Mona wise at 42 me 60
By Mona Eltahawy
Published in the Jerusalem Report, Metro Canada, Qatar's Al Arab and Denmark's Politiken
As a special gift for my 42nd birthday I met two awe-inspiring women in Kuala Lumpur. We were in the Malaysian capital to attend the second gathering of WISE – Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, a program aimed at improving the status of Muslim women around the world.
I joke Kuala Lumpur is turning into the capital of Muslim feminism – in February I attended the launch there of Musawah, a global movement for justice and equality in Muslim families – but my Malaysian friends assure me KL, as it’s known, still has a way to go.
Nevertheless, for this Egyptian Muslim it is fascinating to see Islam in a non-Arab context. Arab Muslims after all are a minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. Those of us from the Middle East are used to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim points of our region’s religious triangle. In Malaysia, Islam lives with Hinduism and Buddhism, creating a different set of influences and problems.
On top of that mix, the two women’s conferences I’ve attended so far in KL draw on the diversity of Muslims, each one bringing together more than 200 women from around the world, be they from Muslim-majority countries or women from Muslim-minority communities.
My two new heroes are non-Arab. The first is Seyran Ates, 46, a lawyer and women’s rights advocate who was born in Istanbul and has lived in Germany since her family moved there when she was six years old. When she was 17, Ates ran away from her family’s home in Berlin because she wanted to be free of patriarchal traditions and sought refuge in a shelter for battered women. She has narrowly escaped death twice for defending women’s rights.
The first time, when she was just 21 and living at a women’s center, young men of Turkish descent broke in and started firing guns. Ates was shot in the throat and almost bled to death. The woman next to her was killed.
Two years ago, as she was about to enter a Berlin courtroom with a client filing for divorce, the husband assaulted the two women. That attack as well as direct threats against her infant daughter have persuaded Ates – a single mother who is open about the fact that she never married her daughter’s father – to close her legal practice.
She might have closed her legal practice but she continues to fight for women in other ways. She’s written several books condemning political Islamic organizations for their misogyny, the right wing in Europe for its hatred and the left wing for its silence over the violations of Muslim women’s rights. Her latest book in German is called “Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution.” I can’t wait for its English translation.
The second new hero I met at WISE was someone I had never heard of before. It’s been my loss. All I can tell you about her is that she is Iranian. Anything else could jeopardize her safety.
She is fearless and doesn’t need my protection but I couldn’t live with myself if by sharing information about her here I contributed in any way to creating trouble for her when she returns to her country. Iran is going through its most exciting political developments since its revolution in 1979 and my new hero lives a life that has closely mirrored the ebbs and flows of the past three decades.
She was a teenaged supporter of the revolution. As a conservative young woman who chose to cover her hair she supported the Islamic aspects of the revolution that eventually pushed aside the other political strands that had united against the Shah.
But within a decade she became disillusioned with the direction Iran had taken and embraced instead her country’s feminist movement. I too had been a more conservative teenager and I found a lot of comfort in discussing our parallel moves away from orthodox interpretations of Islam.
Just as I listened with a mix of awe and horror to Ates’ retelling of how she survived two attempts on her life, I was equally captivated and heartbroken by my Iranian hero’s recounting her imprisonment for her activism.
She described solitary confinement as “like death” and said the only thing that saved her was her spirituality. But she perseveres and practices what she calls backpack activism by working out of her home – her organization’s office was closed down – and by creating online the kind of space she and other activists don’t have in the “real world.” “Virtual space is very important for us. We don’t have public space to reach people by media,” she told us at WISE.
It is impossible to describe the impact women such as Ates and my Iranian hero had on us at WISE.
Two important initiatives were launched at WISE. The first was the WISE Muslim Women’s Shura (Consultative) Council. That group will at first have just an advisory role but among its goals is the training of muftiyyas – women muftis – who will be versed in Islamic jurisprudence and eventually issue fatwas or religious decrees. The council’s first campaign was the launch in KL of a Jihad Against Violence, targeting violent extremism and domestic violence. The second initiative was the launch of the Muslim Women’s Fund which will invest in innovative projects aiming to improve women’s rights.
With women like Ates and my Iranian hero around, we’re well on our way to being wise indeed.
Headscarves and HymenBy Mona Eltahawy
June 16, 2009
www.huffingtonpost.com
NEW YORK -- When President Barack Obama said he wanted to address women's rights during his speech to Muslims last week, I said a prayer to the God of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran: please don't let him fall into the trap of headscarves and hymens.
The conversation about Muslim women too often revolves around what's on our heads and what's between our legs. My hopes were high that Obama -- surrounded by powerful women at home and work -- would avoid that pitfall of too many Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Confession: I'm utterly under Obama's charm, which worries this woman from the Middle East, where we've had our share of charismatic men with disarming oratory skills. I check that charm with higher expectations of this entirely different creature of president: cosmopolitan, has lived abroad, has family all over the globe. I know Obama knows better than George W. Bush.
Which is why I was distraught that Obama had such low expectations for Muslim women. The 13 or so lines dedicated to us focused on headscarves and education, a bland and stereotypical view of Muslim women that ignored the courageous creativity of so many fighting against misogyny and male-dominated interpretations of my religion.
I met many such women -- some in headscarves, many not -- in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year at the launch of Musawah, a global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family. Panel discussions and dinner talk among the 250 activists and scholars from 47 countries were heated, but not about headscarves or education.
We had much heavier issues on our minds -- like a woman's right to initiate divorce, how to protect women against clerics who say Islam gives a husband the right to beat his wife, fighting forced marriage. In other words, wrestling Islam back from the men who use it against us.
And the conversation will continue when I return to Kuala Lumpur in July for the second gathering of WISE -- Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity -- which has on its agenda the launch the first global Muslim women's consultative council (think of a group of women ready to issue fatwas or religious edicts) as a way of acknowledging Muslim women's hunger for religious authority.
As Muslim women, we're not waiting for the president of the United States to open doors for us or to fight our fights. The Bush administration and its "we'll liberate you by invading your countries" doctrine is thankfully behind us. It is up to us to fight for our rights inside our communities.
But there are several ways the president of the United States can help. He can listen to the diverse voices of Muslim women and not just the most conservative interpretation of Islam that some hear out of misguided "cultural sensitivity."
It is not culturally sensitive for example to stay silent when an eight-year-old girl is forced into marriage as was reported from Saudi Arabia last year. It is criminally unjust. It is invariably men who define "culture" and invariably women and girls who bear its brunt.
By seeing our diversity, the president of the United States can avoid the headscarf conundrum. I'm glad he avoided hymens and it was good to hear Obama make clear to his Muslim audience that the U.S. government had gone to court to protect Muslim women's right to wear headscarves. Surely it should be about choice.
So why not support choice for women everywhere, even in Muslim-majority countries? Here's where it gets complicated and confusing. In Egypt, which played host to Obama's speech, women have gone to court and lost in their fight for their right to wear headscarves as anchors on state-run television channels and as flight attendants on state-owned Egypt Air.
In Saudi Arabia, Obama's first port of call during last week's trip, girls and women have no choice but to cover up or suffer the cruelty of the morality police who in 2002 barred girls from fleeing their burning school building because they weren't wearing headscarves. Fifteen girls burned to death.
In Muslim-majority Turkey -- the first Muslim country Obama visited since taking office -- women are barred from wearing headscarves on state-run university campuses and in government buildings.
When it comes to education, surely the most basic right for girls and women everywhere, again it's complicated. In Saudi Arabia -- recognized as one of the worst violators of women's rights -- women outnumber men on university campuses and yet are treated like minors who need a male guardian's permission to do the most basic things.
Afghanistan is the primary battleground for female education. How I wish Obama had paid homage to the brave girls and women of that country who risk life and limb to learn while the Taliban's misogyny fights to imprison them at home. In May, 90 Afghan girls were hospitalized -- with five slipping briefly into comas -- after the Taliban staged the third poison gas attack in as many weeks on girls' schools.
I wish Obama had promised those girls and women that he would not sacrifice their rights if the U.S. talks to the Taliban as has been suggested as a way to curb fighting in Afghanistan.
I wish Muslim women didn't need their own part in the speech. Many wondered whether Obama would take the safe route and avoid women's rights. But that would have given a free pass to the denial and defensiveness of too many Muslims about the abuse of girls and women committed in the name of our religion.
But I urge Obama to avoid a free pass to over simplified stereotypes. He's too smart -- and charming -- for that.
My Heart versus my Head Over Obama. Mona Eltahawy (My Bumble Bee). 6th June 2009.
By Mona Eltahawy
Patheos.com
June 5, 2009
Do you remember the bit in Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention when he said "If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process that threatens my civil liberties."?
Of course you do.
Well, that was the start of what I now realize is my Obama problem. He inspires the most virulent fight between my heart and my head. Not all Muslims are Arab or vice versa, of course, but like many others I was moved to tears when he said those words. But I'm a journalist. When someone moves you to tears, you start to worry.
So I was on the lookout for goose bumps of all kinds while I was watching Obama deliver his speech in Cairo on June 4.
How ironic that the middle name "Hussein" which the U.S. right wing viciously used to paint Barack Obama as a "secret Muslim" gave him what George W. Bush never had - the benefit of the doubt of Muslims, if just for the 50 minutes of his speech, which - needless to say - Bush could never have given. Not in a million years could he have so deftly maneuvered between one thorny subject after another, mispronounce just one word (hajib seems to be the politically correct way of showing you know that there's an Arabic word for headscarf) and received 30 applause breaks from a mostly Muslim audience.
But it's that middle, it's the "Hussein", that drives at that fight between my heart - so easily charmed by Obama's eloquence and intelligence - and my head - which holds Obama to a higher standard. I know he knows better.
So here's the breakdown of my heart vs. my head:
As a Muslim in the U.S., my heart and head were united in delight that Obama highlighted the role of Muslim Americans and talked of Keith Ellison, the first U.S. congressman. That hyphen between Muslim and American bridges the "us versus them" chasm that so many of the Bush administration's policies and rhetoric widened and inflamed.
Obama's acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering touched my heart, but my head wanted to hear concern for civilian casualties and suffering in Pakistan and Afghanistan. To focus just on Palestinian suffering feeds into the obsession with Palestine that dominates too many conversations among Muslims let alone between Muslims and the U.S.
Obama's revulsion at torture reassured my heart, but my head immediately asked why he didn't condemn torture in my beloved country of birth, Egypt, the host for his talk which is also a popular destination for renditions. Heart and head are furious that my country does America's dirty work.
Oh how he thrilled my heart by bringing up women's rights but why oh why, head demanded, did he have to keep mentioning headscarves every time he spoke of Muslim women? Didn't he spend a good few minutes speaking out against stereotypes? So why perpetuate one that too many, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, share of Muslim women?
Yes education, small business loans and political involvement are all important for this Muslim woman's heart and head but I wish Obama had assured the women and girls of Afghanistan that their rights would not be sacrificed for the sake of a ceasefire or truce with the Taliban or other violent extremists.
For months now, Afghan women's rights activists have urged him to do just that and what a victory for those courageous women it would have been if he'd acknowledged them.
Democracy greatly concerns both heart and head. Many Muslims around the world are upset with the U.S. because it supports dictators in many Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, where Obama gave his speech, and Saudi Arabia where he began his Middle East visit. What better illustration than the absence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the speech and the attendance instead of his son, Gamal, widely rumored to be his father's successor. In a republic, no less.
So, Obama pleased heart with talk of the importance of the rule of law, freedom of expression, etc. but head wanted him to be as bold in condemning the repression of his hosts as he was in broaching those hot potato subjects that trouble the U.S. relationship with Muslims.
Clearly, Obama will keep heart and head busy.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning syndicated columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York.
