Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Forget Teaching, It’s Only Crowd Control

    It’s a wonder there are any teachers left…

  • E O Wilson on the Launch of ‘Sustainability’

    Why Internet magazines can be useful.

  • Terry Eagleton on Literary Wittgenstein

    Wittgenstein is the philosopher of novelists and movie directors. Hmmm…

  • Egg-Implantation-Prevention is Murder!

    Even though fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant 40 to 60 percent of the time.

  • Hold the Irony

    Michael Lynch has a terrific article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed – about liberalism and passion and communitarianism, and truth, commitment, relativism, Rawls and comprehensive liberalism, and the fact that liberals do in fact have actual commitments, that they can argue and defend with passion.

    Social conservatives have long argued that progressive liberals, in trumpeting individual rights, ignore traditional communities as a source of value…But as the neocons are well aware, traditional family values frequently clash with liberal values…Some traditional communities are rife with intolerant oppression — precisely the sort of thing that enlightenment liberalism is presumably meant to combat. Surely liberals needn’t tolerate intolerance.
    Walzer valiantly attempts to deal with that concern. But in the end, his principle argument is resistible. Consider a hypothetical local religious community that does not value equal education for boys and girls. According to Walzer, if we are to compel our traditional community to educate its girls, we shouldn’t appeal to individual rights; we should appeal to the pragmatic demands of citizenship.

    No thanks. I don’t want to defend my right to read any books that men read on the basis that I’m more useful to the state that way, I want to defend it precisely on the basis of individual equal rights. I want to defend it on the same basis I used to defend my rights as the youngest of three children: ‘It’s not fair!’ Fairness, and the sense of it and of its lack, is not some kind of gilding or cake frosting; it’s central to having a reasonably healthy sense of how we fit in the world. If we’re systematically and formally given inferior treatment, we either think we deserve it, or become twisted with rage, or both.*

    In my view, the reason that liberals are sometimes perceived as passionless isn’t because liberal values are in need of a communitarian correction. The reason is that some liberals misunderstand, and therefore misrepresent, their own values. In particular, they misunderstand their values in a way that has made them wary of describing their own moral position as true. And that is bad. For once you cease thinking of your values — your fundamental moral beliefs — as objectively true, it is hard to even think of them as values at all. And without political values, there simply is no place for political passion.

    The worry is that if you think your values are true you immediately turn into Bob Jones III, or perhaps Pope Rottweiler.

    In recoiling from that position, some left-leaning thinkers have argued that liberals need to adopt what the philosopher Richard Rorty calls an “ironic” attitude toward our own liberal principles. If we want to be truly tolerant, the thought goes, we need to stop seeing liberal views about equality and tolerance as objective moral truths. Instead, we should see them as morally neutral. Otherwise, we risk being intolerant about tolerance.

    Yeah. I don’t want to be truly tolerant. I have no desire to be tolerant of people who throw petrol bombs at marathons because women are allowed to run in them. I want them to stop doing that, and go away and stop telling women what to do. Sometimes tolerance just isn’t the right tool for the job in hand.

    As philosophers like Joseph Raz have argued, liberalism isn’t value-neutral, nor should it be. Liberal values like tolerance and equality are just that — liberal values, neither merely “true for us” nor ethically inert. Rather, they are part of a particularly liberal ideal of the good life — an abstract ideal but an ideal nonetheless.

    Yup. Ideals are good things. Funny, I just dug up a quotation a couple of hours ago in which Franz Boas called himself (in a letter to his sister) an ‘unregenerate idealist.’ I like unregenerate idealists. Boas’ idealism led to some unfortunate epistemic consequences in anthropology, but he was a mensch. Not an ironic mensch, just a mensch.

    *This doesn’t apply to the treatment I received as the youngest of three children. Such gross injustices as not being allowed to put my feet on the sofa, and not getting to sit in the front seat of the car, when my brother and sister were and did, were gradually rectified over the years. I got over it.

  • The Struggle Continues

    Well at least some people are fighting back. I sure do hope they succeed.

    Placard-waving women protesting against the “Talibanisation” of Pakistan demonstrated outside the national parliament yesterday after a mob attacked female runners. The attack has spurred worries about the growing influence of Islamic extremists.
    A week ago baton-wielding men threw petrol bombs and torched vehicles at a mini-marathon in Gujranwala…

    Which was one of the first to allow women to participate. Can’t have that. Women are things, sluts, devils, son-factories, and on all those counts they must not be allowed to – well, do anything, really.

    “This has got to stop,” said a protester, Aisha Shaukat, outside parliament yesterday. “These mullahs want us to just stay home, have children and God knows what else.” She stood before a placard that read: “The obscenity is in your mind.” Others handed out leaflets saying: “We the citizens condemn this Talibanisation”. Newspaper columnists and other critics have made frequent comparisons between the social agenda of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a powerful alliance of Islamic political parties spearheading the rise of the religious right in Pakistan, and the Taliban.

    God know what else all right: nothing. Stay home, have children, and nothing else. That’s the goal. The plan for women is to make them nothing, and their lives nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s what the black bags are all about: to make them look as much as possible like an ambulatory negation. An absence. A blank.

    The Gujranwala race was attacked by supporters of the MMA. Since gaining control of the provincial government in North West Frontier Province two years ago, the MMA has banned music and dancing in public, torn down advertising billboards featuring women, and introduced gender segregation on college campuses…”Marathons are not objectionable – as long as the menfolk and womenfolk run separately,” said Syed Munawar Hassan, a senior MMA leader. “Every society is not an American or western society. We have our own package of values.”

    Who’s we, bub? Not all Pakistanis want your package of values. That’s why you’re resorting to petrol bombs.

  • We Need to Fight the Battle for Enlightenment

    I am delighted to be here today to speak at such a wonderful conference. Here, I talk as an apostate, an atheist who left Islam and religion altogether at the age of 15, a veteran activist of women’s rights who survived the atrocities committed by political Islam in Iran.

    My being a Muslim, like all other children who are accidentally born into Muslim families, was hereditary. My parents were ordinary Muslims. My father was relatively open-minded but my mother indoctrinated us and used religious rules for protecting her children. In my childhood, faith meant that I had an all powerful all knowing father figure watching over me. Anything bad that happened to me – he’d take care of me. To me it was comforting to Know that evil would not triumph, that the anguish of the innocent in this world would not go un-avenged was comforting. The temptation to subordinate your being to a deity ; to a god was immense.

    My doubts about god began seriously when I was 12 years old. I would give a lot to be able to believe. But in the end I had to tread the rocky and non-comforting path of atheism. I gave up the shelter of a divine shadow – but I gained a life that could question and explore the life and human existence. I questioned and rejected religion and became an atheist because I could not answer the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of religion to myself, and because religion limited me as a human being – I remain an atheist because I have discovered myself as human being not alienated by any god or religion and I do not need religion to tell me who I am.

    But those years of exploring and searching for truth was soon replaced by horrors years of brutality and atrocities by political Islam in Iran. Though I left Islam, I had to live Islam. In my youth and young adulthood in Iran, I lived through thousands of days when political Islam shed blood. Since 1979, a hundred thousand men, women and children have been executed in the name of Allah. I have lived through years of assassination of infidels, apostates and opponents of the Islamic republic inside and outside Iran. Years of suppression of women and brutal treatment of those women who resisted the misery of mandatory Hijab and the rule of sexual apartheid. I, along with thousands of non – believers and political prisoners, was tortured by order of the representative of Allah and Sharia; tortured, while the verses of the Koran about non-believers were played in the torture chambers. The voice reading the Koran was mixed with our cries of pain from lashes and other brutal forms of torture.

    Non-believers – atheists under Islam do not have “the right to life “. They are to be killed. According to Islamic culture, sins are divided into great sins and little sins. Among the seventeen great sins, unbelief is the greatest, more heinous than murder, theft, adultery and so on. Courageous apostates aim to skewer the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of a faith that commands the allegiance of a billion people–as well as the hypocrisies of those Western defenders of Islam who would not tolerate its strictures in their own cultures.

    A free discussion of Islam is extremely dangerous not only in countries under Islamic rule but also in the west. Most keep their feelings to themselves. Those Muslims who disown or even criticize their faith publicly are likely to be accused of apostasy, a crime punishable by death under Islamic law–a penalty enforced by a number of Islamic states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

    The Islamic position on apostasy has been described as: “total disbelief that any sane person could possibly have a genuine reason for leaving ‘the most perfect religion’. He or she must therefore, by definition, be acting in bad faith. Essential aspects of our civilised humanity, such as freedom of speech and freedom of belief, are best exemplified in Islam by those thinkers and writers it calls apostates. The importance of apostates and other religious dissidents is crucial.

    Freedom from and of religion does not mean merely the freedom to have a faith but also the freedom to change one’s religion, and freedom to be free from religion. But under the Sharia, apostasy (either advocating the rejection of Islamic belief or announcing such rejection by word or deed) is not permitted and for a man is punishable by death. The punishment for a woman is more lenient – she must stay in prison until she reverts, however long it takes. Even when the death penalty is not applied, those accused of apostasy can be subject to the most violent treatment. This discrimination is clearly contrary to freedom of religion and belief and to the principle that religion should be a private matter for the individual.

    In a feeble attempt to disguise the Islamic attitude to apostasy, apologists often quote the Koranic verse: “There shall be no compulsion in religion”. For a Muslim wishing to leave Islam this is simply not true. In Yemen it’s punishable by death as it is in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban and other Islamic states. The most famous incidence of Apostasy was in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini announced a fatwa, or death sentence against Salman Rushdie for his alleged apostasy in writing “The Satanic Verses”. In a similar vein in Iran in July 1998 a man was executed for allegedly converting a Muslim woman to the Baha’i faith, this was even though the woman claimed that her mother was Baha’i and that she was raised according to that faith. Freedom House’s Centre for Religious Freedom recently protested the forthcoming trial, before a Sharia court of Islamic law, of Hamid Pourmand, the 47 year old lay leader of a small Assemblies of God church in the southern port city of Bandar-i-Bushehr. Pourmand, a convert from Islam, is facing charges of apostasy from Islam and proselytising Muslims, both capital offences in Iran. The government of Iran puts someone on trial for his life solely for his religious belief. The state’s criminalisation of apostasy is always subject to political manipulation and indicates an absolute negation of individual rights and freedom. Iran applies an extremist interpretation of Shiite Islamic law or Sharia, which harshly represses the free expression of belief, including religious conversion by Muslims. Iran’s Sharia courts view non-Muslims as second-class citizens, whose testimony is given less weight than Muslims, and sometimes even as non-persons, without any legal protections.

    In countries ruled by Islamic law and where political Islam holds sway, writers, thinkers, philosophers, activists, and artists are frequently denied freedom of expression. Islamic regimes are notorious for the violent suppression of free thought. Often, as a government allies itself closely with Islam, any critics of the government will be accused of blasphemy or apostasy.

    In Islam, there exists a horror of putting the Koran to critical scrutiny. Ordinary people do not dare to question the Koran. The result is tyranny, thought police, and stagnation, no intellectual and moral progress. Even in the academic community it is a taboo to discuss the Koran scientifically. While there exist a growing critical movement to criticise religion, particularly Islam, Islamists, apologists for Islam, and western governments have come up with the idea of Islamophobia. They try to silence critics. Islam must be subject to critical examination. By silencing critics and calling them racists, Islamists and apologists intend to keep religious domination intact. In Iran the price for criticising Islam is death in its most horrendous way. How many more fates of Theo Van Gogh’s are we expecting in the west?

    The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. We must win the right to criticize the religion without fear of retribution. Criticism, free speech, is the foundation of an open society. We need to criticise and use reason to solve our problems.

    No belief, rational or irrational, scientific or divinely inspired, should be exempt from critical examination. If a belief is sound it will stand on its own merits. If it is not it deserves to fail. No religion should seek immunity from the examination of its claims, or seek freedom from moral criticism of its practices.

    In the West, the Enlightenment brought about defence of individual freedom and civil liberties. The battle against the Church and backward culture caused a deep change in society’s horizon and values and advanced the society. Western society shook off backward and religious thoughts and beliefs. Most of our contemporary ideas about freedom of speech and civil liberties come from the Enlightenment.

    We the atheist and freethinkers need to fight the battle for enlightenment in the East. We need to push Islam back to where it rightfully belongs. We should fight for unconditional freedom of speech including freedom to criticise Islam. We atheists have to challenge religious authority. For every vilified and oppressed atheist, two more, ten more, a thousand more will spring up. No matter how brutal inquisitions and Islamic holocausts, atheists and freethinkers will spring up because people’s minds and needs cannot be imprisoned forever. Today our society under political Islam is being held prisoner by Islamic captors, who fight to dominate this world.

    And I am delighted to say that hopes continue coming from Iran where the society has changed dramatically and deeply since 1979. The movement for secularism and atheism, for modern ideas and culture, for individual freedom, for women’s freedom and civil liberties is widespread. Contempt for religion and the backward ruling culture is deep. Women and the youth are the champions of this battle; a battle that threatens the foundation of the Islamic system. Any change in Iran will not only affect the lives of people living in Iran, but will have a significant impact on the region and worldwide.

    Therefore, we must fight the battle for Enlightenment in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.

    Adapted from a speech delivered at a conference entitled “Victims of Jihad”, held parallel to the UN’s 61st commission of Human Rights on 18th April 2005, in Geneva, Switzerland.

  • Habermas on Discursive Communication

    Victor Navasky: journalism is supposed to be opinionated, that’s its job.

  • Girl and Parents Threaten Self-immolation

    Human rights organisations criticise increase in crimes against women in Pakistan.

  • Toddler Enslaved to Punish Her Uncle in Pakistan

    Village courts are illegal but powerful; common for verdicts to target innocent, particularly women.

  • Women Protest Talibanization of Pakistan

    ‘These mullahs want us to just stay home, have children and God knows what else.’

  • Liberalism Doesn’t Need Communitarian Correction

    It needs conviction, which underpins passion.

  • University Admissions and Athletes

    Demand for athletes plays a larger role in admissions than most people realize.

  • Why

    So what is going on here? Why is this issue not on the radar?

    David Hadley asks:

    …within these oppressive religious regimes – in this case strict Islam – there is a form of sexual apartheid too. Where women don’t even get the luxury of being even second-class citizens. Which makes me wonder why none of the left-wing ‘progressive’ media are calling for sanctions and boycotts of these regimes.

    Surely it is a great cause for them to rally behind, isn’t it?

    Karl adds:

    there’s that post-colonial guilt thing going on. Women’s rights, gay rights, individual rights–they’re all so modern and western. They’re all undermining those fragile traditional cultures and turning everyone into atomized consumers who exist without real purpose in shiny soulless Corporate World. Sympathy is reserved for those proud noble tribesmen who are fighting to preserve their unique cultural heritage.

    Karl nailed it, I think. It’s the authenticity thing. I was pondering this the other day – why do right-on people feel slightly (or sometimes more than slightly) uneasy about rationalist atheist feminist people from Third World countries when they don’t feel that way about atheists, rationalists, feminists from First World countries? I think it is a guilt thing. The background idea (generally, I think, not very carefully thought about or examined, as background ideas often aren’t, which is why we call them background ideas, hence one that may be vulnerable to argument, eventually) that rationalism etc are ‘Western’ importations and contaminations; that they are not authentic. I think the background idea behind that background idea is a vague postcolonialist guilt about taking away distant people’s authenticity. This relies, of course, on the still further background idea that irrational and anti-rational ideas are natural and authentic while the other kind are not (or else some even weirder idea that they’re in the DNA of Western people and not that of Third World people). I think this is an easy idea to slide into – I think I used to do it myself, hence this hypothesis is partly an extrapolation from my own lumber room of formless unexamined assumptions. I suppose we have some sort of mental picture of rationalist atheist (that’s inaccurate of course, but that’s just it) thrusting capitalist imperialism from The West injecting itself as if from a giant syringe or sexual organ into the irrationalist theist traditionalist rural homogeneous Nonwest. And of that Nonwest as uniformly and consistently Different – Other, you know – from The West, therefore (by definition) not rationalist or atheist or feminist, because those are all items in the syringe. A mental picture of the Third World as something rather like the way women used to be conceptualised – shapeless, formless, chaotic, swirling, opaque, mysterious, and above all uniformly and everywhere completely different from the invading exploiting uninvited imperialists.

    In other words, I think there is a tendency to assume that for instance feminism is an importation from the West and that therefore it is, one, not authentic, and two, a contamination. It’s almost a kind of touristy idea. We don’t go to Bombay or Jakarta to eat at McDonald’s, and we don’t go there to encounter rationalist feminists of the kind we could find on any corner in Camden Town or Cambridge. Nosir. When we go abroad, god damn it, we want our exoticism, we want authentic traditionalism and primitivsm. Well, hey, what could be more primitive than oppression of women? Hah? Not much.

    And there’s a feeling that it’s too easy. That’s another outcropping of the postcolonialist guilt thing. It’s too easy for us to prefer our own ideas. What’s difficult is to force ourselves to accept the things that trouble us. It’s easy to eat unfamiliar food, but to accept unfamiliar morality, that’s not so easy. So, people often unfortunately conclude, because this acceptance is difficult, therefore it is the right thing to do. Uh oh. Red flag. Wrong, Wrong, wrong, wrong. Look – the mere fact that it is difficult for us to accept that the oppression of women is okay, does not mean that it is in fact okay. It’s not a useful moral exercise for us to force ourselves to think that cruelty and deprivation are good things. That ‘too easy’ thought is one that should put people on alert. It may be a useful insight, and the starting point for asking ‘why do I think this particular idea or taboo is right?’ but it may also be a disastrous starting point for accepting horrors.

    Of course all this is all wrong anyway. It simply assumes that only one kind of thinking, one kind of morality, is ‘authentic,’ and that others are importations and injections. But that’s nonsense. The West has no monopoly on rationalism and feminism (and it could be considered quite arrogant and Eurocentric and ethnocentric to think it does) and the Nonwest has no monopoly on irrationalism and antifeminism. Ideas don’t have DNA, and they don’t have passports. Anybody can think of anything. It’s insulting and ridiculous to think or even assume that atheists and feminists from Iran or Pakistan or anywhere else are the slightest bit less ‘authentic’ than misogynist theists are. So get over it, already. Tariq Ramadan is not more ‘authentic’ than Azam Kamguian, any more than the BJP is more ‘authentic’ than Amartya Sen. The ideas need to be judged on their merits. The oppression and subordination of women does not become more noble or acceptable because it’s enacted by ‘devout’ Muslims, any more than the oppression and subordination of dalits becomes more noble or acceptable because it’s enacted by ‘devout’ Hindus. Authenticity is an idea whose time has gone.

  • Horowitz’s War on Rational Discourse

    Graham Larkin takes on an instrumentalist version of ‘truth.’

  • Law on How to Teach Colonialism

    French historians think it not up to state to say how history should be taught.

  • Columbia University as Labour-gouger

    Universities ‘liberal’? Not if you look at their labour policies.

  • Cultural Highlights

    And a little more again, about that conference at the UN, because Azam sent me the link to this Commission on Human Rights report, and it has more detail than the news articles. You should read it.

    Ms. Azam Kamguian from Iran was the first speaker in the session on ‘Infidels and Apostates’. She started by describing her own experience; growing up with an all powerful and pious father. The temptation to subordinate her being to God was very strong but when she was an adolescent she decided that she did not need religion to tell her who she was. “Even though I left Islam, I had to live with it”, she stated.
    According to an extremist interpretation of the Sharia Law, the greatest sin is disbelief. Non-believers and atheists do not have the right to life and apostasy is punishable by death. There was a case where a man was executed for having converted his wife. Even in the academic community, discussions of the Koran are considered to be taboo. According to Ms. Kamguian, Islam should be subject to criticism. Currently, if someone criticizes Islam in Iran they face death.

    Yep, it’s hard to disagree with the statement that Islam should be subject to criticism, as should any other religion. But…it’s not a news flash that criticism of Islam is not exactly popular in a lot of right-on circles. In fact it’s taboo. So deafening silence greets conferences like this one. Where is the Guardian, eh?

    Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides for the “freedom to change religion or belief”. Mr. Ibn Warraq observed the discrepancy between this standard and the situation in Muslim countries. He first described the evolution of Islam in regard to its position on apostates. The Koran prescribes condemnation for apostates only in the next world, but this has evolved to mean those who change religion must be killed. In some countries, such as Sudan and Mauritania, the penal code provides the death penalty for apostasy. Also, Muslim theologians are aware that apostasy can tempt Muslim women to free themselves from Sharia law and they have taken measures to prevent this from happening. In fighting causes of apostasy and bringing changes to the Muslim world, Mr. Warraq sees one solution: “without any post-colonial guilt, we must defend our values. We still have freedom of expression and the right to criticize Islam”. In this sense, publications in the West are very important in helping populations in Islamic countries.

    Aren’t they though. So isn’t it too bad they aren’t helping. Because of post-colonial guilt, no doubt. How depressing it is…

    Ms. Fourest listed three main reasons why Muslim extremism is more threatening today. First, Muslim movements compete by rejecting and resisting western modernization. This, in turn, encourages them to add extreme elements to their religion, such as the veil or genital mutilation. These used not to be commonplace, but now “the veil has become almost the sixth pillar of Islam”, she stated. Second, the degree of secularization in Muslim states is non-existent. On that point, Ms. Fourest drew a comparison. Jewish women in Mea Shearim may face the same oppression as those of Tehran, but the former have access to justice, whereas the latter will be put in jail by the state itself. The third factor, mostly playing in places where Islam is a minority religion, is cultural relativism. The minority is expected to continue its “cultural” practices, including wearing the veil, genital mutilations or stoning, for the “folklore”, Ms. Fourest said. Indeed, cultural relativism is a real danger and must be addressed first, since it deprives those who are fighting extremism of the support that progressive humanists should grant them.

    Exactly. Cultural relativism deprives those who are fighting extremism of the support that progressive humanists should grant them. Indeed it does. It never stops surprising me how completely this subject gets ignored.

    Finally, Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, member of the Dutch Parliament and women’s rights activist, recalled all the discriminations and atrocities suffered by Muslim women in the world. These include the need to be granted permission by a man in order to leave the house; the right of men to divorce their wives by repeating ‘I divorce you’ three times; wearing the veil; inheriting less than men and feminine genital mutilations. “The only way out is education. We must stop financing faith based schools in Europe”, Ms. Hirsi Ali said.

    And Hirsi Ali has to have police protection, and, if you remember, has to live in hotels away from her desk and books and papers; she can’t work, her life has been trashed. But – hey – that’s their culture.

  • Campaigning against the Sharia Court in Canada

    The reasons given for a Sharia Court in Canada by Islamists and their multi-culturalist supporters are not what they seem. They say Muslims do not want their family problems to be made public; these tribunals will deal with civil disputes not criminal matters; one can choose not to go before the Sharia tribunal; and that it will take less time than a Canadian court and cost less.

    Let me address each one separately. Why do the initiators of the proposal not want family disputes to be publicised outside of their ‘communities’. In communities where Sharia law interferes with people’s lives, family problems are not simply disagreements between a man and a woman and who gets what. In fact, private matters and religion are closely linked together. To make my point clear, I would like to present one case study I have come across in my social work. I have a client in Toronto who was taken out of school by her parents at the age of 15 and forced to marry a 29 year old man; according to Sharia, she is married whilst under the Canadian legal system she is not. At the age of 16, this young pregnant girl is going through separation because of domestic abuse. In a secular court, the fact that she was forced to marry at a young age is considered a crime and her husband will be charged for assault and child abuse. As for her parents, they too will be charged. The Children’s Aid Society will get involved and if they have any other children younger than 16, all will be moved out to the Aid Society’s care. While in the eyes of the Sharia tribunal no crime has taken place and the matter is a civil one, which can be resolved by the Islamic tribunal, under the modern secular system of Canada, the child will be immediately protected and the abusers prosecuted.

    Moreover, proponents say that the Sharia tribunal is optional for those who decide to use it. My question is optional for whom? Muslim women lose their options right at birth. But for the sake of argument, let’s go back to our case study. Let us say that the 15 year old girl refused to accept the forced marriage, and made a complaint against her parents to a secular court. I don’t know if that would have happened in reality due to social and financial restrictions. What do you think would have happened to her? I know it is hard to imagine. Her family would disown her for sure. For a moment, imagine being born and brought up in such a family and the so-called Muslim community, being made to study in an Islamic school and never having the chance to integrate within society; and then being disowned by not only your family but also the entire community. No wonder she chose marriage over isolation. I think it is fair to say that she had no choice, even though she could have filed a complaint. As I mentioned before, her choice was taken away right at birth. In her case, after going through tremendous abuse (verbal, mental, financial and sexual) for eight long months and being five months pregnant, she could not take it anymore. What are her choices now before the tribunal? Because she married according to the Sharia, in the eyes of her community and family, her divorce has to be in accordance with the Sharia too or else it will not be legitimate!

    Proponents go on to say that the tribunal costs less and takes less time. During a recession, these two excuses may be acceptable for the government and its right-wing parties. They may think that whatever reduces costs of social services, health care, education and social justice is to their advantage but what would the consequences of these low costs be? And who will pay the price? How much damage will it do to humanity? It is not their problem. The above two ‘solutions’ are exactly the same as letting an unskilled layperson do heart surgery on patients in order to reduce the cost of paying a skilled heart surgeon; the percentage of survivors in this case is obvious. Or discharging a sick patient right after her critical operation in order to bring down the costs of the hospital or to be able to shorten the process of recovery!! If this is not inhuman, then what is it?

    My point is why should Muslim women pay a heavy price to bring down costs? If the cost of courts are high and the process is long because of its bureaucracy, then it is everyone’s duty to fight it and make sure that the justice system is fair and affordable for everyone, while remaining secular and modern.

    And finally, we often hear people saying, this is not your problem; why do you care? This is what Muslim women want. Modern society is not built of different clans and tribes that can make their own laws and practice it without affecting others. A modern, secular society has its own norms and standards. We have gained them by going through harsh struggles over many years. The rights to live, education, health, to socialise and have a social life, and all other rights such as the rights of gays and lesbians and children, etc. make up the society’s standards and norms. The disturbance of any will affect others. For example, it is not acceptable to physically discipline children. In fact it is considered abuse and has legal consequences. When some Amish people claimed that it was their right to physically punish their children and had nothing to do with others as they were doing it out of love for their children, society opposed it. And we had every right to do so. It is exactly the same in the instance of the ‘right’ to have the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice. It must be opposed nationally and internationally as it will diminish our social norms and standards. In the real world, not every ‘right’ is or should be respected, such as the right to commit suicide, drink and drive, institutionalise male domination, gender apartheid and segregation between man and women and so on. Whether all Muslim women want it (as they falsely claim), 1,000,000 people demand it or just one does not affect the argument.

    We still have many long hard challenges ahead for the separation of the state and administration from religion, ethnicity, nationalism, racism and any ideology that contradicts the absolute equality of all in civil rights and before the law. Fighting the Sharia tribunals is one important step in defending universal rights for all those living here in Canada.

    The above speech was made on March 8, 2004, International Women’s Day at a panel debate organised by the International Campaign against the Sharia Court in Canada to debate the planned establishment of a Sharia Court in Ontario, Canada. The successful panel was organised by Homa Arjomand, the Campaign’s Coordinator. To join or find out more about the campaign to stop the Sharia court in Canada, contact Homa Arjomand at homawpi@rogers.com, visit the website
    and sign the petition online.

    This article first appeared on the Iranian Secular Society site and is republished here by permission.

  • Victims of Jihad

    Report from the Commission on Human Rights.

    External Resources