Islam and the Gender Equity Movement

The mere proposal of an All-Africa Muslim Women formation nearly caused brouhaha at a conference I recently attended.

Some righteous males started pontificating about women wanting to dethrone them from their God-given seat of being the centre around which the life of a woman should revolve. They accused women of wanting to beat them in the marvelous game of smoking cigarettes, wearing trousers and sleeping around. If this was aimed at intimidation and muting and mutilating the women's voice, I must say, this is a strategy that seems to be working very well for the blessed man. The most enthusiastic and articulate woman activist started giving men assurances that they are by no means feminists. She stressed that they want to organize themselves precisely to preach to the women who are not dressed properly, that women can police the behavior of deviant women who wear trousers or don't put on scarves better than men can ever do. The males who defended such a forum did this on the basis of enabling women to impart religious education to children and other, with emphasis on the usual message we hear from the pulpit: Islam provides rights to women, but it is men who dispense these rights.

My support for the idea was informed by an expectation that it will serve as a platform for women to challenge male-centric expressions of Islam, push for a fiqh that allows the voices and experiences of women to be articulated and to unapologetically confront the inequities and injustices that women face in society. I had thought that such a platform would raise issues such as women leadership and women scholarship in Islam, access to education, decent and adequate space for women in places of worship, women representation in Mosque committees and on the board of Muslim schools and other Islamic institutions. Thanks to the all-powerful protestation and rave of the male voice, this was shrinking into a place for women at a table laid out by men, with strict instructions not to forget that this is a men's world.

As the vigorous debate went on the voices of the women were getting muter and muter. This vindicated my observation that patriarchal, chauvinist and sexist men deliberately make generalizations and equate the feminist and gender equity movement with women smoking cigarette, drinking beer, tearing off their bras, discarding motherhood in order to intimidate and bully women away from the struggle against gender-based inequities and injustices. The same Muslim men who rile against the Islamophobic painting of Muslims with one brush find it so easy and comfortable to stereotype the feminist and gender equity movement as a lobby of immodest, anti-men, wild women. They deliberately ignore the diversity of the strands and perspectives within the feminist movement.

The reality of the matter is that as a political, cultural and/or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women, and concerned with issues of gender difference, women rights and interests, feminism addresses a range of issues and causes most of which are compatible with the Islamic call towards justice for all. These issues and causes include campaigns for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily integrity and autonomy, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; or workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; against misogyny; and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women.

In addition to ignoring the validity and legitimacy of the many issues and causes addressed by the feminist and gender equity movement, those who bash women's rights and gender equity also deliberately or ignorantly don't recognize the diverse theories, philosophies and currents within this movement. In their zeal to portray feminists as all being frustrated, estranged, elite white and black women, the 'haters' lump liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, environmentalist feminism, anarchist feminism, individual feminism, post colonial feminism and Black feminism or Womanism together. What seem to be lost to the gender equity bashers is that at its very birth Islam transformed the gender dynamics in society by recognizing the full personhood of women, placing a prohibition on female infanticide, recognizing inheritance, turning marriage into a social contract rather than a status, making dowry to be a nuptial gift to the women rather than a bridal-price paid to the father, and providing inheritance and property rights to women at the time such rights were unknown of.

The patriarchal and sexist brigade within the Muslim community thrives on political apathy, low culture of reading, decline in popular education and lack of access to material by classical and contemporary Muslim scholars who tackle these issues outside the framework of literalist and a-contextual fiqh. According to the catalogue of the list of books in our libraries and bookstores, and our curriculum in Muslim institutions, Qasim Amin's Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Mar'a) (1899) was never written and the feminist undertones in the works of the first woman to undertake Quran exegesis - Aisha Abdal Rahman - aka Bint al Shati (Daughter of the Riverbank) - are just a figment in the imagination of modernist scholars.

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How many Madressa and Dar-ulooom graduates know that women's assertion of their right to be acknowledged, listened to and heard starts with the female companions of the prophet Mohammed (s) demanding to know from the prophet (s) why Allah does not address women directly in Quran - to which the Almighty responded by henceforth using the phrase 'believing men and believing women' when addressing the believers? And that this woman activism gender equity tradition continues in the medieval period and the eighteen century with Ibn Arabi arguing that women could achieve spiritual stations as equally high as men and Nana Asma'u - the daughter of the prominent and eminent reformer Uthman Don Fodio - pushing for literacy and education of Muslim women. How many Madressa teachers tell their students of the founding of the University of Al Karauine by Fatima al-Fihri in 859 CE? How many of our children know that 26 of the 160 Mosques built in the 12 and 13th century during the Ayyubid dynasty were funded by a women's charitable trust (Waqf) and that half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were women?

Needless to mention the obvious example and inspiration behind women's active participation and leadership in public political, economic, social and cultural affairs women were the mothers of the believers, Khadijah (RA), Aisha (renowned scholar of hadith and military leader), Fatima (RA) (the beloved daughter of the prophet).

And the prophet's (s) words of praise to the women of Medina: 'How splendid were the women of the ansaar; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned in the faith.' The prophet's (s) words clearly articulate that guarding one's chastity, spirituality and righteousness does not dictate invisibility in public affairs. This is a sufficient rebuttal of the myth that women scholarship, leadership and activism are equal to the loss of shame and decency. What about stressing in the rules of modesty the language and tone we use when talking to our employees and house-helpers most of whom are old enough to be our parents, irritating cat-calls, suggestive looks and gestures towards women in the streets or passes at our house-helpers? How many men who rap about modesty talk down to their wives and treat them like they are dolls?

How many of the men who rant about modesty use vulgar, derogatory and degrading language, are rude to people, and give shabby treatment to their aged parents and grandparents? How many of these men are equally enraged when they witness girl-children below the age of eighteen being handed over in arranged/forced marriages to adults, and how many speak out in outrage against honor-killings and the disowning of children by their parents for marrying outside the village, race, tribe, and sect. How often do we rebuke men for strolling around the beach with bare chests and walking the streets in Bermudas? It seems like for many of us males, modesty and chastity has little to do with God and the integrity of the individual but a lot to do with controlling women's body, voice and movement to ensure that our wives and our daughters remain our property.

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Islam's European Reformation?

The controversial Tariq Ramadan's latest book promotes a "Western" version of Islam. Is he the "Muslim Martin Luther"?

Late last month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton lifted a six-year visa ban on the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, an Oxford professor and Europe's premier voice of reformist Islam, had been prohibited by the Bush administration from entering the U.S. on the grounds that he had given money to the Palestinian militant group Hamas - a charge he vigorously denied. Ever since, Ramadan has polarized public opinion in both America and Europe: the left lauds him as a "Muslim Martin Luther," while the right demonizes him as an extremist in sheep's clothing. Despite the passionate debate, neither side has shown much interest in the substance of Ramadan's message - conveniently summarized in his concise new book, What I Believe (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Ramadan wrote What I Believe as "a work of clarification." In it, he emphasizes that his goal is to fashion a distinctively "Western" expression of Islam that does not require Muslims to choose between their national identities and their religious one. According to Ramadan, a person can be both fully Muslim and fully French, British, or German; these multiple identities shift and blend depending on the situation we face.

Ramadan's intellectual agenda reflects his own unconventional upbringing: his maternal grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical group that championed the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt and which launched the modern era of Islamist politics. Ramadan's father, Said, was one of al-Banna's senior deputies, and after al-Banna's death, he went into exile with his family in Geneva. There, he committed his life to preserving and disseminating al-Banna's legacy. The first of Said Ramadan's children born in Europe was Tariq. Caught between the Islamist cauldron of Egypt and cosmopolitan Geneva, Tariq grew up parsing his multiple and seemingly competing identities. As he writes, "I am Swiss by nationality, Egyptian by memory, Muslim by religion, European by culture, [and] universalist by principle."

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U.S. Can't Afford Military Aid to Israel

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to "go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work." One week later, he sent his FY2011 budget request to Congress, which included a record-breaking $3 billion in military aid to Israel.

This requested increase in U.S. weapons to Israel -- part of a ten-year $30 billion agreement signed between the two countries in 2007 -- qualifies on both counts as a program that the United States can't afford and that doesn't work in establishing a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Data published recently by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation shows that U.S. military aid to Israel comes at a financial and moral price that this country cannot afford to pay. Its website reveals that this same $3 billion earmark for Israel could be used instead to provide more than 364,000 low-income households with affordable housing vouchers, or to retrain 498,000 workers for green jobs, or to provide early reading programs to 887,000 at-risk students, or to provide access to primary health care services for more than 24 million uninsured Americans.

If U.S. weapons were going to Israel for a good purpose, then perhaps a coherent guns versus butter debate would be appropriate. However, Israel repeatedly misuses U.S. weapons to commit grave human rights abuses against Palestinians who are forced to live under its illegal 42-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

During the Bush Administration, Israel killed at least 3,107 innocent Palestinian civilians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. Israel also injured thousands more innocent Palestinians and destroyed billions of dollars of Palestinian civilian infrastructure including homes, schools, factories, government buildings, and even Palestine's only airport. The severity and scale of this killing and destruction were made possible by hi-tech U.S. weapons provided to Israel at taxpayer expense.

And during Obama's first year in office, Israel continued to misuse its stock of U.S. weapons to entrench its apartheid policies toward Palestinians by maintaining its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip -- collectively punishing its 1.5 million Palestinian residents by severely restricting the flow of humanitarian relief -- and building illegal Israeli-only colonies on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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Obama names U.S. envoy to Islamic Conference

President Obama announced Saturday the appointment of Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer, to be his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Obama made the announcement in a video conference to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. In his message, Obama called Hussain "an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff," who would strengthen his policy of outreach to the world's Muslims.

Obama has made repairing U.S. relations with the Islamic world an important element of his foreign policy, an effort highlighted by his call for a "new beginning" in a speech in Cairo last June.

In the statement Saturday, Obama said Hussain has "played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo," and would continue to do so in his new position. Obama noted that Hussain is a Hafiz of the Koran, someone who has memorized the holy Islamic text.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference comprises 57 nations with a goal of promoting Muslim unity.

As a deputy associate counsel to Obama, Hussain has worked on national security, new media, and science and technology issues, according to a White House statement. He previously worked as a trial attorney for the Justice Department and as a legislative assistant on the House Judiciary Committee.

Hussain attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his law degree from Yale Law School. He holds master's degrees in public administration and Arabic and Islamic studies from Harvard University.

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Gaza and Lebanon: Beware the Iron Wall, the Coming War

The Israeli military may be much less effective in winning wars than it was in the past, thanks to the stiffness of Arab resistance. But its military strategists are as shrewd and unpredictable as ever. The recent rhetoric that has escalated from Israel suggests that a future war in Lebanon will most likely target Syria as well. While this doesn't necessarily mean that Israel actually intends on targeting either of these countries in the near future, it is certainly the type or language that often precedes Israeli military maneuvers.

Deciphering the available clues regarding the nature of Israel's immediate military objectives is not always easy, but it is possible. One indicator that could serve as a foundation for any serious prediction of Israel's actions is Israel's historical tendency to seek a perpetual state of war. Peace, real peace, has never been a long-term policy.

"Unlike many others, I consider that peace is not a goal in itself but only a means to guarantee our existence," claimed Yossi Peled, a former army general and current Cabinet Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

Israeli official policy - military or otherwise - is governed by the same Zionist diktats that long preceded the establishment of the state of Israel. If anything has changed since early Zionists outlined their vision, it was the interpretation of those directives. The substance has remained intact.

For example, Zionist visionary, Vladimir Jabotinsky stated in 1923 that Zionist "colonization can...continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through." He was not then referring to an actual wall. While his vision took on various manifestations throughout the years, in 2002 it was translated into a real wall aimed at prejudicing any just solution with the Palestinians. Now, most unfortunately, Egypt has also started building its own steel wall along its border with the war-devastated and impoverished Gaza Strip.

One thing we all know by now is that Israel is a highly militarized country. Its definition of 'existence' can only be ensured by its uncontested military dominance at all fronts, thus the devastating link between Palestine and Lebanon. This link makes any analysis of Israel's military intents in Gaza, that excludes Lebanon - and in fact, Syria - seriously lacking.

Consider, for example, the unprecedented Israeli crackdown on the Second Palestinian Uprising which started in September 2000. How is that linked to Lebanon? Israel had been freshly defeated by the Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, and was forced to end its occupation of most of South Lebanon in May 2000. Israel wanted to send an unmistakable message to Palestinians that this defeat was in fact not a defeat at all, and that any attempt at duplicating the Lebanese resistance model in Palestine would be ruthlessly suppressed. Israel's exaggeration in the use of its highly sophisticated military to stifle a largely popular revolution was extremely costly to Palestinians in terms of human toll.

Israel's 34-day war on Lebanon in July 2006 was an Israeli attempt at destroying Arab resistance, and restoring its metaphorical iron wall. It backfired, resulting in a real - not figurative - Israeli defeat. Israel, then, did what it does best. It used its superior air force, destroyed much of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The resistance, with humble means, killed more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers during combat.

Not only did Hizbullah had penetrated the Israeli iron wall, it had also filled it with holes. It challenged, like never before, the Israeli army's notion of invincibility and illusion of security. Something went horribly wrong in Lebanon.

Since then, the Israeli army, intelligence, propagandists and politicians have been in constant preparation for another showdown. But before such pending battle, the nation needed to renew its faith in its army and government intelligence; thus the war in Gaza late December 2008.

As appalling as it was for Israeli families to gather en masse near the Israeli Gaza border, and watch giddily as Gaza and Gazans were blown to smithereens, the act was most rational. The victims of the war may have been Palestinians in Gaza, but the target audience was Israelis. The brutal and largely one-sided war united Israelis, including their self-proclaimed leftist parties in one rare moment of solidarity. Here was proof that the IDF still had enough strength to report military achievements.


Of course, Israel's military strategists knew well that their war crimes in Gaza were a clumsy attempt at regaining national confidence. The tightly lipped politicians and army generals wanted to give the impression that all was working according to plan. But the total media blackout, and the orchestrated footage of Israeli soldiers flashing military signs and waving flags on their way back to Israel were clear indications of an attempt to improve a problematic image.

Thus Yossi Peled's calculated comments on January 23: "In my estimation, understanding and knowledge it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north." Further, he claimed that "We are heading toward a new confrontation, but I don't know when it will happen, just as we did not know when the second Lebanon war would erupt."

Peled is of course right. There will be a new confrontation. New strategies will be employed. Israel will raise the stakes, and will try to draw Syria in, and push for a regional war. A Lebanon that defines itself based on the terms of resistance - following the failure to politically co-opt Hizbullah - is utterly unacceptable from the Israeli viewpoint. That said, Peled might be creating a measured distraction from efforts aimed at igniting yet another war - against the besieged resistance in Gaza, or something entirely different. (Hamas' recent announcement that its senior military leader Mahmoud al- Mabhouh was killed late January in Dubai at the hands of Israeli intelligence is also an indication of the involved efforts of Israel that goes much further than specific boundaries.)

Will it be Gaza or Lebanon first? Israel is sending mixed messages, and deliberately so. Hamas, Hizbullah and their supporters understand well the Israeli tactic and must be preparing for the various possibilities. They know Israel cannot live without its iron walls, and are determined to prevent any more from being built at their expense.

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Swiss Larang Menara Masjid Baru

Proposal mengenai larangan pembangunan menara masjid di Swiss disetujui oleh mayoritas penduduk Swiss melalui referendum, Minggu 29 November 2009.

Hasil referendum ini, 57,5 persen pemungut suara menyetujui larangan tersebut. Hanya empat provinsi dari 26 provinsi yang menolak proposal tersebut.

Seperti dikutip dari laman stasiun televisi BBC, usulan larangan pembangunan menara masjid itu diusung oleh Partai Rakyat Swiss (SVP), partai terbesar di parlemen, dengan alasan menara masjid adalah tanda Islamisasi. Pemerintah Swiss menentang larangan tersebut karena khawatir citra Swiss akan rusak, terutama di dunia muslim.

Namun, sekretaris jenderal SVP, Martin Baltisser, mengatakan bahwa pemungutan suara yang digelar merupakan pengambilan suara untuk menentang pembangunan menara yang merupakan simpol kekuatan Islam. Koresponden BBC di Bern mengatakan, hasil mengejutkan itu merupakan berita buruk bagi pemerintah Swiss yang takut akan terjadi huru-hara di antara komunitas muslim.

Pemberi dukungan tidak mempedulikan saran pemerintah karena bila mereka mendukung pemerintah dengan mengizinkan pembangunan menara, maka jumlah imigran, dan seiring dengan itu jumlah pemeluk Islam akan meningkat.

Dalam sebuah pernyataan, pemerintah Swiss menerima keputusan tersebut. “Dewan Federal (pemerintah) menghormati keputusan ini. Konsekuensinya, pembangunan menara-menara baru di Swiss tidak lagi diizinkan.” Menteri Kehakiman Swiss, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, akan meyakinkan umat muslim di Swiss bahwa keputusan itu bukanlah sebuah penolakan atas komunitas muslim, agama, ataupun budaya mereka.

Sekitar 400.000 warga muslim tinggal di Swiss. Sejauh ini Swiss hanya memiliki empat menara masjid. Setelah Kristen, Islam adalah agama yang paling menyebar di Swiss tetapi keberadaannya relatif tersembunyi. Ada ruang-ruang beribadah tidak resmi bagi umat muslim di sana. Pengajuan aplikasi untuk mendirikan menara-menara baru hampir selalu ditolak.

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Islamic Business Wins Academic Following

At semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Istanbul last month, talk was largely dominated, inevitably, by the economic crisis and its aftermath. But suitably enough, given the location, another topic also came to the fore: the role of Islamic finance, a fast-developing sector of the global banking industry that has remained remarkably resilient through the slowdown.

With the value of assets in Islamic banks now close to $1 trillion and the industry growing at an estimated annual rate of 15 to 20 percent, business students are increasingly eager to cash in. Universities are increasingly offering new postgraduate programs in Islamic finance to help them do it.

Islamic financial products comply with Koranic prohibitions against charging interest and investing in morally dubious industries, such as alcohol and pornography, and lending is based on profit-sharing. At a time when Western banking and financial models have been thoroughly discredited, Islamic finance is enjoying an enviable reputation as a more reliable way to invest. HSBC in the United Kingdom is one of many Western institutions that now offer, among other products, Shariah-compliant mortgages and bank accounts.

“There is a substantial shortage of people familiar with Islamic financial principals in Western banks,” said Philip Molyneux, head of the business school at Bangor University in Wales, which introduced M.A. and M.S. programs in Islamic banking and finance last year. “And they’re all realizing that the Muslim population is a client base that it would be in their interest to cater to.”

The British government has said it is committed to turning London into a robust Islamic financial center and a paper published by the Treasury in December called for the pool of people with the necessary training to be expanded “to keep up with the rapid growth of the market.” British business schools have moved fast to meet the challenge.

Bangor University introduced its one-year degree courses in Islamic finance after receiving a flood of inquiry from prospective students. Participants finish the programs by submitting a dissertation on a topic related to Islamic banking — for instance the market in Islamic bonds, known as sukuk. Enrollment has risen for this academic year to 29 students from just over half that number last year. Ten of this year’s students are employees of the Faisal Islamic Bank in Sudan, sent to Bangor to gain academic accreditation and improve their English.

According to Mr. Molyneux, about a third of this year’s M.A and M.S. classes has a background in Koranic study and is interested in becoming Shariah scholars. “Every bank, insurance company and investment firm that offers Islamic products has to have a Shariah board that screens their business and decides whether it’s compliant with Islamic principles or not,” he said. “Finding people who can interpret the religious tracts and understand the financial technicalities isn’t easy.”

Next academic year, responding to high demand, the school intends to introduce an M.B.A. in Islamic finance. “I suspect that there will be quite a bit of migration from the M.A. and M.S. to the more management-oriented M.B.A.,” Mr. Molyneux said. “The commercial sector is much more attracted to the M.B.A. than it is to the other degrees, which it often views — rightly or wrongly — as being too academic.”

Thom Polson, a 28-year-old Seattle native, enrolled in the M.A. program at Bangor after completing a postgraduate degree at the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance in London. His interest in the sector began when, traveling extensively through the Middle East, he could see that “Islamic banking was growing almost as fast as the skyscrapers.”

“I saw for the first time economic success working hand in hand with law and religion,” Mr. Polson said. “And it fit with the way I think about community.” Upon graduation, he plans to move to Switzerland and work in Islamic wealth management. His aim is to contribute to the conversion of “the huge amount of capital that is already there from the Muslim world to Shariah-compliant accounts,” he said.

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