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Not logged in on "It all began on March 8th: feminism and fatwas...... "

Not logged in — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:02:02 +0000

Berbers as Anti-Islamists and Anti-Arab Nationalists

I’ve been studying the Middle East and Islam since 1969 but there is still so much to learn. It was only on visiting Salem Chaker, professor of Berber studies at the University of Paris in March 2006 that I realized the vibrancy and oppositional nature of Berber culture - or to use the preferred nomenclature, Amazigh culture. As Chaker’s professional position suggests, the Amazigh have a considerable presence in France as part of the immigration from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. In the English-speaking world, however, they remain almost invisible.

MEMRI took a small step today toward changing that by publishing a fascinating collection of North Africa press commentaries under the title, "’Berbers, Where Do You Stand on Palestine?’" As the MEMRI introduction explains:

Throughout the recent fighting in Gaza, the mainstream North African press was nearly unanimous in its support for the Palestinians and its condemnation of Israel. Some Amazigh (Berber) activist groups, though, made a point of distancing themselves from this mainstream view - for which they were attacked by the Islamist press. While a number of conservative and left-wing Amazigh groups expressed support for the Palestinians, others expressed contrary views, to underline their non-Arab identity and their belief that North Africa should detach itself politically and culturally from the Middle East.

Then follow six excerpts from the Moroccan and Algerian media concerning Berber attitudes towards the war in Gaza. Some of it is bitter indeed, as, for example, a commentary by Moha Moukhlis, a Berber activist:

And the so-called ’Arab street[?]’ A brainless herd that has been indoctrinated and riled up and that has lost all sense of gravity and direction. They express their hatred for the Jews, whom they hope to exterminate from the face of the Earth... Yet this ’Arab street’, which sees itself as the voice of the [world’s] peoples, never dared to lift a finger against the crimes committed by the Hamas fundamentalists, or by the Arabo-Islamist regimes against non-Arab populations in Darfur, Kurdistan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria, or Niger. No! [And] the rights of the Amazigh people are supposed to be sacrificed on the altar of [this] Arab fundamentalism.

For other MEMRI reports on the Amazigh, see here

Comments: (1) Mercilessly repressed on every level - linguistic, cultural, religious, political - the Amazigh nonetheless show signs of defining their identity, in part through emigration and in part through new media. (2) It is time for Washington to begin factoring them into its foreign policy. (February 26, 2009)

by Daniel Pipes, February 26, 2009

Source: http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=565

Liz Gado on "Iraqi women refugees: surviving in Syria"

Liz Gado — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:20:20 +0000

I just can't beleive that war is still a word in our dictionary, what have we learned from the past... nothing.

Bajar libros

Nadejda Letat on "Iraqi women refugees: surviving in Syria"

Nadejda Letat — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:57:04 +0000

Nadejda Letat

I wonder if George Bush realizes what his invasion of Iraq has done to Iraqi women and children - the most vulnerable members of any culture. But the least Syrian Government can do is to protect these victims of Bush's war! By protecting & treating refugees of war more generously, Syria would be showing up USA for what it is - bully of the world! Don't have to go to war against USA - just shame them! If that is possible?

Nadejda Letat, Melbourne, Australia

Nadejda Letat on "Syrian Women's Rights: "the fight does not stop here""

Nadejda Letat — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:38:57 +0000

Nadejda Letat

I am pleased to read that men are joining women in their fight against violence against women and children in Syria, Violence against women and children is a worldwide crime and is not specific to a particular culture and we must all work towards gender equality and protection of children.

Nadejda Letat

Melbourne, Australia.

Nadejda Letat on "Enough: ending private justice and violence against women "

Nadejda Letat — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:10:38 +0000

Aspacia - you have lost before you have begun! Have more hope! Surely there must be some men in Lebanon who reject violence against women and children. And Hizbollah must realize that without women's support in what they are trying to achieve for their country, their job is going to that much more difficult.

Nadejda Letat
Melbourne, Australia

Jenny Allsopp on "Working for women's rights in Jordan"

Jenny Allsopp — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:50:34 +0000

Last Thursday I attended Femmes en Resistance (Women in a State of Resistance), a round-table discussion with representatives from female resistance movements in Burkina Faso, France, and the Maghreb. This event was held in Montpellier as part of The 19th Quinzaine des Tiers-Mondes, a fortnight of events highlighting the struggles of various minorities and resistance groups across the globe.

Although I am aware that each state has individual needs, the impressive degree of alliance and support which frames the female resistance movement across the Arab world, thanks to organisations like Karama, is something which has struck me for some time. Listening to Afaf’s podcast, I was therefore not surprised to find many common notes between her discourse and that of Rachida Haidoux, the representative from the Franco-Maghreb cultural association, Coup de Soleil, who offered a comparative view of the female resistance movements in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria at Thursday’s roundtable.

The thread of consistency which binds their discourses together is recognition of the need to adopt a multi-dimensional approach and attack the root causes of the problem. Whilst Afaf recognises the key role of policy change, like Rachida, she also highlights the fact that policy changes must both stem from and be replanted back into the cultural and social soil. Afaf takes as her example the revision of the Mudwana, now frequently, and often symbolically, referred to as The Moroccan Family Code. She notes that 4 years after its revision only 1% of women were profiting from the amendment to guardianship law.

The progressive revision of the Mudwana has been celebrated internationally, and Rachida claims that today Morocco is the most ‘dynamic and interesting’ of the countries of the Maghreb. Yet Araf seems sceptical; the female resistance may appear strong on paper, but the aforementioned figure clearly shows that policy changes simply must be translated into grass-root currency before true success can be proclaimed.

At the Montpellian roundtable it was a Christine Delteil, a French representative of the CIDF, The Centre d’Information des Droits des Familles (The Information Centre for Family Rights) who really encapsulated the importance of awakening the social consciousness when she stated that ‘at the base of society, at the base of democracy, and at the base of equality, is someone who knows their rights.’

And this need to include the masses in the movement by making them aware of their existing and potential rights is something which Rachida did not leave unaddressed. In a country where 46% of women are illiterate, Rachida stressed the need to proactively inform women about their new rights, as well as reminding them, and in many cases introducing them, to their basic human rights: ‘this is the only way to combat violence and oppression’. And it is not just a question of targeting women. Naturally, men form an essential part of the equation too.

Rachida, like Afaf, is optimistic for the future. She retains a celebratory attitude and hopes to see a rise of initiatives such as the ‘women caravans’, teams which head out into Moroccan villages to inform people about the new Family Law; this certainly seems like the kind of thing which Afaf is talking about when she stresses the need to link policy change to attitude change.

aspacia on "Enough: ending private justice and violence against women "

aspacia — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:27:37 +0000

Hizbollah will never accept this law.

Rev EM Ukpong on "Hidden Crimes"

Rev EM Ukpong — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:47:12 +0000

Women are generally believed to be weeker sex, but that is not a right to over look the fact that women are also God's image.
It is certain that so many women are passing through difficult times in their homes, mostly in some parts of Africa.
In one of those homes I visited some time ago, a woman was unjustly treated by the in-laws because her husband put her in control of his business.
Again, the same woman who had given birth to three girls was further maltreated because she has no male child as a male child is believed to be the hier in the home.
African women are really hurt in their matrimonial homes and i want you to PLEASE look into the matter because women are also the foundation of the future.

YG on "Podcast: reform of family law in Egypt is prompting discussion about women's sexual rights within marriage"

YG — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:32:48 +0000

Very interesting piece.

opendemocracy on "Sidney Blumenthal - part one"

opendemocracy — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:15:21 +0000

comprehensive material

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "Sidney Blumenthal - part one"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:32:08 +0000

The "talk theme" is an exposition of open democracy, what many countries in the world still need to learn admiring: that makes American democracy relatively beautiful - I mean [that] 'openness' allowing one to see the 'breadths' and 'widths', or call it rationality of "civil liberties" not in the shadows of "political rights".

The theme is 'academic' and indeed 'issues-focused': a body of facts balanced historically as narratives. If it is assumed that every regime period is an experiment, the picture we now have is that the period and experiment under review produce "tragic plot reversals" from the point of view of (i) deepening democracy and (ii) making effective good governance exemplary. The reversals are therefore too unfolding to be comfortable for a great nation and that is sad at the same time as it is beautiful that it is democracy that is going to remedy the situation. What is sad but full of lessons relevant, in my opinion here seems well woven into the discourse of Lawrence Whitehead (1999-84-98), considering the insights to his "The Drama of Democratization". Here we are introduced in high academic language to the furry of transitions in politics that knows no boundary - less developed or developed states! It is about the reality of transition, and now we have simplified and called it CHANGE!

The DEMOCRATS, understand what it means, and I guess it is that, which the "talk-theme" aims at, so hopefully they are now united to win in the face of the REPUBLICANS capitalising on the same theme, with excuses for them as a party over the 8 years soon to end. There is a sense of awakening in American politics and democracy - one which would do well to search inwardly to come out strong outwardly, especially thinking of the verdicts as we are seeing them passed here and there now! I won't back out saying that there is "grace" this time cognizant of real politics for the democrats to go ahead with!

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

Not logged in on "poDcast21: the Nobel Women's Initiative"

Not logged in — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:05:06 +0000

i want to know more how the group work .
who set up this group
where are they come from especially women's who won noble prize

dia fnaish on "Rebuilding civil society in Sierra Leone"

dia fnaish — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:07:59 +0000

Hi there
My name is Dia Fnaish and I would like to share some information about the crimes against women. I came across this while researching statistics and thought it might be of interest.

The victimization of women is a special area of concern, and both the NCVS and the UCR contain data on gender as it relates to victimization. Statistics show that women are victimized less frequently than men in every major personal crime category other than rape,72 is The overall U.S. rate of violent victimization is about 25 per 1,000 males age 12 or older, and 18 per 1,000 female 73

When women become victims of violent crime, however, they are more likely than men to be injured (29% versus 22%, respectively).74 Moreover, a larger proportion of women than men make modifications in the way they live because of the threat of crime.75 Women, especially those living in cities, have become increasingly careful about where they travel and the time of day they leave their homes—particularly if they are unaccompanied—and in many settings are often wary
of unfamiliar males.

Date rape, familial incest, spousal abuse, stalking, and the exploitation of women through
social-order offenses such as prostitution and pornography are major issues facing American society
today. Testimony before Congress tagged domestic violence as the largest cause of injury to American women.76 Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once identified violence against women by their partners as the number one health problem facing women in America.77 Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) reveal the following78:

■ Physical assault is widespread among American women. Fifty-two percent of surveyed
women said that they had been physically assaulted as a child or as an adult.
■ Approximately 1.9 million women are physically assaulted in the United States each year.
■ Eighteen percent of women experienced a completed or attempted rape at some time in their lives.
■ Of those reporting rape, 22% were under 12 years old, and 32% were between 12 and 17 years old when they were first raped.
■ Native American and Alaska Native women were most likely to report rape and physical assault, while Asian/Pacific Islander women were least likely to report such victimization. Hispanic women were less likely to report rape than non-Hispanic women.
■ Women report significantly more partner violence than men. Twenty-five percent of surveyed women, and only 8% of surveyed men, said they had been raped or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date.
■ Violence against women is primarily partner violence. Seventy-six percent of the women who had been raped or physically assaulted since age 18 were assaulted by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, or date, compared with 18% of the men.
■ Women are significantly more likely than men to be injured during an assault. Thirty-two percent of the women and 16% of the men who had been raped since age 18 were injured during their most recent rape; 39% of the women and 25% of the men who were physically assaulted since age 18 were injured during their most recent physical assault.
■ Eight percent of surveyed women and 2% of surveyed men said they had been stalked at some time in their lives. According to survey estimates, approximately 1 million women and
371,000 men are stalked annually in the United States.

Emilye on "Making development work for women"

Emilye — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:55:05 +0000

Depressingly, nothing could have more forcefully illustrated my point about the about lethal ease with which debates about equality can so quickly descend into single-minded efforts by a few men to prove their own victimhood. I was trying to make a call for greater solidarity between men and women, to advance our common concerns and progress towards a world of equality and justice for all people – men and women. I did not say, or I hope imply, that ‘all men are "violent ogres" or that women are always "innocent victims"’ – on the contrary, I feel very strongly that the resort to simplistic gender dichotomies is deeply problematic. Far from blaming men, I was praising the excellent work being done by men in many parts of the world to bring about greater equality, and exhorting the need for women and men to work together to challenge the structures of inequality and injustice that disadvantage us all.

So while I could respond by reeling off just some of the many horrific statistics from the hundreds upon hundreds of studies that point to the gender asymmetry of violence in terms of perpetrators and victims –which, by the way, is not only confined to acts of physical violence but is also structural and institutionalised – I think this would rather miss the point. Precisely what I didn’t want was to end up bogged down in a divisive ‘blame game’. As I said, merely counterposing women's and men's experience and perpetration of violence is not helpful; the challenge is rather to help illuminate the workings and functions of violence within the systems of oppression that organise our different societies. As such, my concern is not only with men’s violence against women (although I do believe that men should be held accountable for this violence where it occurs, just as women should be held accountable for any violence they commit). More fundamentally, however, my concern is with the violence that produces and is produced by a hierarchical gender order that is, itself, interwoven with other forms of inequality and oppression. So let’s try and get beyond this ‘men versus women’ stalemate we seem to be stuck in and start to bring all this back to the most important issues of social justice and social change.

eeh100 on "Empowering women in the middle east"

eeh100 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:20:16 +0000

Elie Elhadj - London Is Muslims’ Treatment of Women Islamic? On March 11, 2002, fire struck a girls’ school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The religious police locked the schoolgirls inside the inferno rather than let them escape without their head-to-toe cloak. The firemen were prevented from entering the school for fear that the girls would be seen without their covering. Fourteen young girls were burned to death and dozens more were injured. Is this treatment Islamic? To answer this question, a comparison will be made between the fine treatment that the Prophet Muhammad reportedly accorded to His first wife Khadija and the treatment of women that evolved under Sharia (Islamic Law). We are told that the Prophet’s first wife was the best born in Quraish, a successful businesswoman and, too, the richest. We are also told that Khadija employed Muhammad in her business, that she proposed marriage to him when he was 25 years old, and that she was 15 years his senior and twice a widow. For the 25 years of the Prophet’s marriage to Khadija, until her death in 620, He remained monogamous to her, that she was the one person to whom He turned for advice, and that Khadija was the first convert to Islam. The difference between the Prophet’s treatment of Khadija and the treatment of women under Sharia Law is stark. The Quran subordinates women to men [see, for example, Verses 2:228 (Chapter 2, Verse 228], 4:34, and 18:46). It decrees that one man is equal to two women when bearing witness in a legal setting (2:282), that a male’s share in inheritance is equal to that of two females (4:11), that a man can have up to four wives simultaneously, on condition of equitable treatment (4:3), that a husband can divorce his wife without giving reason, though the Prophet is reported to have discouraged divorce. A wife can divorce her husband only after establishing good cause such as impotence, madness, or denial of her rights. Allowing the Muslim male to marry four wives simultaneously and divorce any one of them at will without giving cause is synonymous with unlimited polygamy. Additionally, Shii religious scholars interpret Verses 4:4 and 4:24 as if men are allowed a temporary marriage contract (when traveling, for example), called Mut’a, for which a payment to the woman is made by the man in return for her temporary companionship with no consequent obligations. Sunni Ulama sanction the Misyar marriage. Under Misyar the man is not responsible financially for the woman and the couple live apart; the woman relinquishes her right to housing and support money and accepts that the man visits her in her family house whenever he likes, day or night. Misyar has no date certain for divorce. Misyar has been sanctioned by the Mecca-based Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly on April 12, 2006. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the Grand Mufti of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Islam’s venerable thousand-year-old university, have both sanctioned Misyar too. Misyar and Mut’a marriages represent sanctioned adultery. Misyar and/or Mut’a permit couples desirous of an illicit affair to evade being charged with adultery, a serious charge punishable under Sharia Law by stoning to death [according to the Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet); but not the Quran, which specifies 100 lashes instead (24:2). The Prophetic Sunna (sayings and acts attributed to the Prophet) contains Traditions unflattering to Women as well. Sahih Al-Bukhari attributed to the Prophet saying that most of those who are in hell are women, that women’s “lack of intelligence” is the reason why a woman’s testimony in an Islamic court of law is equal to half that of the testimony of the Muslim male, and that the reason why Muslim women are prohibited from praying and fasting during menstruation is due to them being “deficient in religious belief.” Sunan Al-Nasai attributed to the Prophet saying: “People who entrust the management of their affairs to a woman will fail.” Sharia Law is not applied uniformly in Muslim countries. In extremist Saudi Arabia, Sharia means guardianship over and responsibility by the male in the family (father, brothers, husband) over the actions of the women in their charge. It also means strict segregation of the sexes at work, schools, hospitals, shops, public parks, elevators, etc. It means banning women from driving motorcars, traveling without the guardian’s written permission, and wearing a black cloak from head to toe to conceal not only their face and hair but also the side of their shoes. Al-Bukhari’s attributions became a common popular Saudi proverb: “women are light on brains and religion.” Saudi Sharia interpretations eliminate the potential political opposition of one half of the population to the government. By contrast, in Muslim non-Arab Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey, Sharia Law is interpreted in such a way as to give women more rights, including becoming presidents and prime ministers. Is veiling and covering women from head to toe Islamic? Orthodox overzealous Ulama think so. Moderate Ulama disagree. The Quran demands modesty only (24:31). Similarly, the Quran has no specific demand to segregate the sexes. The contradictions between the Prophet’s fine treatment of His first wife Khadija and the way Sharia evolved on the treatment of women need to be reconciled. Harmonizing Sharia with the Prophet’s way of life (Sunna) is all the more important because the Prophet’s Sunna has been made by the Ulama of the tenth century equal to the Quran as a source of Sharia Law. A meaningful first step here was announced in June 2006. Turkey has formed a committee of thirty-five religious scholars to study the removal of all Hadith references attributed to the Prophet that encourage violence against women.