The Muslim Woman

Men too could become a spectator of women sporting events in Malaysia provided the sports-women are decently clad after the northern state barred male audience from seeing the event.

Mohamad Asri, the mufti of northern Perlis state said,

During Prophet Mohammed’s days, even his wife Aishah participated in horse racing in public, but she was clad decently.

Kelantan, the sole state ruled by the hardline Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party, will hold the first Malaysian All-Women Games from Saturday and plans to only allow men to attend the opening ceremony.

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Muslim girls in the US have no problems with their traditional attire, hijab. They have tagged it as a source of strength, pride and a tool to spread correct information about much-stereotyped Islam.

However, in the past years, the issue has ignited a kind of controversy over wearing of the veil in public.

Muslims are of the view that France has actually set fire to the debate by barring hair veil in state schools in 2004. This has been followed by other European countries primarily Germany.

However, the situation is not the same in the United States, people of Muslim communities are of the view that they don’t have to face any kind of discrimination in the nation and that they are free to do the kind of activities, which every youth in the nation are subjected to do. Whether, it’s hanging out with friends or going for a party or in practicing their religion.

Even for younger Muslim girls, wearing hijab at public middle schools enhances their self-confidence and makes them feel distinguished among their peers. And majority of them feel that that they did not feel isolated by their attire.

The girls also use their hijabs to spread correct information about much-stereotyped Islam. For example, when people ask the reason of covering hair, a girl explained to them that

the hair is the symbol of sensuality and beauty, and that I try to hide that.

Ala Gebarin, 17, also takes into her strides stares and remarks she might come across. I am aware that my hijab can be intimidating, but it is only a layer of clothing, said she.

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The situation of women in Pakistan is uncertain today. If we look at the statistics, it seems that there is no end to incidents of violence against women.

Eighty per cent of the violence against women cases are pending in lower courts in Pakistan involve family members. Around 1,000 women are sexually abused in the country every year but they go un-reported because women know they cannot survive with such a stigma.

Figuratively:

1. Estimates of the percentage of women who experience spousal abuse alone range from 70 to upwards of 90 percent.

2. As many as eight women - half of them minors - are raped in Pakistan everyday.

3. Both reported and unreported rapes indicated the number of victims to be over 10,000 a year.

4. The women crises center received only 201 cases of violence against women since it was set up two years ago, forming only 15 per cent of the actual number.

5. Nearly, 85% of the cases were not reported by women because of the predominant male-dominated society and illiteracy.

6. 87 cases out of 201 cases were related to domestic violence followed by physical torture and abuse, dowry, financial problems and harassment.

Women in Pakistan face staggeringly high rates of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence while their attackers largely go unpunished owing to rampant incompetence, corruption, and biases against women throughout the criminal justice system.

The crimes involved ranged from murder, honour killing, gang rape, non-registration of FIR, non-arrest of the accused, kidnapping, abduction and domestic violence.

Bottom line

A strong feudal and patriarchal social structure, cultural bias against women and the acceptance of traditional customary laws have created an environment that is not conducive to the aspirations of the contemporary women.

A fundamental issue has to be resolved - the fate of law making. Is it going to be based on principles of equality or politicized in the name of Islam?

However, it must be kept in mind, if Pakistan wants to maintain its image as a civilized and progressive country, women’s issues must addressed immediately.

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A Muslim group has offered to help fund a school’s legal battle over its refusal to let a girl student wear the niqab in class.

The prospect is coming as an expensive legal fight because the school does not have enough financial backing.

Buckingham shire county council, the local authority for the school, is reluctant to finance a challenge that it considers could cost as much as £500,000.

On eight of this month, court will decide whether the school’s decision not to allow the pupil, aged 12, to wear the veil should go to a full judicial review or not.

However, the case seems to be week on the part of the school because the girl’s sisters were allowed to wear the niqab when a different head was in charge.

Paul Goodman, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, has pressed the county council to back the school. Nevertheless, it asserts it supports the school’s right to decide its own dress code, the council has not promised to fund a legal defense.

The Department for Education too is keeping an eye on the case because of the potential for wider implications if the school has to back down or loses a human rights case.

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Syrian law contains provisions that discriminate against women and facilitate violence against them. Under the law, some forms of violence against women can be carried out with near impunity.

For instance, men can escape punishment or receive reduced sentences if they kill a female member of the family with whom they are committing ‘adultery’ or other ‘vicious sexual relations’. Isn’t it fueling illegitimate relationships then?

The scale of violence against women in Syria remains poorly documented for a number of reasons including social restrictions, seclusion, bad education, poverty, etc.

However, some general findings postulated:

1. In 56% cases, women were punished for ‘disrespect’ and cursing.
2. 14% for neglecting their household duties.
3. Husbands beat their wives in 49% of such cases, used insults in 38%, andused silent treatment in 8.4%.
4. 67% of women had been punished in front of their families.
5. 52% were insulted.
6. 87% were battered.

We may also go to the extent of saying that the religion itself is conditioning obstacles regarding interactions between the genders.

True, Islam limits interaction between sexes and calls for modesty in dress and conduct but isn’t it carried to far? A woman in Islamic countries is not suppose to drive, cannot talk to man other than her husband, they have no voice of their own, just living a life of drudgery like that of a slave, moving in accordance with her ’shuahar’ as if they are no more like a puppet.

There have been serious flaws in the administration of justice in Syria, lack of legal and other safeguards to protect the rights of native women have made the men hawk upon them.

The need of the hour is to grant the UN bodies that are operating within the nation, greater attention in combating the problems that are specific to women rights. Only then, the respect and promotion of women’s human rights would become an irreversible reality, at the same level as men’s human rights.

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Divorce rate is rising in Islamabad especially in its elite class. More women in Pakistan are seeking divorce after an amendment to the Civil and Family Court Act 1964 took away the courts’ discretion to push for reconciliation over long periods.

The court has to decide the case after the three-month reconciliation period prescribed under the Muslim Family Law.

Now it is not compulsory on the part of women to appear in the court, this too has made women easier to furnish divorce.

Statistics showed that 3,900 family cases were pending in 28 courts of civil judges in the eight towns of Rawalpindi district in December 2006 and nearly, 50% of these cases were related to women seeking divorce. Official sources said last year 393 divorce cases were reported to the Conciliation Court of Islamabad (CCI), the highest in any district of the country. This is more than one divorce a day.

Iftikharun Nisa Hassan, director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center, says,

‘Today women are getting educated and securing jobs and are less inclined to put up with inhuman treatment by their husbands. They are financially viable and seek second marriages for a comfortable life.’

It seems that native women have finally decided to step outside the bounds created by their chauvinistic society. They are realizing that self-dignity and self-respect is the only way of a happy and satisfied life.

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Violence in Iraq has escalated refugee crises, which is also creating instability in the province. The dislodged women, children and youth are becoming more susceptible to exploitation and abuse.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every month and majority of the displaced are women and children.

Carolyn Makinson, executive director of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children asserted,

‘the rampant insecurity within Iraq and the lack of humanitarian assistance in neighboring countries, puts women and children at great risk of abuse. There are already reports of Iraqi women and young girls forced into prostitution or sex to survive and children forced into labor and other forms of exploitation’.

Syria and Jordan are apparently, becoming inundated with the influx of refugees and so have placed certain restrictions on the services provided to them.

Education for children is becoming a major cause, firstly, because of the lack of accommodation and secondly, the high affordable prices of private schools. Syria allows Iraqi refugee children to attend public school but families often cannot afford the supplies and school uniforms their children need.

Scores of refugee families are experiencing financial crunch. Generally, they cannot legally work and have no way to support themselves and their families. Women who cannot provide for their families are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

To guarantee protection of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced Iraqis and to help ease the great strain on countries receiving refugees, the United States and international community must significantly increase its funding for humanitarian assistance programs and regular monitoring of the allocated funds is too required.

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Some Muslim group has urged the government to prevent the formation of women’s cricket league in Bangladesh. They tagged it as an ‘anti-Islamic’ move. In a statement, the Islamic Constitution Movement, which has no representation in parliament, said women’s cricket, and other field sports such as football, represented ‘alien culture’.

After all, harassing women and subjugating them for their own purpose is their ‘culture’ so giving them space and letting them go ahead in life is definitely called an ‘alien culture’ for them.

The group asked the head of an interim government that is, in place to prepare for national elections to ban women from participating in the league, as well as in any other sports or beauty pageants. On the other hand, General Secretary of the Bangladesh Cricket Board Mahbub Anam said that the league would continue despite the complaints.

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Three women’s right activists from Iran were detained as they were about to leave the country for partaking in an educational workshop in India.

Mansureh Shojai, Talat Taghinia and Farnaz Seifi were arrested at Teheran’s Imam Khomeini airport on Saturday morning.

The three women were involved in a recent campaign dubbed ‘One Million Signatures’ aimed at changing Iran’s ‘discriminatory laws’ for women, by collecting signatures, online and in person.

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Turkish women have created a landmark victory in the arena of business and politics.

Arzuhan DoÄŸan YalcındaÄŸ, the first female to do so in the organization’s 36-year history, has occupied the top position at Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association. ‘It is a great honor for me to be elected the first chairwoman of the group’s executive board’, she said.

Whereas, Gulsun Bilgehan has been chosen as the head of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe committee on gender-based equal opportunities.

She said that it would be

‘meaningful that a Turkish woman was elected to chair a committee dealing with women’s rights, equality, honor killings, domestic violence, forced marriage and the education of girls.’

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Throughout the world, women are victims of violence on a daily basis whether in the context of peace or in conflict. Perpetrators may be officials of the state, armed opposition groups or individuals - including family members.

Here, in Afghanistan, women are traded for debts. It forces me to ask a question, can women in Muslim countries ever expect to breathe in the air of self- approbation?

In Helmand, southern Afghanistan, a man who was not in a position to pay his debt, married off his daughter to an opium dealer, who already had a wife and four children. What’s more worse was yet to come. Unable to withstand the callousness of life in her husband’s home, she ‘grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself.’

This is just a single incident but the province is saturated with these kinds of cases, many of those go unreported.

Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the opium available in the world today. Local drug dealers pay in advance to farmers for their poppy yield but they often end up giving their daughters to the drug traffickers when they fail to harvest the expected yield.

Staggering figures shows

1. In 2006 alone, 69 cases of self-immolation and murders from Helmand and Kandahar provinces were related to marriages in exchange for drugs.

2. More than 20 women and girls had committed suicide over the past 10 months most of them had been handed over to dealers instead of drugs.

3. Women as old as 32 and girls as young as three being given to another family in exchange for debts.

4. 60% to 80% of all marriages in Afghanistan were forced.

Afghanistan is still facing an internal armed conflict and is ruled by a fragile government. Condition of women has hardly improved even after the fall of Taliban regime. Cases of violence are generally kept secret in rural areas but if the victim or family chooses to complain, tribal Jirgas or local councils are convened to resolve it.

There is a huge gap between the reality on the ground and the ‘remarkable progress’ claimed by western diplomats who sit in fortified compounds behind guards and concrete blocks and who never leave Kabul. The only area in which the country could really be said to have made remarkable progress is in growing the poppy.

End of the Taliban was meant to be like this?

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A Muslim woman police officer refused to greet Britain’s most senior police chief with a handshake just because he is a man and she a woman. And that her religion prohibits her to do so.

The incident occurred when Sir Ian Blair was inspecting a line-up of 200 recruits during a passing out parade.

Not only she showed reluctance for a formal hand shake but was clad in a traditional Muslim hijab headscarf and refused to be photographed with him as she did not want the picture used for ‘propaganda purposes’.

I personally feel that this is not done. If one is not in a position to fulfill the official formalities, then must not choose the kind of profession. One must go in for a job where there is comfort zone.

Here, the officer is not able to greet the chief with a handshake, what she will do when she would have to seize the criminals or has to go in for fieldwork one can easily imagine.

After all, people must adhere to the rules and regulations of the country where they are living. Had she been residing in some Muslim country, she would have escaped the chance but when living in UK, well, she has to follow the norms of London.

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Is Islam really changing?

Is it giving space to the women folk?

Tucson’s largest mosque, which was completed in 1990, for the first time, has allowed women folk to pray in view of imam and other leaders.

The Tucson mosque, with about 1,000 mostly Sunni worshippers, had a long tradition of separating men and women with gender-specific entrances.

Men have used the front door to access the main worship area. Women have used a small room accessible by a side door, where they listen to the prayer leader via an audio system. The women’s room has windows, but except on special occasions, they’re covered with blinds.

In August, Ingrid Mattson became the first female president of the Islamic Society of North America. And last year, a gender-dividing wall at the Islamic Society of San Francisco was removed.

University of Arizona senior Yusra Tekbali says she appreciates the new arrangement at the mosque in Tucson, where a curtain separating the women is now partially opened.

Women are now happy with the change and with the support that they are receiving from men. After all, it’s an example of a national effort to make women more equal in mosques.

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Afghan women are getting into business, an arena long dominated by men. Kamila Kabuli is rocking the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif by selling cosmetics products.

The provincial women’s department was instrumental in setting up stall for Kabuli. It has set up two more stalls that sell handicrafts and clothes. Also, it plans to open another 20 and rent them out to women in pursuing weeks.

Their action has experienced some opposition since native women are exploding the stereotypical myth by entering into business.

However, Kabuli says,

‘I’m very proud to have been chosen for this job although it is difficult. It can be a bit tough, but I can show that women can do it’.

Native men are teasing the women by targeting them as a laughing stock. Many other women however are thrilled to see the female-run stalls.

Shopper Bibi Fatuma said women develop some comfort zone while buying products from a woman and this makes them easier to interact, which however is not the case with men shopkeepers.

Some men have also welcomed the project. However, not everyone is upbeat. There are people who are still doubtful regarding the credentials of women shopkeepers.

Nevertheless, women folk are happier at the move as it gives them a little bit of independence. They are looking forward towards ‘a big market for women selling stuff’.

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Zangabad region of Afghanistan is experiencing a ray of hope, especially in the arena of the natives’ health and well-being.

Lately Canadian military has set up a clinic, Civil Military Co-operation Centre for people of the region. At first, the locals believed that the foreigners would be handling out bad medicine but then they did not pay heed to the rumors and unlike previously, when they burnt the clinic, this time they were seen willingly coming up for medical assistance.

One woman covered in a burka said she and her children deserved the same medical attention currently only afforded to those with transportation and the necessary funds to see private doctors in the city.

Sgt. Nicky Bascon, a reservist with Toronto’s Queen’s York Rangers and Civil Military Co-operation Centre operator explained that they are aware of their culture but in order to give mediation to the women folk, they would have to see her first.

Although, initially, a few consented but an initial trickle of local burqa-clad women seeking help quickly turned into a stream.

The doctors sorted out the patients into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. They offered medications to the children suffering from ‘mosquito-borne disease’ or ‘burns from a spilt kettle of tea’. And women were treated according to their medical requirement.

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