different story and reason, read Karen Armstrong for an excellent non-biased work on his life). I'm not against the Hejab if a woman decides to wear it of her own volition but I'm against the way it is being imposed in Saudi Arabia and Iran - that is by force, or in Syria, where the influences are a lot more subtle but just as powerful sometimes. Still, I refuse to stereotype any woman I meet with a Hejab or without, and, whilst in Syria or Britain, was always mindful of who wouldn't shake hands and who was alright with a peck on the cheek. I think some people confuse wearing the hejab with piety whilst not wearing one implies a lack of it. That notion is ridiculous and nonsensical.

Back to the main topic, I've learned that the hejab itself is a lot more cultural than it is Islamic, something which can be seen in the various implementations we see throughout the Islamic world, so there is no one rule on how it should even be expressed. In Britain, I think it's become an issue for Muslims because they feel (quite rightly) like they are under some form of attack, whether by the media or by the public. I have seen it taken too far however, such as with the recent court case of the schoolteacher insisting on wearing the Niqab in her kindergarden class, but it was good to see that the English judge had enough common sense to put a stop to this excess. This was a classic example of someone picking up a cause without knowing what it is they were fighting for or what was being debated. These people are the quintessential rebels without a clue.

A rebel without a clue can be defined as a person who thinks they are rebelling against a status quo but are in fact, conforming to it. On the opposite end of the spectrum (to risk contradicting my earlier statement on piety!), Arab female pop singers on the Rotana music network also fall into this category, where the status quo they think they are rebelling against leads them to a ridiculous scenario where they confuse political freedom with sexual freedom. They fall from the frying pan and into the fire without understanding what the core issues faced by women in the region and worldwide are. Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and particularly Irshad Manji are in my opinion, also prime examples of such 'rebels'. Irshad Manji is quite amusing in her debates, though I wouldn't recommend you support her by buying her book, but a rummage on Youtube or Google should bring up some of her finest moments and even some of her own 'radical' interpretations of Islam - interesting. In my opinion, women like these marginalise any genuine Arab or Muslim voices which are tackling the genuine issues faced by females, thus ensuring they aren't taken seriously and continually ostracised.

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My own mistrust of rich people aside, I wasn't quite sure what to make of Sheikha Mozah and her recent award of the Chatham House prize for international relations. A quick google of her name brought up her very slick and elegant website with a number of her quotes and statements about her vision for Qatar. She is the second of three wives (not that I have a problem with polygamy) but it's interesting her repeated calls for shattering the orientalist framework within which women are viewed in the region. I still need to read more about her to make my mind up, but if anything would redeem her to me is her attempt to address the real issues facing women in the region rather than parroting tired orientalist cliches.

"Our women in the Gulf have been active for a long time - we hear that from our mothers and grandmothers. Foreigners tend to misunderstand that." I think many arab women tend to misunderstand that too.

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'50,000 Iraqi refugees' forced into prostitution

"Most are unwilling to talk, but Zahra, an attractive girl with a bare midriff and tattoos, tells me she's 16. She has been working in this club since fleeing to Syria from Baghdad after the war. She doesn't like it, she says, "but what can we do? I hope things get better in Iraq, because I miss it. I want to go back, but I have to look after my sister". Zahra points to a thin, pubescent girl with long black hair, who seems to be dancing quite happily. Aged 13, Nadia started in the club two months ago."

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Multiculturalism and domestic abuse

For those who care, I recently sent an e-mail response to Johann Hari, the Independents columnist, criticising him on a recent article:

Sir,
I had recently read your article on the horrific treatment that some women who happen to be Muslim have suffered in Germany and elsewhere. The ludicrous judgement of the judge, dismissing blatant domestic abuse as"cultural" was ignorant, insulting and condescending to say the least. However, you deserve no congratulations for highlighting this issue, if that is indeed what you wished.
Firstly, you create an artificial category of "multiculturalists" who have no problem in letting off vicious wife-beaters because they happen to be Muslim. Your criticism is supposedly against these individuals, however what you are really attacking is religion, and Islam to be specific. You also criticise these religions for their treatment of homosexuals, which is fair enough. But it is an insult to the intelligence of your readers and to yourself personally, in front of those truly learned, to maintain arrogant pretensions that you know better than 1500 or 2000 year old philosophies.

It goes without saying that domestic abuse is not condoned under neither Islam nor Catholicism, regardless of deliberate attempts to misread Biblical or Quranic texts. As a writer with considerable talent who's articles I read often, I feel you have a responsibility not to peddle to anti-Muslim sentiment, and perhaps aim to build bridges rather than walls. Isn't domestic abuse a problem women suffer from in "modern" societies too? Does the justice system not fail them too sometimes for even more absurd pretences? In the eyes of both the "multiculturalists" you so strongly condemn, and yourself, the real offense about the woman being abused is that she is a Muslim, rather than the abuse itself. Rather than highlight this issue, you too have failed these women as that ignorant judge in Germany did.

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"Cheap arguments" and the real debate..

Phyllis Chesler wrote in The Times about how her "eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam". I started reading it and thinking, indeed how barbaric this Islamic religion is, look what they do to their women or how they force people to think and act in the same way. I don't want anything to do with them or their barbarity. Then I remembered that I am myself a Muslim and I had never experienced, nor seen the kind of horror story she was describing except perhaps in Saudi Arabia, that bastion of "moderate" Middle Eastern countries which the United States, Britain and Israel love so much. What is she talking about and why? What are her motives? It's becoming quite popular to construct these ridiculous and stupid generalizations in order to generate controversy and of course much needed revenue from book sales and appearances. Just read about people such as Wafa Sultan and Ayan Hirsi Ali, far from being respectable authorities and fighters for womens rights, I view these people as opportunistic individuals who have prostituted their ideas on the altar of this insane "Clash of Civilizations" temple.

Meanwhile Dr Buthaina Shaaban, somebody I deeply respect, highlights issues which people like Chesler don't have the intellectual integrity to address or even examine:

"No one seems to have the moral courage to condemn loudly the practices of Israeli and American occupations against women in Palestine and Iraq, or even to highlight the disconcerting suffering of women prisoners, women who lost their loved ones and women who were raped and humiliated. Let's imagine for a moment that these women in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon had a different, perhaps Western nationality what would have happened on the women's international day? their stories would have become the only stories of that day." Incidentally the article is in the pro-Saudi establishment paper al Sharq al Awsat, but well worth a read.

I'm starting to take more and more of an interest on the situation of women in the Arab and Islamic worlds and I'm actively seeking information on personalities about whom I could read about past and present. I know that the cheap debates such as that by Phyllis Chesler in the earlier paragraph are not what is on Muslim and Arab womens minds, but because I've never focused on this area, I'm missing a clear understanding of what is. I guess questioning is always the start.

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