Author: Ophelia Benson

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.

A little more about that meeting and press conference at the UN last week. It’s interesting that one of the available articles is from the CBC – the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – since Canada has some ‘issues’ itself on this stuff, as regular readers of B&W know. Homa Arjomand has been working tirelessly to oppose the introduction of Sharia law in Ontario, but Ontario in its wisdom has not changed its decision. Ontario should have been at the UN last Monday. Ontario needs to pay attention.

Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant who has become a prominent women’s advocate in the Dutch parliament, said European countries have to accept that women are more threatened within Muslim communities than in their wider secular societies. Governments must take measures to protect these vulnerable women, even if such action is deemed culturally insensitive to the Islamic community or leads to accusations of anti-Muslim bias, she said. “If you look at the women’s shelters in the Netherlands, the majority of the victims are women from non-Western countries and the majority of them are Muslim women,” she said. “Liberal democratic governments are not interfering because they argue that that’s their culture,” she added.

And if they’re Ontario they go beyond not interfering, and actually help. Not clever. Not even all that culturally sensitive, really. Culturally sensitive toward fundamentalists who want to push women around, but damn insensitive toward the women who don’t want to be pushed. Odd to take the side of the former rather than the latter, isn’t it.

Respecting cultural diversity is really a form of “upside-down racism,” preventing immigrant women from enjoying the same freedom and protection as native European women, said Iranian activist Azam Kamguian. While Europe pays lip service to universal human rights, it is in reality “bribing Islamic countries and Islamists to give up terrorism and then saying the rest is OK,” Kamguian said. By turning a blind eye to Islam’s hostility toward homosexuality and Jews, European governments are buying “a one-way ticket to the Middle Ages,” Hirsi Ali said.

And they don’t even get frequent flier miles. Not clever and not even smart shopping.

Homa gives an example.

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.

Cultural sensitivity, eh?

I wish I’d been in New York last Monday. I wish I could have dropped in on the UN. I’d have liked to attend (if they were open to the public) the press conference or the seminar or both. All the more since two of the participants have contributed articles to B&W.

The main global humanist organisation and a group of former Muslims on Monday accused European countries of ignoring violations of human rights in their Islamic communities to preserve “multi-culturalism”…”Yet in Europe many women find themselves subject to domestic violence, undergo forced marriages or are even killed by family members because of some belief that they have tarnished the family honour,” Brown declared. That view was echoed later by three ex-Muslims and self-described atheists — Somali-born Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Iranian exile rights activist Azam Kamguian and historian of Islam Ibn Warraq — and French sociologist Caroline Fourest.

How I wish I’d been there. In the front row, taking notes, with a video camera, and a tape recorder, and a stenographer.

Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, told the news conference she condemned “the moral relativism in Europe whereby women from Third World countries do not enjoy the same freedoms as native European women enjoy”…Kamguian, a former political prisoner and women’s activist in Iran, who now lives in London, said this “cultural relativism” in Europe and Canada “was upside-down racism” which denied the universality of human rights, especially for women….Fourest, author of several books on religious extremism, told the seminar on the fringes of the commission that sexism and oppression of women “are the main values shared by fundamentalists of all three monotheist religions.”

Exactly. As the dear Vatican made so unambiguous the other day.

She told the news conference a resolution from Islamic states on “defamation of religion” passed by the commission last week was in line with efforts by the Catholic Church and other faiths to protect religion from criticism.

Oh, perfect – just what the world needs. UN resolutions protecting religion from criticism. For every Azam Kamguian and Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq there are whole football stadiums full of religion-protecters and multiculturalists telling them to shut up or else. This story didn’t exactly receive blanket coverage, one can’t help noticing.