Author: Ophelia Benson

You want martyr? I’ll give you martyr. Here’s a real martyr.

Mahmud Muhammad Taha argued for a distinction to be drawn between the Meccan and the Medinan sections of the Koran. He advocated a return to peaceable Meccan Islam, which he argued is applicable to today, whereas the bellicose Medinan teachings should be consigned to history. For taking this position he was tried for apostasy, found guilty and executed by the Sudanese government in 1985.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around on this subject.

The funeral of British suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer was held in absentia in his family’s ancestral village, near Lahore, Pakistan. Thousands of people attended, as they did again the following day when a qul ceremony was held for Tanweer. During qul, the Koran is recited to speed the deceased’s journey to paradise, though in Tanweer’s case this was hardly necessary. Being a shahid (martyr), he is deemed to have gone straight to paradise. The 22-year-old from Leeds, whose bomb at Aldgate station killed seven people, was hailed by the crowd as ‘a hero of Islam’.

That crowd is mistaken.

A little from that sickening interview in Prospect.

Taseer: It’s martyrdom, isn’t it?

Butt: Absolutely. It’s something that makes me really depressed being stuck in this country because I know I’m so far away from it. I know that if I was to pass away in my sleep, then I would not have the mercy of Allah upon me because I have been such a bad person. And I don’t see myself in any way as getting into heaven that easily, except through martyrdom.

‘Allah’ won’t give him ‘mercy’ if he just dies of gangrene from an infected pimple. No, he has to kill himself and a lot of other random people – then ‘Allah’ will be nice to him. And of course that’s the important thing – not to mention what a swell guy this ‘Allah’ must be.

Taseer: You’re looking forward to death?

Butt: Absolutely. As long as it’s done properly. I’m terrified of dying normally, growing old, grey.

Taseer: You don’t see that as a selfish impulse, to care for nothing but your own salvation?

Butt: Ultimately, that’s everybody’s. The mother loves the child more than anybody. But even she, on the day of reckoning, will not look at the child; Allah says she will think of herself, solely of herself. Ultimately, that is what it’s about: I’m going into my grave, you’re going into your grave, everyone is ultimately going into their grave. In this duniya (world), we have as much as we can want, but ultimately it is for the benefit of your soul. It is the only point in Islam where an individual is actually allowed to be selfish.

No comment required.

Identity, eh. Identity, identity, identity – how sick we all are of hearing about it. The hell with identity. Get over it – you are what you are, never mind what your precious ‘identity’ is, just get on with it, do something useful, make a difference, forget about your darling self for five minutes, think about something more interesting.

Eve Garrard says a few words on this subject at Normblog.

Human rights are an indispensable part of a morally decent society (though the eager embracing of victimhood is not, and there’s no doubt that the discourse of human rights has, along with multiculturalism, encouraged many to regard the status of victim of rights-violation as the most attractive one going, and hence to reach for it at the slightest provocation).

That’s the one – the thing about regarding the status of victim of rights-violation as the most attractive one going. That’s one of the problems with the (often frankly formulaic and mindless) repetition of the ‘alienation – rage – grievance’ trope. It creates the very thing it’s talking about – and then uses the created thing as a reason to go on talking about it, thus creating more of it, thus having yet more pretext to go on talking about it, ad infinitum. And then the victim-status that’s been invented can curdle and warp and go stark staring mad, and then look what happens.

The New Republic has an article on some inspiring people. It’s about three ‘clerics’ in the UK: Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza Al Masri, and Abu Qatada. But the authors keep saying a strange thing, despite their lack of admiration for these ‘clerics.’ They say it repeatedly – which I find odd. Not surprising, because I see it all the time, but very odd. Stupid, in fact.

In fact, German law enforcement documents we recently obtained indicate that Abu Qatada has provided much of the spiritual inspiration for Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the most effective Iraqi insurgent leader…Abu Qatada is the mentor and spiritual authority for many militant jihadists, including the notorious Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi…Abu Qatada’s central role as the spiritual guide of European jihadists was highlighted by the fact that the members of the Spanish cell who killed 191 Madrid commuters on March 11, 2004, tried to reach him three times by phone before they blew themselves up a couple of weeks after the Madrid attacks. Indeed, the Spanish judge who indicted Abu Qatada characterizes him in the indictment as “the recognized spiritual leader of numerous extremist groups.”

I daresay you’ve spotted the strange thing I have in mind. What’s all this ‘spiritual’ nonsense? What do people mean ‘spiritual’? They mean religious, so why don’t they say that? Why do they want to pretty it up? Religious is a hooray word these days anyway, why is there this compulsion to make it even hoorayer? They wouldn’t call Hitler a spiritual inspiration, so why the honorific for these bastards? Spiritual inspiration (same word is the root, there – it means breath), spiritual authority, spiritual guide, spiritual leader. Why so respectful? Really, it’s baffling.

Another knee-jerk honorific got on my nerves yesterday. An irritating little item on the need to keep religious schools in the UK – only of course they’re not called that. Why? Because that would make it too obvious what a bad stupid idea they are? Yes, probably. When your case is feeble, resort to manipulative language. It works, too.

Abolishing faith schools is not the way to create harmony between different communities in the wake of the London attacks, Tony Blair has said…He stressed that he backed faith schools, including Muslim schools, which were part of the “proper” school system. And he insisted the schools did not teach children to “look at children of other faiths in a bad way” and often contained some pupils from other religions. Mr Blair said parents were attracted to such schools because they provided a “strong ethos and values”.

Yeah, because people like you go on implying that religion has a monopoly on ‘values.’ Another self-perpetuating self-creating trope, just like identity and victim status. I think this is where we came in.

Hmm. Should I do the charitable reading thing? Or should I just yell is Peter Singer nuts?

Let’s try the charitable reading. He mis-spoke. He left out the qualifying phrase. He forgot a crucial adjective or two. He – um – lives in a hole in the ground and has all his news filtered by hooded agents of a secret international organization?

Singer sought the clash with neo-con America, partly to revive a career that was going stale. True, when he was appointed Ira W de Camp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in 1999, Bill Clinton was in the White House, but still Singer had been lured from the relatively liberal milieu of academic Melbourne because he thought the challenges in one of the world’s most selfish, reactionary societies would galvanise him anew as an ethical person.

Maybe it’s the reporter who left out the adjective or two, since that is a paraphrase or indirect quotation rather than an actual quotation. Surely. Because I have to say – bad and regressive as things are here, this is not even close to being one of the world’s most reactionary societies. (Selfish, possibly, depending on how you define it, but that’s not what I’m taking issue with.) It’s really not. I could give a great long list of examples of why not, but it’s so obvious I won’t even bother. I’ll just say – look at the lives of women and girls in a long, long, long list of countries, and then look at their lives here, and tell me the US is more reactionary than all those countries. Neither in practice, nor in law, is that remotely the case.

It looks as if women in Iraq are in big trouble.

With the approach of the 15 August deadline for completing the new constitution, the role of women in society has become a political battlefield. It pits secular Iraqis against newly powerful religious parties who want a greater role for Islam written into the document…Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had some of the most secular legislation in the region. But all that could change, with hardline Shia members of the national assembly pushing for the country to be named the Islamic Republic of Iraq.

Nightmare.

A strict interpretation of Islamic law would mean that the evidence of a woman in court would count for only half that of a man. And women would have significantly less say in matters of marriage and divorce. “We believe in equality between men and women,” says Amal Moussa, a member of the Shia coalition that took the most seats in January’s elections. “But it is a limited equality. There are Islamic rules that regulate the family and society, and women and men have different rights and duties.”

I love that kind of thing. We believe in equality (well that sounds good). But it is a limited equality. It means that women are inferior and have to do what they are told. That kind of equality.

“We are a pluralist society and this constitution will determine our future,” Ms Edwar says. “It is crucial for us. We cannot allow it to move us backwards and make a mockery of conventions that Iraq has signed on human rights.” Secular women in Iraq have been through a difficult two years, with relentless violence keeping more and more women indoors and many feeling growing pressure to wear the veil.

Growing pressure to wear the ‘veil’? Oh but why is that a problem? Isn’t wearing the veil an expression of their deep devout pious faith? And of their culture? And of their Otherness? And of their postcolonialism and nonOrientalism? And of diversity? So why don’t they want to? Have they been corrupted by the West – is that it?

“I am worried,” says Yannar Muhammad, a prominent activist who runs a shelter for abused women. “I think the future of women in Iraq is very bleak.”

Not good.

Margaret Owen is also worried.

In March 2004, Iraq adopted an interim constitution called the Tal (transitional administrative law). It was then that Iraqi women won their battle to stop the passing of the proposed rule 137, which, if promulgated, would have destroyed all hopes for women’s equality, dignity and justice in the country, in effect allowing the total subordination of women to men within their families, in the community and in political life. This particular interpretation of the Qur’an would legalise polygamy; divorce by “talaq” (when a husband has only to declare “I divorce you” three times for the marriage to be at an end); honour killings; stoning and public beheadings of women for alleged adultery. But now rule 137’s provisions are back in the new draft constitution.

Rule 137 would legalize honour killings? Really? I’m naive – I thought honour killings were tacitly permitted in many places, but I didn’t realize they were actually legal – anywhere. At least I don’t think I knew that. I wonder if that’s right.

Despite the appalling security situation in Iraq (two Sunni members of the committee who are drafting the constitution were gunned down last week), thousands of brave Iraqi women, from different governorates, risked their lives last Tuesday when they congregated in Baghdad’s Al-Firdaws Square to protest against their exclusion in the draft constitution. The international press, busy reporting the continuing violence of the insurgency, failed to cover this event and it got little publicity within Iraq.

Hmm. That BBC article above said it was two hundred women – not thousands. Unless it’s a different demonstration, but that seems unlikely. I wonder which is the right figure.

The drafts released last weekend are a cause for deepest concern. Written by a committe of 46 men and nine women, they expressly state that the main source of legislation in the new Iraqi constitution is to be sharia law, which will take precedence over international law. Sharia law decrees that “personal status” (that is, family law relating to marriage, divorce, custody, widowhood and inheritance) is to be determined according to the different religious sects. Depriving women of their long-held rights and rendering them subservient to interpretations of Islamic law could well lead to the “Talibanisation” of Iraq and an escalation of violence towards women who rebel. Indeed extremists and insurgents are already using rape, acid attacks and violence to force women to wear the veil. Now a law is set to be passed that will ban widows from working for three months following the deaths of their husbands.

That’s how it went in Iran. (I’ve just read Persepolis – read and looked at. Great book.)

If Iraq is truly to become a democratic state, complying with international human rights treaties and conventions, then its constitution, while upholding sharia law, must ensure that its interpretation does not breach its international obligations.

Wait – what? While upholding Sharia law? After what you just got through saying? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Every day in Iraq, women are beaten, raped, abducted and murdered in “honour killings”. Millions more live in poverty and fear. The new constitution must uphold their rights, for we know that it is only when women have equality with men that there can be true democracy, justice and peace. Iraqi women are imploring the international community to act to protect the lives of 13 million women. Tony Blair and Jack Straw must not remain silent.

Second that.

Update. Sort of legal, maybe, semi-legal. “In November 1998, the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights condemned the practice of honor killings. The two articles in the Jordanian Penal Code, which apply to crimes of honor, are the exonerating law: a section of article 340 in the Jordanian Penal Code (no 16, 1960) stating that “he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty”; and Article 98 that states: “He who commits a crime in a fit of fury caused by an unrightful and dangerous act on the part of the victim benefits from a reduction of penalty.” That’s from January 1999 and they were working on reforming the law.

A reader tells me I’m wrong in the Flexible Labour comment – that Muslims (from the Indian subcontinent) were not recruited to move to the UK in the 50s, and that I have them confused in that respect with West Indians, who were. Okay. I did look it up before posting, in a reference book I happened to have handy (the Oxford Companion to British History) which did say people were recruited from the subcontinent, because I thought I thought that was the case but wasn’t sure. But one reference book can always be wrong.

I also apparently didn’t make my meaning entirely clear – probably because I knew so well what I meant that I didn’t notice it wasn’t clear. By ‘dirty little secret’ I didn’t mean the recruitment itself, but the broader or perhaps vaguer point that immigration policy is not motivated solely by altruism or multiculturalism but also by a demand for cheap labour. The reader tells me that’s not a secret, dirty or otherwise, in the UK. Okay. Perhaps I’m misled by the way the subject is discussed in the US, which is generally extremely euphemised and dressed up and generally disguised. Maybe that’s just as well, maybe a blunter discussion would be disastrous. But I think euphemised discussions tend to be confused.

In any case, this article suggests a different reason for ‘alienation’ and grievance and generally feeling pissed off.

What is revealing is that the feelings of alienation suffered by Muslims in the YouGov poll are far greater among men than women. Muslim girls, on the whole, are liberated by living in Britain. Their education is deemed as important by the State as their brothers’. Those whose parents don’t encourage them to stay on at school and go to university will be encouraged by their teachers instead. For many of them, Western society offers the chance of escape from oppression by fathers, brothers and husbands.

Not to mention from ‘the community’ at large. ‘Community’ has become such a hooray word – a usage which overlooks how oppressive and coercive and narrowing a community can be. Not to mention punitive. And if it’s a community that hates women – well, it’s all those and more, for women and girls.

This suggests that the problem with Britain — and the West as a whole — is not that it is un-Islamic. If that were the case, then Muslim women would surely feel as alienated as Muslim men. More plausible is that Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West. Here, they simply can’t get away with subjugating their womenfolk in the way that they can in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Somalia.

Actually, often, they can, if they do it behind closed doors. But they can’t subjugate all women. They’re constantly affronted by the presence of women who are not generally globally subordinated and submissive and inferiorized. There’s a grievance for you.