In the Red Zone

TRIBAL ISLAM WATCH II

Cleared for Takeoff

 The skies have gotten friendlier for women--at least for one Saudi Arabian.  This photograph, by Ali Jarekji of the Reuters news service, introduces us to a young woman who--well, let's let the London Times' Michael Theodoulou tell the story, if nothing else than to enjoy his mordant lede:

Hanadi Hindi will not be allowed to drive to the airport, but when she gets there she will be able to fly jet aircraft.

The 26-year-old Saudi is to become the kingdom’s first accredited woman pilot after signing a contract with the fleet of Prince al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire Saudi businessman and nephew of King Fahd.

According to Theodoulous, Forbes magazine rates the reform-minded Prince as the world's fourth-richest man, with a net worth of over $21 billion.  Perhaps he could place some of that lucre at the service of his Kingdom's 4.7 million women--who make up more than half the number of Saudi university graduates, although only 5.5 percent of them are employed.  Meanwhile, our good Wahhabi ally bans women from driving, voting or traveling except when accompanied by a male relative. 

Apparently, Captain Hindi still has some flight instruction to finish in Jordan, after which she'll be taking wing sometime in the middle of next year.  What I want to know is, how are they going to fit a male relative in those crowded cockpits?

Berlin's Bartered Brides

With the prospect of Turkey's membership in the European Union--and the shockwaves of Theo van Gogh's murder still roiling the continent--many observers are taking a fresh and unsentimental look at certain age-old traditions common in the Muslim world.  Case in point, Richard Bernstein's December 19 article in the New York Times about "Jasmin," a Turkish girl in Berlin hiding from people who seek to murder her.

She is 18 years old, living in a shelter whose address cannot be disclosed, having...escaped from her Turkish-born parents.  The reason, she said, was that they were threatening to kill her unless she agreed to marry a man from Turkey whom she had never met.

"I had a German passport, and that made me very valuable," she told Bernstein, who continues,

She said her would-be betrothed in Turkey was wealthy and therefore able to pay a big price for a bride by which he could gain a German passport and German residency. 

Bernstein quotes a former commissioner for foreign affairs who argues that the number of girls fleeing arranged marriages in the country is a small percentage of Deutschland's overall Turkish population.  But Jasmin and social service workers disagree, claiming that "oppression and control of ethnic Turkish girls are widespread, perhaps even dominant."  Worse, Turkish men prefer arranged marriages over unions with German women. 

"The attitude of families is that a girl from Turkey will be innocent and pure and will just stay home and have babies," Jasmin said.  "Turkish girls who grew up in Turkey don't know German laws, so they don't know how to protect themselves, even if things go badly."

Fortunately, Bernstein observes, many Germans are rethinking multiculturalism--or "multi-kulti" as they call it.  In Jasmin's case, her German employer refused to turn her over to her parents, but instead found her sanctuary in a shelter which since 1986 has assisted 1,000 girls fleeing arranged marriages.

WOMEN ARE THE ACHILLES HEEL OF ISLAMOFASCISM

The key to winning the War on Terror--whether in Iraq, Ridyah or the American homeland--is women.  Liberated women will sweep away the claptrap of religious fascism faster than you can say Scheherazade and relegate the mullahs of every denomination to the status of soap-box preachers.  And across dar-al-Islam today, we see the issue of women's rights beginning to shake the self-conception of Muslim world with a force unheralded since Napoleon sailed into the harbor of Alexandria.  Adding our voices to the revolution is one small way we can help bring about a release of new energies across the Middle East and beyond. 

With that in mind, I thought we'd periodically examine topics pertaining to women in the Middle East.  Starting with this small, but interesting bit of good news (tip of the hat to Professor Roth) from the BBC.  Over the last month the Beeb has featured on-line voices from Iraq, including Sarab al-Delaymi, a Baghdad housewife, who recently wrote

Women in Baghdad are traditionally more open than women in the provinces, but we've recently started to notice the emergence of a new type of more emancipated women in the provinces. Many women are becoming more engaged and active in political debate and some of them even occupy high administrative and political positions. This makes me and others hopeful of a better future.

Indeed.

(Unfortunately, not all observations from the Beeb's participants are so upbeat.  But scroll down and read what Sarab has to say about schools and teachers' salaries.)

The Beeb also informs us of a radical event occurring in Egypt.  Seems medical doctor and  sociologist Nawal Saadawi has announced her intention to enter next year's presidential elections, making her the first woman to run for the top post.  Although her candidacy has no legal standing, Saadawi intends it as an consciousness-raising act. "I am going to stand in the presidential election, not to win but to get the Egyptian people moving in favour of a reform of the constitution and to oppose corruption and"--adding the obligatory coda--"American colonialism."  (Interestingly, Saadawi's anti-colonial ire did not prevent her in the 1990s from fleeing with her family to the Great Satan when religious fundamentalist threatened her life.  After teaching at Duke University and Washington State University, she returned to Egypt in 1996.)

Ms. Saadawi is a controversial figure in the Land of the Nile: author of 27 books--mostly about women's issues--and a political prisoner under Sadat, in 2001 she gave an interview in which she denounced the veil and polygamy, accused religious leaders of being more concerned with sex than Allah and posited the shocking theory that the Hajj contained paganistic elements.  Her comments blew the turbans off Egypt's religious establishment, who charged her with sexual licentiousness in inciting women to immoral behavior, declared her beyond the bounds of Islam and ordered the state to annul her 37 year marriage.  Authorities eventually dropped the case, largely due to pressure from international observers. 

More seriously, human rights observers have criticized Pakistan's first-ever legislation against karo kari, or the horrendous practice of "honor killings." which take the lives of hundreds of Pakistani women each year.  On first glance the bill--passed the Congress but awaiting President Musharraf's signature--is strong, prescribing a minimum of ten year imprisonment and a maximum of the death penalty for murdering women deemed to have "shamed" a family.  But it also allows killers to escape justice through qisas--convincing victims' families to pardon perpetrators--or by paying compensation, called dyat.  Critics note that qisas and dyat favor the rich and powerful who can intimidate families through social or economic pressure.   

Why the loopholes?  In 1990, Pakistan amended sections of its criminal code to reflect the so-called Qisas and Dyat Ordinances of Islamic law.  According to Pakistan's Daily Star, any legislation that seeks to abrogate or work around the Ordinance will "most likely be successfully challenged in a court of law as being repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah."  Indeed, Pakistan judges have already ruled that the Qisas and Dyat Ordinance cannot be by-passed because they are "part and parcel of Islamic common law."  Take a deep breath and repeat after me, separation of mosque and state..separation of mosque and state...

Women's rights in Islam (and not only Islam) is huge, of course, and I've only presented a merest skimming of the news.  If anyone has any tips or issues they'd like this site to raise, please let me know.  Until next time, let us ponder the words of the Holy Koran:

He created you from one being, then from that being He made its mate. (39.6) 

TRIBAL ISLAM WATCH

ABC News is reporting a truly disheartening account of the plight of many women in post-Taliban Afghanistan who are going to gruesome lengths to avoid being sold into marriage.  (Buying and selling human beings:  isn't that a definition of slavery?)

But even as Afghan females are finally enjoying basic human rights, such as the right to an education, to work and to vote.  Afghanistan remains a profoundly conservative Muslim nation.

Cultural transformation--including age-old honor-bound codes of conduct--still shackle and oppress women, especially those living outside Kabul.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of news reports about suicides by self-immolation among Afghan women.  Although nationwide statistics are hard to come by, hospitals and aid agencies in cities like Kabul and Herat in western Afghanistan have recorded a number of female burn cases.

Forced into marriages--often with older, richer men--and faced with a life of endless exploitation and drudgery, an untold number of Afghan females are dousing themselves with kerosene used in cooking stoves and setting themselves on fire.

The piece then quotes a Western aid worker with the World Medical Association: 

"There is an absolute level of despair, that you will never be able to make a choice about your life and that really there is no way out, and knowing that you will have to live with a man you have not chosen, who is probably older than you are, who is going to allow you to work, to go out of the house."

In case we don't grasp to what ends this "absolute level of despair" is driving women, ABC News observes

Self-immolation is a horrific act that often results in a slow, tortuous death in hospital burn wards even as medical officials desperately struggle to save lives.

Seems our work is far from done in Afghanistan.

MY FRONTPAGE INTERVIEW

Jamie Glazov and the good folks at Frontpagemagazine.com give me the opportunity to express my views about Iraq, the War on Terror and the role of women, music and laughter in the fight against Islamofascism.