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  • johnpi 8:47 pm on October 11, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , , , , , , ,

    Feminists from the Arab World: Women’s issues and feminist movements are discussed by scholar-activists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt at the first-ever conference, “Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective” – organized by the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers, Bahithat.

    Excerpt of an interview with Professor Hatoon Ajwad Al Fassi from Saudi Arabia:

    Can you explain briefly what you talked about in your presentation – about how feminism in Saudi Arabia – or the non-existence of it, as you question – developed over the last decades, and what kinds of historical contexts shaped the feminism in question?

    Al Fassi: I don’t think there is a political movement called feminism in Saudi Arabia, there isn’t such a thing. My definition of [a feminist] is someone who has an awareness of her being as a woman, who has rights. I consider this as a feminist consciousness. That is a kind of feminism if you like. This happens on different levels: a level that is very leftist, very liberal that has extreme demands and others that are to the right – Muslims or Islamists who have extreme demands from our point of view…

    So when it comes to practical issues, extreme Islamist feminists think that personal status laws are untouchable because they have to do with the Islamic faith?

    Al Fassi: Yes… Or they would say that these laws are the right ones in Islam and that nobody should question them. But the question is their application. And this is something that we agree on… But they go into more details that we disagree with, such as [the fact] that they believe that women should not go to work unless they are very needy, that the priority should be to stay at home and that the man should always provide for the woman.

     
  • johnpi 5:47 am on September 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , , , , ,

    Time magazine: Indonesia’s Islamic schools: More female friendly.

    When she was widowed two years ago, most people in the Javanese village of Babakan Ciwaringin expected Nyai Yu Masriyah Amva to marry again. They also assumed that the local pesantran, or traditional Indonesian Islamic boarding school, would close with the death of her husband, its head Islamic scholar. Neither happened. Bucking tradition, Amva decided that she would run the school. “If men can do it, then why can’t I?” the 48-year-old recalls praying. “If you, Allah, are the source of all power, then why do I have to find someone else to run it? Just give me the power. I know that I can do it.” After all, she reasoned Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia’s ex-president, was a woman, joining the ranks of “Benazir [Bhutto], and Elizabeth, and the woman Madonna played in that movie” — Evita Peron.
    ….

    This July’s bombings at two five-star hotels in Jakarta and the 2002 bombings in Bali raised fears among counterterrorism experts that Indonesia’s 12,000 pesantran were potential breeding grounds for radicalism. And while suicide bombers and radicals have been traced to a few schools notorious for their extremist teachings, others have been incubators for a more benign trend in the world’s most populous Muslim nation: the development of feminist readings of the Quran and Islamic traditions. Indonesia’s two largest Muslim political parties — the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah — have intricate campaigns promoting women’s rights. Indonesian feminists, male and female alike, have worked with progressive pesantran to develop women-friendly interpretations of shari’a — a radical break with the conservative notions of shari’a across the Muslim world, which tend to be heavily reliant on the world views of medieval — and male — jurists.

     
  • johnpi 10:22 am on September 11, 2009 | 7 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, guardianship, , , ,

    Over at Muslimah Media Watch Egyptian blogger Eman Hashim writes about the Saudi guardianship campaign being led by two Saudi princesses: “My guardian knows what’s best for me.” It is a campaign in support of the strict male guardianship laws in that country.

    Hashim is rebuked in the comments by other Muslimahs for her defense of women who choose or desire to live under male guardianship.

    However, Hashim is far more critical and uncompromising when she writes about women who choose to live within the dominant paternalistic paradigm on her own blog. In a review of a movie about the fight in America to get the vote for women, she favorably quotes this line: “Women like you are worse than anti-suffragists; you perpetuate the lie everyday at breakfast.

    Then she lists her own complaints:

    My god! How many times have you met a woman who voluntarily declares her stupidity and ignorance just to get a man’s attention and approval?

    How many women have you talked to and they just faked inferiority to nourish a no-body guy just to get a proposal?

    How many places have you gone to where women refuse to get business done with other women cause “we are not as smart as men”?

    I know that a lot of my fellow doctors never went to a female doctor nor they ever intend to because “male doctors are cleverer”

    I know that women don’t like to go to electronic stores and deal with saleswomen cause “we just don’t understand technology!”

    I know my friends who resist any piece of information related to their laptops cause “guys just get these kinds of things not us.”

    She concludes her post:

    I am optimistic, I believe that someday we will be able to break those walls, that women will be that scared of being rejected by intimidated men, that women will not be ruled by what other want her to be, that women will not be scared to lead their lives, make their own choices, be ready for the consequences and live the beauty of a free life!

    I don’t understand why Hashim writes with one face at Muslimah Media Watch, and another when she writes for her own blog.

     
  • thabet 10:32 pm on September 2, 2009 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, , , , ,

    A bunch of white men debate how best to save the eternally oppressed Muslim woman…

     
  • johnpi 11:32 am on August 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Feminism, , , , ,

    Related to the previous post, are extremist women like “Companion of Weapons” who wish to participate in al Qaeda violence the Muslim world equivalents of Laine Lawless, Shawna Forde, and Brandi Baron?

    A woman, who signed her name “Companion of Weapons,” added her support to a lengthy essay of protest online: “How many times have I wished I were a man… When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me.” She listened to the speech 10 times, and “felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest… I am powerless.” The stirrings of feminism are never limited to specific ideological groups, though they may never be labeled by the f-word.

    Apart from their desire for legitimate active engagement in the extremist movement, these women are insulted that their contributions, by way of a number of suicide bombings especially in Iraq, is not acknowledged. It would appear that al-Qaeda may be employing the services of women, but maintaining a male-exclusive front, as it were. The ideological statement, as is common, is for both the masses and for the Other. The statement offers the masses instruction so that the majority of women remain content with their domestic role.

    I’ve tagged this “Muslim-on-Muslim violence” because the majority of victims of extremist violence are other Muslims…

     
  • johnpi 9:26 am on August 1, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, , , , , ,

    Unique among immigrant-bashing nativist movements, writes Sara at Orcinus, the Minutemen militias seem to let women take leadership roles. Since movement members racism is often only exceeded by their sexism, “There’s a good argument to be made that authoritarianism is, at its core, a fetishization of all things “masculine,” which means it generally can’t exist without the reflexive subjugation of all things feminine.”

    So it’s unusual that you can find three women in right-wing leadership roles: Laine Lawless, Shawna Forde, and Brandi Baron.

    The Seattle Weekly has a new article on Ford, who has apparently had a difficult life: foster care, shoplifting, prostitution arrests, repeated marriages and name changes. Ford, who told her followers that she saw brown-skinned immigrants as filthy, lowly lawbreakers, was recently charged for the double murder of a Mexican man and his 9-year-old daughter.

    Sara writes:

    It would not surprise any of us, I think, to find out that Brandi Baron and Laine Lawless had similarly troubled biographies — as do almost all of the men who commit acts of far-right extremist violence.

    When feminism promised to give us all the same opportunities men had, I’m pretty sure this is not what the movement’s foremothers had in mind.

    I guess this means we’ve finally arrived. It doesn’t feel much like victory, though.

    Laine Lawless is the former high priestess of Sisterhood of the Moon, a lesbian pagan organization, and got into trouble in 2006 for sending a letter to a neo-Nazi leader asking if some of his “warriors” would be willing to engage in a terror campaign that would include beatings, stealing non-white peoples’ paychecks and “Discouraging Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative.”

    And here’s video of Brandi Baron demanding to ‘Kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally.’

     
  • johnpi 5:46 am on July 23, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism,

    The Sunnah of the Prophet is “not to beat.”

    The part of Chapter 4, Verse 34 in question is more or less read in all present English translations: “Those husbands who fear disobedience on the part of their wives, first admonish them, then abandon their sleeping places, then beat them.” My position is that the understanding of this verse must revert back to the interpretation given it by the Prophet Muhammad, peace and the mercy of God be upon him, through his actions. He never beat anyone much less any of his wives. When there was any marital discord, he went away.

    And why this is a human rights issue rather than a feminist issue:

    There are many men who agree that 4:34 has to revert back to the way the Prophet understood it and, I might add, there are many women, particularly in the Islamic world today, who believe that wives should be beaten by their husbands! Therefore this is not a feminist issue. It is a human rights issue.

     
  • johnpi 8:12 pm on June 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , , , , , , , ,

    I’ve been struck by the way images of Neda specifically and Iranian women in general have been panned by self-identified Western Muslim feminists. Carried to it’s absurd conclusion, images of Muslim women are so at risk of ‘exploitation’ ‘fetishization’ ‘confirmation of barbarity’ etc, etc. that a strong implicit argument is being made that says their images should be struck from the Western media milieux entirely – which, given the interest actual women show in places like Gaza and Iran for the world to know about them, the effect of such western Muslim feminist critique becomes another kind of forced veiling, this time on the part of western Muslim feminists over their non-Western ’sisters.’

     
  • johnpi 8:08 pm on June 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , , , , , , , ,

    From an American feminist, more on the images of Iranian women in the protests there:

    In general, the images of Iranian women — young and old, clad in chadors and scant designer scarves — have been a valuable emotional bridge for men and women alike. They’re more sympathetic figures not only because, of course, many consider them to be the fairer sex, but also because of the way the Islamic regime has tirelessly targeted women.

    (More …)

     
  • fathima 10:05 pm on June 18, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, , , , tucker

    Iranian Woman Protesting June 2009

    While it makes for stirring photography, articles like Diane Tucker’s “Iranian Women: We Feel Cheated, Frustrated, And Betrayed” are misguided for several reasons. First, it ascribes one unanimous opinion to all Iranian women, regardless of class, educational, or religious background. That opinion, conveniently enough, is one wholly in line with American pseudo-feminist liberation rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that fueled the drive to the war on Afghanistan and, not so long ago, calls to bomb Iran. Second, it constructs a false binary between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, in which the latter is presented as the liberator of Iranian women. In fact, Mousavi’s politics resemble Ahminejad’s in many ways (cf. his human rights abuses). It’s vital that we recognise that we can protest Iranian state aggression without having to immediately support Mousavi, just because he’s not Ahmadinejad. In fact, many Iranians have been doing just this. But their boycotting of the elections was given no exposure in the media — presumably because Western media is fixated on the notion of pretty women voting as the epitome of democracy and civic engagement. Furthermore, the protests themselves are complicated affairs, with allegations of inner-party sabotaging. And then there’s the hypocrisy of Washington supporting protests in Iran, and of the hysteria — fed, in part, by reductivist articles like Tucker’s — of Western media.

     
  • aziz 9:19 am on May 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, ,

    surprised this wasnt posted yet – but Fatemeh of MMW fame has a great post at DoubleX about why feminists don’t understand muslim women.

     
  • johnpi 5:22 pm on May 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, , , , , , , ,

    Researchers have discovered that having daughters rather than sons makes you more liberal.

    In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person’s children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent.

    Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors’ key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).

     
  • johnpi 8:23 am on May 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Feminism, Indian secret agents, , , , , ,

    Denial-istan.

    In the absence of national leadership or even basic coherence at the top, rumors and ideological punditry masquerade as reason. A television anchor insists that all the attacks are the handiwork of Indian intelligence agents. A talking head on another channel claims that the Taliban are misunderstood – all they want to do is to bring swift justice to the country. Another strategic expert assures viewers that everything happening in Pakistan is the U.S.’s fault. Drone attacks are creating anti-Americanism, and its only natural that those attacked will retaliate wherever they can. If the US were to simply stop the drone attacks on Pakistan, everything would be just fine. The fact that Pakistan was spinning out of control well before anyone had heard the term drone hamla, is left out of the conversation.

    More Denial-istan.

    The conservatives themselves are men reacting to the threatening Western presence and targeting women who are often the victims of wars and the political instability that it brings. With the threat of outsiders, women become burdened with the need to carry and preserve culture.

    If it weren’t for those darn outsiders…

     
  • johnpi 8:49 pm on April 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , ,

    Sahar’s point:

    …local critics need to stop talking in foreign tongues. The best way in dealing with both the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban (for there are two types) is using religious discourse, while minimizing feminist and human rights references which are locally perceived to be discredited due to their political associations.

    Rochelle’s comeback:

    What you’re missing in this article is the huge component of women’s rights defenders who work within culturally-specific contexts and yet use secular frameworks. To demand that the only way women can move forward is to utilize religious discourse is deeply troubling, not least to the thousands of women’s rights defenders in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the world who use a human rights framework while reinforcing that these frameworks are not contradictory to their culture, religious, or history.

    Feminist and human rights references may be “locally perceived to be discredited due to their political associations” but that doesn’t mean they should be discredited, and by reowning feminism and human rights within their own context, (saying that yes, our culture does have feminist tradition) local women’s rights defenders are questioning these “foreign” connotations.

     
  • johnpi 8:16 pm on April 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , ,

    I thought to myself ‘this isn’t going to end well’:

    In the past few years I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Now I don’t have a problem with trends. Trends are fun, they make me cool, and that means I can relate to the young people. The problem is with this new trend is that its called “Let’s Obsess about Human Rights.”

    And then it did:

    I have tried to establish that the protection of human rights is a process which depends largely upon strengthening internal institutions, structures and procedures for challenging violations and denials of rights. Governments must develop civil society to ensure that the social and economic conditions aid the enfranchisement of women. Empower grass-roots women’s rights organisations to re-interpret the role of women in their society.

    All us hegemons are on the same page…

     
  • johnpi 8:32 pm on April 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, ,

    Polygamy: a relationship in which women’s rights are obtained and their needs met. Cycads examines efforts to appropriate feminist language to promote polygamy in Indonesia.

     
  • johnpi 6:57 am on April 13, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Feminism, , , , , spousal rape

    (UPDATE by Aziz: Note that Wayne Ross vehemently denies ever making such statements, and the evidence does seem tissue-paper thin)

    “If a guy can’t rape his wife…who’s he gonna rape?” and “There wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence if women would learn to keep their mouths shut.”

    Patriot Boy consoles the president of Feminists for Life of America Serrin Foster over rising criticism of Sarah Palin’s choice for Alaska attorney general Wayne Anthony Ross, who made the comments above.

    Patriot Boy writes to Ms. Foster:

    Surely, there is nothing more feminist in its very nature than spousal rape. It empowers wives by providing them with the means of gratifying the head of household even when they are not in the mood. If you look at it that way, support for spousal rape is perhaps the greatest innovation in feminist thinking since crotchless pantaloons.

     
  • johnpi 4:45 pm on March 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, , , terorism,

    New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned this month’s slaying by an alleged insurgent of Laila Paaitae Doah, a prominent peace advocate and Muslim women’s rights activist in Thailand’s violence-torn deep South. Laila was shot by a suspected Muslim militant in broad daylight on March 12 in Krongpenang district, Yala province, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok. She died of her wounds in hospital on March 13.
    “Laila’s brutal murder is part of ongoing efforts by insurgents to intimidate and attack Muslims who oppose insurgency or have supported Thai authorities,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Her death is a serious loss for those trying to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the South.”

     
  • thabet 2:20 am on March 14, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism

    A lengthy article in The Times about the troubles in Feminist Sisterhood.

    Although that article reads more like a spoilt middle class girl complaining about being single at 37, rather than an analysis of feminism.

     
  • abunoor 3:58 pm on February 20, 2009 | 8 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, ,

    It’s hard for me to imagine who needed a scientific study to tell them this, but some of the underlying implications are interesting…

    “Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say”

    supplementary study on both male and female undergraduates found that men tend to associate bikini-clad women with first-person action verbs such as I “push,” “handle” and “grab” instead of the third-person forms such as she “pushes,” “handles” and “grabs.” They associated fully clothed women, on the other hand, with the third-person forms, indicating these women were perceived as in control of their own actions. The females who took the test did not show this effect, Fiske said.
    That goes along with the idea that the man looking at a woman in a bikini sees her as the object of action, Fiske said.

     
  • Fatemeh 9:29 pm on September 19, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, ,

    This week on MMW, we get a rousing discussion on why some people just can’t get over headscarves, rip Khalil al-Anani a new one, dissect American Dad’s depiction of Saudi women, watch Shabana Azmi play devil’s advocate, roll our eyes at a movie titled Unveiled that’s about–you guessed it–some sexy and oppressed Muslim woman, and rolled out The Link List.

     
  • Fatemeh 1:34 pm on August 22, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism, ,

    This week on MMW, we reported on a new collection of Egypt’s first feminist writings, the sexism in Nawal el Zoghbi’s newest music video, played the Devil’s advocate in arguing about news coverage of Muslim women, and presented another incomparable link list.

     
  • thabet 12:12 pm on July 16, 2008 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Feminism, , ,

    Do Muslim women need liberating?

     
  • willow 3:47 pm on July 6, 2008 | 48 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism,

    I’ve been blogsurfing the other side recently (and wherever I go, Muse has stepped in to mediate the fray–I suggest adding a Best Diplomat award to the BCs), and came across this post at The Apostate, one of the few genuinely eloquent and persuasive ex-Muslim blogs out there. I’m in a minority of white converts who believe that sometimes the best thing a white convert can do is sit down, shut up and let other people do the talking, which is why I don’t comment on things like honor killing. (Being from a middle class white American family, honor killing hasn’t ever been and won’t ever be a factor in my life experience, so it’s unfair for me to comment on the role it has played in the experiences of others.) However, it’s an interesting and disturbing discussion of the interplay between misogyny and Islam, which has, I think, some real intellectual merit.

     
  • koonj 9:13 pm on July 1, 2008 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Feminism,

    Extremist women want options other than staying at home. My latest post at Religion Dispatches.

     
  • willow 2:57 pm on June 1, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Feminism,

    @ Eteraz, news about extremist women fighting for the right to blow themselves up. Yes, now you’ve heard everything.

     
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