Author: Ophelia Benson

If you’re a woman – don’t live in Sierra Leone if you can help it.

One in 8 women dies during pregnancy or childbirth, and women have an abysmal life expectancy of just 43 years, one of the lowest in the world. Girls can expect to receive only six years of schooling. On top of it all, the horrors of Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war, in which perhaps a third of the country’s women and girls suffered sexual violence, haunt women today. Widows struggle to get by, survivors of wartime rape face stigma and discrimination, and men continue to assault women with impunity.

One in 8! One in 8!! That’s grotesque. But Papua New Guinea is not great either.

Girls in Papua New Guinea can expect to receive only five years of schooling. What’s worse, accusing women of sorcery is often used as a form of social “payback.” If someone unexpectedly becomes ill or dies, the grievance is often taken out on an alleged “sorcerer”—almost always a woman—who is beaten, raped, or even killed in retaliation.

Haiti isn’t a female nirvana.

Nearly half the young women and girls in the capital’s Cite Soleil shantytown have been raped or sexually assaulted…[T]he problem isn’t taken seriously because many Haitians, including members of the police and judicial system, consider nonconsensual sex as rape only if the victim was a virgin….[I]f a husband finds his wife engaging in adultery in his home, the criminal code excuses him if he kills her…

And as for Yemen, why, it sounds very much like Saudi Arabia –

Early marriage is commonplace in Yemen, with 48 percent of girls married by the time they are 18 and some brides as young as 12….One in 39 women die during pregnancy or childbirth, and 1 in 10 children doesn’t make it to a fifth birthday. Yemeni women live particularly restricted lives; for example, getting a passport and traveling abroad requires a husband’s or father’s permission.

If you’re a woman…be very careful about where you settle down.

Jakob Illeborg says Denmark should have known better.

[T]he hawkish approach taken by the Bush administration internationally is reflected by a similarly tough position on Islam and Muslims in Denmark. If the US is leading a global mission, the Danes have been fighting an inner mission, standing up against what is perceived, by some, as a threat to our democracy. Ever since the prophet cartoon crises of 2006 and 2008, Islamist extremists around the world have been threatening bloody revenge on Denmark.

So…maybe that’s why this ‘what’ is perceived by some as a threat to our democracy? Because of the, you know, threats? Of bloody revenge? For some cartoons? Could that have something to do with it? And could there be a way to describe it other than ‘hawkish’?

Monday’s attack, is of course, indefensible, but it raises questions about the wisdom of the much-debated cartoons and Danish reactions to Muslim wrath…The tragedy in Islamabad only confirms the views of those on both sides of the argument…[M]any are proud of Denmark’s newfound role as a “player” in the international conflict between the west and Islam. This is certainly not a position we used to pride ourselves on – nor is it one that is shared by other Scandinavian countries. Denmark used to have a reputation as a liberal, consensus-seeking country advocating calm and reason…

Whereas now it has…what? A reputation as an illiberal country that thinks newspapers should be able to publish innocuous cartoons without triggering death threats and riots and car bombs outside embassies? Is that what he’s saying? Is he saying that publishing the cartoons is not liberal? That it’s anti-liberal?

Tragic.

Very good take-down of Edward Said (and review of Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West). I don’t always agree with Peter Berkowitz (much less the Hoover Institution) but I do here.

Like the book it introduces, the preface exhibits a master propagandist at work, as he weaves together moderate and reasonable pronouncements with obscurantist rhetoric and sophisticated invective.

That’s how it’s done, of course – mixing the two so that the reasonable stuff provides cover for the obscurantist rhetoric.

Certainly, Said’s conclusions can be convenient. Learning Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, and studying the Koran and Islamic jurisprudence, Muslim poetry and philosophy, and the social and political structures and history of the peoples of the Middle East are exacting and arduous labors. It’s much easier to forgo all that hard work and instead, following Said who follows Foucault, proclaim that such learning and study inevitably falsify their subject matter and ineluctably contribute to the domination of cultures that the Western mind can never hope to understand. Better not to engage in systematic study of Arabs and Muslims, and better still to take one’s stand against those who do. In this way, Said and his disciples stand the scholarly vocation on its head, transforming the self-imposition and social enforcement of ignorance into intellectual and moral virtues.

And what’s really annoying about that is that Said has countless epigones who think and say that he was a great scholar, when that’s just what he wasn’t. David Barsamian on ‘Alternative Radio’ the other day, for instance:

Edward Said, the great Palestinian-American scholar commented that racism against Arabs is the last acceptable form of racism in the U.S. Arabs are constructed as the Other, dark and evil.

Uh huh. Barsamian ought to visit Saudi Arabia sometime if he wants to see some real Othering.

There’s one passage that every scholar, journalist, popularizer, and educator should learn by heart.

Said’s brand of propaganda is particularly insidious. Although he presents himself as a heroic defender of liberal learning and systematic scholarship, he conjures egregious misrepresentations and promulgates toxic misunderstandings, thereby undermining the separation between scholarly vocation and partisan pleading in defense of which he purports to write.

Yeah. There’s a lot of that around. That’s bad.

I love it when women push back against exclusion and demand their rights, don’t you?

Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida’s refusal to include – or at least acknowledge – women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam. In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters. His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists.

Well I should think so. The nerve of that guy! A woman’s role is limited to house and children, indeed – doesn’t he know it’s the 21st century?! Jeez – wake up, dude, we got past that awhile ago. Women can do anything! Free to be you and me! Our bodies ourselves – our bodies belong to us and we can blow them up just as well as men can. We probably do it better – we’re better at planning and patience, you know.

“A lot of the girls I speak to … want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression,” said Huda Naim, a prominent women’s leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. “We don’t have a special militant wing for women … but that doesn’t mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad.”

All right! Way to go Hamas, not stripping women of their right to explode themselves and others. Solidarity forever.

Mr. Al-Zawahri’s remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida’s attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large.

Uh…so it comes as a newsflash to these women that al-Qaida isn’t really a feminist outfit? Have they been paying full attention?

On the other hand, noted SITE director Ms. Katz, Mr. al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.

Well quite. This is what I’m saying. Many al-Qaida supporters do not believe women should drive cars, or have jobs, or get medical attention when ill, or refuse to marry when told to, or leave the house. Playing a military role kind of fits into that larger picture, if you see what I mean.

Mr. Al-Zawahri’s stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. air strike…“I say to you…[I have] tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favourite wife’s chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling,” he wrote in a 2005 letter.

Oh…that’s a shame. So sad that it wasn’t his least favourite wife instead. Poor guy.

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called “al-Khansaa”…has popped up online…Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August if 2004 with the lead article “Biography of the Female Mujahedeen.”

Excellent! Kind of Sex and the City for the abaya set.