The Muslim Woman

Female circumcision is a ‘rite of passage’ for young girls from childhood to adulthood. This cruel practice involves the removal of the clitoris and other parts of the female genitalia. Followers of this practice believe that it is an effective way to curb a woman’s sexuality.
It is often referred as female genital mutilation by the Amnesty International and the World Health Organization. The word mutilation is used to reinforce the idea that this barbaric practice is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. Though, locally the term used widely is the less judgmental ‘cutting’. After all, no parent likes to think that they are mutilating their own daughters.
Apart from the Middle East, female genital cutting is widely practiced in African countries, especially in the region from Senegal in West Africa to Somalia on the East coast. But now, due to immigration this practice is not confined to any specific region and has spread to Europe, Australia, and even the United States. British police are of the opinion that in Britain alone 66,000 girls face the risk of genital mutilation. According to Amnesty International, approximately 130 million women all over the world have been affected by some form of genital mutilation or the other. Despite the practice being banned in most countries, it is still a very enduring tradition, and more than 2 million such procedures are being performed every year.
A very large section of tradition-bound families make their daughters undergo this genital cutting when they are on a vacation in their home countries. By doing so, the people involved in this crime can cover up their tracks and the girls get enough time to recover.
Unfortunately, till the time this barbaric practice is completely stopped, millions of innocent girls worldwide will continue to suffer physical and emotional trauma all in the name of culture.

via: Y!News

A female, the most sublime creation of God, is merely an item of barter in Afghanistan. Although, the Taliban era has ended, yet the side effects remain. Debts are paid off, family feuds solved, murder accusation charges restrained, thanks to the daughters of the home who are exchanged for alleviating all such tension from their home.

The brutal Taliban regime was an era of women harassment in which the women were forced to be only a decorative item of their households and never let to step out of the premises of their house. However, years after the brutal masters were thrown out, women in Afghanistan continue to suffer, now at the hand of their family. Unable to see their family through pain, few of the girls of the house offer to sacrifice their much-cherished freedom for the sake of rest of the members of the family. While others are forced into marriages against their wishes, in which they have to suffer as some are married to a person equivalent to the age of their father or in some cases the groom is their grandfather’s age.

The poor and battered Afghanis have no option to pay off their long drawn debts, but to lend their girls in exchange to evade away their overdue amounts. Not only this, the girls are also used to mitigate any feudal differences, disputes and also to cleanse any charge of murder.

It is really disheartening that even in this age, when women rights activists are on a high, females are traded off, forced into brothals, and married against their wish to live a life wiping their tears because of harassment at the hands of their in laws. Not only this, violence against the fair sex remains widespread in which they are beaten up to live a life of seclusion from the society. However, the lucky ones are those whose families have no debts to pay off or no disputes to settle. Only such among the poor Afghani families, girls can dream to step out of their homes and make a life of their own and not forced into marriages.

Times can be expected to change, with the women rights activities gaining in importance, females themselves realizing and cherishing their freedom, and getting involved in activities from household chores to earning their livelihood that has helped in shedding the long drawn conservative outlook of traditionalists such as Shinwaris.

And as time advances, educated Afghani youth have to take up cudgels against such traditional practices of bartering girls for any kind of activity. Only then the future of Afghani girls can be thought to be safe.

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Via: Usatoday

The fatty and bulldozer sized women folk of Mauritania are now coming out of age. They are shedding their biased ethos of being bulky and putting themselves in to exercise regimen to shape and size their bodies. Though, the thousands of women living in the rural areas are yet to be convinced of the health hazards caused due to their over sized figures, the welcome trend seems to be making inroads to different parts of this desert nation.

The female obesity is a part and parcel of Mauritania culture. Feminine heaviness and masculine skinny figures are thought to be perfect matching for sexual intercourse and family reproduction. The bulkiness of women is also considered crucial to the wealth and prestige of the family. The obese brides are more sought after and rich people are willing to pay more bride fee to the family. The poets and ballads also glorify the feminine bulkiness as an epitome of beauty.

Surveys have also quite often exposed the uncanny interest among the ladies to add fat to their body even by taking hormone-increasing drugs. The practice of system of gavage or forced feeding is also prevalent in rural Mauritania. Girls are forced to drink more and more camel milk and intake butter and oil containing enormous fat. There are incidents where special sessions in the village are held to make women folk take food lashed with fat.

But, the growing awareness programme launched by the national government and supported by non-governmental organizations are paying dividend. Mauritanian women are increasingly adopting exercise practices to remain fit and shed fats. Now, they are well aware of the possible health hazards like diabetes, heart strokes, high blood pressure and other miseries. The slim-down campaign unleashed by the women’s ministry is well appreciated by the fair sex in the urban Mauritania.

However, females living in the rural and interior parts of Mauritania are yet to be reached. Overpowered by the Islamic values and the male dominated society, they have no alternative, but to abide by tribal lust for flesh and fat. There are also incidents where girls died of torture when they refused to add fat to satisfy their male folks.

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Via: NY Times

There are between 1,000 and 3,000 women in Israel who are subjected to sex slavery, and there is an intensive commerce in women in the country.

Girls as young as twelve are being lured into the pretext of wealth and prosperity in the west but instead of making their dreams come true, they are held into the noose of sex trade, this is the ground reality that is taking place in Israel and the issue has been surfaced by Canadian journalist and social activist Victor Malarek.

A report postulated that women are sold to pimps for as much as $10,000 each, work 14-18 hours a day, charge about $30 a client but receive only a small fraction of the money for themselves. Statistics have revealed that there are more than 10,000 trafficked women and at least 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone, this is more than enough to assume the condition in whole of Israel.

While talking to Jewish Tribune, Malarek said,

Newspaper ads from modeling and employment agencies promise exciting jobs, but the women are duped. They must submit, or they are raped, beaten and tortured.

The irony of the situation is that, the UN troops instead of acting as a peacekeeping force are playing the part of predators. They are actually molesting the girls sexually, in Kosovo to be more specific.

Sex- slavery: A ‘budding trade’ in the nation

The so called ‘business’ is churning around 12 billion dollars a year, compelling more than 800,000 women yearly to make a choice between prostitution and death. UNICEF too has given out a statement, according to which, nearly, 1.7 billion kids are swindled annually with a decrease in the age of victims every year.

Malarek further added that government isn’t taking the issue seriously as it brings in money along with it. And who would deny such a huge capital?

The women are shown false colors of good social conditions and hence they are motivated to fulfill their dreams but unfortunately, it was nothing more than a mirage. They land up in nightclubs and bars from there they are send to brothels where they become puppets in the hands of buyers.
Upon questioning, authorities in Israel said that there is ‘no law against trafficking people, and no law against prostitution’, and also that they are not in a position to take any legal action against the perpetrators because the victims are too scared to speak out anything.

While talking to Reuters, Rachel Benziman the legal advisor to the Israeli Women’s network said,

It’s not a problem of finding the right section in the criminal code. It is more a problem of finding the women who will testify and finding the motivation.

Now, the question of the hour is, will the women ever experience a day-light of freedom? What do you have to say?

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The veil is increasingly becoming a torment in Britain, not for those who wear it, but for the rest.

Even in a secularly tolerant society like Britain, the veil is becoming hard to absorb. And efforts are going on to place legal curbs on the burqa to the dismay of the Muslim community.

Muslim women in Britain wear black gowns that cover them from head to toe in leaving only a slit for their eyes.

There have been many instances where citizens of Britain have shown their reluctance to accept the veil draped Muslim women.

The past year has seen numerous examples, where the veil-covered women have been targets of abuse. An immigration judge told a lawyer dressed in a niqab that she could not represent a client for he could not hear her. A student lost a case she was fighting for being barred from wearing a niqab. Moreover, the British education authorities are proposing to disallow niqab in schools altogether.

While few like David Sexton, columnist for The Evening Standard, find Britain to be too deferential toward the veil.

Young Muslim women who started wearing niqab since Sept. 11, 2001 concede that it is a frontal expression of Islamic identity, which they have embraced as a form of rebellion against the policies of British Government in Iraq and at home.

Few feel it is an act of faith towards Alha, while some take it as a symbol of Muslim identity and solidarity in the British society, which is increasingly becoming intolerant towards the burqa and taunting them.

There is also a group of Muslim women who find the niqab objectionable. Imran Ahmad, author of ‘Unimagined‘, an autobiography of growing up Muslim in Britain, and head of British Muslims for Secular Democracy feels that the veil is offensive, something steeped in subjugation.

While few Muslim women in Britain wear the headscarf, called the hijab, covering all or some of their hair, some wear the nikab. Like in France, Turkey and Tunisia, where students in state schools and female civil servants are banned from covering their hair, UK is also trying to bring in a similar legislation.

Muslim women have been wearing burka or nikab for time immemorial. While few have been forced to wear it as a compulsion, some wear it as a ritual, while the rest for their self-pleasure. But, burqa is considered as a kind of subjugation and backwardness, but when religion permits, what can others do? And, more importantly, why?

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Va: IHT

During the war we lost everything.We even lost our honor.

says Umm Hiba , an Iraqi women in Damuscus and daughter of a teenage daughter who dances at nightclubs and is a prostitute. It is the story of many such Iraqi women who were forced to flee to neighbouring Syria after the men in their family were either killed or kidnapped. Bereft of jobs and armed militia knocking at their doors, they had no other option. In Syria the question of sheer survival drove them to the somewhat lucrative and the oldest profession of the world.

These women find work at casinos or openingly solicit clients on the steets. A favourite is the Maraba part of the road from Damuscus to the famous convent at Saidnaya.

Syria though committed to help, seems overwhelmed by the Iraqi exodus. According to the United Nations commissioner for refugees they number 1.2 million. Syria just does not have the necessary infrastructure to deal with such numbers.

Cheaply available Iraqi prostitutes have made the flesh trade here a big business luring Arabs from neighbouring countries. Most visitors are from Saudi Arabia, just a six hour drive through Jordan.

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New York Times

Women in Algeria are making a silent move, which reminds me of ’storming of the Bastille’ but in here, I am not hinting at the noiseless and creeping revolution part instead I am stressing at the collective move which the women as a whole are making towards their emancipation.

More and more women are becoming conscious of their individuality and hence are taking plunge in nearly all walks of life. Right from the education sector till the administration realm, they could be seen fluttering the flag of their identity.

There’s hardly any arena left where women have not made a mark. They could be seen driving buses and cabs. But even then they do not enjoy a high profile position, since they represent 20% of the work force only.

Hugh Roberts, a historian has asserted that unlike previously, educational qualifications are not taken as a plausible ladder in the direction of economic well being; hence more and more men discontinue their studies and decide to leave country in search of some employment. But in here, the perception of women is all together different, they do not tread on to the steps of the men instead they go in for higher degrees, which becomes instrumental in placing them in an improved standard of living.

This does not mean that women have abandoned their conventions rather they are still carrying forward their religious ideologies and are modern in their approach towards life. They could be seen fully clad in their Islamic cloak, visiting mosques and driving vehicles.

Sociologists have noticed that the age of marriage for women too have experienced an inclination. Formerly, women used to marry around 17 or 18 but now, they prefer to get betrothed at the age of 29, since, they have become more career oriented than before.

Some scholars have even gone to the extent of anticipating that if the trend continues then the time is not far when women could be seen handling all the administrative services in this strife torn region. They have personified women as Algeria’s most potent force for social change. Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers holds the view, Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity.

As could be expected (from a chauvinistic driven country) some socio- political groups are not ready to digest the powerful emergence of women on the scene. They have completely put the blame o’er the shoulders of the fairer sex postulating that the country is experiencing such turmoil because of women’s ‘new role’. Some have even gone to the extent of saying that women are ‘violating’ their traditional faith.

No matter what people are concocting, women are enjoying the world out side their stereotypical shells and ‘are brimming with enthusiasm’. This is actually what is required, before changing the attitude of male driven societies, it is very important to change the mind sets of the women folk.

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A gruesome incident, which led to the death of a teen in north of Iraq created a widespread condemnation. It was able to gather attention of international media because of the footage.

Now authorities in the region have detained four people with regard to the inhuman deed of honor killing. It’s terribly distressing that the victim’s male family members murdered her. But not only that, a mob of men viewed this whole event as if it were entertainment, this is even more disgusting!

The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of honor killings in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives’ actions have shamed the family. And in here, the killing has been done in the name of religion by ’stoning till death’.

Death by stoning is slow and painful. Islamic code prescribes that ‘the stone should not be so big as to kill the offender with one or two stones’ and ‘nor should it be as small as pebbles’.

Two of the four arrested are members of the victim’s family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday. Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are being sought.

The Kurdistan government, who originally did nothing in reaction to this event, have now stated - after their dirty little secrets were exposed to the world via the internet - that these men will be punished. Hmm... we’ll see!

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The State shall guarantee coordination between a woman’s duties toward her family and her work in the society, considering her equal to man in the political, social, cultural and economic spheres without detriment to the rules of Islamic jurisprudence (Shari’a).

-Article 11, Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt

Despite the fact that women in Egypt were granted citizenship and full political rights in the 1956 Constitution, the social and economic environment in the country has worked against women exercising their political rights.

Violence against women:

Violence against women in Egypt continues to be a major issue with 35 percent of women in Egypt reported as being beaten by their husbands. Honor killings, whereby women who are suspected of tarnishing the family’s reputation through their sexual indiscretions are murdered by male family members, are also carried out periodically but the Egyptian government isn’t interested in researching or providing statistics.

Most rural women take gender-related disadvantages for granted, as they have been told from birth that their only role in life is to marry and have children. Girls’ education is seen as a luxury.

Traditional notions:

The prevalence of certain traditional notions in some communities, like the Bedouins in Egypt or some tribes in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, sometimes prevents women from going out or from mixing with men.

The endurance or tolerance of violence or even its perception as such is also socially determined. Circumcision in Egypt is a practice which is greatly tolerated by women who perceive it as the right thing to do and greatly rejected by women who recognize a violation in it. The same women who agree to the procedure that is meant to control woman’s desire until her marriage, admit to the woman’s right to enjoy her sexual life within marriage, and in fact do enjoy this life.

Women are less educated:

Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has revealed that nearly half of the population in the region is illiterate, with women occupying the major ratios. Illiteracy predominantly centers on rural areas among underprivileged women between the ages of 15 and 45.

Girls here are actively discouraged from going to school with some schools failing to provide girls’ toilets and, in many cases, with female students being relegated to the back of classes.

Discriminatory Personal Status Laws:

The situation for Egyptian women in the workforce has improved somewhat as increasing numbers leave menial and low-paying blue-collar jobs in factories and offices, and as street cleaners, janitors, hospital aides, and domestic servants. However, despite more women joining professions including education, engineering, and medicine, they are still in the minority, and their numbers are well below those of men employed in the same categories.

In addition, the Egyptian government’s obstruction of a woman’s right to divorce exemplifies its unwillingness to grant women legal equality. Profoundly discriminatory family, penal, and civil laws reinforce the unequal status of women in the family and in Egyptian society. Laws condoning domestic violence and policies that exclude women from the judicial bench foster and perpetuate women’s second-class status.

Bottom line

The issue of violence against women must go beyond legal action. Although relevant laws have been improved, however, there were still many weaknesses in the way the issues of domestic violence, rape and genital mutilation were dealt with. Policies in that regard were somewhat gender blind and this requires changing the attitude of people behind the scene which cannot be done in a single go, it’ll be a gradual process and will take time.

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Women, though legally equal, suffer from institutionalized discrimination in some areas. It is far more difficult for a woman to divorce than a man, who may do so at will. The minimum marriage age has been abolished, and in practice, marriages are consummated when the bride is as young as nine years old. Women are vulnerable to sexual assault by their husbands or fathers.

Recent survey conducted by Yemen Female Media Forum over the first three months of 2007 has disclosed that Yemeni women are subjected to repeated abuses and violence.

The poll suggested that women living in rural areas have no access to healthcare and most of them deliver at home unattended due to the lack of medical staff in their areas, coupled with the indifference and poor living standards of their husbands. While those living in cities, the survey clarified, enjoy good access to healthcare but don’t escape abuse and violence.

The survey showed the type of disabilities among women, which are symptomatic of abuse, violence and mistreatment. Such disabilities include speaking and hearing impairments, limp, fracture of arms and mental disorders.

What could be the reason of it?

The community culture, poor awareness about women’s role and disrespect for women’s status are some of the reasons behind the increased numbers of abuse cases. Other causes of violence and mistreatment include the absence of legal institutions as well as alcohol and drug abuses.

Is there a way out?

Some preventive initiatives must be taken through innovative educational campaigns, which’ll reduce violence among women in the nation. Certain legislatives are to be framed that’ll respond effectively to gender based violence. Raising awareness through media and teaching women about their rights and how to exercise them are also an important step towards their liberation.

So, the bottom line is, it’s jungle rule out here, so women take stand or pick up your shield or linger the way you’ve been so many years.

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