UK newspaper The Times names Neda Soltan the Person of the Year.
Latest Updates: Muslim women in the media RSS
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johnpi
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johnpi
Making up shariah as we go: Iran bans make-up for women on TV, state TV chief claims it goes against shariah.
“Make-up by women during television programs is illegal and against Islamic sharia law … There should not be a single case of a woman wearing make-up during a program,” Ezatollah Zarghami was quoted as saying by the reformist Etemad newspaper.
He also called for the media equivalent of a ghetto for women.
Zarghami, a former member of the elite Revolutionary Guards who has been re-appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also ordered that women guests should “preferably” be hosted by women.
Because if women interview men they’re likely to fall into each other’s arms before the end of the show. Right.
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johnpi
Cultural disjoint: Saudi TV presenters covered from head to toe.
A new TV show that discusses issues concerning teenage girls and female university students was recently broadcast with Saudi presenters dressed in black from head to toe, the Saudi English-language Arab News reported on Thursday.
What’s the point of having a televised talk show where people are completely obscured? The complete covering defeats the purpose and function of a visual medium. Why not just have a black screen instead, or perhaps go to radio…
I suppose without some visual distraction the strident among us would start regulating voice…
Sisters – If you have a naturally soft voice, try to make it more ‘rough’ – so as not to encourage the one who may have illness in thier heart. Indeed in the extra effort this involves will come extra reward inshaAllah for wanting to please Allah
At some point it becomes the absolute responsibility of the one with ‘illness in his heart’ to exercise self-control, rather than exhorting women to distort themselves beyond recognition to accommodate weakness.
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johnpi
The campaign against all things girl or woman continues in Pakistan. Militants blew up a girls school in the Northwest frontier Province in a place called Karigar Garhi.
This kind of thing has become so normalized that I couldn’t even find a story about it, just an aside mention in another story and some photos. Or maybe it’s really not that important and I’m being over-sensitive to the issue. I don’t know…
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johnpi
Remember this clarion call for (especially Western) silence and indifference in the name of privacy and respect toward the martyr Neda, and against those who would appropriate her as a “sign,” a symbol?
Here’s Neda’s mother in a BBC interview thanking the world for its attention:
I don’t want people to forget her. People – Iranians – have all been very supportive. They come to me and congratulate me for having had such a brave daughter.
And now I want you to do something for me. I want you, on my behalf, to thank everyone around the world, Iranians and non Iranians, people from every country and culture, people who in their own way, their own tradition, have mourned my child… everyone who lit a candle for her – every musician, who wrote songs for her, who wrote poems about her… you know, Neda loved the arts and music. I want to thank all of them.
I want to thank politicians and leaders, from every country, at all levels, who remembered my child.
Her death has been so painful – words can never describe my true feelings. But knowing that the world cried for her… that has comforted me.
I am proud of her. The world sees her as a symbol, and that makes me happy.
Muslims ‘not of the West’ need as much protection from Western Muslims who will colonize them as they do from any other oppressor.
Who among us will rush in and do the patroniz…err…protecting?
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johnpi
A couple weeks ago headlines were made when Syrian First Lady, Asma Al Assad invited the Obamas to Damascus. HuffPost readers ended up commenting more on Asma’s beauty and less on what an Obama/Assad meeting would mean for the Middle East. And we couldn’t help but notice the Syrian beauty either. In a region where the women love to cake on their make-up, it is very refreshing to see the wife of President Bashar al-Assad with very little on.
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johnpi
Muslim women lead protests in restive west China.
…the incident was one of many examples of how Muslim women have been taking bold leadership roles following the deadliest communal violence in decades in the Xinjiang region. As the communist government launches a sweeping security crackdown, the women have faced down troops, led protests and risked arrest by speaking out against police tactics they believe are excessive.
It seems many of the men have been rounded up and jailed. Whole neighborhoods have been cleared of adult men.
And from the same article, a description of Uighur religious practice, women’s roles in society and the economy, mixed with a description of women’s clothing norms:
Most Muslim Uighurs practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam or follow the mystical Sufism tradition. The women often work and lead an active social life outside the home. Many wear brightly colored head scarves but the custom is not strongly enforced. Young Uighur women often wear jeans, formfitting tops and dresses.
In the journalistic tradition of ’showing’ rather than labeling, I think the purpose of this paragraph is to make a long-winded expression that Uighur women are moderate, liberated and deserving of sympathy (the writers know they are writing for a Western audience that likely fears conservative Islam).
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johnpi
Al Arabiya: Female DJs modernize tribal Pakistani region.
New radio station in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA):
The new station, set up by the FATA authorities, aims to counter several illegal stations run by the extremists who air anti-West and pro-Jihad propaganda and has raised a few eyebrows for breaking away from social norms in the region severely hit by the Taliban-led insurgency.
“We initially got a tough response and often resistance for having women. We had to air songs asked for by women under men’s names. But now situation is gradually easing out,” a station official said. “We’re glad to have become a harbinger for change that was awaited for long,” said another official.
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johnpi
Israel and American military planners foiled by Western media images of Muslim women (and men).
NEW YORK — In the weeks since moderate Iranians threw down the gauntlet to the conservative clerics who run their lives, Israel has watched the unfolding drama with trepidation….
…As long as the vacant stare of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Hilterian rants of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embodied “Iran,” Israel could avoid thinking too seriously about what military types call “collateral damage.” Many suspected Iranian nuclear facilities were located in busy suburbs, some beneath busy cities.
Now, however, Iran has donned a very different face — not just that of Neda, the young protester whose tragic death has been watched by millions on YouTube. The new face Iran has turned to the world is a composite. Yes, the mullah and Ahmadinnerjacket are still in there, but so are hundreds of thousands of people risking their skin to repudiate them.
This is not a minor issue for Israel, nor for American military planners who might have harbored hopes of reviving the idea of a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear sites.
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johnpi
A pejorative comment about ‘what Western media manipulation has done’ to Neda:
Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime.
Some facts about who has acted to make Neda a sign of Iran’s repressive regime, and some facts about who has acted vigorously in defense of Neda’s ‘privacy.’ From Wikipedia:
* After being pronounced dead at Shariati hospital, Agha-Soltan was buried at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran; she was denied a proper funeral by government authorities.
* On June 23, it was reported that government authorities directed Agha-Soltan’s family to remove the black mourning banners that were hanging outside their residence in the Tehran neighborhood of Tehranpars in order to prevent the home from becoming a place of pilgrimage.
* On June 24, The Guardian reported the results of interviews of neighbours who claimed that Agha-Soltan’s family was forced to vacate their apartment some days after her death.
* The Iranian government has issued a ban on collective prayers in mosques for Agha-Soltan in the aftermath of the incident.
* Soona Samsami, the executive director of the Women’s Freedom Forum, who has been relaying information about the protests inside Iran to the international media, told the foreign press that Agha-Soltan’s immediate family were threatened by authorities if they permitted a gathering to mourn her. Samsami stated, “They were threatened that if people wanted to gather there the family would be charged and punished.”
* On June 22, Iranian riot police dispersed a crowd of between 200 and 1,000 protesters with live ammunition and tear gas who had gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e Tir Square after online calls for protesters to pay tribute to Agha-Soltan and others killed during the demonstrations.
* On that same day, about 70 mourners gathered outside Niloufar mosque in Abbas Abad, where the Agha-Soltan family attended services. A leaflet posted on the mosque’s door read, “There is no commemoration here for Neda Agha Soltan.” Many in the crowd wore black. Some recited poems. After about ten minutes, 20 Basij paramilitary arrived on motorcycles and dispersed the attendees.
Embedded in these various bullets points are reports of lots and lots of non-Western Muslims – real people, with real feelings and real rights trying to take control of their own destinies and identities, but some Western Muslims clearly seek to diminish or ignore them. Therefore ‘Muslim sources’ and ‘feminist sources’ should be deconstructed of the license these labels give them to speak with authority about non-Western and female perspectives.
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johnpi
Silence and invisibility for the sake of Neda:
Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime. Neda’s agency is denied, and in her passing we cannot afford her privacy but continually reproduce an image of her death which to me resembles a Warhol pop art print. Neva Mwiti writes a really strong analysis of Stolen and the controversy surrounding it. She asks whether or not “film producers, brand gurus and marketers from the West will realise and respect that the third world is not fodder for their notoriety, but actually made up real people, with real feelings and real rights over their own destinies and identities.” I think her comments can be applied to the majority (if not all) representations of women like Faitim and Neda. When will these women be given the respect they deserve?
Neda’s agency is denied by limiting the scope of her possible desires to one – “privacy,” a state of silence and invisibility.
Next we should examine what we know about Neda’s thoughts on the political behavior she was engaged in and was killed for. From Wikipedia:
* Her music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who was accompanying Agha-Soltan during the protest, told the media: “She couldn’t stand the injustice of it… All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted. She wanted to show with her presence that, ‘I’m here, I also voted, and my vote wasn’t counted’. It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence.”
* Caspian Makan (Agha-Soltan’s fiancé) told BBC: “Neda had said that even if she lost her life and got a bullet in her heart, she would carry on”.
She was engaged in an act of expression when she died, in a public place for all to know and see. She stepped out of anything that was part of her normal regular life to be public and to be heard. To then say that the highest respect we can pay her is “privacy” is to steal the agency – the meaning that she ascribed to the last few minutes of her life.
Speaking of non-Western perspectives, this commenter at Racialicious was fairly bursting with respect for them:
If I am not mistaken…it is the Iranian dissidents who are pimping Neda Soltani’s blood-ridden face all over the Internet. It is a certain political group of Iranians who are dying for attention from the Western corporate media.
Paraphrased thusly: “I just hate non-Westerners who won’t get with my program and let me colonize them…”
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johnpi
It only seems like women are playing a central role in the Iranian election protests because of Western media manipulation – not.
Reports have surfaced that there is no more space left for women in Tehran’s official prisons. Human rights’ activists report on unsanitary and inappropriate conditions for imprisoned women protesters in Iran’s overcrowded jails. At least 60 of imprisoned women are in the public wards and have only been given a blanket and are forced to sleep in corridors.
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johnpi
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.’
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johnpi
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.
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johnpi
‘I don’t want to see my character played by a woman like Bipasha Basu who prefers to be seminude most of the times. She might be glamorous but she is an undignified woman and is part of the immorality spreading industry – Bollywood.’