Global View by Mona Eltahawy

Cool and sexy Muslims...how about that?

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:00:00 -0400

I could not have dreamed up Rima Fakih if I had tried.

When I imagine stereotype-busting Muslim women, they’re not usually being crowned the first Muslim, and possibly first Arab, Miss USA.

I have long fought to dislodge that media darling “covered in black Muslim woman” from her throne of cliché and to give voice to the diversity of Muslim women out there.

Fakih, complete with a bikini that had even me struggling to concentrate, effortlessly embodied all of that.

When the 24-year-old Lebanese-born, New York City-raised resident of Dearborn, Mich., told judges that U.S. health insurance should cover the birth control pill, she had already won this feminist’s heart.

Dearborn is proud of its queen, media in her country of birth have gushed, and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman publicly congratulated Fakih amid reports the two would meet soon.

And not one of her relatives has tried to honour kill her?

In fact, Fakih thanked her mother — how American is that — for encouraging her Miss USA title bid. Fakih’s aunt in Lebanon — who wears a headscarf — said her Miss USA niece was “an honour for all of southern Lebanon” where her family hails from.

Who allowed the silent and invisible women an opinion — and sexy legs — dammit!

Fakih almost tripped over her ball gown during the pageant, but that was nothing compared to how she wrongfooted quite a few Muslims who didn’t know whether to celebrate or condemn a Muslim beauty queen. I am allergic to pageants, but I am relieved to see a different type of Muslim woman in the news.

I had barely recovered from news of Rima the Beauty Queen when I was dumbstruck by news that Aziz Ansari — an American-Muslim comedian — was going to host the MTV Movie Awards Sunday.

As emcee of the awards he will effectively become Mr. Pop USA, following in the footsteps of Mike Myers, Sarah Silverman and Ben Stiller.

Muslims are sexy AND cool now?

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Muslims have been cornered into apologizing and explaining, endlessly, “Why do they hate us? Is it our freedoms?”

Well, surely Fakih and Ansari are being hailed as the embodiment of American freedom?

According to the zany paranoia of the right wing, Fakih’s victory was the latest “proof” that Muslims are on the receiving end of “affirmative action” and of a “politically correct Islamopandering climate.”

I’ll believe that when there’s a Muslim in the White House.

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning Egyptian-born commentator and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She reported on the Middle East for 10 years before moving to the U.S.

Lessons learned as a 'volcano refugee'

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:00:00 -0400

When the volcano with the unprounceable name erupted in Iceland, I was cocooned in Oxford, England, attending the Skoll World Forum, an annual conference for social entrepreneurs.

I had no idea what a social entrepreneur was until I was asked to attend the forum to speak about social networking and its impact on the Middle East. I learned that the inspiring men and women who had gathered at Oxford University — where every building was fit for a postcard — applied entrepreneurial principles to solve social problems and help bring about change.

In plain English: To my left at dinner one night was a young woman who worked with Visonspring, which helps women in the developing world start businesses selling low-cost eye glasses.

My contribution was to show how women in the Middle East used social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to fight for their rights and to network and connect, thereby building a virtual community that translated into a community in the real world that offered support and solidarity.

Spending three days in such a feel-good cocoon ensured we were blissfully unaware of the impact of Eyjafjallajökull’s huffing and puffing. I had scheduled two extra days in the U.K. to allow for a lecture on Islam and feminism and some socializing in London, my childhood home.

And it was here in London where, along with thousands of other stranded travellers, I became a “volcano refugee” who learned the value of social networking to my own life. Through Facebook I heard from friends all over the world, offering support and kind words to soothe the stress of not knowing when I could fly home again. Through Twitter, I could follow Heathrow Airport’s announcements on cancelled flights.

But this volcano refugee also remembered the value of old-fashioned networking, too, thanks to “real life” friends who took me in when my flight was cancelled and there appeared to be no opening in air space anytime soon.

Looking up and seeing no planes in the sky was a stark reminder of just how prehistoric it is to be stranded because of a volcano. But being grounded was a chance too for some good-old fashioned rest and a sober reminder that if the uncertainty of being a volcano refugee was exhausting, then the trauma of being a refugee was almost impossible to assuage.

When we’re forced to slow down, gratitude can come fast and easy.

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning Egyptian-born commentator and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She reported on the Middle East for 10 years before moving to the U.S.

Plenty of work remains for gender equality

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0400

In 1995, I joined hundreds of women from around the world in Beijing, China, to attend the UN conference on women. It was the third conference of its kind after one in Mexico City and Nairobi, each a decade apart.

So are things any better for women, worldwide, 15 years after the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Platform for Action?

First the bad news. Women’s nominal wages are 17 per cent lower than men’s. Women perform 66 per cent of the world’s work, produce 50 per cent of the food, but earn 10 per cent of the income and own one per cent of the property, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

While much deserved criticism is lobbed at the Arab world (where I am from) for its abysmal record of women’s rights — women’s economic participation is at a lowly 33 per cent, for example -- the lowest in the world — industrialized countries can’t brag too much either when it comes to women and the economy.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) told rich nations in a report it issued to coincide with International Women’s Day that they should do more to cut the pay gap between men and women. Its report showed that women in rich nations on average earn nearly one-fifth less than men.

The pay gap was widest in Korea and Japan, where men earned more than 30 per cent more than women; Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom were the next worst performers with a pay gap of more than 20 per cent. Belgium and New Zealand, which had pay gaps of less than 10 per cent, performed the best.

The good news is that the OECD found the percentage of working women had increased to 62 per cent in 2008, from 45 per cent in 1970. But women in nearly all countries spent at least twice as much time as men taking care of children or other relatives, leaving them with shrinking schedules that allow for only part-time or lower-paying jobs.

Work at home or involving family care is not remunerated, of course, and so as long as women remain primary caretakers and those who sacrifice careers for home, that lower pay cycle will continue both outside and inside the home.

I have lived in the U.S. for 10 years now. How does my new home fare when it comes to equal pay for equal work? Quite badly. Today, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man is paid. In 1972, it was around 49 cents to the dollar.

Putting female genital mutilation on the Davos agenda

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:00:00 -0400

Imagine if every year three million boys had their penises cut off. Sound outrageous?

Well, every year three million girls have parts or all of their clitorises cut off in a procedure known as female genital mutilation (FGM). The clitoris has double the nerve endings that a penis has, so my analogy to chopping off little boys’ organs isn’t too far off.

There are four types of FGM ranging from the most “minor” — known as clitoridectomy, which involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris — to the most severe, known as infibulation, which involves removal of parts of the external genitalia followed by stitching together of what remains. The girl subjected to this then has her legs bound for about two weeks to create a seal over her genitals.

Have I been graphic enough?

And yet the world is mostly silent about the mutilation carried out on girls from infancy to about the age of 15 in at least 28 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Some immigrants have taken the practice with them to communities throughout the world. It is carried out for several reasons, including control of women’s sexuality and initiation into womanhood.

FGM has no health benefits. Doctors say it causes lasting psychological trauma, extreme pain, chronic infections, bleeding, abscesses, tumours, urinary tract infections and infertility.

As you read this, British activist Julia Lalla-Maharajh will be at the World Economic Forum in Davos to shake the suits and wallets there into paying more attention to FGM. Her video appeal won the Davos Debates 2010 on YouTube, and on Jan. 30 she will be speaking on a panel about FGM.

It’s important to remember FGM is not exclusive to one religion or social class. It is older than Christianity and Islam. Egyptian mummies are said to display characteristics of mutilation. And as recent as the 1950s, partial or total removal of the clitoris was prescribed in western Europe and the United States in response to hysteria, epilepsy, mental disorders, masturbation, nymphomania, melancholia and lesbianism.

The international community must speak out on behalf of girls and women and pour more support into campaigns that have worked to end FGM in some communities. Campaigners say the most effective ways involve a mix of human rights, education, community development, health care, and alternative rites of passage. Here’s hoping Julia Lalla-Maharajh can persuade the suits and wallets.

Social media gives rise to the new iMuslims

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:00:00 -0400

You’ve seen their mugshots: A Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a plane on Christmas Day; five young American Muslims detained in Pakistan, apparently desperately seeking jihad.
You’ve heard they went online in search of radical imams ready to recruit every Muslim within a foot of an Internet connection.

I bet you haven’t heard of these mugshots: Iranian men in chadors and headscarves.

As part of the “Men in Headscarves” campaign, Iranian men have been posting pictures of themselves wearing the head and body coverings the Iranian regime imposes on women. Their pictures have spread on Facebook and YouTube in support of Iranian student activist Majid Tavakoli.

Authorities arrested Tavakoli in December after he called for more democracy and urged students to reject “tyranny.” The next day, government newspapers published pictures of Tavakoli dressed in a chador and claimed he had tried to escape arrest disguised as a woman.

Yes, violent radical groups such as al-Qaida and others have used the Internet to their advantage. That is not new.

But what is new is how young Muslims around the world have been using the Internet to challenge authority. Their exciting work is overshadowed by news of angry, young Muslims online.

Do you know of the Egyptian blogger who helped convict police officers for the sodomy of a bus driver by posting footage of the crime on YouTube? How about the female Saudi blogger who challenges her country’s restrictions on women (she is married to a former officer of the morality police, who often enforce those restrictions).

Pick up Gary Bunt’s iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam and learn that for every online al-Qaida recruiter there are thousands more Muslims reforming Islam online. Interpretations and commentaries on the Qur’an fill the Internet and recreate the vibrant intellectual atmosphere that many Muslims lament we’d long ago lost.

I see it every day on Facebook, where I have almost 5,000 friends. We argue over everything from polygamy and burqas, to being gay and Muslim. You rarely see such diverse opinions in news reports on Muslims.

Twitter is just as vibrant. An American Muslim I follow summed up the sentiments of many towards those five young American Muslims: “I say we welcome these kids home from Pakistan with a swift kick in the ass. Who’s with me?”

The Internet deals a blow to radical groups by giving anyone online the chance to answer back. For every Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, there are dozens of Iranian men taunting the regime that runs the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What's Barbie wearing under her burka?

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:00:00 -0400

Authenticity has never been Barbie the doll’s strong suit. It’s estimated that if she were life sized, she would tip over because of the size of her breasts.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that as part of the 500 international outfits designed to mark Barbie’s 50th birthday — yes, she’s that old but doesn’t she look good for her age — “Muslim” Barbie is wearing a burka.

As a Muslim woman, I am sadly all too familiar with the media shorthand for “Muslim” and “woman” equalling Covered in Black Muslim Woman. This being Barbie though, the burka isn’t in forbidding black. Italian designer Eliana Lorena, who made the outfits for an auction Sotheby’s is holding to collect money for Save the Children, instead made Muslim Barbie’s burka vermillion and lime green!

What will the Taliban say?

What on Earth are little girls supposed to do with Burka Barbie? More intriguingly, what is Barbie wearing under that lime green burka? I was at a loss until I came across an ad by German lingerie company Liaison Dangereuse.

A woman steps out of the shower into stilettos (because they’re the first thing a woman wears after showering, of course). She stands nude at her mirror to apply makeup, followed by lingerie, on top of which she throws a burka (black, not lime green though). The clip ends with the tantalizing line “Sexiness for everyone. Everywhere.”

That’s more like the Barbie we’ve known for 50 years! So, are Burka Barbie and Liaison Dangereuse in some kind of marketing cahoots?

The final piece of the puzzle came when the BBC reported that on the Saudi religion channel Awtan TV women presenters are dressed from head to toe in a black niqab. (The burka has a mesh where the eyes are, the niqab leaves the eyes uncovered).

Eureka!

Those Burka Barbies must be spinoffs for those women presenters, one of whom told the BBC that wearing the niqab helps her to concentrate more on her work and what she looks like is irrelevant. It begs the question why she didn’t choose radio instead, but, hey, I’m still trying to figure out this Burka Barbie business.

Apparently, fans of these women in black from head to toe — gloves included — urge them to stay just the way they are. Little did Ms. Lorena realize that she was actually supplying a demand most of us never knew existed — Burka Barbie TV Presenter!

I never was one for dolls.

Step in right direction for Kuwaiti women

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:22:49 -0400

Within a week in October, Kuwaiti women won two small victories that were baby steps for womankind, but a nightmare come true for Muslim fundamentalists, who for decades blocked political rights for women.

First, Kuwait’s constitutional court ruled married women could obtain passports and travel without their husbands’ permission. The court said the previous requirement was in violation of guarantees of freedom and gender equality in the constitution.

The second victory came when the constitutional court dismissed a case raised by an Islamist voter who claimed that two of four women elected to parliament in May — Rola Dashti and Aseel al-Awadhi — cannot be members of the legislature because they don’t wear headscarves.

The other two female parliamentarians wear headscarves.

Headscarves have nothing to do with being a competent parliamentarian but everything to do with Muslim fundamentalist fear of women’s rights.

For years, those fundamentalists stood in the way of women’s political rights, making sure Kuwait’s parliament remained a boy’s only club.

Islamists forget they don’t hold the copyright to Islam or its interpretations and they forgot that for many of us Muslims, the essence of Islam is equality and justice, not a hatred of women or laws to curtail their rights.

All four women parliamentarians in Kuwait are Muslim. Two wear headscarves. Two don’t. That is the way it should be — an exercise of free will based on individual conscience and not the misogyny of fundamentalists.

Hot and bothered over fake hymens

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:35:54 -0400

Proving one more time that when it comes to Muslim women, it’s about headscarves and hymens — in other words, what’s on our heads and what’s between our legs — Egypt is hot and bothered over a Chinese device that fakes female virginity.

It’s reportedly available in Syria for $15 but nobody knows if the gizmo called Gigimo is on sale in Egypt yet. Just the mere thought of a device, which is said to release liquid imitating blood, allowing a woman to fake virginity on her wedding night, has driven some conservatives crazy.

One Egyptian Muslim scholar even went so far as to say that people caught importing the virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty and the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition bloc in parliament, want the kit banned on grounds it will encourage promiscuity.

The conservatives are not content that their ideology has put headscarves on the heads of 80 per cent of Egyptian women. Now it’s the horror of uncertainty about that “good girl” they marry.

With all the troubles Egypt faces these days — spiralling cost of living, a president in power for 28 years whose son looks likely to succeed him, etc. — why all the fuss over hymens, real or fake?

Welcome to the hypocrisy and denial that together drum at the heart of conservative religious views on women and chastity. And in the case of Egypt, that conservatism applies equally to Muslims and Christians.

As a Muslim, I know the Qur’an preaches chastity for men and women, but the conservative obsession with women means only females are expected to abide by the prohibition on extramarital sex. This obsession with virginity is shallow at best and deadly at worst.

And it’s built on a lie — people in Egypt are having sex outside of marriage, as they do everywhere. Hymen reconstruction surgery was an option for sexually active women who could afford it.

In less affluent and more rural areas, women have used body parts of animals for blood on the sheets. Now the Gigimo provides a cheaper, cleaner and non-surgical prop to maintain the lie that many men still want to believe.

Truth be told, it’s unlikely Egyptian women will flock to the Gigimo. But it’s been worth it just to watch male hysteria as the made-in-China hymens threatened to smash their virginity god.

‘Birthday greetings’ for Saudi Arabia

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:10:27 -0400

Saudi Arabia has just turned 79. Relatively young, but old enough to know that it is morally disgraceful to treat women like children.

The country that sits on the world’s largest oil reserves is the only one that denies half its population the right to drive. Saudi women cannot vote, cannot drive, cannot be treated in a hospital or travel without the written permission of a male guardian, cannot study the same things men do and are barred from certain professions.

To mark her country’s birthday, Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha al-Huwaider wants you to write to women in your government and urge them to pressure the Saudi government to end the system of male guardianship of women in Saudi Arabia. Consider it a campaign to finally let Saudi women grow up.

“I do believe free people around the world can help a lot to make women’s lives in Saudi Arabia better,” al-Huwaider said.

She asks that you also write letters, via Saudi embassies, addressed to Saudi King Abdullah — who many Saudis believe is a reformer but whose hands are tied by conservative members of the royal family and clerics.

The guardianship system basically puts a male relative in charge of women’s lives. Imagine the humiliation of an adult woman needing the permission of a man — at times much younger than her — to do the most basic of things, such as being admitted into a hospital. Almost 60 per cent of university students in Saudi Arabia are women — so it’s not a question of capability.

Some women are “lucky” enough to have male relatives who do not abuse the system. Their male relatives, for example, sign a letter granting unlimited permission to travel.

But why subject women to the whims of men and officials?

In 2008, al-Huwaider produced two video clips directly challenging Saudi Arabia’s misogyny.

One featured her driving as she addressed an open letter to the country’s interior minister asking him to lift the ban on driving and offering to teach Saudi women how to drive.

The other one protested the lack of women on Saudi Arabia’s Olympic teams and criticizing the ban on girls and women from sports in the kingdom’s state-owned schools and universities, saying it had contributed to an obesity problem.

Just look at Saudi Arabia’s neighbours to see that its outrageous treatment of women has nothing to do with Islam but more with its own customs. And listen to Wajeha al-Huwaider to understand that there are Saudi women courageously fighting for their rights and who deserve our support.

Send those “birthday cards!”

Sudan caught with its pants down

Mona Eltahawy, metro canada — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:17:14 -0400

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The Sudanese regime surely didn’t reckon with the phenomenon of Lubna Hussein, the journalist arrested along with 12 others in Khartoum in July and charged with “indecency” for wearing trousers in public.

Not only did she refuse the flogging sentence that 10 of those women accepted, she went to court to contest the charge, determined to show it has no basis in Islamic teaching and using her clout as a journalist to speak out for so many other women who can’t.

The entire world was watching when a judge waived the flogging sentence Monday and ordered her to pay a $200 fine.

But Hussein kicked the ball right back at the Khartoum government, refusing to pay the fine and choosing instead to spend a month in jail to show solidarity with the thousands of other women, Muslim and non-Muslim, that the so-called Islamic Sudanese regime singles out for its brand of hollow piety.

Shockingly, such charges are not unusual in Khartoum, where a police official says nearly 43,000 women were detained last year for indecent clothing offences.

The Sudanese regime picked on the wrong woman with Hussein. Despite her request to family and friends not to pay the fine on her behalf, the head of the Journalists Union — a member of the ruling party — paid the fine and Hussein was almost pushed out of prison — television news reports show her looking upset at being told to leave.

She said she didn’t want to leave behind the almost 800 women who had no one to pay the fine for them.

Ponder that for a moment — the Sudanese authorities essentially ended up paying a fine for a ridiculous charge they invented. Forget shooting yourself in the foot — they scored an own goal!

Just before Hussein was released, the UN human rights office said her conviction violated both the bill of rights in Sudan’s interim constitution as well as international human rights treaties ratified by Sudan.

We know what Lubna Hussein did to expose the Sudanese regime’s moral bankruptcy. What will the UN, for which Hussein used to work, do? She resigned from that job — which could have provided her immunity — to contest the charges.

It’s about time the UN kicked out Sudan and other countries that so egregiously violate women’s most basic rights in the name of “decency.”

Women biggest losers in Afghan elections

Mona Eltahawy, metro canada — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:42:35 -0400

Reports the Taliban sliced off the index fingers of two Afghan women who dared to vote in their elections last week were a reminder, if we needed any, who the polls’ biggest losers were.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, seem to be neck-and-neck in results. But poor security, rampant fraud and too few female election staff kept many women from voting stations, leaving us wondering what chance women stood in getting their voices heard.

Going into the Aug. 20 polls, things didn’t look so bad on paper. There were nearly 350 women registered as provincial council candidates — about 10 per cent of the total. Afghanistan’s constitution reserves one-quarter of provincial council seats for women to guarantee them a role in political life.

But the Taliban’s brutality is just one of the many rocks and hard places that surround Afghan women.

Karzai, the celebrated “moderate” on the scene, showed how spectacularly easy it was to sell out women for votes when he ratified a controversial family law to win the votes of fundamentalists. He promised to reword it after an international outcry but, in fact, made it worse.

The legislation, meant to govern family law for minority Muslim Shiites, who make up about 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people, gives a man the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife if she refuses to obey his sexual demands, according to Human Rights Watch.

It’s a painful blow for women’s rights because Afghan Shiites are generally more liberal than many of their Sunni compatriots.

Fighting between NATO troops and the Taliban insurgency takes a huge toll on Afghan civilians and makes it almost impossible for women’s groups to do the simplest of their work, let alone take on those myriad rocks and hard places.

So exactly for whose benefit were the elections? Clearly, not women’s.

Education or invasion? Take your pick against extremism

Mona Eltahawy, metro canada — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:13:12 -0400

What’s a more potent antidote to extremism: Invasions and guns or money for schools?

That was not a trick question and you don’t get gold stars for the right answer.

Activists have long told us that getting an education was a great way out of poverty and a crucial ally to economic growth. So it was good to read last week that Canada plans to send Pakistan more aid with a special emphasis on bolstering the Pakistani education system. About time.

For a stark and bloody reminder of where parents turn when public education fails their children, remember the siege at Lal Masjid standoff in 2007 —not in a remote part of Pakistan but in the capital, Islamabad. Two radical brothers established a Taliban-style compound that taught its students the virtues of vigilantism and suicide bombings. More than 100 people, including women and children, died after a bloody standoff with government forces.

Schoolgirls who survived were sent back home —many to rural areas without schools for them —where they told reporters they missed their books and where they passed on what they had learned to village children.

Parents wouldn’t have sent their girls and boys to the Lal Masjid compound if there were schools nearby.

That gap has been filled by the now notorious “madrassas.” Unlike secular schools, “madrassas” focus on religious education. That isn’t the problem. Rather, it’s who funds them.

Not everyone who goes to a madrassa blows himself up, but I am not naïve enough to think they’re all about love and God either.

If poor governments don’t invest enough in schools, you can be sure boys get priority when they do. It’s either harsh reality — boys can work and support family — or misogyny — in May, 90 Afghan girls were hospitalized with five slipping briefly into comas after the Taliban staged the third poison gas attack in as many weeks on girls' schools. Sometimes it’s both.

In a 2004 report, the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations explained why girls’ education was worth the investment: it delivers huge returns for economic growth, political participation, women’s health, more sustainable families, and disease prevention.

Surely returns like that deserve gold stars?

Lashing out at Sudanese ‘fashion police’

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:56:47 -0400

What would you do if you were out with friends at a coffee shop, the police arrived and arrested you all for being “indecently dressed” — you’re wearing trousers — and decided your punishment was a public flogging: 40 lashes each?

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein went head-to-head with her country’s outrageous “dress code” law in style. She insisted on a trial (10 of the women arrested with her accepted a fine and flogging), showed up in the Khartoum court wearing the very same trousers that got her arrested in the first place and — the cherry on the cake — she sent out 500 invitations to journalists and activists to come and watch.

Dozens of women, many in trousers, and several men turned out to support Hussein and were promptly tear-gassed and beaten by police. Any doubt on how far Hussein has upended the system in Sudan was laid to rest when the Sudanese regime barred her from travelling to Lebanon earlier this week to give a television interview on her trial.

Hussein’s trial resumes Sept. 7.

For years the Sudanese regime had played a cheap game of flaunting its “Islamic principles” over the bodies of women. It has flogged thousands of both Muslim women and non-Muslim southern Sudanese women for supposedly violating Islamic principles.

Many silently endured the misogyny and injustice; they were poor, socially vulnerable or ashamed. But Hussein has brilliantly used her position and clout to fight back. She is a journalist who knows all about shaping the narrative. She was also a press officer for the United Nations, a position that could have earned her immunity from charges and a flogging, but she chose to resign and fight instead.

And most importantly she is a Muslim woman who knows that a flogging for wearing trousers is sheer and utter nonsense — she has said she was ready to “receive (even) 40,000 lashes” if that’s what it takes to abolish the indecency law.

A Sudanese friend who recently visited Khartoum told me she’d seen friends and relatives dressed in T-shirts and trousers at parties she went to without consequence, an indication the regime had turned down some of its “Islamic” zeal.

Hussein’s case could be one of police gone wild, thinking they could get away with what is business as usual — teach a group of women “morals.” But they didn’t reckon they had to deal with a media-savvy woman, a pride to Sudan’s feminist movement and women everywhere.

These heroes are fearless, inspiring

Mona Eltahawy, metro canada — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:37:30 -0400

Tina Turner was wrong — we do need another hero. Especially fearless women.

As a special gift for my 42nd birthday I met two such women in Kuala Lumpur, where we were attending the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE), a program aimed at improving the status of Muslim women worldwide.

Seyran Ates, 46, a lawyer and women’s rights advocate, was born in Istanbul and has lived in Germany since her family moved there when she was six. She ran away from home at 17 to escape patriarchal traditions and sought refuge in a shelter for battered women.

When she was 21 and living at a women’s centre, young men of Turkish descent broke in and started firing guns. Ates was shot in the throat and almost bled to death. The woman next to her was killed.

Two years ago, as she was about to enter a Berlin courtroom with a client filing for divorce, the husband assaulted the two women. That attack, as well as direct threats against her infant daughter, have persuaded Ates — a single mother who is open about the fact that she never married her daughter’s father — to close her legal practice.

She continues to fight for women in other ways. She’s written several books condemning political Islamic organizations for their misogyny, the right wing in Europe for its racism and hatred, and the left wing for its silence over the violations of Muslim women’s rights. Her latest book is called Islam Needs A Sexual Revolution. I can’t wait for its English translation.

All I can tell you about my second new hero is she is Iranian. Anything else could jeopardize her safety.

Her life has closely mirrored Iran’s ebbs and flows since its 1979 revolution. She was a teenage supporter of that revolution. As a conservative young woman who chose a headscarf she supported its Islamic aspects, which eventually pushed aside the other political strands that had united against the Shah.

But within a decade she became disillusioned with Iran’s direction and embraced instead her country’s feminist movement. I, too, had been a more conservative, headscarf-wearing teenager and it was comforting to trace our parallel moves away from orthodox interpretations of Islam.

They tried to kill Ates twice. They imprisoned my Iranian hero twice.

Solitary confinement was “like death,” she said, and only her spirituality saved her. She is now a “backpack activist” — the regime shut down her organization’s office — and creates online a space activists don’t have in the “real world.”

With women like Ates and my Iranian hero around, we’re well on our way to being wise indeed.

If only Uighurs were Buddhist

Mona Eltahawy, for Metro Canada — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Pity the Uighurs — the wrong kind of minority fighting the wrong kind of enemy.

In China’s worst ethnic unrest in years, Uighurs took to the streets of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, on Sunday. They are believed to have been angered by government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died, news agencies reported.

The Chinese government quickly blamed exiled separatists, arrested dozens and tried to curb information flow by stifling the Internet. Yesterday, Han Chinese armed with iron bars and machetes went looking for revenge on Uighurs.

But as Reuters pointed out, the underlying cause of the unrest most likely was long-standing economic, cultural and religious grievances that have built up among the Uighurs over decades of tight central rule.

If only the Uighurs were Buddhists like the Tibetans, who just 18 months ago had their own uprising in Tibet’s capital Lhasa. We’d be having Free Xinjiang concerts already courtesy of Bjork, Sting, Bono and all those other one-named saviors of the poor and oppressed.

If only the Uighurs were a minority in a country that didn’t produce half the goods we use and which wasn’t quickly threatening to turn into a superpower. Perhaps then the U.S. State Department would issue more threatening words of its own. Instead, they’re Muslim and us Muslims don’t get much love these days. And just as importantly, the Uighurs are facing off with the wrong kind of enemy. If the “West” ignores Uighurs because they’re not as cuddly as the Tibetans or their leader the Dalai Lama, then where are the Uighurs’ fellow Muslims? Uighurs are a Turkic people who are largely Muslim.

Many Muslims pay attention only when the U.S. and Israel are doing the oppressing. China is the wrong kind of enemy. Look at Darfur, where the suffering goes ignored because its victims are black and because those who are creating the misery in Darfur are not Americans or Israelis. We only pay attention when America and Israel behave badly.

Speaking of Darfur, China is one of Sudan’s biggest trade and arms partners. Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who last year wanted to try a British teacher for insulting Muslims by naming a class teddy bear “Mohammed,” won’t be rushing to condemn Chinese oppression of Uighurs.

So perhaps Israel can save the day and invade Xinjiang.

– Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning Egyptian-born commentator and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She reported on the Middle East for 10 years before moving to the U.S.

Right to full-body veil not a matter of religion

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:32:19 -0400

The full-body veil, called the burqa or niqab, terrifies me.

I’m a Muslim woman who defends a woman’s choice to wear a headscarf — I wore one for nine years — but I will never defend the niqab. It embodies the erasure of a woman’s identity.

And so I agreed with French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he said the burqa wasn’t welcome in France because it “is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience.”

I would add the niqab doesn’t belong anywhere, neither in countries where Muslims are a minority nor in a Muslim-majority country like Egypt, my country of birth.

An argument I had on the Cairo subway — while I still wore a headscarf —with a woman who wore niqab helped seal for good my rejection of the niqab.

She asked me why I did not wear the niqab. I pointed to my headscarf. “Isn’t this enough?”

“If you wanted a piece of candy, would you choose an unwrapped piece or one that came in a wrapper?” she asked.

“I’m not candy,” I answered. “I’m a woman.”

I retell that argument often because it shows the niqab isn’t about the “West” versus “Islam.”

Many will accuse Sarkozy of hating Muslims, but that would be to concede that the burqa is religiously-mandated, as extremists believe. Many Muslim scholars have clearly described the niqab as an old Bedouin tradition that was not required by the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

To connect the niqab with Muslim women is inaccurate because only a small minority wears it.

Hearing Muslims argue over the burqa is the best way to disarm the Islamophobic right wing in Europe and in North America and their crocodile tears for Muslim women. We don’t care for their “support” and yet — to fight Islamophobia — we must not silently watch extremists erase Muslim women out of existence.

That’s where “it’s about the economy, stupid!”

France is home to Western Europe’s largest population of Muslims, estimated at about 5 million. Many complain of discrimination and blame the French government for inaction.

It was good to hear Sarkozy also say that France’s integration model wasn’t working any more because it doesn’t give immigrants and their French-born children a fair chance. That’s the best way to fight extremists and the niqab they promote. The majority of Muslims in France are more concerned with poverty and unemployment than with the niqab.

The heart versus head

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:42:19 -0400

George Bush could never have pulled it off. Give a speech that comfortably hopscotched between hot potato subjects, deftly shift from self-criticism to demanding the same of his audience and get at least 30 applause breaks from a mostly Muslim audience in Cairo, Egypt? Not in a million years.

How ironic that the middle name “Hussein,” which the U.S. right wing viciously used to paint Barack Obama as a “secret Muslim,” gave Obama what Bush never had — the benefit of the doubt of Muslims, if just for the 50 minutes of his speech.

But that middle name sparked quite the fight between my heart — so easily charmed by his eloquence and intelligence — and my head, which holds Obama to a higher standard. I know he knows better.
Here’s the breakdown of my heart vs. my head:

As a Muslim in the U.S., my heart and head were united in delight that Obama highlighted the role of Muslim Americans. They bridge that divide of “us versus them” that so many of the Bush administration’s policies and rhetoric inflamed.

Obama’s acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering touched my heart but my head wanted to hear concern for civilian casualties and suffering in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Obama’s revulsion at torture reassured my heart but my head immediately asked why he didn’t condemn torture in my beloved country of birth, Egypt — the host for his talk is a popular destination for renditions. Heart and head are furious that my country does America’s dirty work.

Oh how he thrilled my heart by bringing up women’s rights but why, oh why, head demanded, did he have to keep mentioning headscarves every time he spoke of Muslim women?

Yes education, small business loans and political involvement are all important for this Muslim woman’s heart and head but I wish Obama had assured the women and girls of Afghanistan that their rights would not be sacrificed for the sake of a ceasefire or truce with the Taliban or other violent extremists.

Democracy greatly concerns both heart and head. Many Muslims around the world are upset with the U.S. because it supports dictators in many Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, where Obama gave his speech, and Saudi Arabia where he began his Middle East visit.

So, Obama pleased heart with talk of the importance of the rule of law, freedom of expression, etc., but head wanted him to be as bold in condemning the repression of his hosts as he was in broaching those hot potato subjects that trouble the U.S. relationship with Muslims.

Clearly, Obama will keep heart and head busy.

Kuwaiti women inspire historic change

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:29:52 -0400

I love it when women put the fear of God into countries. That’s how I like to explain Saudi Arabia’s decision to delay municipal elections for two years.

It’s all the fault of four Kuwaiti women who made history on May 17 by winning seats in their country’s parliamentary elections. Their victory was made all the more delicious because fundamentalists long opposed to women’s political rights lost several seats.

A day later, the Saudis postponed their elections, slated for October. They know the ideas that Saudi women can pick up from their Kuwaiti sisters.

In the aftermath of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, many Kuwaiti men and women fled the violence by driving to neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Inspired, 47 Saudi women violated the kingdom’s ban on driving by taking to the wheel in a convoy through the capital Riyadh.

And to this day, the country whose oil reserves fuel most of the world’s cars continues to deny women the right to drive a car, vote and run for office. Men were enfranchised only in 2005 when the kingdom briefly flirted with democracy by allowing its first local elections. Fundamentalist clerics ensured they remained off limits to women.

Just as they had in Kuwait, where for years they blocked legislation for women’s suffrage. Women finally won their political rights in 2005, but failed in two subsequent elections to win seats in the 50-member parliament. But now, with neither quotas nor the backing of political parties, the four successful women candidates have proven that once conservative voting habits can change.

When conservative Saudi clerics claim to be upholding “Islam,” point to neighbour Kuwait and ask, “Whose Islam?” Saudi Arabia can run but it can’t hide from the change that surrounds it.

Naiveté and international hypocrisy

Mona Eltahawy, Metro Canada — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:35:15 -0400

If pirates were holding Nathalie Morin and her three children hostage would the Canadian government rescue her?

Morin, 24, is the Canadian woman who claims her Saudi husband Samir Said Ramthi Al-Bishi — whom she met in Canada — is holding her against her will in the kingdom, infamous for its appalling women’s rights record. Morin’s mother has threatened to sue the Canadian government for negligence if it doesn’t do more to help her daughter.

Morin moved to Saudi Arabia in 2005, taking the Canadian-born child she had with Bishi with her. The couple has since had two more children, one of whom — according to Morin’s mother — was conceived after rape.

Morin, who complained to her mother Bishi beats her and will not let her leave their apartment alone, visited Canada in 2006, but returned to Saudi Arabia saying she couldn’t be without her children. Since then, Bishi has apparently refused to give her permission to travel, a requirement in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Alleged marital rape? No leaving the house or travel without your husband’s permission? Sound familiar?

Surely questions that should trouble Canada where horrified headlines recently chastised Afghan President Hamid Karzai for signing a law that allowed marital rape and barred women from leaving home without a husband’s permission.

Where are the horrified headlines over women’s rights in Saudi Arabia? Morin admitted it was a mistake to move to Saudi Arabia, so those who want her to lie in the bed she made of her own naiveté can move on.

But it is precisely those shouting “she should’ve known better” who should answer my pirate question.

Did they blame U.S. Capt. Richard Philips and his crew for sailing along a stretch of water where Somali pirates had taken dozens of hostages?

I don’t believe invasions can liberate women. Laws that guarantee equality and protect women’s rights are more important than guns and tanks.

No faith in Afghan clerics

Mona Eltahawy — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:12:35 -0400

When Taliban gunmen shot dead prominent women’s rights activist Sitara Achakzai in Kandahar on Sunday, they had nothing to hide. It was broad daylight after all.

To further underline that bloody message of hatred for women, a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the murder.

Clearly, misogyny has married impunity and the Taliban — ousted from power in 2001 — are, once more, terrorizing the women of their country.

Achakzai’s assassination was but the latest in a series of murders targeted at women’s rights activists. Under almost identical circumstances, Taliban gunmen in September killed the highest-ranking female police officer in Kandahar, Lt.-Col. Malalai Kakar.

Such murders are just the most visible signs of the violence meted out to the girls and women of Afghanistan. Just last month, the United Nations warned in its annual human rights report that Afghan women’s rights were little better today than they were during the brutal reign of the ultra-conservative Taliban.

Girls as young as seven are targets of rape, while other females suffer “honour killings,” early and forced marriages, sexual abuse and slavery, the UN report said.

Obviously, in the absence of rule of law everyone is vulnerable in Afghanistan. But girls and women are on the bottom of everyone’s lists. President Hamid Karzai was forced to reconsider his signature on a law allowing marital rape after an international outcry earlier this month. Hardline clerics seem hell-bent on justifying the most heinous of acts in the name of Islam.

When the president is willing to sell women out and when those who claim to be the gatekeepers of God give sanction to such selling out, it is not difficult to understand why the Taliban’s hate for women gets a free ride.

We hear a lot about the need to talk to the Taliban to end fighting in Afghanistan. Such a conversation must not happen at the expense of Afghan girls and women.

I am a Muslim woman who is fed up of those leaders and clerics who claim to speak in the name of my religion and yet who ignore its message of justice and equality. They are just as much to blame as the gunmen who shot Achakzai and Kakar.

Both women were Muslim and knew the violence had nothing to do with religion, but was just plain old misogyny. Kakar used to protect abused wives by physically beating their husbands.

As I say a prayer for Sitara and Malalai, I hope they’ve found peace in feminist heaven.

Afghan law about power, not culture

Mona Eltahawy, Global View — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:00:00 -0400

I thought I was used to seeing politicians bargain with each other. A few concessions here and there to influential voting blocs are part of the elections game.

But Afghan President Hamid Karzai — the “liberal” darling of the international community — surely wins that game by throwing women’s rights like bargaining chips at the feet of religious conservatives he’s courting for Afghanistan’s August presidential election.

In February, he signed a new law that, according to United Nations organizations, legalizes rape within marriage and bars women from leaving their homes without permission from their husbands.

Déjà vu, anyone?

Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the Afghan parliament, told a British paper the law was “worse than during the Taliban,” a government that denied women basic rights such as education when it ruled Afghanistan 1996–2001.

News of the new law broke at an international conference for Afghanistan being held at The Hague. The reports offer both a fortuitous chance to embarrass Karzai for so cheaply selling out women, and a test for the 72 countries and organizations gathered at The Hague on how willing they are to defend Afghan women.

Since the Taliban’s ouster, much has improved for Afghan women. Millions of girls now attend school and women have a 25 per cent quota in parliament. In March, a female lawmaker, Shalah Attah, said she would run for president in August polls.

So what was Karzai thinking?

Despite the reemergence of the Taliban, the law has less to do with its misogyny and more with Karzai’s election manoeuvring.

If it wasn’t enough that millions of Afghan women still face violence at the hands of the Taliban, they now have to watch a president who claimed to be an ally bargain away their rights.

The law covers members of Afghanistan’s Shia minority, who account for about 10 per cent of the population, and was backed by the influential Shia clerics and parties who are objects of the increasingly unpopular Karzai’s affection.

Although the Afghan constitution allows Shia to have a separate family law, that same constitution and international treaties signed by Afghanistan promise women equal rights.

Afghan women parliamentarians and activists have condemned the law and said they’re worried another law being drafted for the country’s majority Sunni women will be equally harsh.

The international community has a perfect opportunity to corner Karzai at The Hague, but it must remain silent out of misguided cultural relativism that shortchanges women.

Afghanistan’s new law has nothing to do with culture or religion and everything to do with power and politics.

– Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning Egyptian-born commentator and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She reported on the Middle East for 10 years before moving to the U.S.