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Mona Eltahawy Special to the Star NEW YORK CITY
I'm a Muslim. I'm a feminist. And I'm here to confuse you,” I told attendees at the TEDWomen conference, where I was a speaker, in Washington this week.
The conversation on Muslim women usually revolves around our head scarves and our hymens — what's on our heads (or not), what's between our legs, and the price we pay for it.
For kick-ass feminist icons, I have a long history to choose from....
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I am surprised that we even HAVE feminists still, now, in the 21st century. We did all that stuff decades ago. Back then, it was government leaders we were arguing with, now apparently religion is the cause. I think women should stop thinking of themselves as inferior human beings. Loads of women, not just Muslims, freely sacrifice some freedoms for their religion; Catholics are a case in point. Some women also sacrifeice their freedom in exchange for gold jewellery and a comfortable life. I also suspect that a great deal of religious rules pertaining to women and girls are not, as they appear to be, aimed at 'controlling women's behaviour'; it is about controlling everyone's behaviour. If you can control the family,you can control the culture, the country, and eventually the world. So many of these rules imposed in places like SA, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc seem to be carrying the message 'If you want to be a good Muslim you must control your women!'Some enlightened people suggest that the 'message' is misinterpreted, or even manipulated to treat women as second class beings. And I bet some of the Christian and Hindu countries are at it too.
Most senior religious leaders in the world probably end up power mad. [Just look at the Pope! - some kind of ecclesiastical super-politician, lobbying world leaders mainly [I think] to keep bums on seats, and collection plates rattling.] It's so condescending to women to imply in every case that they are victimised by a mysogynist religion. If we want to be equal, we do have a responsibility to be prepared to fight for it, and maybe suffer for it. If a girl feels that she doesn't want to wear hijab or whatever, on the grounds that 'oh I won't be able to get a husband'. OK bugger it. Don't get married. Take care of your own lazy ass. I certainly wouldn't get back on the street waving a banner to protect the liberties af women who demand a healthy prenup, and plan on spoiling their sons and mutilating their daughters, and wouldn't be caught dead contributing to society beyond shopping.
Posts: 1399 | From: alexandria | Registered: Jan 2002
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Whoopy Doo. Muslims consists of people from all walks of life, literally. You ain't confusing anyone baby. Definitely outdated.
Posts: 2275 | Registered: Dec 2009
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There are many versions of Islam too. There are many Muslims who are liberals, who believe in human rights and the equality of gender.
However Islam is what it is. The Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and what he taught in Quran cannot be changed.
Quran and Hadith say that women are less than men; they are deficient in intelligence and scourge your wives. How can you preach equality without changing what is in Quran?
Quran demands everyone converts to Islam or is "subdued, feels humiliated and pay Jizyah". Is that a choice? How can you build an Islam that talks about tolerance, but neglect the teachings of Quran?
There are Muslims who believe in democracy but what does the Quran say about it? You can try to change Islam into whatever you want it to be, but trying to change it means adding more lies to lies.
Many liberal minded Muslims have tried to change Islam and they have all failed because in the end, the version of Muhammad's Islam always wins.
Posts: 1365 | Registered: Dec 2010
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I am not liberal, I am a fundamentalist Muslim, this means that I follow the Quran alone and not the flock of fairy tales called hadith. All evil that Muslims are accused of and perpetrate comes from hadith.. in the Quran women are not lesser but are equal and violence is only justified in self-defense. Other religions are not persecuted but are expected to pay a sort of tax for the needy, similar to the charity expected from muslims and also in return for protection...
Posts: 195 | From: Nottingham, England | Registered: Jan 2009
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"in the Quran women are not lesser but are equal and violence is only justified in self-defense."
Well, let us see what the Quran says about women. It says “men have a degree (of advantage) over them” that the witness of woman is worth half of that of man; that women inherit half of their male siblings; that a man can marry two or three or four women, that if a women becomes captive in a war, her Muslim master is allowed to have sex with her 33:50; that if a woman is not totally submissive to her husband she will enter Hell,that women are “tilth” for their husbands (to cultivate them) that men are in charge of women, as if women were minors who could not take care of themselves; that they must be obedient to their husbands or be admonished (verbally abused), banished from the bed (psychologically abused) and beaten (physically abused).
Men are promised many virgins after they die. What do women get? Do women get also young celestial studs? No they don’t. They have to maintain their “modesty” even after their death. The truth is that in Islam men and women are not treated equally even after their death. In fact, according to Muhammad few women ever make it to Paradise . The majority of them end up in Hell.
These verses define the station of women in Islam. You see equality of sexes in these verses, I don't.
True, you can interpret the above verses as you like. In fact one can take any book and and interpret it as s/he likes to suit her expectations.
You could even take Hitler's Mein Kampf and give it a different interpretation. You could make the claim that the inner meanings of Hitler’s orders to cremate the Jews is to burn all your attachment to the world and become spiritually enlightened and not to genocide the Jews. You could discover a liberal nazism in which everybody is loving and gentle, and there is no racial hostility.
But to try to keep Nazism and work within it, in order to make it tolerant and humane is also dishonest. It is dishonest because a humane Nazism is no more Nazism.
Likewise saying that Islam is a tolerant religion that respects women’s rights and the rights of non-believers, won’t work. It won't work because Muslims know it is not true, & in the end it is only Muhammad's version of Islam that matters, not yours, not anyone's elses'. No wonder any attempt to reform Islam has failed. Motazalies tried and failed, Sufis tried and failed, Ataturk tried and failed. Every attempt to change Islam will fail because Quran is on the side of the fundamentalists.
In the same way, the average German wouldn't buy into the idea of someone else's different version of Nazism. Because they know a racial tolerant Nazism is not true. No German would be that stupid to believe if someone told him that all the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis were due to the misinterpretations of Hitler’s orders. Every attempt to reform Nazism and re-sell it to Germans would fail for the same reason.
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quote:Originally posted by Stephie_ELH: Other religions are not persecuted but are expected to pay a sort of tax for the needy, similar to the charity expected from muslims and also in return for protection...
There is no evidence of that! This is one of the most ridiculous lies that Muslims love to tell. No one wanted to attack the Muslims. ALL Muhammad’s wars were offensive. Please do not keep repeating the same lies. Here is the text of the message that Mohammad sent to the Julanda brothers the rulers of Oman:
“Peace be upon the one who follows the right path! I call you to Islam. Accept my call, and you shall be unharmed. I am God’s Messenger to mankind, and the word shall be carried out upon the miscreants. If, therefore, you recognize Islam, I shall bestow power upon you. But if you refuse to accept Islam, your power shall vanish, my horses shall camp on the expanse of your territory and my prophecy shall prevail in your kingdom.”
It is clear that Muhammad was the aggressor. Was Persia threatening Islam? Was Syria attack threatening Islam? Was Spain, Morocco, India, Byzantine, Jerusalem or the rest of the world where Muslims invaded, looted, and forced their religion threatening Islam? Tell me what country attacked Islam first. The problem with Muslims is that they lie and they think because this lie is for Islam it is okay.
Posts: 1365 | Registered: Dec 2010
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Muslims in the lands they conquered they offered, as Quran and Sunnah tell them to offer, only three possibilities to non-Muslims: death, conversion, or the status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity known as that of the "dhimmi," with a host of political, economic, and social disabilities.
The Jizya option was open, of course, only if the conquered people happened to be ahl al-kitab, People of the Book, that is Christians or Jews, or came to be treated as such at some point, as happened to Zoroastrians and, after some 60-70 million of them had been killed.
And so, over time, many non-Muslims, in order to avoid this condition of degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity, converted to Islam.
Posts: 1365 | Registered: Dec 2010
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You must read a different Quran from other muslims.
Please show the forum what verses in the Quran speak about Men and Women as Equal. Would love to read these verses because I always thought and read that Islam caters to Men, Hence the reason why we see Heaven is a Males Fantasy.
Peace
Posts: 9651 | From: Reace and Love City. | Registered: Oct 2005
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Fifty years ago Muslim women were much more liberal and militant Islam was not very common. The reason is that at that time Muslims were not very religious. A person can be a Muslim by name but not practice it. During the sixties, most Muslims were Muslims by name. Few went to the mosques. They were more interested in modernization. Wearing veil was deemed as backward thinking. The youth were interested in western culture and as unbelievable as it may sound today the same women who later wore the chador and shouted after Khomeini, death to America, used to wear mini skirts just a few years earlier, listened to the Beatles and rocked and Elvis.
This liberation did not happen by reinterpreting the Quran. It happened because prior to that, during the twenties, Muslim world gave birth to men such as Atta Turk and Reza Shah who banned the veil, jailed the trouble making and hardliner Mullahs and forced secularization on their respective countries, challenging and undermining the influence of Islam in all spheres of the society and at all cost.
Great thinkers emerged that openly challenged the Sharia and blew new breath of secularism and modernism into the ailing body of the Ummah (Muslims). Sheikh Ali Abdul Raziq, an Egyptian scholar confined Islam to spiritual functions and tried to free mundane matters from strict religious or priestly hold. Dr. Taha Hussain, a leading Egyptian scholar, rejected the theory that the political system of early Islam was prescribed by God through His revelation to the Prophet. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a prominent Indian scholar, argued that the Quran did not demand of the follower of any religion that he should accept some new religion. It demanded of every single religious group that it should stick to the real teachings of its religion, shorn of all perversions and interpolations.
Asaf Ali Fyzee, an Indian Moslem thinker, agreed with Abul Kalam Azad that the object of religion was service of humanity and that a static law was unsuitable to a progressive society. In Iran the scholar Ahmad Kasravi denounced Islam and called it the main cause of ignorance and backwardness of the people. He called for modernizing of the country through secularization. At the same time Ali Dashti published his book on the prophetic career of Muhammad revealing the fact the he was not a prophet but an ordinary man with little or no virtues and knowledge worthy to be followed. A few decades before them, the Iranian Mirza Agha Khan Kermani openly stated that Islam was good for “barefooted desert-dwelling camel-herding lizard-eating bloodthirsty savages of Arabia and not for people who were the architects of great civilizations such as the Iranians.”
If in the early half of the twentieth century the militant Islam was almost non-existent, it was not because Islam was interpreted such as to become tolerant and progressive. It was because Islam was attacked and undermined. During those days Muslims prospered and Islamic countries modernized because Islam was not taken into equation.
The Islamic violence is a direct result of the Islamic theology. It is naïve to believe the Wahhabi movement, the Khomeini revolution, have nothing to do with the teachings of the Quran. History, also includes the history of Muhammad and his terrorizing wars.
It is possible to veer Islamic world towards moderation again. This can happen only if religion is weakened. Scholars and politicians in Islamic countries must join force and challenge the authority of the Quran, the infallibility of its author and the legitimacy of his claim. They must secularize Islamic countries and stand strong against the Islamists. With Islam and Sharia in the way, the only future awaiting Muslims is more bigotry, more poverty and more violence.
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