Teaching and Learning at UPEACE
By Mona Eltahawy
The Jerusalem Report
Jan. 4, 2010
It was the end of a three-hour class I’d given on women and Islamist movements. Why do women join such movements, which often bar them from positions of power? Why would a woman who belonged to one such movement tell a researcher “We don’t want equality. We want justice”? Why would the majority of women who belonged to another movement resist demands by fellow sisters that they gain decision-making positions?
And most disturbingly, why would women offer to blow themselves up for violent Islamist movements, whose misogyny outdoes the nonviolent groups’? Is it any different when a woman blows herself than when a man does? Why do women suicide bombers shock people more? Isn’t it clichéd to think that all women are nurturing and less violent than men?
I was spilling my guts out, I knew. Those were issues that mattered to me not just academically or for my columnist’s eye but personally too as a Muslim woman and a feminist. But then, every class was a philosophical roller-coaster that left my students and me alternately elated and drained from the intensity of our discussions.
As I packed up my papers and unclenched my spine at the end of class, one of the Asian students shared an anecdote that made me want to hug her. She told me that during her years as a television producer in her country, her co-workers decided to go on strike and would shave their hair as part of their labor dispute.
“I thought about it and realized that the men had no idea what hair meant for women. In a month, the men would look the same but it was very different for women,” she said. “I refused to shave my hair. I was the only woman who refused and I came under a lot of pressure but I refused.”
Clearly, I was learning as much as I was teaching.
The campus: the U.N.-mandated University for Peace. The class: “Women and New Media in the Middle East,” which I was teaching to graduate students from 14 different countries.
The country: Costa Rica, which became the first country to abolish its armed forces in 1948. (Imagine! We all know what was happening in the Middle East in 1948!)
The lessons walked home with us. The students would tell me of hours of arguments and debates they’d have – face to face and (apropos our class on how New Media gave women in the Middle East unprecedented avenues for expression) via Facebook.
Spending a year studying alongside students from more than 70 countries brings the world to you; yes, it’s exhilarating, but it also reminds you of how frustrating and unknown that world can be. When you encounter for the first time ideas and ideologies that your home country had sheltered you from or when you’re sitting just across the room from someone whose values you’ve never contended with before – either because you’re conservative and your classmate across the room explains what it’s like to be bisexual or because you’re liberal and the classmate across the room thinks homosexuality is unnatural – nothing short of alchemy is at work: nothing will be the same again.
I traveled as a child with my family. We left Egypt when I was 7 and I didn’t return till I was 21. Of my 42 years, I’ve spent just 17 in Egypt. But I didn’t travel by myself until I was 27 years old. My solo journeys before that were intellectual and were conducted not in a class of 14 nationalities but between the covers of books. Books brought me the exhilaration and terror of new ideas that helped me deconstruct and reconstruct Mona.
The youngest of my students was 22 and the oldest 33. Their deconstruction and reconstruction was happening before my eyes.
My education at UPEACE continued at “home” too, in the hotel where other visiting professors and I lived during the course. Imagine the privilege of having dinner with one of the world’s leading researchers and educators in nonviolent struggles. As a young student, Mary E. King worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) in the U.S. civil rights movement and here she was, the author whose many books include “Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,” giving me goosebumps by telling me it was my duty to write a book.
And right over there at the next table, another dinner companion/teacher: Jan Pronk, who spent almost 40 years as a Dutch politician and diplomat, including four terms as a minister in Dutch governments. He served for two years as Head of Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan before Sudanese President Omar Bashir effectively pinned a badge of honor on his chest by asking him to leave Sudan after Pronk criticized a deal between Khartoum and a Darfurian rebel group. The students got decades worth of experience from professors like King and Pronk and I got them both for dinner.
But I was in trouble. Students under renovation and legendary professors notwithstanding, Costa Rica – hands down the most beautiful country I’ve ever been to – was messing with my head. With every look at the stunning Central Valley vista laid before us at the campus, I knew I’d lose my mojo (read: anger), if I stayed here too long. It was impossible to be angry at anything.
So for the sake of my writing, I had to leave and, so, as soon as I finished teaching my course, I left .
Europe's call to intolerance/ (Referendum's?! S. C.)
Why are Islamic Extremists Obsessed with Women's Bodies?
By Mona Eltahawy
The Jerusalem Report
Jan. 4, 2010
It was the end of a three-hour class I’d given on women and Islamist movements. Why do women join such movements, which often bar them from positions of power? Why would a woman who belonged to one such movement tell a researcher “We don’t want equality. We want justice”? Why would the majority of women who belonged to another movement resist demands by fellow sisters that they gain decision-making positions?
And most disturbingly, why would women offer to blow themselves up for violent Islamist movements, whose misogyny outdoes the nonviolent groups’? Is it any different when a woman blows herself than when a man does? Why do women suicide bombers shock people more? Isn’t it clichéd to think that all women are nurturing and less violent than men?
I was spilling my guts out, I knew. Those were issues that mattered to me not just academically or for my columnist’s eye but personally too as a Muslim woman and a feminist. But then, every class was a philosophical roller-coaster that left my students and me alternately elated and drained from the intensity of our discussions.
As I packed up my papers and unclenched my spine at the end of class, one of the Asian students shared an anecdote that made me want to hug her. She told me that during her years as a television producer in her country, her co-workers decided to go on strike and would shave their hair as part of their labor dispute.
“I thought about it and realized that the men had no idea what hair meant for women. In a month, the men would look the same but it was very different for women,” she said. “I refused to shave my hair. I was the only woman who refused and I came under a lot of pressure but I refused.”
Clearly, I was learning as much as I was teaching.
The campus: the U.N.-mandated University for Peace. The class: “Women and New Media in the Middle East,” which I was teaching to graduate students from 14 different countries.
The country: Costa Rica, which became the first country to abolish its armed forces in 1948. (Imagine! We all know what was happening in the Middle East in 1948!)
The lessons walked home with us. The students would tell me of hours of arguments and debates they’d have – face to face and (apropos our class on how New Media gave women in the Middle East unprecedented avenues for expression) via Facebook.
Spending a year studying alongside students from more than 70 countries brings the world to you; yes, it’s exhilarating, but it also reminds you of how frustrating and unknown that world can be. When you encounter for the first time ideas and ideologies that your home country had sheltered you from or when you’re sitting just across the room from someone whose values you’ve never contended with before – either because you’re conservative and your classmate across the room explains what it’s like to be bisexual or because you’re liberal and the classmate across the room thinks homosexuality is unnatural – nothing short of alchemy is at work: nothing will be the same again.
I traveled as a child with my family. We left Egypt when I was 7 and I didn’t return till I was 21. Of my 42 years, I’ve spent just 17 in Egypt. But I didn’t travel by myself until I was 27 years old. My solo journeys before that were intellectual and were conducted not in a class of 14 nationalities but between the covers of books. Books brought me the exhilaration and terror of new ideas that helped me deconstruct and reconstruct Mona.
The youngest of my students was 22 and the oldest 33. Their deconstruction and reconstruction was happening before my eyes.
My education at UPEACE continued at “home” too, in the hotel where other visiting professors and I lived during the course. Imagine the privilege of having dinner with one of the world’s leading researchers and educators in nonviolent struggles. As a young student, Mary E. King worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) in the U.S. civil rights movement and here she was, the author whose many books include “Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,” giving me goosebumps by telling me it was my duty to write a book.
And right over there at the next table, another dinner companion/teacher: Jan Pronk, who spent almost 40 years as a Dutch politician and diplomat, including four terms as a minister in Dutch governments. He served for two years as Head of Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan before Sudanese President Omar Bashir effectively pinned a badge of honor on his chest by asking him to leave Sudan after Pronk criticized a deal between Khartoum and a Darfurian rebel group. The students got decades worth of experience from professors like King and Pronk and I got them both for dinner.
But I was in trouble. Students under renovation and legendary professors notwithstanding, Costa Rica – hands down the most beautiful country I’ve ever been to – was messing with my head. With every look at the stunning Central Valley vista laid before us at the campus, I knew I’d lose my mojo (read: anger), if I stayed here too long. It was impossible to be angry at anything.
So for the sake of my writing, I had to leave and, so, as soon as I finished teaching my course, I left .
Europe's call to intolerance/ (Referendum's?! S. C.)
By Mona Eltahawy
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 Washington Post
My question for Switzerland and other European countries enthralled by the right wing: When did Saudi Arabia become your role model?
Even before 57.5 percent of Swiss voters cast ballots on Sunday to ban the building of minarets by Muslims, it was obvious that Switzerland's image of itself as a land of tolerance was as full of holes as its cheese. When the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) came to power in 2007, it used a poster showing a white sheep kicking black sheep off the country's flag. This was no reference to black sheep as rebels -- the right wing doesn't do cute -- but to skin color and foreigners. Posters the SVP displayed before Sunday's referendum showed women covered from head to toe in black, standing in front of phallic-looking minarets. Such racism preceded and fed into the bigotry that fueled the referendum.
Predictably, the election results sparked cries of "Islamophobia," but the situation for Switzerland's 400,000 Muslims is not (yet) dire. The four existing minarets were not affected by the vote, and there are still 150 mosques or prayer rooms in which to worship.
Further, the Council of Europe, the continent's top human-rights watchdog -- whose chairmanship, ironically, Switzerland recently took over -- has already said the ban could violate fundamental liberties, and the Swiss justice minister said the European Court of Human Rights could strike down the vote.
But the real issue here is more fundamental than whether or when Muslims can build minarets in Switzerland. Until Europe confronts long-simmering questions about how it treats immigrants -- Muslims and others -- the continent will continue to convulse with embarrassing right-wing eruptions that strip it of any right to preach to anyone on human rights and liberties.
Europe is an aging continent that depends on the "foreigners" its right-wing politicians love to rail about. In Switzerland, for example, it's difficult for immigrants and even their children to get citizenship.
As a Muslim who believes in the separation of church (and mosque and synagogue) and state, I pay attention when people say they are opposed to political Islam. But to suggest, as nationalist parties in Switzerland did, that minarets are symbols of political Islam is ridiculous.
Minarets are used to issue the call to prayer, not to recruit people to Islamic political groups. If the SVP finds such prayer calls too noisy, I'd like to see it try to stifle church bells.
Raising the specter of "political Islam" or "creeping Islamicization" to frighten voters diminishes the concerns that ought to be discussed, such as an ideology's opposition to many minority and women's rights. And that's where the difficult questions lie for Europe's Muslims. They, too, have a right wing that breeds on fear and preaches an exclusionary and inward-looking Islam. It is the perfect foil for the non-Muslim political right wing on the continent. But while these conservative Muslim views might hold some moral sway, they have none of the political power of the SVP and its cohorts.
Meanwhile, condemnations from the Muslim world -- where some have semi-jokingly called for a boycott of Swiss chocolate -- underscore the other sort of hypocrisy that must be confronted if Muslim complaints of bigotry are to be taken seriously.
The Grand Mufti of Egypt, for example, denounced the ban as an "attack on freedom of belief." I would take him more seriously if he denounced in similar terms the difficulty Egyptian Christians face in building churches in his country. They must obtain a security permit just for renovations.
Last year, the first Catholic church -- bearing no cross, no bells and no steeple -- opened in Qatar, leaving Saudi Arabia the only country in the Persian Gulf that bars the building of houses of worship for non-Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, it is difficult even for Muslims who don't adhere to the ultra-orthodox Wahhabi sect; Shiites, for example, routinely face discrimination.
Bigotry must be condemned wherever it occurs. If majority-Muslim countries want to criticize the mistreatment of Muslims living as minority communities elsewhere, they should be prepared to withstand the same level of scrutiny regarding their own mistreatment of minorities. Millions of non-Muslim migrant workers have helped build Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups have long condemned the slave-like conditions that many toil under, and the possibility of Saudi citizenship is nonexistent. Muslim nations have been unwilling to criticize this bigotry in their midst, and Europeans should keep in mind that Sunday's ban takes them in this direction.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born writer and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.Why are Islamic Extremists Obsessed with Women's Bodies?
Alaa Al Aswany
The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 6:57pm
(Thanks to Tarek Fatah and Adnance Osmane for the headsup)
The Shabaab movement in Somalia controls large parts of the south and centre of the country, and because officials in this movement embrace the Wahhabi ideology, they have imposed their views on Somalis by force and have issued strict decrees banning films, plays, dancing at weddings, football matches and all forms of music, even the ring tones on mobile phones.
Some days ago, these Islamic extremists carried out a strange operation: They arrested a Somali woman and whipped her in public because she was wearing a bra. They announced clearly that wearing bras was un-Islamic because it is a form of fraud and deception.
We may well ask what wearing bras has to do with religion, why they would consider them to be a form of fraud and deception and how they managed to arrest the woman wearing the bra when all Somali women go around with their bodies completely covered. Did they appoint a special female officer to inspect the breasts of women passing by in the street?
One Somali woman called Halima told the Reuters news agency: "Al-Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts. ... They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat."
EXCESSIVE INTEREST
In fact, this excessive interest in covering up women's bodies is not confined to the extremists in Somalia.
In Sudan, the police examine women's clothing with extreme vigilance and arrest any woman who is wearing trousers. They force her to make a public apology for what she has done and then they whip her in public as an example to other women.
Some weeks ago, Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein insisted on wearing trousers and refused to make the public apology. When she refused to submit to flogging, she was referred to a real trial and the farce reached its climax when the judge summoned three witnesses and asked them if they had been able to detect the shape of the accused's underwear when she was wearing the trousers.
When one of the witnesses hesitated in answering, the judge asked him directly: "Did you see Lubna's stomach when she was wearing the trousers?"
The witness gravely replied: "To some extent."
Ms. Hussein said she was wearing a modest pair of trousers and that the scandalous pair she was accused of wearing would not suit her at all because she is plump and would need to lose 20 kilograms in order to put them on.
The judge convicted her anyway and fined her 500 pounds or a month in prison.
In Egypt, too, extremists continue to take an excessive interest in women's bodies and in trying to cover them up entirely. They advocate not only that women wear the niqab, but also that they wear gloves, believing they will ensure that no passions are aroused when men and women shake hands.
We really do face a phenomenon that deserves consideration: Why are Islamic extremists so obsessed with women's bodies?
POSSIBLE ANSWERS
Some ideas might help us answer this question.
First, the extremist view of women is that they are only bodies and instruments for either legitimate pleasure or temptation, as well as factories for producing children. This view strips women of their human nature.
Accusing the Somali woman of fraud and deception because she was wearing a bra is the same charge of commercial fraud that the law holds against a merchant who conceals the defects of his goods and makes false claims about their qualities in order to sell them at a higher price. The idea here is that a woman who accentuates her breasts by using a bra gives a false impression of the goods (her body), which is seen as fraud and deception of the buyer (the man) who might buy (marry) her for her ample breasts and later discover that they were ample because of the bra and not by nature.
It would be fair to remember that treating women's bodies as commodities is not something found only in extremist ideologies, but often happens in Western societies, too. The use of women's naked bodies to market commercial products in the West is merely another application of the idea that women are commodities. Anyone who visits the red-light district in Amsterdam can see for himself how wretched prostitutes, completely naked, are lined up behind glass windows so that passersby can inspect their charms before agreeing on the price. Isn't that a modern-day slave market, where women's bodies are on sale to anyone willing to pay?
Second, the extremists believe women to be the source of temptation and the prime cause of sin. This view, which is prevalent in all primitive societies, is unfair and inhuman, because men and women commit sin together and the responsibility is shared and equal. If a beautiful woman arouses and tempts men, then a handsome man also arouses and tempts women. But the extremist ideology is biased in favour of the man and hostile to the woman, and considers that she alone is primarily responsible for all sins.
Third, being strict about covering up women's bodies is an easy and effortless form of religious struggle. In Egypt, we see dozens of Wahhabi sheiks who enthusiastically advocate covering up women's bodies, but do not utter a single word against despotism, corruption, fraud or torture because they know very well that serious opposition to the despotic regime (which should really be their first duty) would inevitably lead to their arrest, torture and the destruction of their lives. Their strictness on things related to women's bodies enables them to operate as evangelists without any real costs.
Somalia is a wretched country in the grip of famine and chaos, but officials there are distracted from that by inspecting bras. The Sudanese regime is implicated in crimes of murder, torture and raping thousands of innocents in Darfur, but that does not stop it from putting on trial a woman who insisted on wearing trousers.
It is women rather than men who always pay the price for despotism, corruption and religious hypocrisy.
Fourth, the extremist ideology assumes that humans are a group of wild beasts who are incapable of controlling their instincts, that it is enough for a man to see a bare piece of female flesh for him to pounce on her and have intercourse. This assumption is incorrect, because humans, unlike animals, always have the power to control their instincts by willpower and ethics. An ordinary man, if he is sane, cannot have his instincts aroused by his mother, sister, daughter or even the wife of a friend, because his sense of honour and morality transcends his desires and neutralizes their effect.
So virtue will never come about through bans, repression and pursuing women in the street, but rather through giving children a good upbringing, propagating morality and refining character.
According to official statistics, societies that impose segregation between men and women (as in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia) do not have lower rates of sexual crimes than other societies. The rates there may even be higher.
HUMANE VIEW
We favour and advocate modesty for women, but first we advocate a humane view of women, a view that respects their abilities, their wishes and their thinking.
What is really saddening is that the Wahhabi extremism that is spreading throughout the world with oil money and gives Muslims a bad image is as far as can be from the real teachings of Islam. Anyone who reads the history of Islam fairly has to be impressed by the high status it accords to women, because from the time of the Prophet Mohammed until the fall of Andalusia, Muslim women mixed with men, were educated, worked and traded, fought, and had financial responsibilities separately from their fathers or husbands. They had the right to choose the husband they loved and the right to divorce if they wanted. Western civilization gave women these rights many centuries after Islam.
Finally, let me say that religious extremism is the other face of political despotism. We cannot get rid of the extremism before we end the despotism. Democracy is the solution.
------------
Alaa Al Aswany is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Yacoubian Building and Chicago, and is a regular contributor to the Egyptian newspaper Al Shorouk.
Mona Eltahawy: Torture for Beer Drinkers
By Mona EltahawyTuesday, October 27, 2009
The Washington Post
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA During the recent U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman painted a picture of Malaysia that many like to see -- a multiethnic mosaic of religions, races and beliefs. "The Malaysian government has introduced the One Malaysia concept," Aman said. "It aims at fostering appreciation and respect for all races, seeing diversity as a source of strength. It envisages unity that arises from true acceptance instead of mere tolerance."
Yet the same day that Aman extolled the virtues of one Malaysia for all, a judge's ruling back home conveyed an image of the Southeast Asian nation with a two-track justice system that unfairly punishes Muslims.
The chief Islamic law judge of the eastern state of Pahang upheld a religious court's verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer. There is debate here over whether the state law under which Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was convicted and sentenced violates provisions of federal law. The question underscores the challenge that individual state governments -- which have sole authority over Islamic issues -- pose to the federal government, and the fairness of a legal system that applies only to Muslims, whose personal offenses are tried under "sharia," or religious, law.
After Kartika, 32, pleaded guilty to drinking, the sentencing judge threatened to jail her for three years if she didn't pay a fine of $1,400. Kartika paid the fine and came close to being caned in August before an uproar in the media and among rights activists earned her a temporary reprieve. She would be the first Muslim woman to be caned in Malaysia if the sentence is carried out.
Kartika's case is just one example of the increasing harshness of Malaysia's separate justice system for Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of the population. Last month an Islamic court sentenced an unmarried couple to caning for trying to have sex in a car. An Islamic court in another state ordered an Indonesian Muslim man to be whipped six times and jailed a year for drinking liquor at a restaurant.
Ten of Malaysia's 13 states impose fines on Muslims who are caught drinking alcohol -- though the Muslim holy book, the Koran, does not stipulate a punishment for this transgression -- while three states have recently ordered caning. Such punishments apply only to Muslims; non-Muslims must abide only by civil laws, so they are free to drink or engage in other behavior forbidden under Islam.
This dual system of justice amounts to state interference in Muslims' private lives. State efforts to "protect" Muslims from sin include a government attempt to ban Muslims from a rock concert because it was sponsored by a beer company. (The government eventually backed down.)
Although Malaysia has long prided itself on being a role model of a "moderate" majority-Muslim nation, politicians have taken to brandishing their conservative and punishment-focused Islamic credentials to attract the votes of Muslims drawn to "purer" leaders. Many Muslims are afraid to challenge the Islamists for fear of being labeled as anti-Islamic or ignorant of Islamic tenets. "This is definitely not the Malaysia I grew up in, which was far more relaxed and tolerant. This has really been a political development over the last decade or so where political parties have used Islam in order to win the Muslim vote," Marina Mahathir, a writer and a blogger, told me by e-mail.
And contrary to the One Malaysia theme, the politicization of religion has even led to hostility against non-Muslims. In late August, for example, a group of Muslims paraded the severed head of a cow, the most sacred animal in Hinduism, to protest the construction of a Hindu temple. A Malaysian civil court charged 12 protesters with criminal offenses.
Hamidah Marican, executive director of the group Sisters in Islam, whose request for a review of Kartika's sentencing was recently rejected, seeks to challenge the image Malaysian officials present of a tolerant country. Harsh punishments such as caning, she says, actually violate Islamic principles.
"Islam is compassionate. There are 107 verses in the Quran that talk of forgiveness," Marican said. "Personal sins are between you and God, not for man to judge. Sharia laws are in fact often the result of juristic activity involving human beings; hence they're fallible."
Malaysia plans to again seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council next year, but members of the council should know that caning is a humiliating punishment that violates international conventions against torture, to which Malaysia is a signatory.
The Malaysian government must acknowledge that interfering in people's private lives and sentences such as caning are the antithesis of a "moderate" Muslim state. Malaysia must make clear what kind of country it wants to be. Is it the nation of the splendid Kuala Lumpur skyline, blending the traditions of its mosques and temples with the modernity of the dazzling Petronas Towers? Or is it a judgmental, moralistic nation that obsesses over the private lives of its citizens?
A Book Burner for UNESCO?
By Mona Eltahawy
The Washington Post
Monday, September 14, 2009
As deliberations began ahead of voting for the new culture chief of the United Nations, news surfaced last week that Egyptian police had arrested more than 150 people for allegedly breaking the daylight fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
What does a security crackdown resembling Saudi-style morality policing have to do with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization?
A lot, given that a serious contender for that UNESCO job is Farouk Hosni, Egypt's culture minister for the past 22 years. During his lengthy tenure, Hosni has alienated many Egyptians by suffocating cultural and intellectual freedom while giving a leg up to religious zealotry.
The most strenuous objections to Hosni's bid have been charges of anti-Semitism tied to comments he made in May 2008 that he would "burn Israeli books" himself if he found any in Egyptian libraries.
Yet the anger behind these protests should be directed at Hosni's boss, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has controlled Egypt for 28 of the 30 years since it became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel. When it comes to Israel, Mubarak has perfected the art of double dealing -- keeping official and business ties intact (and the border with Gaza closed) but unleashing populist anger at the Jewish state and barring cultural ties ostensibly in solidarity with Palestinians.
In just the sort of backdoor dealings that sustain the peace treaty, Israel has promised it won't oppose Hosni's bid in return for an unstated diplomatic trade-off with Egypt.
A stronger case against Hosni's bid to lead the U.N. cultural organization would focus on how he has used censorship and disregarded individual freedom to ultimately strip Egypt of its robust culture. He might not have actually burned books, but he has banned plenty. In 2006, Hosni ordered all copies of "The Da Vinci Code" confiscated and banned the film from Egyptian screens. Never mind that the Vatican itself hadn't called for such a ban, that thousands of Egyptians already owned copies of the book and that bootleg DVDs were already on sale in Egypt.
Hosni told an applauding parliament: "We ban any book that insults any religion."
That ban came in response to a complaint from a Christian parliamentarian, but Hosni, himself an artist, has capitulated to Muslim zealotry, too. In 2001, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood -- the Islamic political organization that today is the main opposition to Mubarak's regime -- serving in parliament complained that three novels published by a branch of the Culture Ministry were "pornographic." They weren't. One literary critic said, "Anyone excited by the prospect of reading these three novels in order to get a pornographic kick will be very disappointed."
But within days, Hosni had ordered an investigation, and the books were pulled from circulation.
Not content to merely agree that the novels were "pornographic," Hosni fired three employees of the Culture Ministry, including the head of the department that published them, and dismissed concerns about freedom of expression by saying: "My fundamental responsibility is to protect society's values from pornographic works." He reminded people that Egypt wasn't Europe.
Hosni has told writers who flouted social values to leave Egypt and has vowed not to publish any book, even novels, that contested religion or violated those values.
For Muslim and Christian Egyptians who believe the state is not in charge of policing our morals, it is disturbing to see the culture minister claim he is the guardian of our values -- and only a short step from that to the police in Aswan arresting people last week for allegedly publicly breaking the Ramadan fast, disregarding religious freedoms and the rights of Christians.
The reign of fundamentalists is unsurprising given the stifled political atmosphere in Egypt. Mubarak is Egypt's longest-serving president in modern history -- and for all of his years in power, Egypt has been under a state of emergency that allows him to suspend the rule of law.
One of UNESCO's missions is to promote freedom of expression, so why would it want a director who has so adeptly stifled such freedom?
Hosni belongs to a regime that has decimated practically all forms of political opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood is essentially the last man standing, and the secular intelligentsia is considerably weakened. When Hosni has agreed that books deserve to be banned, he has flown the flag for the regime's tactic of outdoing the fundamentalists in religiosity.
Today that tactic involves the use of Salafi Islam -- an ultra-conservative interpretation most common in Saudi Arabia -- to fight the Brotherhood, hence the Ramadan arrests. The ramifications for Egypt's already frail freedoms are worrisome, to say the least.
Hosni's supporters say that it's time for an Arab U.N. cultural chief. It may be. But with his record, Farouk Hosni doesn't deserve to head UNESCO. Those of us proud of our Arab heritage, full of artists who challenge and enlighten rather than restrict in efforts to "protect" our morals, know that Farouk Hosni is not the man to represent us.
=================
Mona is back from Denmark and Upstate New York Jews and Moslems have Dialogues:
A Jew and a Muslim Go Upstate
By Mona EltahawyJerusalem Report
Sept. 14, 2009
I was getting ready to head up to my room on the last night of a retreat for emerging Jewish and Muslim religious leaders when I stumbled upon an argument between two of my favorite people at the gathering – a Jewish woman and a Muslim man.
It went something like this:
Woman: “My people were kicked out but it’s always been our land. And now we’ve just returned to our homeland.”
Man: “European Jews? It isn’t their homeland. It’s the land of the Palestinians. “
Woman: “I can’t believe you said that. We’re this tiny country…”
Man: “Yeah and because you’re so tiny and yet so powerful is proof of how you people control everything.”
I thought for sure they’d lost their minds – three days in the stiflingly hot, clean air of the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York had obviously melted the politically correct masks they’d worn so well and here they were saying how they really felt. Here they were finally acknowledging the elephant in the room. It was more like elephant wrestling.
Not once in the three days we’d spent comparing and contrasting the Torah’s and Quran’s rendition of the Joseph saga – the theme of our retreat - had either one of them exhibited any tell tale signs.
My face obviously gave me away. They burst out laughing.
“We’re rehearsing for the “Difficult Conversations” session tomorrow morning,” the man explained.
In the skit’s final version the Jewish Woman and the Muslim Man – they are stand-ins now, I know – are sitting next to each other on plane and learn of their respective backgrounds when a flight attendant arrives with a Kosher and a Halal meal.
The elephants are truly in the mud now.
Muslim Man: (when the woman mistakenly takes his Halal meal) “Just like a Jew, taking what isn’t yours.”
Jewish Woman: (when the man says something she doesn’t like) “Just like an Arab, ignorant and uneducated.”
Our group - 20 participants and four scholars – laughed with a mix of horror and relief.
We’ve all heard such ugliness. Seeing it so starkly aired out loosened us up to see what we were up against and how to fight it.
I’ve never understood why they always put the Christians between us Muslims and Jews at interfaith groups. Christian friends: please understand. It’s not that I don’t want to “dialogue” with you. It’s just easy to lose focus when there are three sensibilities waiting to be offended and who has bigger elephants waiting to wrestle in the mud than Jews and Muslims?
And surely that “Judeo-Christian” term should be “Judeo-Muslim” in recognition of everything we have in common, from dietary laws of the observant to marriage laws of the conservative.
So I salute Rabbis Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer and Melissa Heller of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for bringing us together. It was brave and necessary to bring just Jews and Muslims together, especially those of us here in the U.S., where our respective communities are minorities whose relationship is too often determined by a conflict most members of our respective communities have never experienced in person.
We tread a fine line. Isn’t the conflict hostage enough already to the religious zealotry of Jews and Muslims who have often marginalized Christians and turned the conflict into one over whose side God was on?
But it’s also foolish to ignore religion. Especially when some of us are trying to have that “difficult conversation” – e.g. the harsh things our respective religious texts at times say about people outside of our faith and how easily such harshness seeps into and stains attitudes over the conflict.
Starting that “difficult conversation” with the “other side” can nudge us into talking to our “own side” about the things that hurt the most and for me, it’s women’s issues that hit every bone.
I joke that if I was Jewish I would be Reconstructionist or maybe Reform – a liberal denomination that ordains women. I was one of 50 women and 50 men who prayed behind American Muslim scholar Amina Wadud in the first public mixed gender prayer in New York in 2005. Several other women have since led men and women in prayer but we’re still far from ordaining women.
So it gave me hope to learn that about 150 years ago or so Jewish women began writing their own commentaries and interpretations of the Torah and that the first woman rabbi was ordained in the U.S. in the 1970s.
Several Muslim women have interpreted various parts of the Quran during the past two decades and Laleh Bakhtiar became the first Muslim woman to translate the Quran into English in 2007.
Although it wasn’t as painful as the Jewish Woman vs Muslim Man skit, I had my own difficult conversation at the (off the record) retreat with a Muslim man I promised to call Omar.
Here’s a snippet; not a rehearsal but very real:
Omar: (hearing that Mona supported the rights of gay and lesbian Muslims to identify as such and to lead active sexual lives) “Where in the framework of Islamic jurisprudence does it allow that?”
Mona: “I’m outside the framework. Where are women in that framework? It’s all been written by men.”
Omar: “Oh so you’re way out there.”
And it is in the vulnerability of embracing being way out there or inside the framework, despite the judgment, that the conversation really begins.
==================================
Yale's Misguided Retreat
By Mona Eltahawy washington post
Saturday, August 29, 2009
In deciding to omit the images from a book it is publishing about the controversy sparked by Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Yale University Press has handed a victory to extremists. Both Yale and the extremists distorting this issue should be ashamed. I say this as a Muslim who supported the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten's right to publish the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in late 2005 and as someone who also understands the offense taken at those cartoons by many Muslims, including my mother. After a while, she and I agreed to stop talking about them because the subject always made us argue.
For more than two months in 2006, I lived in Copenhagen, where I debated the issue with Danes -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- including Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, who commissioned the images, and Naser Khader, Denmark's first Muslim parliamentarian, who launched the liberal Democratic Muslims group just as the controversy unfolded.
Speaking at a conference that Khader hosted at the Danish parliament a year after the cartoons' publication, I warned of two right wings -- a non-Muslim one that hijacked the issue to fuel racism against immigrants in Denmark, and a Muslim one that hijacked the issue to silence Muslims and fuel anti-Western rhetoric.
Sadly, both groups are celebrating Yale's decision because it has proven them "right."
The controversy that many might recall as "Danish newspaper publishes cartoons of the prophet; Muslim world goes berserk" was actually much more complex. What occurred across many Muslim-majority countries in 2006 was a clear exercise in manufacturing outrage. Consider:
Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons in September 2005. The widespread protests in majority-Muslim countries that eventually left more than 200 dead did not start until about four months later. Indeed, when an Egyptian newspaper reprinted one cartoon in October 2005 to show readers how a Danish newspaper was portraying the prophet, no backlash was heard in Cairo or elsewhere.
Jytte Klausen, the Danish-born author of the Yale Press's forthcoming book, "Cartoons That Shook the World," recognizes that lag. According to Yale Press's Web site, she argues that Muslim reaction to the cartoons was not spontaneous but, rather, that it was orchestrated "first by those with vested interests in elections in Denmark and Egypt, and later by Islamic extremists seeking to destabilize governments in Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya, and Nigeria."
I'm perplexed why Klausen agreed -- even "reluctantly" -- to Yale's decision to pull the cartoons. Ironically, she told the Guardian that she wanted to publish the cartoons to make the case "that some of them are Islamophobic, and in the tradition of anti-Semitism" -- the latter a view that would hardly inflame many Muslims.
Yale also cut from the book images of the prophet meant to illustrate the history of the depiction of Muhammad in Ottoman, Persian and Western art. Sunni Muslims observe a prohibition on depictions of the prophet -- but since when has Yale? It says it pulled the images on advice from Islamic and counterterrorism experts that they could incite violence, but at least one author and expert on Islam, Reza Aslan, has criticized the move as "idiotic" (he also retracted a blurb he had written in support of the book).
The cowardice shown by Yale Press recognizes none of the nuance that filled my conversations in Copenhagen nor discussions I had with Muslims in Qatar and Egypt during the controversy. Many told me they were dismayed at the double standards that stoked rage at these Danish cartoons yet did not question silence at anti-Semitic and racist cartoons in the region's media.
Does Yale realize that it has proven what Flemming Rose said was his original intent in commissioning the cartoons -- that artists were self-censoring out of fear of Muslim radicals?
Yale has sided with the various Muslim dictators and radical groups that used the cartoons to "prove" who could best "defend" Muhammad against the Danes and, by extension, burnish their Islamic credentials. Those same dictators and radicals who complained of the offense to the prophet's memory were blind to the greater offense they committed in their disregard for human life. (Indeed, some of those protesters even held banners that said, "Behead those who offend the prophet.")
When a group of Danish imams flew to the Middle East in late 2005 with "offending images" of the prophet -- some cartoons from the controversy and other images taken from the Web sites of extremist groups -- the timing was ripe for the bandwagon of outrage to roll: The Muslim Brotherhood had become the largest opposition group in the Egyptian parliament. In January 2006, Hamas had just won the Palestinian elections.
One by one, regimes and Islamists competed in outrage, whipping up a frenzy that at times spiraled out of control.
Unfortunately, those dictators and radicals who want to speak for all Muslims -- and yet care little for Muslim life -- have found an ally in Yale University Press.
Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-born commentator based in New York, writes and lectures on Arab and Muslim issues. She is a columnist for the Danish newspaper Politiken.
Let's be frank: Arab world would benefit from talking about sex.
Stifling this conversation can have deadly consequences
By Mona Eltahawy
(Slightly shorter version appears in Monday's Toronto Globe and Mail)
Sex has ruffled many in the Arab world lately. About time.
Just this past week, Saudi Arabia shut down all local operations of a Lebanese TV station that broadcast an interview with a Saudi man who spoke frankly about sex.
When Mazen Abdul-Jawad, 32 and a divorced father of four, took Lebanon's LBC into his bedroom to boast that “everything happens in this room,” show his sex toys, explain that he lost his virginity at the age of 14 to a neighbour, and then host a sex chat with male friends, he was providing the sensational material that has made the show Bold Red Line notorious.
But this is ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, where the morality police can detain a man and a woman out in public unless the two can prove they're related. And yet there was Mr. Abdul-Jawad explaining how he hooks up with women by using the Bluetooth technology on his phone.
To add insult to injury, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal controls the TV station which broadcast Abdul-Jawad’s interview and which a spokesman for the Culture and Information Ministry said had damaged the kingdom’s reputation. Confused?
It gets worse when you understand that the same Prince Al-Waleed also owns a religious TV station which caters to the conservative views Saudi Arabia is more often associated with as well as a music television channel that promotes racier fare, including scantily-clad singers and anchorwomen hired to attract viewers and advertising revenues.
Sex sells after all. But Abdul-Jawad has been vilified and has begged in media interviews for forgiveness from Saudi society for appearing on the show which he claims manipulated and duped him. He could face a flogging sentence
Abdul-Jawad’s “sex confessions” have only told the Arab world what it already knows: deny it all you like and threaten to punish it but unmarried men and women, as everywhere, are having sex.
If they didn’t already know that, why are there at least 1,000 virginity tests requested every year in Jordan according to Dr. Moemen al-Hadidi, chairman of the National Forensic Center? Jordanian women’s rights groups insist that men too undergo chastity tests - and for good reason. Jordanian parliament refuses to pass legislation to toughen sentences for so-called honor crimes in which Muslim and Christian men murder women relatives they suspect of suspicious behavior.
So who is talking about sex openly in the Arab world? Women.
Not surprising considering that it is women who suffer the most from double standards around sexuality in the region. Women must also face Islamists' attempts to silence the relatively relaxed attitudes toward married sex in the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed that stress sexual pleasure for both husbands and wives.
Wedad Lootah, marriage counsellor in the family guidance department of Dubai Courts in the United Arab Emirates, and Heba Kotb, an Egyptian sex therapist, are proponents of such a message.
Ms. Lootah, who covers her entire body including her face, is the author of Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples , published earlier this year. Ms. Kotb, who wears a head scarf, is the host of a popular sex show broadcast widely across the Arab world.
Both women have received threats and condemnations, but they can continue their work because their conservative style of dress and their message, firmly based in Islamic teachings, give them permission and legitimacy.
But what of those who are having sex outside marriage? Who lie outside the box of husband-and-wife sex promoted by Ms. Lootah and Ms. Kotb, and who want to have a more constructive conversations about sex than shows like Bold Red Line allow?
They go online, where for the past few years young Arabs especially have migrated to express themselves in unprecedented ways. More than half of Saudi bloggers are women and they know that what is banned in the “real world” can find a place in the virtual one.
Consider the Arabic-language novel Al Akheroon ( The Others ), written under the pen name Siba al-Harz – a semi-autobiographical novel in the voice of a Shia lesbian Saudi woman. Banned in Saudi Arabia (I bought my copy in Beirut) it is available as a PDF online. Also online, you can read blogs by anonymous lesbian and gay Arabs and find support groups offering help for a minority fighting both religious and social discrimination.
Syrian writer Salwa Al-Neimi draws on the Arab world's history of sexual frankness in her novel which has became one of the best-selling books translated into English under the title “The Proof of the Honey”. It was banned in most Arab capitals but there’s no denying the classical texts she refers to such as “The Perfumed Garden”, a kind of Muslim “Kama Sutra”, by Sheikh Nefwazi. I first came across it on the shelves of the librarary at the university I attended in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. An English translaton by Sir Richard Burton is available online.
As Arab economies tumble along with the global recession, the age at which people can afford to marry is getting higher. Religion might teach chastity, but the reality is otherwise, and unless we talk about sex in the Arab world more, the pitiful sex education on offer in most countries will continue to fail young people, especially women who pay the highest price for silence.
The Arab world cannot afford to stifle the conversation about sex. Arabs are just as vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-AIDS and we owe it to ourselves to move sex talk beyond sensationalism and conservatism. Denial is deadly.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues.
By Mona Eltahawy
(Slightly shorter version appears in Monday's Toronto Globe and Mail)
Sex has ruffled many in the Arab world lately. About time.
Just this past week, Saudi Arabia shut down all local operations of a Lebanese TV station that broadcast an interview with a Saudi man who spoke frankly about sex.
When Mazen Abdul-Jawad, 32 and a divorced father of four, took Lebanon's LBC into his bedroom to boast that “everything happens in this room,” show his sex toys, explain that he lost his virginity at the age of 14 to a neighbour, and then host a sex chat with male friends, he was providing the sensational material that has made the show Bold Red Line notorious.
But this is ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, where the morality police can detain a man and a woman out in public unless the two can prove they're related. And yet there was Mr. Abdul-Jawad explaining how he hooks up with women by using the Bluetooth technology on his phone.
To add insult to injury, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal controls the TV station which broadcast Abdul-Jawad’s interview and which a spokesman for the Culture and Information Ministry said had damaged the kingdom’s reputation. Confused?
It gets worse when you understand that the same Prince Al-Waleed also owns a religious TV station which caters to the conservative views Saudi Arabia is more often associated with as well as a music television channel that promotes racier fare, including scantily-clad singers and anchorwomen hired to attract viewers and advertising revenues.
Sex sells after all. But Abdul-Jawad has been vilified and has begged in media interviews for forgiveness from Saudi society for appearing on the show which he claims manipulated and duped him. He could face a flogging sentence
Abdul-Jawad’s “sex confessions” have only told the Arab world what it already knows: deny it all you like and threaten to punish it but unmarried men and women, as everywhere, are having sex.
If they didn’t already know that, why are there at least 1,000 virginity tests requested every year in Jordan according to Dr. Moemen al-Hadidi, chairman of the National Forensic Center? Jordanian women’s rights groups insist that men too undergo chastity tests - and for good reason. Jordanian parliament refuses to pass legislation to toughen sentences for so-called honor crimes in which Muslim and Christian men murder women relatives they suspect of suspicious behavior.
So who is talking about sex openly in the Arab world? Women.
Not surprising considering that it is women who suffer the most from double standards around sexuality in the region. Women must also face Islamists' attempts to silence the relatively relaxed attitudes toward married sex in the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed that stress sexual pleasure for both husbands and wives.
Wedad Lootah, marriage counsellor in the family guidance department of Dubai Courts in the United Arab Emirates, and Heba Kotb, an Egyptian sex therapist, are proponents of such a message.
Ms. Lootah, who covers her entire body including her face, is the author of Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples , published earlier this year. Ms. Kotb, who wears a head scarf, is the host of a popular sex show broadcast widely across the Arab world.
Both women have received threats and condemnations, but they can continue their work because their conservative style of dress and their message, firmly based in Islamic teachings, give them permission and legitimacy.
But what of those who are having sex outside marriage? Who lie outside the box of husband-and-wife sex promoted by Ms. Lootah and Ms. Kotb, and who want to have a more constructive conversations about sex than shows like Bold Red Line allow?
They go online, where for the past few years young Arabs especially have migrated to express themselves in unprecedented ways. More than half of Saudi bloggers are women and they know that what is banned in the “real world” can find a place in the virtual one.
Consider the Arabic-language novel Al Akheroon ( The Others ), written under the pen name Siba al-Harz – a semi-autobiographical novel in the voice of a Shia lesbian Saudi woman. Banned in Saudi Arabia (I bought my copy in Beirut) it is available as a PDF online. Also online, you can read blogs by anonymous lesbian and gay Arabs and find support groups offering help for a minority fighting both religious and social discrimination.
Syrian writer Salwa Al-Neimi draws on the Arab world's history of sexual frankness in her novel which has became one of the best-selling books translated into English under the title “The Proof of the Honey”. It was banned in most Arab capitals but there’s no denying the classical texts she refers to such as “The Perfumed Garden”, a kind of Muslim “Kama Sutra”, by Sheikh Nefwazi. I first came across it on the shelves of the librarary at the university I attended in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. An English translaton by Sir Richard Burton is available online.
As Arab economies tumble along with the global recession, the age at which people can afford to marry is getting higher. Religion might teach chastity, but the reality is otherwise, and unless we talk about sex in the Arab world more, the pitiful sex education on offer in most countries will continue to fail young people, especially women who pay the highest price for silence.
The Arab world cannot afford to stifle the conversation about sex. Arabs are just as vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-AIDS and we owe it to ourselves to move sex talk beyond sensationalism and conservatism. Denial is deadly.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues.
Abusing Women and Islam. Mona Eltahawy:
International Herald Tribune Aug. 15, 2009July, hot and usually slow for many of us, was a month of humiliation and pain for 164 Muslim women sentenced to a public flogging for “crimes” as varied and absurd as wearing trousers in public to having sex outside of marriage in countries as far afield as the Maldives, Sudan and Malaysia,
The most famous of those 164 is Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese journalist who was among 13 women arrested by police at a Khartoum café on July 3 and charged with violating the country’s “decency laws” by wearing trousers.
Ten of those women accepted a fine and flogging but Ms. Hussein and two others contested the charges, which they’re now fighting in court. The Sudanese regime barred her from traveling to Lebanon earlier this week to give a television interview on her trial, which resumes on Sept. 7.
It’s bizarre to use the word “lucky” to describe a woman facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers, but by virtue of her position and clout, that’s exactly what Ms. Hussein is. She is also brave and defiant: Ms. Hussein resigned her position as press officer for the United Nations, which could have earned her immunity from the charges, to stand trial.
And most importantly she is a Muslim woman who knows that a flogging for wearing trousers is sheer and utter nonsense; she has said she was ready to “receive (even) 40,000 lashes” if that’s what it takes to abolish the law.
Not so lucky have been the thousands of other Sudanese women — Muslim and non-Muslim southern Sudanese women. They have served as the whipping girls for the Sudanese regime’s cheap game of flogging women to show off its “Islamic principles.”
The International Criminal Court has indicted President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. His janjaweed allies in Darfur have been accused of rape. Trousers are “indecent” but rape is just another reminder of how useful women’s bodies are in conveying the message.
Mr. Bashir is an unabashed dictator. How then to explain the silence of the Maldives’ liberally-inclined President Mohamed Nasheed at the flogging sentences handed out to 150 of his countrywomen in July for extramarital sex?
It’s depressingly simple. To appease Islamists he needs for his ruling coalition, he offers up the easiest chips to bargain with — women. Ruling according to “Islamic law,” courts in the Maldives sentenced about 50 men along with those 150 women to flogging.
Why is the ratio of women-to-men to be flogged 3-to-1? Men can escape a flogging for extramarital sex just by denying the charges. Women who become pregnant after the sex find their babies used as evidence against them. According to official statistics from the Department of Judicial Administration, the Maldives sentenced a total of 184 people to flogging in 2006 — 146 were women.
Claims that courts in the Maldives rule according to “Islamic law” are hollow at best and at worst a moral offense to the justice and compassion that we are taught are central pillars of Islam. The Maldives no longer cuts off the hands of thieves. Instead, it pours its zeal for “Islamic law” into flogging, a punishment that seems to be designed to torment mostly women.
If you want to know what a public flogging is like, search online for a video showing the Talban flogging a screaming woman in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.
For the faint of heart, there is Amnesty International’s description from the Maldives of the public flogging of an 18-year-old woman on July 5. She received 100 lashes after being accused of having sex with two men outside of marriage. Local journalists reported the woman fainted after receiving the lashes. The court ruled the woman’s pregnancy was proof of her guilt; the men involved in the case were acquitted, Amnesty said.
Also on July 5, an “Islamic court” in Malaysia sentenced a Muslim woman to be flogged with a rattan cane for having a beer with her husband in a nightclub.
As Zainah Anwar, a Muslim Malaysian feminist who is project director of Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family, reminded her country’s authorities, “Neither the Koran nor the Hadith [sayings of Prophet Muhammad] prescribes any form of punishment for drinking alcohol ... Islamic teachings emphasize forgiveness, compassion and positive personal transformation. So why punish in the first instance?”
Flogging is a cruel and inhuman punishment that is banned by international law and conventions like the one against torture, to which the majority of countries in the world are signatories.
It is time for the international community to take away the pass to the international club from countries that duck out of their international obligations under the pretext of “cultural or religious” reservations.
One hundred and sixty-four women were sentenced to flogging in July alone. Where is the outrage?
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born commentator on Arab and Muslim issues.
The Sounds of Silence on Iran
By Mona Eltahawy The Washington Post
Thursday, June 25, 2009 followed with my Comment.
Do you hear the silence from the Arab world over events in Iran?
Let's start with Arab leaders, who are experts at vote rigging -- if they hold elections at all. What could they possibly say about the Iranian election, or the allegations of vote fraud, without sounding hypocritical? Nor would they rush to congratulate longtime nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of a regional rival with nuclear ambitions.
The Arabs are quiet, but their silence is surely tempered with discomfort. The demographics of most Arab nations mirror those of Iran: The majority of Arabs are young. It's likely that many young Arabs watching thousands of Iranians demanding to be heard, Arabs who are suffocating under dictators of their own, thought, "That's me."
For some, the silence is the sound of despair, for in Iran we are seeing the implosion of the politics of cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Let's look at the Arab world's legacy: A succession of Arab leaders were known simply for standing up to America and Israel. It did not matter what they did to their own people, the human rights violations, the mass graves, the stifling of the media and most forms of expression. Standing up to the United States and Israel was enough.
In that sense, Ahmadinejad is a familiar figure. And Saddam Hussein is gone. Libya's Moammar Gaddafi has gone from U.S. foe to friend. The region is full of U.S.-supported dictators, from President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Standing up to America and Israel fell to non-state entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and their money trail leads to Iran. Ahmadinejad is simply the latest leader whom Arabs have lionized and forgiven for cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Little did the repressions visited upon Iranians matter, even though the hardships they endured were often mirrored in Arab cities cheering on Ahmadinejad. Iran supported the Palestinians, and Ahmadinejad regularly railed at the United States and threatened Israel.
But with thousands in Ahmadinejad's own country filling the streets, effectively saying that it's not enough to simply stand up to America and Israel, what now for those Arabs who lionize Ahmadinejad? Especially now that George W. Bush is gone? Where is the sympathy or support for the plight of the Iranians?
Silence.
That silence is the sound of hearts breaking over the dream of political Islam. When the 1979 revolution swept away the U.S.-backed shah and his injustices, Iran held out the tantalizing mirage of rule by Islam, even for countries that were not majority Shiite. Thirty years later, Iranians are protesting not a secular, U.S.-backed dictator but a system run by clerics who claim to uphold democracy as long as its candidates are given the regime's stamp of approval.
What's happening in Iran is not about the United States or Israel. It's not about Ahmadinejad or Mir Hossein Mousavi. It's not even about the poor or the rich in Iran. The demonstrations are about people who feel their will and voice have been disregarded. In Egypt, it's our secular dictator, in power for almost 28 years, who disregards our will. In Iran, it's a clerical regime in power for 30 years, hiding behind God.
Dictatorship by clerics is not more acceptable because its torture and beatings are committed in the name of God.
This must be especially difficult for political Islamic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which congratulated Ahmadinejad on his "victory" and yet whose generational disagreements and divisions mirror those in Iran: A young generation of Muslim brothers and sisters has over the past few years challenged the Brotherhood's aging leadership on issues such as prohibiting female and Christian leaders.
That aging leadership gave the young Muslims the very undemocratic choice of shutting up or leaving.
How do we know? The same way we've known about much of Iran's strife -- through blogs and social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These days, most of the noise in the Arab world is online.
Online, you will hear bloggers connecting repression in Iran and Arab countries. Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, known for exposing police brutality on YouTube, was quick to send Twitter alerts that Iran's clerics, like the Mubarak regime, used plainclothes thugs to terrorize demonstrators. Online, you will hear young Arabs express envy over the huge Iranian demonstrations in the face of government crackdowns. Online, Arabs will expose U.S. hypocrisy and ask what happened to U.S. support for peaceful demonstrators when they were beaten and dragged off Cairo streets in 2005 and 2006.
Online, Arabs argue over the politics of cutting off our nose to spite our face, challenging each other to support Iranian democrats despite Ahmadinejad's taunts at America and Israel.
Tired of the Arab world's embarrassing silence over Iran? Go online. Iranian blogs are older and more established than many in the Arab world, but the Web is giving voice to the voiceless and shattering the silence.
Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-born commentator based in New York, writes and lectures on Arab and Muslim issues. She received the European Commission's 2009 Samir Kassir Prize for Freedom of the Press for opinion writing.
My Comment:
Interesting Note and Interesting Comments, But I am not sure that the Problem is Silence, Most times it is the Growing Gap between what they say and What they do.
And as a Computer Specialist I can tell you that If a Person has a Pre-conceived Idea the Media and Internet will not change it. Example if you think USA is Bad then you will ignore any information that proves the contrary.
I could give more Examples but Mona understands MY Silence....
