The Muslim Woman

Lately, the Women’s Freedom Organization of Iraq has put forward an astounding report which projects the growing practice of public executions of women by Shiite militias. One such ghastly incident of lynching has come to the fore, where a young woman was dragged by a wire wound around her neck to a close by soccer field and hung from the goal post. Then they perforated her body with bullets. Her brother rushed to defend her but unfortunately he was shot dead too. According to the members of Organization of Women’s Freedom, nearly 30 women are put to death monthly for honor-related reasons. It further stated that in comparison with the present situation, Iraqi women are worse off than they were under the Baathist regime in a country where, the women enjoyed some freedom and rights, which were not destined to women of the Middle East. Lamenting before the scenario, they said that before the invasion of the US, the condition of native women were not so deplorable in fact, they were given certain privileges. However, the status of women changed after the incursion. The United States gave prominence to a new group of leaders, most of who were associated with ultraconservative Shiite clerics. Among the Sunni minority, Continue reading “Iraq: Growing practice of women executions by Shiite militias” »

A victim of rape in Iraq has tried to go against the social custom of suffering mutely but instead has jeopardized her life. She has openly condemned the Iraqi police of sexually molesting her. This is not the first time a criminal case has been framed against the Iraqi officials. A number of organizations have acknowledged sexualized torture as a part of Iraqi prison. According to Iraqi human rights advocate and writer Haifa Zangana, the first question asked of female detainees in Iraq is, Are you Sunni or Shia? The second is, Are you a virgin? It’s no surprise that we’re hearing allegations of rape against the Iraqi National Police, considering who trained them. DynCorp, the private contractor that the Bush Administration hired to prepare Iraq’s new police force for duty, has an ugly record of violence against women. The Bush Administration has refused to protect women’s rights in Iraq. In fact, it has decisively traded women’s rights for cooperation from the Islamists it has helped boost to power. Torture of women by police recruits armed, trained, and funded with US tax dollars is one symptom of this broader crisis. Image Read

Despite becoming victims of permanent threat of shooting, bomb attacks, kidnappings and rape…how a group of Muslim women in Iraq could even think to kill another group of Muslim women? But this is a harsh reality and slowly becoming common practice in Iraq. We all know, condition of Muslim women is worse in most of the Muslim countries. In recent bizarre of events, in the al-Washshash district of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a gang of Shiite women, a part of the Mahdi army militia killed three Sunni women. The Mahdi Army, Militia or Jaish al Mahdi is paramilitary force created by Iraqi Shias to protect Shia community form Sunnis and U.S led occupation forces. The leader of the gang is Layla, the sister of Jabbar Hammudi, the principal leaders of the Mahdi Army,who was killed few days before. Violence broke out, when some of Sunni women try to protect their homes from a gang of Shiite women. From very long time, the campaign of forced migration of Sunni families in that district of Baghdad, have been carried out by the militias of the Mahdi Army. This incident reminded me of a small footage of Saddam regime where a regiment of women soldiers are killing dogs with their bare hands to show how tough they are. The women who is considered to be kind hearted, soft and loving are becoming more and more violent. Not to mention that this story tells that women, too, may engage in ‘jihad’. And it illustrates, in spades, the fact that the much-vaunted ‘brotherhood’ or ‘sisterhood’ of Muslims, everybody all happy families together, is purely illusory. Unfortunately, women in Iraq are wasting their time to attacking and killing each other and not concentrating on real cause of their suffering and problems. The attempts to kill each other by both the Muslim communities (Shia and Sunni) will only be beneficial for US led forces. I just hope that in the future, society will respect the rights of women, and woman will help the other in all walks of life. via Image

Post Saddam Hussain’s hanging, things haven’t changed much and a new phenomenon is grappling Iraq, with a new trend emerging with the rise in the number of widows. One such widow is Suad Rzuki Aboud who lost her husband, three sons and a son-in-law when their family bakery was blown off by the Sunni militia. She says: I was pleading for anyone to help. No one came. One of the reasons attributed to this could be the never-to-end violence in the country which gives birth to many widows each day. The skyrocketing prices of the essential commodities coupled with the poverty in the country makes it difficult for the upbringing of the children by a single mother. As if that wasn’t enough, the US–backed constitutional changes gives each religious sect to determine its own set of rules concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody. Maysoon Al-Damluji, a secular member of Iraq’s parliament is of the view that Article 41 of Iraq’s new constitution is ‘a recipe for disaster.’ The social stigma associated with such a woman in a ‘hardline’ society makes doubles her difficulties. In the eyes of society, women always need a man to protect them and keep them straight. There is still some social stigma about a woman being on her own. The dogma surrounding such widows has reached such new proportions that family members often fake the identity of their kin. One such unfortunate widow was Nuha Farai, who lost her husband 20 days after she tied the knots, whose in-laws, in an desperate attempt to inherit government pension, faked his status as single! The aftermath of the bloodshed has left these widows with a very few choices with some even resorting to prostitution and others taking up begging on the streets of the city. It was only this week that the Sunni militants gunned down three such widows in a country where such professions are treated as immoral. Source: USA Today

What would a woman get if she dares to hold a professional job? Abduction, rape and murder, yes this is what she would receive at least in Iraq! Religious extremists in the southern Iraqi city of Basra are busy slaughtering the women folk who are going against their religious doctrines by stepping out of the four walls of their house just to earn their livelihood. In some parts of Baghdad, women were being prevented to go to the markets alone. Parents are frightened to send their daughters to school and university. They are constantly being subjected to threats, intimidation and even murder. Perpetrators tend to justify their inhuman deeds of killing a woman by leaving a piece of paper on her or dress her in indecent clothes. Atmosphere is saturated with threat till an extent that the women folk dare not move out in the streets without proper dress code. Grim figures suggest slaughtering of 42 women between July and September alone in the region this year. Abusers have created a kind of propaganda by painting graffiti on walls all across the streets. Women have been receiving warning, while there are cases, when the gunmen themselves are coming to their houses and slaughtering them, in front of their own kids. They are not in a position to spill out their outlook towards life, leave alone going out to work. They have been forced to breathe within a set paradigm of the chauvinistic ridden man made laws across Iraq by Islamist militants, both Sunni and Shia. They live in fear of their husbands, too, as women’s rights have been undermined by the country’s postwar constitution that has taken power from the family courts and given it to clerics. Lack of security, law and order has curtailed all aspects of women’s life, for them constructing a safe haven is nothing than a mirage in the arid desert of the province…a wasteland that would never expect a shower of rain. At least this is what an impression I could get from the contemporary times. Image