Latest Updates: women in Islam RSS

  • johnpi 3:47 pm on March 1, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women in Islam

    Website of anti-coed Saudi cleric shut down.

    The website of a top Saudi cleric who issued an edict calling for those who support co-educational environments to be put to death has been shut down on Sunday.

    Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak’s website was shut down following a barrage of criticism from religious scholars in Saudi Arabia and Egypt condemning his fatwa (religious ruling) as a call for violence.

    Many religious scholars in Saudi Arabia denounced Barrak’s ruling, saying it was similar to rulings once issued by religious fundamentalists, or Takfiris, accusing other Muslims of apostasy and condemning them to death.

    The important thing here is not that he said it, but the response that it got.

     

  • johnpi 11:18 pm on February 6, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women in Islam, ,

    Al Shabab launches new effort to drive girls out of schools in areas it controls.

    The Al-Shabab movement in Somalia has issued directives in schools located in areas under its control, in an effort to instill Islamist ideology in the younger generation.

    Islamist authorities in Merca, located some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, have ordered that boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and that the Somali national flag be replaced with the movement’s flag in schools, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

    Observers and human rights activists are concerned that the new directives will help the Islamists spread a radical ideology among impressionable schoolchildren.
    ….

    Analysts suspect the directives are a sign the movement is trying to push girls out of the school system in moves reminiscent of the Taliban’s attacks against girls’ schools in Pakistan, since imposing separate schooling for boys and girls is logistically and financially impossible.

    “Al-Shabab has already demonstrated its clear need to subjugate women, and the expulsion of girls from schools fits into this,” Roque said, “in the same way that the Taliban separated men and women, their roles, their rights, and their role in the public and private spheres.”

     

  • johnpi 9:26 am on January 26, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 'warlordism', , , women in Islam

    In the Philippines, Female Muslim religious leaders oppose warlordism; assert their role in peace process.

    Some 100 female Muslim religious leaders from all over the country declared their opposition to “warlordism” that has plagued Mindanao and the country as they asserted their participation in community affairs, especially the peace process in Mindanao. The Aleemat (Muslim women religious leaders) participating in the three-day Regional Conference on Women and Peace Advocates at the Waterfront Insular Hotel here said they have been registering their opposition to warlordism in a number of occasions all over Mindanao as they stressed Islam does not tolerate it.
    ….

    The outrage against warlordism in the country came about after the November 23 massacre in Sitio Masaly, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town in Maguindanao where 58 persons were killed, 32 of them journalists.

     

  • johnpi 8:14 am on January 26, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Malaysian court lifts ban on book by Sisters in Islam.

    The Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled Monday that “Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism” did not pose any threat to national security, said Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a lawyer for Sisters in Islam, the Malaysian women’s advocacy group that published the book.

    The Home Ministry had banned the compilation of essays in 2008, two years after it went into circulation, saying it could undermine people’s faith and disrupt public order.

    According to a 2008 ministry letter to Sisters in Islam, the book mainly went too far in questioning whether Islamic family laws discriminate against women in issues such as polygamy and divorce.

     

  • johnpi 8:51 am on December 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women in Islam,

    An article about a book published in 1898 by a Muslim scholar challenging interpretations of male supremacy over women.

    The ulema of Maulvi Mumtaz’s time ignored it, but its revolutionary thoughts are now warming the hearts of reformists in the community. “Quoting the Quran and Hadith, both Prophet Muhammad’s traditions, the maulvi convincingly explodes the myth of male supremacy and argues that the Quran is just to both sexes,” says Islamic reformist Asgar Ali Engineer who published Huququn Niswan (Rights of Women) a few months ago after he got a photocopy from a US library with an American scholar’s help.

    There are plans to publish the book in English, Hindi and Urdu.

     

  • johnpi 11:21 am on November 17, 2009 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women in Islam

    Gendered doctrine in Islam.

    It was taught to me when I married that on Judgement Day, I as a man will be held responsible for the sins of my wife – that it is not she that will burn in the hellfire for her sins, but I. Likewise for children.

    Is this or is this not orthodox Islamic teaching?

    If so, how can we possibly criticize any Muslim man for attempting to control the actions of his wife and children?

     

  • johnpi 2:15 pm on November 11, 2009 | 14 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 'Islam under siege', , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , women in Islam

    Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.

    Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
    ….

    Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
    ….

    Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

     

  • johnpi 11:07 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women in Islam,

    Saudiwoman blogs about the issue of runaway girls and women in Saudi Arabia, but she starts with this description of life in ultra-conservative Saudi families.

    Ultra-conservative Saudi families, and they are a majority, have a general dynamic that few Saudis could deny. Like old-fashioned western family ideologies, the father is the breadwinner, the mother takes care of the home-front, the sons are served and tolerated and the daughters are the bit of fluff that flutters around the house.

    But unlike most other cultures, daughters also have to contend with constant supervision of their every move. A job that some brothers feel falls on their shoulders. No matter what age a woman is, many families believe that as long as she is single, she is a liability. This translates into horrific intrusions of privacy and personal freedom. In one extreme case, a family I know has no locks on any of the doors including the bathroom doors, so that to insure the daughters cannot seclude themselves and do anything inappropriate; pre-approval of clothing, whether at home or when leaving the house, is common.

    A friend of mine once told me she had to sit for over two hours in an uncomfortable position because she had pajama pants on and was afraid her father, who had come early from work, would see them. And this is not only with teenage girls, but also adult women… even divorced mothers. So what’s a girl to do in this situation? Many go by the Arabic saying that translates into “a woman has only three places in this world: her family’s home, her husband’s home or her grave”.

    So the majority wait patiently for their knight to rescue them, others commit suicide and a few run away.

     

  • johnpi 10:31 am on November 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women in Islam

    Saudi Arabia is serious about training a cadre of female firefighters.

    A new batch of Saudi female firefighters graduated from a civil protection course on Monday, bringing the total number of Saudi women trained in fire suppression to over 500.
    ….

    Training women in firefighting is new to the kingdom.

    Wajeha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, said the trend was a change from previous attempts to keep women out of the public eye.

    “It’s great,” she told The Media Line. “Don’t forget that women in this society are treated as irresponsible people. They always have to have a man to do things for them, so many thought this was only a show. Very few welcomed the idea.”

    Response inside Saudi Arabia continues to be mixed.

    Several people commented on their uniforms, with some complaining that they were not Islamic. One reader wrote that such courses should be obligatory in all universities and colleges, while another said that calling these graduates firefighters was “an insult to real male firemen.”

    The story does not say it, but there is no doubt the genesis of the program was the 2002 fire at a Mecca girls school where 14 died and 50 were injured when Muttawa forced the students back into the burning building because they were improperly covered. They also wouldn’t allow firefighters to physically assist the girls for fear of sexual enticement.

     

  • johnpi 8:15 am on November 3, 2009 | 22 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , women in Islam,

    Chechen leader champions ‘tradition,’ makes Sufi Islamism the state religion to counter influence of Salafi Islamism.

    Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.

    At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.

    And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.

    Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.

    Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.

    “Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”

     

  • buzz 9:03 am on November 2, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women in Islam,

    ishr-burka-1CAIRO (Reuters) – Rokaya Mohamed, an elementary school teacher, would rather die than take off her face veil, or niqab, thrusting her to the forefront of a battle by government-backed clerics to limit Islamism in Egypt.

    Egypt’s state-run religious establishment wants teachers like Mohamed to remove their veils in front of female students, sparking a backlash by Islamists who say women should be able to choose to cover their faces in line with their Islamic faith.

    “I have put on the niqab because it is a Sunna (a tradition of the Muslim prophet Muhammad). It is something that brings me closer to religion and closer to the wives of the Prophet who used to wear it,” she said.

    “I know what makes God and his prophet love me, and no sheikh is going to convince me otherwise. I would rather die than take it off, even inside class,” she added.

    Egypt, the birthplace of al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri, fought a low-level Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, has faced sporadic militant attacks targeting tourists since then, and is keen to quell Islamist opposition ahead of parliamentary elections next year and a 2011 presidential vote.

    The spread of the niqab, associated with the strictest interpretations of Islam, is a potent reminder to the government of the political threat posed by any Islamist resurgence emanating from the Gulf, where many young Egyptians go to work.

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 8:22 pm on October 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , women in Islam,

    Death toll in Peshawar market blast rises to 117.

    Juan Cole identifies those responsible:

    Muslim extremists in Darra Adam Khel appear to have planned and carried out the attack, done by remote-controlled car bomb. They had threatened the markets with retribution if they did not forbid women to shop there. Pakistani extremists often preach ‘char divari’ or the immuring of women– keeping them within the four walls of their homes and forbidding them to go out at all. This idea, typical of Taliban sorts of thinking, is not Islamic and is contradicted by what we know of early Muslim history, in which women played an active and public role.

    In any case, the extremists then bombed the area around these markets, since Kochi is a women’s market. At least 70 of the victims were women and children.

    Darra Adam Khel is an Afridi Pashtun village in the North-West Frontier Province between Peshawar and the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Kohat (which itself witnessed a big bombing last week).

     

  • johnpi 6:00 pm on October 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , women in Islam,

    Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s Muslim policy advisor, is angry about her treatment at the hands of Hizb ut Tahrir propagandists on a UK television show – as angry as she is at US conservatives who twist what she says to form an equally dishonest, distorted, ideological view of Islam.

    The HT representative on the program dismissed or “reinterpreted” findings I presented so as to not challenge the group’s simplistic utopian ideology which holds liberty in contempt as morally decadent. For example, as I regularly report, our research shows that far from denouncing democracy, Muslims around the world say it is among the things they most admire about the West, specifically mentioning “liberty” as a desirable attribute. Around the world, from Morocco to Malaysia, Muslim respondents described their respect for much of what the West holds dear: freedom of the press, the rule of law, and transparency and accountability of government.

    As much as HT selectively ignored and exploited these findings to push their propaganda, many conservative pundits who diametrically oppose HT’s vision of the world, did much the same. To them, my crime was that I reported that many Muslim women wanted sharia as a source of legislation. I also explained that Muslim women surveyed by Gallup said they believed they should have access to equal legal rights, free employment, voting without family influence, and even leadership positions in government. This suggests that many Muslim women see Sharia differently from those who use it to deny women rights. For simply stating results of survey research, I stood accused of “endorsing” Taliban-like rule, and downplaying the abuses done in the name of sharia.

     

  • johnpi 4:44 pm on October 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Muslim cartoonists, , , women in Islam

    Muslim cartoonist tackles social and political issues.

    Pakistan can be difficult terrain for a female Muslim cartoonist whose alter ego, Gogi, has comments in the bubble above her head on everything from male chauvinism to suicide bombers.

    Gogi is a long-lashed, short-coiffed, polka dot-wearing, pixie-faced modern Pakistani woman. She is a bit like “Blondie” and a bit like Oprah — except devoutly Muslim.

    Gogi creator Nigar Nazar, the first and, as far as she knows, “only woman cartoonist of Pakistan and very likely the entire Muslim world,” says Gogi represents the educated and self-confident urban Pakistani.

    Gogi is mostly “on the receiving end of the joke that is life,” Nazar says. She deflects the onslaught with womanly humor.

    “Gogi is that ray of hope in a male-dominated country where she has to brave it . . . with a tough exterior while not losing her feminine grace, charm and intelligence,” Nazar said.

     

  • johnpi 11:18 am on October 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , women in Islam

    God furious if women governors: Iran cleric.

    Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani said the appointment of women in such top jobs was against sharia (Islamic) law.

    “They come to Qom, the centre of Shiite Islam, and announce that they will appoint women as governors of some provinces. Do you want to fight with the Quran and the Prophet with such talks that go against sharia?” he asked.

    Is it any wonder that shariah gets a bad name wit interpretations like this…can somebody point me to what part of the Quran says women can’t be governors?

     

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

    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 10:08 pm on October 8, 2009 | 10 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women in Islam

    President Barack Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir to discuss Shariah.

    Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified” and the majority of women around the world associate it with “gender justice”.

    The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.
    ….

    Mogahed: “I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media. The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance. The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases.”

    Sharia in its broadest sense is a religious code for living, which decrees such matters as fasting and dressing modestly. However, it has also been interpreted as requiring the separation of men and women.

    It also includes the controversial “Hadd offences”, crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft.

    Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with “maximum criminal punishments” and “laws that… to many people seem unequal to women,” but added: “Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.”

    The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir’s website.

     

  • johnpi 8:06 pm on September 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women in Islam,

    Burqas disappear from a Pakistani city.

    In Mingora, the main city of Swat Valley:

    “When the Taliban fled, our burqas went with them,” said Shahin Begum, 40, an elementary school teacher, who returned to work on Aug. 1.

    Women were the main targets of the Taliban’s morals police, and once that rigid rule was imposed their lives froze. They were barred from going to traditional women’s shopping areas, and anyone who worked in a public place, including hospitals, was required to wear a burqa, a sacklike, head-to-toe garment with netting over the eyes.

    The burqa is traditional for many women in tribal, conservative western Pakistan. But here in the Swat Valley and its ethnically mixed hill towns north of the capital, Islamabad, women are relatively more open, and for many the outfit felt clumsy and confining.

    “I felt like I was out of air,” said Zaida Bibi, a maid in a green shawl with flowers.

    Now, she said, it still feels like a delicious act of revenge to walk into Cheena Market, a maze of glittering glass stalls full of cosmetics, dresses and shoes that was forbidden under the Taliban, where she was shopping Sunday.

    “It’s a free, light feeling,” she said as she chose gifts for Id al-Fitr, a major Muslim holiday, which was celebrated this week.

     

  • johnpi 6:44 am on May 11, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: abrogation, Aisha, Bukhari, , , , , women in Islam

    A. Faizur Rahman writing at The American Muslim (TAM):

    Child marriage in Islam is justified on the basis of a hadith in Bukhari which says that the Prophet married Hazrath Aisha when she was just six and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

    This hadith cannot be true for several reasons. First, the Prophet could not have gone against the Quran to marry a physically and intellectually immature child. Secondly, the age of Hazrat Aisha can be easily calculated from the age of her elder sister Hazrat Asma who was 10 years older than Hazrat Aisha. Waliuddin Muhammad Abdullah Al-Khateeb al Amri Tabrizi the famous author of Mishkath, in his biography of narrators (Asma ur Rijal), writes that Hazrat Asma died in the year 73 Hijri at the age of 100, ten or twelve days after the martyrdom of her son Abdullah Ibn Zubair. It is common knowledge that the Islamic calendar starts from the year of the Hijrah or the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina. Therefore, by deducting 73, the year of Hazrat Asma’s death, from 100, her age at that time, we can easily conclude that she was 27-years old during Hijra. This puts the age of Hazrat Aisha at 17 during the same period. As all biographers of the Prophet agree that he consummated his marriage with Hazrat Aisha in the year 2 Hijri it can be conclusively said that she was 19 at that time and not 9 as alleged in the aforementioned hadith.

     

  • johnpi 5:47 pm on April 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , women in Islam

    Muslimah of the Week: Sukayna, the Prophet’s great grand-daughter.

     

  • johnpi 9:56 am on March 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , women in Islam

    Nuseiba blogger Sahar is starting a series on outstanding Muslim women in history, starting with Aisha. Why? Because:

    Muslim women are in need of role models. Many of us look to women from Western backgrounds to seek inspiration from. Islam’s history is riddled with examples of admirable women. We either don’t hear about these women today ’cause Muslims are too busy telling women how to dress appropriately; or they are represented to us in a way that appeals to patriarchal expectations.

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 2:07 pm on January 25, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , women in Islam

    Al-Azhar Scholars have welcomed the publication of the first Interpretation of the Quran [tafsir] written by a woman, saying that it confirms the equality between men and women in Islam.

    Kariman Hamzah, the author of this Quranic interpretation and a former presenter of an Islamic television program in Egypt, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Interpretation is the culmination of her 35 years working in the media. The Islamic Research Academy, the highest authority at the Al Azhar University, approved the printing and distribution of the first Quranic interpretation written by a woman, and which will appear in local bookstores soon.

     

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