Tag: International Women’s Day

  • Culturally pressured

    Kiran Opal has marked International Women’s Day by putting together accounts by 17 ex-Muslim women on her blog.

    For those of us who have left Islam as a faith and as an identity, the pressure to stay silent is intense. For many ExMuslims, the price for speaking out about their skepticism, atheism, or agnosticism, is often very high. There is no one monolithic Muslim identity; there is nothing essentially, inherently “Muslim” about someone born into a Muslim family. Yet, for too many people, Islam has become a racialized identity. Many Muslims and non-Muslims see the Muslim identity as a race, not just a doctrine. Although ExMuslims, whether ‘out’ or ‘closeted’, do not identify as Muslim, others often insist on imposing this identity on us.

    From the page on Muslim privilege:

    Question:
    What are the privileges you do NOT have as an Exmuslim woman that you did have as a Muslim woman? (e.g. speaking openly about your beliefs, etc.)

    Taslima: I no longer have the luxury of openly speaking about my beliefs and opinion of Islam without offending my family and friends. My family makes sense, because they are Muslim, but as an ex-Muslim woman, I am more or less culturally pressured into silence by a lot of American “progressive” friends who will openly tell me to “stop being so Ayaan Hirsi Ali”.

    From the page on ex-Muslim privilege:

    Question:
    What are the privileges you DO have as an Exmuslim woman that you did not have as a Muslim woman?

    Maha:

    I’m freer than I would have ever been had things not gone the way they did ten years ago. I get to experience life to the fullest – the good and bad. I know what it’s like to fall in love, to be in a relationship, and to fall out of love or have my heart broken. I know what it’s like to try to make ends meet while working paycheck-to-paycheck. My friends hop, skip, and jump from longitude to longitude. I get to travel freely, explore freely, and think as much as my mind wants without the threat of hell or shame from a fake community.

    The day I left Islam was the day humanity and science released me from the hell of religious solitary confinement.

    I get to hug a dog and fall in love with him because he’s a beautiful soul – without horrifying screams from Muslims about washing my hands seven times to get rid of the pup’s kisses.

    Read the whole thing.

     

     

  • Born of necessity

    Leymah Gbowee says in Al Jazeera “Let’s celebrate International Women’s Day by remembering women around the world working towards peace.”

    I am an optimist; there is beauty despite the ugliness. The bravery and strength of our mothers, daughters and sisters give me hope. Even when they are the ones that have been raped, abused and battered, they take part in the process of rehabilitation and resolution – from a neighbourhood conflict to an outright war. I am in awe of the ability of women to keep communities and families together even in the midst of wars and crises.

    I have just returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where I travelled with the Nobel Women’s Initiative delegation. War and violence have ravaged the nation, especially the women. We listened to stories that would keep you up at night. For too many of the women, each story started with “I was raped; I was in pain; I was upset and distraught…” But in the middle of their narrative, the beautiful is revealed: “…and then the women came; my sister came; my mother came; a women’s association heard and came…. They took me to a doctor; helped me with clothes; talked to me and then I regained strength… and now I am able to at least think about living again.”

    The beautiful line is how women, despite the ugliness of violence, have an unshakeable sense of sisterhood and solidarity. Regardless of what the world calls DRC, I call it the “Capital of Sisterhood and Solidarity”. Their enduring hope compels every one of us to fight for peace.

    Maybe with peace there will be less solidarity, because less need for solidarity. It would be worth it.

  • “Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus”

    How to celebrate International Women’s Day at Aligarh Muslim University.

    Women students in flowing burqas talk about how purdah is the “purest form of existence for a woman”. They explain how capitalism — with its notions of financial independence or a career for women — is anti-women.

    Models are on display to help explain how purdah is to be observed.

    And then, apparently in a concession to more “modern” views, the women also speak about dowry, foeticide, sexual violence and women’s health.

    All this is part of a three-day exhibition that started on Friday at one of Aligarh Muslim University’s women’s hostels, Abdullah Hall, to — ironically — mark International Women’s Day.

    What did they say about dowry and sexual violence? That they’re the “purest form of existence for a woman”?

    Anam Rais Ansari, one of the organisers, and a student of law, said they were providing “Islamic solutions” to women’s problems.

    The group has organised a talk titled ‘Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus’, at Kennedy Hall on the campus on March 8.

    Fliers on campus, and a huge poster at the university gate, show senior lawyer and feminist Vrinda Grover as one of the speakers.

    However, when contacted, Grover said she had pulled out of the function after she came to know about the group and its activities.

    “I am no longer part of (the AMU) function. The views of the organisers are extremely regressive. They are trying to tell women how to dress and how to live,” Grover said.

    But Abdul Rauf, a representative of the group, who is a research scholar at the biochemistry department, said: “We have invited Grover. She will come.”

    I love the title. “Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus” – yes that’s an alternative all right.

    ‘Students of AMU’ was formed in 2010, and has significant influence on the campus now. It enjoys the support of some teachers and students and, apparently, of AMU authorities as well. The group is known for its regressive views on women and women’s rights.

    A recent post on its Facebook page reads: “Sisters, even though our brothers are responsible for their own gaze, we are responsible for what we give them to gaze at!!” One of the posts profiles four Western women who recently converted to Islam.

    One of the over 30 lectures the group has organised in the past was titled ‘Hijab: The beauty of Islam’. The group is alleged to have recently scuttled an initiative to get men and women students of the campus together on a single platform to protest against the alleged molestation of a Kashmiri student by a teacher.

    A student of the law faculty said: “‘Students of AMU’ is subverting the secular discourse at the university, and is promoting conservatism on campus. They prefer to call themselves an Islamist body.”

    It all sounds very familiar. You get the same thing at UK universities, with the addition of clueless students who think they’re supporting something progressive and leftwing by supporting Islamists.