Status of women in Islam today's great moral challenge?

[Roxanne Appleby]

(this is being carried over from the Jihad thread)



Thanks for bumping this thread. I haven't read all of it yet, I'll just reply to this first.

What I mean by coming across as morally superior is that I feel you're doing this to feel good about yourself, and not because you're trying to help someone. Roxanne, I fail to understand how your saying that oppression of women is wrong is going to help our 14 year old girl in Saudi Arabia. I don't understand how she is reassured by the fact that one Roxanne Appleby of Literotica stands by her with words on in the internet and shows her solidarity and support through those very words that merely condemn what's happening to her. Everyone can bear witness from the other side of the world, Roxanne, and to feel that you've done something worthwhile by saying what they're doing is wrong, is not enough. It doesn't even begin to make a difference.

I realise that saying that something is wrong is a way to start something, but will you leave it at that and expect someone else will follow up? Do you think the Muslim societies will actually take notice and stop doing what they're doing just because you're saying it's wrong? It's way past the time to just stand up and say, "You're wrong and stop doing it." Use their texts and their religion to tell them it's wrong by their standards. And the only way you do it, is to know what you're fighting. Pronouncing judgements is all fine, but unless you're willing to follow up, it is meaningless, yes.

I'm repeating some of what I said in Jihad thread, and I'll add some new.

To repeat, it doesn't matter in the slightest what you or I or any other "infidel" thinks the Koran really means. Muslims couldn't care less what we think it means. What matters is what Muslims think it means, at least to the extent that they use it to justify actions that I think are bad, like murder and making women second class citizens. Also, I have no ability to "fight for the people in Islamic societies" insofar as I believe that half of them are subjected to injustice, except for one thing: I can bear witness that it is wrong to oppress women, and those societies should stop doing it.

You say that it is meaningless for me to just say, "Oppressing women is wrong. Islamic society should stop it." I say, it might be meaningless, and it might not be. I'll tell you what I think does have meaning though: Refusing to say it. Refusing to have the confidence to believe that a thing is unjust, and to say so. I believe that when you refuse to say it is wrong, you implicitly give your sanction to it.

In Britain in 1785 you might have said it was meaningless for Thomas Clarkson to write a student essay making the case that slavery was wrong. In 1955 you might have said it was meaningless for Rosa Parks to refuse to go to the back of the bus. No one could have said then whether you were right or wrong.

I'm no Thomas Clarkson or Rosa Parks. I don't know if my saying that a thing is wrong has meaning, or will make any difference. I believe that it is the least I can do, because I believe that refusing to say it does have meaning.

The opening post of this thread provided examples where appeals to conscience made a great difference, and imagined an instance where it would not have: Ghandi marching in Berlin in 1939 on behalf of Jews. I don't know which examples apply in the case of Islam. It may be that hearts are as hard as pharoah's there. But I can't know that, so I'll say it again: It is wrong to oppress women. You should stop it.



PS. I do feel good about myself saying this. I don't think that disqualifies it from having any meaning.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

In Western societies Muslim parents frequently encourage and support girls to seek educational qualifications and achieve professional status. Education and qualification may be seen as making a woman more attractive as a marriage partner yet they are also means to helping a woman achieve for her own sake.

Generalisations are dangerous. The generalisation that starts this thread is only fueling discord between Muslims and non-Muslims. There is no such thing as a single status of women in Islam. Why isn't there a similar debate about the status of women in the Roman Catholic Church? Women cannot become priests. Why not? Is St Paul infalliable? Og

The fact that Islam is elastic enough to make room for Muslims in the U.S. to not oppress women (which would be very difficult here) is a hopeful sign.

You are correct that generalizations are dangerous. So is ignoring reality. The status of women in almost every Islamic nation and society is terrible, and shameful. Comparing this to the Catholic church not allowing women to become priests is disingenuous, because the Catholic church is not the government anywhere except the Vatican. In most Islamic nations the civil law is to a greater or lesser extent the same as the religious law, and is used to oppress women.

 

[R. Richard]

My aunt was a suffragist. Not a suffragette, but a suffragist who campaigned by legal means for women in the UK to get the right to vote. They won that right in 1928.

Yet it took until the 1970s for it to be illegal to discriminate against a woman just because she was a woman. In theory women became equal in the UK about 30 years ago during the lifetime of my eldest daughter.

In Switzerland some women still do not have the vote.

Yet this thread criticises Islam for not granting women the freedoms that they have only recently won in the West. Not all Muslims would agree that women are second class people who should be protected from others and from themselves. In Western societies Muslim parents frequently encourage and support girls to seek educational qualifications and achieve professional status. Education and qualification may be seen as making a woman more attractive as a marriage partner yet they are also means to helping a woman achieve for her own sake.

Generalisations are dangerous. The generalisation that starts this thread is only fueling discord between Muslims and non-Muslims. There is no such thing as a single status of women in Islam. Why isn't there a similar debate about the status of women in the Roman Catholic Church? Women cannot become priests. Why not? Is St Paul infalliable?

Og

What you have written is true. Women in the West were denied the vote until fairly recently. Further back, women in some countries could not own real property, could not realistically obtain a college education etc.

However, women in the West could go out of their house by themselves, they could speak out in public although many would not listen, they had real rights under the law such as some realistic protection from rape. As to arranged marriage, at least the system was a bit less pervasive in the West.

To the best of my knowledge, women in the West were never stoned or otherwise executed for adultry. A woman who was raped could not be killed to stisfy "family honor."

What I am saying is that the culture of Islam seems to badly treat women on a practical level. A woman of the West can obtain the services of a doctor and she does have some protection under the law if her marriage fails. Many women in Muslim countires can;t obtain the srvices of a doctor, as at least almost all of the doctors are male. In many places in the Muslim world it is still legal for a man to divorce his wife by saying "I divorce thee" three times in succession. [In the old days the families involved would adjusicate the matter and decide if the woman was at fault. If the woman's family decided that she was not at fault, a war ensued. That rarely happens anymore and a Muslim woman has lost valubale protection.

 

[Liar]

Anybody wanna talk about the status of women in Orthodox Christian Russia? Or in any rural central or eastern asian culture? Hunky-dory? Njet.

 

[oggbashan]

Anybody wanna talk about the status of women in Orthodox Christian Russia? Or in any rural central or eastern asian culture? Hunky-dory? Njet.

Or in Native American enclaves? Or Australian aborigine tribal lands? Or in UK inner cities?

The change of thinking in Islamic societies about the status of women is happening slowly. If change is to happen it will come from within. Trying to enforce it from outside is only hardening attitudes AGAINST change.

Equal status for women is exceptional in most of the world. Fundamentalist Muslim societies are only a small part of the picture.

Og

 

[Liar]

Or in Native American enclaves? Or Australian aborigine tribal lands? Or in UK inner cities?

The change of thinking in Islamic societies about the status of women is happening slowly. If change is to happen it will come from within. Trying to enforce it from outside is only hardening attitudes AGAINST change.

Equal status for women is exceptional in most of the world. Fundamentalist Muslim societies are only a small part of the picture.

Og

Egg sacktly. What I was trying to say it that it's counter productive to demonize a specific religion, when it is not the faith that is opressing women, but the sociopolitics of the society. The Bible letter by letter is a pretty misogynic (if that''s the word) read too. And yet, here we are.

 

[oggbashan]

However, women in the West could go out of their house by themselves, they could speak out in public although many would not listen, they had real rights under the law such as some realistic protection from rape. As to arranged marriage, at least the system was a bit less pervasive in the West.

To the best of my knowledge, women in the West were never stoned or otherwise executed for adultry. A woman who was raped could not be killed to stisfy "family honor."

If you replace the words 'the West' in your post by the phrase 'Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein' or 'Iran under the Shah' or 'Turkey' or 'Egypt' or 'Indonesia' your statements are still true. States that have Muslim majorities are not necessarily oppressive of women. It was largely true in Afghanistan and Pakistan until the West supported the Mujahaddin against the USSR and helped the growth of fundamentalist Muslim groups. We are reaping what we sowed.

Og

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Egg sacktly. What I was trying to say it that it's counter productive to demonize a specific religion, when it is not the faith that is opressing women, but the sociopolitics of the society. The Bible letter by letter is a pretty misogynic (if that''s the word) read too. And yet, here we are.

You wanna start a thread about the status of women in Orthodox Christian Russia, rural central or eastern Asia, Native American enclaves, Australian aborigine tribal lands or UK inner cities, be my guest. This one is about Islamic societies, which happen to include one out of every five humans on the planet. In addition, the status of women in Islamic nations is often imposed by law, because to a greater or lesser extent in many Islamic nations the civil law is the same as religious law. For these reasons and others, I think this subject is worth talking about, and am suspicious of efforts to derail the conversation or change the subject.

You say that the oppression of women in Islamic societies is not caused by the religion. I don't know or care what the religion itself "really" says, the oppression is done in the name of the religion. If the Islamic faithful don't like their religion being held responsible for the oppression of women there, they can stop oppressing women.

 

[Pure]

reply to rr, re women executed for adultery

rr: To the best of my knowledge, women in the West were never stoned or otherwise executed for adultery

see the following from a thread of answers to questions to google:

Besides the case of Anne Boleyn, 1536, here is one.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=11180



Subject: Re: Execution for adultery in a Christian country

From: webadept-ga on 02 May 2002 16:23 PDT

There is one case in the US, On March 21st, 1643, eighteen year old Mary Latham was hanged in Massachusetts for adultery, though anothersite suggests it was in 1644.You can find out a bit more on this case using the keywords+"Mary Latham" +Adultery on the Google search.

Subject: Re: Execution for adultery in a Christian country From: webadept-ga on 02 May 2002 16:36 PDT

There is one case in the US, On March 21st, 1643, eighteen year old Mary Latham was hanged in Massachusetts for adultery, though anothersite suggests it was in 1644.You can find out a bit more on this case using the keywords+"Mary Latham" +Adultery

-----

 

[oggbashan]

You wanna start a thread about the status of women in Orthodox Christian Russia, rural central or eastern Asia, Native American enclaves, Australian aborigine tribal lands or UK inner cities, be my guest. This one is about Islamic societies, which happen to include one out of every five humans on the planet. In addition, the status of women in Islamic nations is often imposed by law, because to a greater or lesser extent in many Islamic nations the civil law is the same as religious law. For these reasons and others, I think this subject is worth talking about, and am suspicious of efforts to derail the conversation or change the subject.

You say that the oppression of women in Islamic societies is not caused by the religion. I don't know or care what the religion itself "really" says, the oppression is done in the name of the religion. If the Islamic faithful don't like their religion being held responsible for the oppression of women there, they can stop oppressing women.

Roxanne,

What I am trying to say is that Islamic societies are not the same. There is no such thing as a common oppression of women under Islam. You are aggregating a large number of people as oppressors when the majority of them are not.

Your statement that 'I don't know or care what the religion itself "really" says, the oppression is done in the name of the religion.' is a real problem. IRA bombers killed people in my country in the name of religion yet I didn't blame all Roman Catholics or all Irish people for the IRA's actions. The IRA were NOT acting on behalf of the Roman Catholic church, nor on behalf of Irish people.

The Muslim fanatics are just as much an aberration of Islam as the IRA were of Roman Catholicism. They are a minority who want to impose their will on a majority by force. Every time you or others blame 'Islam' when you mean the few nutcases you are helping the fanatics.

Og

 

[Liar]

Was going to reply, but it seems Og speaks for me. Me and my case rest over ------> here.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Roxanne,

What I am trying to say is that Islamic societies are not the same. There is no such thing as a common oppression of women under Islam. You are aggregating a large number of people as oppressors when the majority of them are not.

Your statement that 'I don't know or care what the religion itself "really" says, the oppression is done in the name of the religion.' is a real problem. IRA bombers killed people in my country in the name of religion yet I didn't blame all Roman Catholics or all Irish people for the IRA's actions. The IRA were NOT acting on behalf of the Roman Catholic church, nor on behalf of Irish people.

The Muslim fanatics are just as much an aberration of Islam as the IRA were of Roman Catholicism. They are a minority who want to impose their will on a majority by force. Every time you or others blame 'Islam' when you mean the few nutcases you are helping the fanatics. Og

Og, in probably half the Muslim world the status of women is very bad. In most of the rest it is not good. Only in a few places is it not bad.

Context matters, and the previous three sentences give context.

The fact that murders committed by the IRA were loudly and all but unversally condemned in the Catholic world is context that matters. You didn't see street demonstrations in Catholic countries in which thousands celebrated IRA murders, and chanted "death to the Prods." That matters.

The oppression of women in Islamic societies is so widespread that it is impossible to say that it is the work of minority. The violence done in Islam's name is the work of a minority, but there is plenty of evidence showing that it is supported by a signifigant portion of the population in many Islamic nations. This is context that matters.

There seems to be an undercurrent that says we shouldn't point these things out or talk about them, because that would somehow be "insensitive." I am not oblivious to the danger in pointing these things out, that doing so can be used by yahoos and demagogs to persecute. That is not sufficient reason to shut up about the existance of injustice, though, or pretend that it is not real, and extremely widespread.

 

[Pure]

roxanne's stand,

while morally correct, it seems insubstantial, unless backed by action-- which she has never mentioned. "stands" by western women on the 'net have no demonstrable effect for change, nor even any evident relation to women's morale in Muslim countries, ms roxanne's vignette of an imaginary 14 year old, notwithstanding.

here's the problem. IF intervening on behalf of Western values does good, what better place to look for evidence than in Iraq (an intervention RA probably supported). The US has 130,000 soldiers on the ground, and a friendly government in power. What is the status of women? Which direction is it headed.? What does this say about western interventions which are morally correct?

Hidden victims of a brutal conflict: Iraq's women

Abduction, rape and murder are the punishments for any woman who dares to hold a professional job. A month-long investigation by The Observer reveals the terrible reality of life after Saddam

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer

They came for Dr Khaula al-Tallal in a white Opel car after she took a taxi home to the middle class district of Qadissiya in Iraq's holy city of Najaf. She worked for the medical committee that examined patients to assess them for welfare benefit. Crucially, however, she was a woman in a country where being a female professional increasingly invites a death sentence.

As al-Tallal, 50, walked towards her house, one of three men in the Opel stepped out and raked her with bullets.

A women's rights campaigner, Umm Salam - a nickname - knows about the three men in the Opel: they tried to kill her on 11 December last year. It was a Sunday, she recalls, and 15 bullets were fired into her own car as she drove home from teaching at an internet cafe. A man in civilian clothes got out of the car and opened fire. Three bullets hit her, one lodging close to her spinal cord. Her 20-year-old son was hit in the chest. Umm Salam saw the gun - a police-issue Glock. She is convinced her would-be assassin works for the state.

The shootings of al-Tallal and Umm Salam are not isolated incidents, even in Najaf - a city almost exclusively Shia and largely insulated from the sectarian violence of the North. Bodies of young women have appeared in its dusty lanes and avenues, places patrolled by packs of dogs where the boundaries bleed into the desert. It is a favourite place for dumping murder victims.

Iraqis do not like to talk about it much, but there is an understanding of what is going on these days. If a young woman is abducted and murdered without a ransom demand, she has been kidnapped to be raped. Even those raped and released are not necessarily safe: the response of some families to finding that a woman has been raped has been to kill her.

Iraq's women are living with a fear that is increasing in line with the numbers dying violently every month. They die for being a member of the wrong sect and for helping their fellow women. They die for doing jobs that the militants have decreed that they cannot do: for working in hospitals and ministries and universities. They are murdered, too, because they are the softest targets for Iraq's criminal gangs.

Iraq's women live in terror of speaking their opinions; of going out to work; or defying the strict new prohibitions on dress and behaviour applied across Iraq by Islamist militants, both Sunni and Shia. They live in fear of their husbands, too, as women's rights have been undermined by the country's postwar constitution that has taken power from the family courts and given it to clerics.

'Women are being targeted more and more,' said Umm Salam last week. Her husband was a university professor who was executed in 1991 under Saddam Hussein after the Shia uprising. She survived by running her family farm. When the Americans arrived she got involved in civic action, teaching illiterate women how to read and vote, independent from the influence of their husbands. She helped them fill in forms for benefits and set up a sewing workshop.

In doing so she put herself at mortal risk. And since the assassination attempt, like many women in Najaf, she has found it hard to work. Which is what the men in the white Opel wanted. To silence the women like Umm Salam, who is 42.

'It is very difficult for women here. There is a lot of pressure on our personal freedoms. None of us feels that we can have an opinion on anything any more. If she does, she risks being killed.'

It is a story familiar to women across Iraq, betrayed by the country's new constitution that guaranteed them a 25 per cent share of membership of the Council of Representatives. That guarantee has turned instead into a fig leaf hiding what women activists now call a 'human rights catastrophe for Iraqi women'.

After a month-long investigation, The Observer has established that in almost every major area of human rights, women are being seriously discriminated against, in some cases seeing their conditions return to those of females in the Middle Ages. In areas such as the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City in east Baghdad, women have been beaten for not wearing socks. Even the headscarf and juba - the ankle-length, flared coat that buttons to the collar - are not enough for the zealots. Some women have been threatened with death unless they wear the full abbaya, the black, all-encompassing veil.

Similar reports are emerging from Mosul, where it is Sunni extremists who are laying down the law, and Kirkuk. Women from Karbala, Hilla, Basra and Nassariyah have all told The Observer similar stories. Of the insidious spread of militia and religious party control - and how members of those same groups are, paradoxically, increasingly responsible for the rape and murder of women outside their sects and communities.

'There is a member of my organisation, an activist who is a Christian,' said Yanar Mohammed, head of the Organisation for Iraqi Women's Freedom, who has had death threats for her work in protecting women threatened by domestic violence or 'honour' killings. 'She would have to walk home each day to her neighbourhood through an area controlled by one of the Islamic Shia militias, the Jaish al-Mahdi. She does not wear a veil so she gets abused by these men.

About three weeks ago, one of them starts following her home saying that he wants a sexual relationship with her. He tells her what he wants to do, and if she doesn't agree he says she will be kidnapped. In the end he thinks that, because he is armed, because he threatens her existence, she will have to agree to a "pleasure marriage" [a temporary sexual union arranged by a cleric].'

Strong anecdotal evidence gathered by organisations such as that of Yanar Mohammed and by the Iraqi Women's Network, run by Hanna Edwar, suggests rape is also being used as a weapon in the sectarian war to humiliate families from rival communities. 'So far what we have been seeing is what you might call "collateral rape",' says Besmia Khatib of the Iraqi Women's Network. 'Rape is being used in the settling of scores in the sectarian war.' Yanar Mohammed describes how a Shia girl was kidnapped, raped and dumped in the Husseiniya area of Baghdad. The retaliation, she says, was the kidnapping and rape of several Sunni girls in the Rashadiya area. Tit for tat.

Similar stories are emerging across Iraq. 'Of course rape is going on,' says Aida Ussayaran, former deputy Human Rights Minister and now one of the women on the Council of Representatives. 'We blame the militias. But when we talk about the militias, many are members of the police. Any family now that has a good-looking young woman in it does not want to send her out to school or university, and does not send her out without a veil. This is the worst time ever in Iraqi women's lives. In the name of religion and sectarian conflict they are being kidnapped and killed and raped. And no one is mentioning it.'

Women activists are convinced there is substantial under-reporting of crimes against women in some areas, particularly involving 'honour killing' - there is a massive increase against a background of pervasive violence - and that families often seek death certificates that will hide the cause.

In regions such as the violent Anbar province, the country's largest, which borders Jordan and Syria, there is little reporting of the causes of any death. And activists complain, in any case, that they have been blocked from examining bodies at the Medical Forensic Institute in Baghdad, or collecting their own figures to build up an accurate picture of what is happening to women.

While attacks on women have long been the dirty secret of Iraq's war, the sheer levels of the violence is now pushing it into the open. Last week in Samawah, 246 kilometres (153 miles) south of Baghdad, three women and a toddler were killed when gunmen stormed their home in an unexplained mass murder. Like Dr al-Tallal in Najaf, they were Shia Muslims in a Shia city. The three women were shot. The 18-month-old baby had her throat slit.

In the north, too, last week the killing of women became more visible, with the al-Jazeera network reporting that attacks on women in the city of Mosul had led to an unprecedented rise in the number of women's bodies being found. Among them was Zuheira, a young housewife, found shot dead in the suburb of Gogaly. Salim Zaho, a neighbour, quoted by the television station, said: 'They couldn't kill her husband, a police officer, so they came for his wife instead.'

It is one of the recurring narratives of murder told by Iraqi women. It is a violence that would not be possible without a wider, permissive brutalising of women's lives: one that permeates the 'new Iraq' in its entirety. For it is not only the religious militias that have turned women's lives into a living hell - it is, in some measure, the government itself, which has allowed ministries run by religious parties to segregate staff by gender. Some public offices, including ministries, insist on women staff wearing a headscarf at all times. A women's shelter, set up by Yanar Mohammed's group, was closed down by the government.

Most serious of all are the death threats women receive for simply working, even in government offices. Zainub - not her real name - works for a ministry in Baghdad. One morning, she said, she arrived at work to find that a letter had been sent to all the women. 'When I opened up the note it said, "You will die. You will die".'

The situation has been exacerbated by the undermining of Iraq's old Family Code, established in 1958, which guaranteed women a large measure of equality in key areas such as divorce and inheritance. The new constitution has allowed the Family Code to be superseded by the power of the clerics and new religious courts, with the result that it is largely discriminatory against women.

The clerics have permitted the creeping re-emergence of men contracting multiple marriages, formerly discouraged by the old code. It is these clerics, too, who have permitted a sharp escalation in the 'pleasure marriages'. And it is the same clerics overseeing the rapid transformation of a once secular society - in which women held high office and worked as professors, doctors, engineers and economists - into one where women have been forced back under the veil and into the home. The result is mapped out every day on Iraq's streets and in its country lanes in individual acts of intimidation and physical brutality that build into an awful whole.

And so in Salman Pak, on the Tigris 15 miles south of Baghdad, The Observer is told, the Karaa Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior rounds up some Sunni men. Later some of the police return to the men's houses and promise their worried women to help find the missing men in exchange for sex.

In the Shia neighbourhood of al-Shaab in Baghdad, militiamen with the Jaish al-Mahdi put out an order banning women from wearing sandals and certain shoes, skirts and trousers. They beat up others for wearing the wrong clothes.

In Amaryah, a Sunni stronghold in Baghdad, Sunni militants shave three women's heads for wearing the wrong clothes and lash young men for wearing shorts. In Zafaraniyah, a largely Shia suburb south of Baghdad, the Jaish al-Mahdi militiamen wait outside a school and slap girls not wearing the hijab.

It is a situation bleakly recorded by the Human Rights Office of the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq. 'There are reports that, in some Baghdad neighbourhoods, women are now prevented from going to the markets alone,' Unami reported. 'In other cases, women have been warned not to drive cars, or have faced harassment if they wear trousers. Women have also reported that wearing a headscarf is becoming not a matter of religious choice but one of survival in many parts of Iraq, a fact particularly resented by non-Muslim women. Female university students are also facing constant pressure in university campuses.'

'Since the beginning of August it has just been getting worse,' says Nagham Kathim Hamoody, an activist with the Iraqi Women's Network in Najaf . 'There are more women being killed and more bodies being found in the cemetery. I don't know why they are being killed, but I know the militias are behind the killing... We went to the mortuary here in Najaf, but the authorities would not co-operate in helping to identify the murdered women. There was one doctor, though, who told us that some of the bodies showed signs that they had been beaten prior to their murder.'

And so the painful lives of Iraqi women go on.

 

[oggbashan]

I said before that the status of women in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was much better than it is now. It was.

The West has made the status of women in Iraq WORSE than it was.

The covert backing of Mujahaddin in Afghanistan against the USSR ended in a victory for the Taleban and made the status of women in Afghanistan WORSE.

Both events were caused by action by the US and its allies. We have no status whatever for demanding improvement by other countries.

Og

 

[Liar]

Og, in probably half the Muslim world the status of women is very bad. In most of the rest it is not good. Only in a few places is it not bad.

Context matters, and the previous three sentences give context.

The fact that murders committed by the IRA were loudly and all but unversally condemned in the Catholic world is context that matters. You didn't see street demonstrations in Catholic countries in which thousands celebrated IRA murders, and chanted "death to the Prods." That matters.

The oppression of women in Islamic societies is so widespread that it is impossible to say that it is the work of minority. The violence done in Islam's name is the work of a minority, but there is plenty of evidence showing that it is supported by a signifigant portion of the population in many Islamic nations. This is context that matters.

Um... Here comes the statistics:

The top ten muslim countries in the world by population:

Indonesia: 213 million
India: 175 million
Pakistan: 162 million
China: approx. 140 million
Bangladesh: 129 million
Egypt: 70 million
Turkey: 68 million
Iran: 67 million
Nigeria: 64 million
Ethiopia: 37 million

Out of those, two of the bottom three, Iran and Nigeria, have legal support different degrees of Sharia law either locally (Nigeria) or nationally (Iran). The others, not.

Old time patriarch rule and exremism is sometimes practiced anyway in rural areas of some of those countries. But that's a crime in the eyes of national law. And at least in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there are whole court bodies who do nothing but crack down on those illegal practices. Change from within, I assume. Slow and tedious work, but work that is being done.

There seems to be an undercurrent that says we shouldn't point these things out or talk about them, because that would somehow be "insensitive." I am not oblivious to the danger in pointing these things out, that doing so can be used by yahoos and demagogs to persecute. That is not sufficient reason to shut up about the existance of injustice, though, or pretend that it is not real, and extremely widespread.

Rox, it's a good thing to point out that there are injustices in the world. But you're barking up the Muslim tree, when the big problem is in the other end of the park. You'll see the same degree of oppression in almost any other poverty ridden and rural dominated society in the world. You have to ask yourself; is Islam the culprit? Or is this a correlation mistaken fpr cause and effect?

Sharia is the villain you're after. But that's not legally practiced in the vast majority of the muslim world.

 

[Pure]

here is a woman whose activity should be supported

http://www.pbs.org/speaktruthtopower/rana.html

Journalist, feminist, and human rights defender, Rana Husseini broke the silence and exposed the shame of Jordan when she unveiled the common but unspoken crime of honor killings there. Honor killings happen when a woman is raped or is said to have participated in illicit sexual activity. Across the globe, women who are beaten, brutalized, and raped can expect police, prosecutors, and judges to humiliate victims, fail to investigate cases, and dismiss charges. Imagine what it means in Jordan, where women who are raped are considered to have compromised their families’ honor.

Fathers, brothers, and sons see it as their duty to avenge the offense, not by persuing the perpetrators but by murdering the victims; their own daughters, sisters, mothers. Honor killings accounted for one-third of the murders of women in Jordan in 1999.

Husseini wrote a series of reports on the killings and launched a campaign to stop them. As a result, she has been threatened and accused of being anti-Islam, antifamily, and anti-Jordan. Yet, Queen Noor took up the cause, and later, the newly ascended King Hassan cited the need for protection of women in his opening address to parliament. The conspiracy of silence has been forever broken thanks to this young journalist who risks her life in the firm faith that exposing the truth about honor killings and other forms of violence against women is the first step to stopping them.


Ms Husseini:

I never imagined that I would work on women’s issues when, in September 1993, I was assigned as the crime reporter at The Jordon Times. In the beginning I wrote about thefts, accidents, fires—all minor cases. Then, after about four or five months on the job, I started coming across crimes of honor. One story really shocked me and compelled me to get more involved.

In the name of honor, a sixteen-year-old girl was killed by her family because she was raped by her brother. He assaulted her several times and then threatened to kill her if she told anyone. When she discovered that she was pregnant she had to tell her family. After the family arranged an abortion, they married her off to a man fifty years her senior. When he divorced her six months later, her family murdered her.

An honor killing occurs when a male relative decides to take the life of a female relative because, in his opinion, she has dishonored her family’s reputation by engaging in an "immoral" act. An immoral act could be that she was simply seen with a strange man or that she slept with a man. In many cases, women are killed just because of rumors or unfounded suspicions.

When I went to investigate the crime I met with her two uncles. At first when I questioned them about the murder they got defensive and asked, "Who told you that?" I said it was in the newspaper. They started telling me that she was "not a good girl." So I asked, "Why was it her fault that she has been raped? Why didn’t the family punish her brother?" And they both looked at each other and one uncle said to the other, "What do you think? Do you think we killed the wrong person?" The other replied, "No, no. Don’t worry. She seduced her brother."

I asked them why, with millions of men in the street, would she choose to seduce her own brother? They only repeated that she had tarnished the family image by committing an impure act. Then they started asking me questions: "Why was I dressed like this? Why wasn’t I married? Why had I studied in the United States?" They inferred that I, too, was not a good girl.

From then on I went on covering stories about women who were killed in an unjust, inhuman way. Most of them did not commit any immoral, much less illegal, act, and even if they did, they still did not deserve to die. But I want to emphasize two things. One is that all women are not threatened in this way in my country. Any woman who speaks to any man will not be killed. These crimes are isolated and limited, although they do cross class and education boundaries.

The other thing is a lot of people assume incorrectly that these crimes are mandated by Islam, but they are not. Islam is very strict about killing, and in the rare instances where killing is counseled, it is when adultery is committed within a married couple. In these cases, there must be four eyewitnesses and the punishment must be carried out by the community, not by the family members involved.

Honor killings are part of a culture, not a religion, and occur in Arab communities in the United States and many countries. One-third of the reported homicides in Jordan are honor killings.

The killers are treated with leniency, and families assign the task of honor killing to a minor, because under Jordanian juvenile law, minors who commit crimes are sentenced to a juvenile center where they can learn a profession and continue their education, and then, at eighteen, be released without a criminal record. The average term served for an honor killing is only seven and a half months.

The reason for these killings is that many families tie their reputation to the women. If she does something wrong, the only way to rectify the family’s honor is to have a wife, daughter, sister killed. Blood cleanses honor. The killers say, "Yes, she’s my sister and I love her, but it is a duty."

I undertook this issue not just because I am a woman, but because most people fight for human rights in general—political agendas, prison conditions, children’s rights—but nobody is taking up this issue. And isn’t it important to guarantee the right of a woman simply to live before fighting for any other laws?

Related to this is the practice of protective custody. If a woman becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she will turn herself in to the police, and they’ll put her in prison to "protect her life." Anywhere else in the world you would put the person who is threatening someone’s life in prison, but in my country and elsewhere in the Arab world, it is the opposite. The victim goes to jail.

Most of these women are held there indefinitely. They are not charged, and they cannot make bail. If the family bails them out, it is to kill them. So these women remain, wasting their lives in prison.

Since I started reporting on the honor killings, things have started to change for the better. When King Hussein opened the Thirteenth Parliament, he mentioned women and their rights—the first time a ruler had emphasized women and children. And now King Hassan is following in his father’s footsteps, with a new constitution where he put in two new sections, one on women. And he asked the prime minister to amend all the laws that discriminate against women. What was not included was a solution; we could begin with a shelter for women. Instead of putting women who seek haven from their families in prison, the government could have programs to rehabilitate them.

Of course this kind of human rights work has its critics. People have accused me of encouraging adultery and premarital sex. Once I had this man threatening that if I didn’t stop writing, he would "visit me" at the newspaper. What upsets me the most is that people want to stay away from the subject by using these excuses.

One woman said, "So what if twenty-five women are killed every year; look at how many illegitimate children are born every year?" So sad. People try to divert the main issue by accusing the victim and portraying evil women as the main cause of why adultery takes place. Women are always blamed in my country, and elsewhere in the world. Everywhere in the world, they are blamed. We are talking here about human lives that are being wasted.

It is important to realize that people who commit the killings are also victims. Their families put all the burden and pressure on their back. If you don’t kill, you are responsible for the family’s dishonor. If you do kill, you will be a hero and everyone will be proud of you.

While I was studying in the United States, I felt that there were good people who were trying to work for other people who were in need of help. I came to believe that if you want to do something or change something, you could do it. But in Jordan many people are passive. They don’t care. Many believe that whatever they do will not affect anything in society.

But I am convinced this is wrong. Because we can’t say, "Okay, I won’t do this because nothing will change." If you adopt this attitude, then it’s true: nothing will ever change. I hope the day will come when I will no longer need to report on these crimes. This will happen when Jordan modernizes, not only materially, but in its awareness of human rights for women. And I am sure that day will come; and it may be closer than we think.

 

[cantdog]

You wanna start a thread about the status of women in Orthodox Christian Russia, rural central or eastern Asia, Native American enclaves, Australian aborigine tribal lands or UK inner cities, be my guest. This one is about Islamic societies, which happen to include one out of every five humans on the planet. In addition, the status of women in Islamic nations is often imposed by law, because to a greater or lesser extent in many Islamic nations the civil law is the same as religious law. For these reasons and others, I think this subject is worth talking about, and am suspicious of efforts to derail the conversation or change the subject.

You say that the oppression of women in Islamic societies is not caused by the religion. I don't know or care what the religion itself "really" says, the oppression is done in the name of the religion. If the Islamic faithful don't like their religion being held responsible for the oppression of women there, they can stop oppressing women.

Then get the hell back on the Jihad thread and speak to us over there. The status of women is no doubt important, but it's not got the urgency of many other difficulties in the world today. These include the collapse of fisheries, the degradation of freshwater, greenhouse gas emissions, the depletion of fossil fuels, overpopulation generally, unsustainable first-world living standards, and many others. Especially if you're not willing to address the status of women anywhere but in "muslim countries," about which, you tell us, you know damn little and care to know less.

You refuse to absorb any significant amount of muslim history, you don't have much concern for the culture of "muslim countries," except insofar as you prefer to believe they oppress women. Further, you are unconcerned how often and to what extent women are oppressed in those places.

To me that makes this entire thread nothing but one big exercise in baiting the liberals. All you want to do is test the extent to which liberals will condemn another society's denials of civil rights. Well, you have had your fun. Why should anyone indulge you any further, discussing a subject which you yourself clearly care little or nothing about?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Um... Here comes the statistics:

The top ten muslim countries in the world by population:

Indonesia: 213 million
India: 175 million
Pakistan: 162 million
China: approx. 140 million
Bangladesh: 129 million
Egypt: 70 million
Turkey: 68 million
Iran: 67 million
Nigeria: 64 million
Ethiopia: 37 million

Out of those, two of the bottom three, Iran and Nigeria, have legal support different degrees of Sharia law either locally (Nigeria) or nationally (Iran). The others, not.

Old time patriarch rule and exremism is sometimes practiced anyway in rural areas of some of those countries. But that's a crime in the eyes of national law. And at least in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there are whole court bodies who do nothing but crack down on those illegal practices. Change from within, I assume. Slow and tedious work, but work that is being done.

Rox, it's a good thing to point out that there are injustices in the world. But you're barking up the Muslim tree, when the big problem is in the other end of the park. You'll see the same degree of oppression in almost any other poverty ridden and rural dominated society in the world. You have to ask yourself; is Islam the culprit? Or is this a correlation mistaken fpr cause and effect?

Sharia is the villain you're after. But that's not legally practiced in the vast majority of the muslim world.

It's good to get specific, but there are inaccuracies in your post. For example, "Hudood" is a set of Quranic laws that legalize the prosecution of a woman for fornication if she cannot prove a crime was committed. National versions differ. In Pakistan, for example, four Muslim men must have witnessed the event, and testify for the victim. If the woman can't produce those witnesses, she can be prosecuted for alleging a false crime. Penalties include stoning to death, lashing or prison. Stoning and lashing are rare, but more than 2,000 Pakistani women now languish in jail, at last count, for Hudood violations.

 

[shereads]

This is a tough call. I abhor the treatment of women in Islamic extremist societies, but if a solution to the worst abuses can be imposed from outside, it will have to happen in baby-steps. We can pressure our own governments to use economic and political pressure against governments that either sanction or fail to enforce laws against female circumcision and other horrors. And we can hope that more effective pressure for change comes from within, as it has in non-Muslim societies where sexual equality under the law - and in the home, beyond the reach of law - is still a new concept. (Japan, for one. I'm no expert, but I understand that Japanese women are decades behind the west in the struggle for workplace equality, as well as domestic issues like the right to use condoms.)

Islam certainly isn't the first or only religion that can be dangerous and offensive in the hands of fundamentalists. Like fervent nationalism, relgious fervor can make ordinary people embrace monstrous ideas. Religion isn't always to blame, either. Victorian women had no legal protection against beatings and worse by their husbands; they could not own property; if they sought a marital separation, they could not have legal custody of their children.

Read the Old Testament and imagine what life must have been like when some of those guidelines were enforced. It advocates raping female slaves taken in battle, and death by stoning for brides accused of not being virgins. Take those chapters of the Bible as the literal Word of God, and you have to wonder why God didn't circumvent the need for a female of the species, if He despises us so much.

I prefer to think it's a case of the tail wagging the dog: God getting credit for policies that benefitted the people in power, who happened to be men; not typical men, but men of a particular kind, who crave more power than they deserve on their own merits. In every age and society, bigotry arises from that kind of insecurity. As long as entrenched bigotry benefits more people than it harms, bigotry survives. It doesn't have to benefit a majority; just a majority of the people who have the means to demand change.

Just weeks ago in the USA, the FBI arrested the leader of a polygamist sect accused of forcing women and girls into multiple-marriage, including incestuous and underage marriage. These sects began when the Mormon church disavowed multiple marriage - a change that might have happened from within, but happened faster because secular laws against polygamy headed west with the population a few decades behind Joseph Smith. Religious freedom conflicted with secular law; in this case, secular law won because the majority of Americans had nothing to lose.

That's the key, isn't it? When it comes to any battle between entrenched misogeny, racism, anti-Semitism or other abuses of human dignity, it's a matter of cost versus benefit. Change begins when the majority of those in power begin to find the practice inconvenient.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Then get the hell back on the Jihad thread and speak to us over there. The status of women is no doubt important, but it's not got the urgency of many other difficulties in the world today. These include the collapse of fisheries, the degradation of freshwater, greenhouse gas emissions, the depletion of fossil fuels, overpopulation generally, unsustainable first-world living standards, and many others. Especially if you're not willing to address the status of women anywhere but in "muslim countries," about which, you tell us, you know damn little and care to know less.

You refuse to absorb any significant amount of muslim history, you don't have much concern for the culture of "muslim countries," except insofar as you prefer to believe they oppress women. Further, you are unconcerned how often and to what extent women are oppressed in those places.

To me that makes this entire thread nothing but one big exercise in baiting the liberals. All you want to do is test the extent to which liberals will condemn another society's denials of civil rights. Well, you have had your fun. Why should anyone indulge you any further, discussing a subject which you yourself clearly care little or nothing about?

Obviously you don't have to indulge me a bit.

Here is something I find very curious. Many words have been posted in this and the Jihad thread saying lots of things, but most of the participants appear to have gone out of their way to avoid agreeing with me that it is wrong for a society to oppress women. Indeed, it seems a great deal of effort is being expended to avoid saying that. And now you are expressing anger that I have even raised the issue, and said it's nothing but "baiting the liberals." If there's a trap here to be baited, it's one of your own making.

You say it's not really a very urgent issue. If you are among the 700 million women in Islamic societies it is at least as urgent an issue as any of the others you have mentioned. As liar and Og have suggested the depth of the oppression varies, and as I have responded, for perhaps half those 700 million women it is very bad indeed.

I actually know quite a lot about the history of Islam, probably more than most of those here. You say I "don't have much concern for the culture of 'muslim countries'." That is a very vague statement; what does "concern" mean? Presumably you are referring to my statements that I don't care what the Koran "really" says, only about things that are done in its name. That is correct. As far as my "concern" for the culture of Islamic societies and nations, in a way you're right. I do care that to a greater or lesser degree almost all of them oppress women, and that rather a lot of violence is committed against Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Islam. Beyond that though, I'm not "concerned for their cultures" or how they live, other than I wish them the same comfort, security and peace that I do for all humans.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

This is a tough call. I abhor the treatment of women in Islamic extremist societies, but if a solution to the worst abuses can be imposed from outside, it will have to happen in baby-steps. We can pressure our own governments to use economic and political pressure against governments that either sanction or fail to enforce laws against female circumcision and other horrors. And we can hope that more effective pressure for change comes from within, as it has in non-Muslim societies where sexual equality under the law - and in the home, beyond the reach of law - is still a new concept.

. . . Change begins when the majority of those in power begin to find the practice inconvenient.

We can do one other thing. Governments are not the only vectors of change in the world. Opinion matters also. We can buck the relativist orthodoxy and confidently assert, "It is wrong to oppress women. You should stop it."

In this way also we can hasten the day "when the majority of those in power begin to find the practice inconvenient."

 

[cloudy]

It's not our culture, Roxanne.

To us, the women seem oppressed, sure, but we can't impose our views, our ways on everybody else.

If there is change, it will have to begin on the inside. We absolutely cannot force our way of life on another culture. It's been tried before, and it's still resented. I'm a prime example.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

It's not our culture, Roxanne.

To us, the women seem oppressed, sure, but we can't impose our views, our ways on everybody else.

If there is change, it will have to begin on the inside. We absolutely cannot force our way of life on another culture. It's been tried before, and it's still resented. I'm a prime example.

I'm not trying to impose anything. I acknowledge that I can't make anyone do anything. It's up to them.

You may say that it is meaningless for me to assert that it is wrong for a society to oppress women, and they should stop it. Maybe it is meaningless, and maybe it isn't. I do think that there is meaning in refusing to assert that it is wrong, however.

And by the way, the women are oppressed, it's not the case that they just "seem" so "to us." They have no choice about their second class status, and that is the definition of oppression. (I acknowledge what Og and Liar have said that the extent of this varies around the Muslim world.)

 

[Pure]

Cloudy //It's not our culture, Roxanne.

To us, the women seem oppressed, sure, but we can't impose our views, our ways on everybody else.

If there is change, it will have to begin on the inside. We absolutely cannot force our way of life on another culture. It's been tried before, and it's still resented. I'm a prime example. //


Rox: I'm not trying to impose anything. I acknowledge that I can't make anyone do anything. It's up to them.

You may say that it is meaningless for me to assert that it is wrong for a society to oppress women, and they should stop it. Maybe it is meaningless, and maybe it isn't. I do think that there is meaning in refusing to assert that it is wrong, however.

And by the way, the women are oppressed, it's not the case that they just "seem" so "to us." They have no choice about their second class status, and that is the definition of oppression. (I acknowledge what Og and Liar have said that the extent of this varies around the Muslim world.)

P: Let's assume that the point here, as cant says, isn't so much to reach the 14 year old, as to induce people--the moral slackers at AH-- to take a stand and make moral judgments, like MJP (moral judgment re Pakistan):

---MJP: "what happens to women, often, in Pakistan, is wrong--e.g. prosecution for *being* raped--and it occurs because of the tyrannical religion and the authoritarian government in collusion."

all of us have some capacity for sympathy--and for withholding it (e.g., those who favor capital punishment). that's what you're tapping into. the status of the moral judgments uttered is another issue. i suppose you want to say, "How can anyone assert MJP and also say, 'but that judgment is relative'? " Doesn't that amount to saying "MJP and I'm not in a position to make any definitive moral judgement."

I don't think so. I'm quite aware of my upbringing; I have ideas about what 'mistreatment' of woman is. Interestingly, when I was growing up, spanking children was NOT thought to be mistreatment, now lots of authorities say it is. So I say, MJP*: "The father who has his daughter killed for 'dating' the wrong person and possibly having sex with him, is wrong," I know where I'm coming from. Based on my background, that's what I think.

Now, you say, but isn't the judgment to be affirmed by anyone, anywhere? Who could think that that's right. Well, I've seen interviews. Often the man's wife thinks it's right. And the brothers of the victim, and maybe even her sisters. And many of her relatives.

Can I guarantee to you that Socrates or Aristotle would reach the same conclusion on issues of 'family honor.' No. (We know A thought women of inferior endowments, morally and intellectually; maybe the suspect ones just be 'offed' rather than investigated and coddled.)

So, coming from where I come from, MJP and MJP* seem appropriate. But I refuse to say they are true for all times and places, or, that it's so 'objective' that any fair person, of any culture can be induced to agree.

Perhaps this is what cloudy was saying, also. Perhaps somewhere in the warp and weft of the universe is "The Absolute Moral Code for Everyone Everywhere at Every time." You may have it by the leg, and I may have it only by the toe, but we don't really know the full nature of the beast. And still, before the 'final revelation' we make our judgments as best we can.

 

[damppanties]

Here is something I find very curious. Many words have been posted in this and the Jihad thread saying lots of things, but most of the participants appear to have gone out of their way to avoid agreeing with me that it is wrong for a society to oppress women. Indeed, it seems a great deal of effort is being expended to avoid saying that.

I never realised any participants disagreed with your condemnation of the oppression of women. From what I can see, they provided instances of where making such a generalised statement is wrong and how women are oppressed in other religions/ societies too. They provided instances where Muslim women are not oppressed and instances where women from other religions/ cultures are also oppressed.

I think we should all take a break and comdemn oppression of women. All of us, in one voice - repeat after me, "Roxanne is right when she says it is wrong for a society to oppress women." And now let us hope that this small, but very important action of ours has helped some woman help herself in some godforsaken part of some Muslim country, because hey, a group of porn writers condemn what is happening to her, and she should take heart from this!

I actually know quite a lot about the history of Islam, probably more than most of those here. You say I "don't have much concern for the culture of 'muslim countries'." That is a very vague statement; what does "concern" mean? Presumably you are referring to my statements that I don't care what the Koran "really" says, only about things that are done in its name. That is correct. As far as my "concern" for the culture of Islamic societies and nations, in a way you're right. I do care that to a greater or lesser degree almost all of them oppress women, and that rather a lot of violence is committed against Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Islam. Beyond that though, I'm not "concerned for their cultures" or how they live, other than I wish them the same comfort, security and peace that I do for all humans.

I am glad you wish them comfort, security and peace Roxanne, but I wish you did something to help them other than merely wishing.

Now, I seriously think that you should care about the culture of Islamic societies and not their religion, because I believe that their culture is to blame for the oppression against women, not their religion. And unless you learn about what you're fighting, you cannot help people. Of course, if the only extent of your 'helping' is standing up and saying that oppression of women is wrong, then that's up to you, but I feel sad, Roxanne, because you do not care enough. You merely think you do but when it comes to acting on what you believe, its suddenly 'they' who need to bring in the change. You're just the one who stands on the sidelines and points it out.