Dreams Into Lightning

Brownworth: The feminist revolution is just beginning.

Victoria Brownworth has a stand-out column in the April 2008 print edition of Curve. The article is not available online, so I'll just post a couple of brief excerpts here.

I am a feminist. Not apologetically, under my breath. I believe that the single most important civil rights movement of the 20th century was feminism. But then, I live in the United States, where women have a great deal of freedom. I never cease to be grateful for the fact that I was born here. Being born female in the majority of the world is a very, very bad thing. That is, if you get born at all. Sex-selection abortion, for example, is rampant throughout Asia and the Asian continent.

Brownworth goes on to recount her niece's description of her time in Cairo:

She is a formidable young woman, remarkably fearless, and wears the privilege that comes with being born female in the United States; she will not be made second-class.

But according to her firsthand reports, there was never a day in Cairo or its outskirts when she was not the victim of demeaning and damaging sexual predation. She was angered and repulsed by the constant assaults - verbal and physical - but in no way cowed by them. As she noted, a tone of surprising bitterness in her voice, "At least I always knew I was coming home."

In a very different, quiet voice, she added, "But as I traveled outside Cairo, it was so hard knowing that all around me were women who were victims of FGM [female genital mutilation]."

Brownworth, herself a rape survivior, then recalls an exchange with a woman in Libya; the two women had discussed the case of the Saudi rape victim who was sentenced to 90 lashes. (I posted on it here.) The woman's sentence was increased after she challenged the ruling; she was finally pardoned after international protest.

My friend in Libya was appalled by my "insensitivity and disrespect" for Islamic law. I told her I would be equally outraged had this occurred in a Christian theocracy - except there haven't been any for centuries.

She then told me that if the woman hadn't gotten into a car with a strange man, she wouldn't have been raped. So although the penalty seemed harsh from my "Western perspective", it was for the woman's own protection.

I am no longer friends with this woman. ...

It's worth your time to read the whole piece, and pass it on to a friend. It's in Curve 18 #4; you can purchase back issues at the link.

On a side note, Curve doesn't ignore lesbian conservatives. Go here and scroll down for a McCain endorsement:

I’m a rare out lesbian this campaign year because in the face of two Democratic candidates who are dividing almost the entire LGBT vote, I’m voting for the other guy: John McCain. Before you call me a traitorous wretch and lob verbal attacks about internalized homophobia, let me explain. I’ve been a Republican since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office, though I briefly fell off the wagon to support Clinton No. 1, which I regretted almost instantly.

To hear former President Bill Clinton tell it today, he and Hillary are the most gay-positive politicos out there. However, Clinton himself signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—which has ousted thousands of queer service members since it was enacted in 1993—as well as the Defense of Marriage Act.

John McCain supported it too, but he remained one of the few Republicans to rally against a federal anti-gay marriage amendment, calling it “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” Like a true Republican, he’s repeatedly said that states should have the right to define their own policies. ...

Go to the link for the rest. When you're done, check out Tammy Bruce:

I’m a pro-choice lesbian feminist. I’m also an independent conservative and have grown increasingly frustrated with all the candidates for president. I have never voted for a candidate because of the letter after the name, and I still have not made a decision about whom I will vote for in November. For the first time in a presidential race I am not only not excited about a candidate, I am extremely concerned about all their agendas.

How I identify may sound like a contradiction, but it’s really not. I want government to be small and unobtrusive. Whenever government gets big, that means it’s interfering in our lives, and that’s never been a good thing for gays, whose freedom and independence rely in large part on the majority leaving us alone. A main problem is how conservatism is viewed—which is that it has been attached to religious politics for too long. ...

Well worth a read. Longtime readers of Dreams Into Lightning will recall that a piece in Curve prompted my 2004 post on women and power.

Honor Killings, Suicides Up in Iraqi Kurdistan

France 24, via Muslims Against Sharia:

By Shwan Mohammad

Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called "honour" killings and female suicides on the increase.

"At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone," a doctor told AFP in the region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.

"Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances" -- apparently the victims of "honour" killings.

"Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves," the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

According to Kurdish regional government figures, in Sulaimaniyah province alone more than 50 women attempted suicide by burning in the first four months of the year and another eight tried to hang themselves. ...

New York Strikes Back Against Libel Tourism

Via LGF:

Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, who successfully sued Cambridge University Press last July, has failed in his efforts to silence Rachel Ehrenfeld.

The American Center for Democracy in Defense of Freedom, which Ehrenfeld directs, has just issued the following press release. The New York State legislature today passed the “Libel Tourism Protection Act,” which will help protect American writers from the likes of Bin Mahfouz, who uses his millions to silence critics of his own past and of others who work to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world. For the likes of Bin Mahfouz, the inability to convince people of the merits of your arguments leads instead to efforts to sue them into silence. That underhanded assault on our freedom of speech has now become more difficult, as this new legislation corrects holes in New York’s law that had left Ehrenfeld, and other authors, open to suits from foreigners like Bin Mahfouz.

Fitna

Watch it here.

Social Cohesion

Christopher Hitchens says it as only he can:

Picture the life of a young Urdu-speaking woman brought to Yorkshire from Pakistan to marry a man—quite possibly a close cousin—whom she has never met. He takes her dowry, beats her, and abuses the children he forces her to bear. She is not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male relative and unless she is submissively covered from head to toe. Suppose that she is able to contact one of the few support groups that now exist for the many women in Britain who share her plight. What she ought to be able to say is, "I need the police, and I need the law to be enforced." But what she will often be told is, "Your problem is better handled within the community." And those words, almost a death sentence, have now been endorsed and underwritten—and even advocated—by the country's official spiritual authority.

You might argue that I am describing an extreme case (though, alas, now not an uncommon one), but it is the principle of equality before the law that really counts. And just look at how casually this sheep-faced English cleric [Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams] throws away the work of centuries of civilization:

[A]n approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts"—I think that's a bit of a danger.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough? For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. ...

The Archbishop, in a now-notorious BBC interview, cited the supposed need for "social cohesion" as one of the arguments for sharia (Islamic law) courts in Britain. As it happens, there is actually a Centre for Social Cohesion in Britain, and a glance at their blog indicates that they're none too impressed with the latest pronouncements of the Grand Mufti of Canterbury. Even more important, they're offering a pdf download of a study Crimes of the Community: Honour-Based Violence in the UK by James Brandon and Salem Hafaz.

The Independent (UK) says as many as 17,000 women

are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.

And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.

The crisis, with children as young as 11 having been sent abroad to be married, has prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to call on British consular staff in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to take more action to identify and help British citizens believed to be the victims of forced marriages in recent years.

The Home Office is drawing up an action plan to tackle honour-based violence which "aims to improve the response of police and other agencies" and "ensure that victims are encouraged to come forward with the knowledge that they will receive the help and support they need". And a Civil Protection Bill coming into effect later this year will give courts greater guidance on dealing with forced marriages.

Commander Steve Allen, head of ACPO's honour-based violence unit, says the true toll of people falling victim to brutal ancient customs is "massively unreported" and far worse than is traditionally accepted. "We work on a figure which suggests it is about 500 cases shared between us and the Forced Marriage Unit per year," he said: "If the generally accepted statistic is that a victim will suffer 35 experiences of domestic violence before they report, then I suspect if you multiplied our reporting by 35 times you may be somewhere near where people's experience is at." His disturbing assessment, made to a committee of MPs last week, comes amid a series of gruesome murders and attacks on British women at the hands of their relatives.

Marilyn Mornington, a district judge and chair of the Domestic Violence Working Group, warned that fears of retribution, and the authorities' failure to understand the problem completely, meant the vast majority of victims were still too scared to come forward for help. In evidence to the home affairs committee, which is investigating the problem, she said: "We need a national strategy to identify the large number of pupils, particularly girls, missing from school registers who have been taken off the register and are said to be home schooled, which leads to these issues. Airport staff and other staff need to be trained to recognise girls who are being taken out of the country.

"We are bringing three girls a week back from Islamabad as victims of forced marriage. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, but that is the failure end. It has to be part of education within the communities and the children themselves."

Women who have been taken overseas to be married against their will are now being rescued on an almost daily basis. The Government's Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) handled approximately 400 cases last year – 167 of them leading to young Britons being helped back to the UK to escape unwanted partners overseas. And it is not just women who are affected. Home Office figures show that 15 per cent of cases involve men and boys.

I want to go back to the quote from Rowan Williams, as highlighted by Christopher Hitchens.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill.

Indeed it does. This is the idea that the Archbishop of Canterbury finds "dangerous".

American Woman Jailed by Saudi Fascist Thugs ...

... for sitting with a man in Starbucks. Her name is Yara, no last name given. Here's the story at the Times:

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police. ...

Muslims Against Sharia has more:

Two weeks before Yara, an American businesswoman, was arrested by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at Starbucks, she said she strolled past the very same cafe with another businessman: Neil Bush.

Bush, President George W. Bush's younger brother and CEO of the education software company Ignite!, was in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, speaking at an economic forum hosted by King Abdullah for hundreds of influential business leaders.

Yara, who does not want her last name revealed because of safety concerns, is a managing partner at a Saudi financial company. She went to hear Bush speak, and she said she invited him later to tour her company's offices, to give him a sense of what life was really like for women living in the capital.

"I was boasting about Riyadh, telling him it doesn't deserve its bad reputation," she said. "I told him I never experienced any harassment. I'd had no trouble as a woman. It was business as usual."

But on Monday, Yara learned that she had been wrong. She was thrown in jail, strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the kingdom’s “Mutaween” police. “When I was arrested, it was like going through an avalanche,” she said. “All of my beliefs were completely destroyed.”...

Neocon Express comments: 'This is why when Laura Bush goes over to Saudi Arabia and proudly wares the very symbols of gender oppression...it's an act of ignorance, and a national disgrace! This has never been a matter of quaint cultural difference. It's a matter of life or death for millions of subjugated women in the world of Islam.'

Meanwhile, in Iran, two sisters face stoning for "adultery":

Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them, the Etemad newspaper Monday quoted their lawyer as saying.

The two were found guilty of adultery -- a capital crime in Islamic Iran -- after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away.

"Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence," said their lawyer, Jabbar Solati.

The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily said.

Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for "illegal relations" and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were convicted of "adultery."

The pair admitted they were in the video presented by the husband but argued that there was no adultery as none of the footage showed them engaged in a sexual act with other men. ...

What's wrong with the Jews?

Muslims Against Sharia:

When Muslims criticize Jews chances are it's Islamists. You rarely see moderate (an I do mean real moderate, not Islamists like CAIR who claim to be moderate) Muslims saying unflattering things about the Jews. So, normally, when I see the Jews do dumb things i.e., supporting an Islamist congressional candidate because of partisanship (American Jewish World's support for Keith Ellison) or providing utilities to a terrorist enclave (Gaza), I try to keep my mouth shut. For obvious reasons. But not this time.

I thought I've seen everything: Cuban missile crisis, fall of Berlin wall, 9/11. Until recently, I thought that the father of modern terrorism getting awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was the most peculiar event in my lifetime. But a recent, largely unnoticed event, could take the cake in peculiarity contest.

On December 15, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the president of the Union of Reform Judaism (one of the largest Jewish organizations in America), gave a sermon in San Diego in front 5,000 Jews in which he announced URJ's alliance with Islamic Society of North America (ISNA - one of the largest Muslim organizations in America).

As a part of the sermon, Rabbi Yoffie stated that "[ISNA] has issued a strong and unequivocal condemnation of terror, including a specific condemnation of Hizbollah and Hamas terror against Jews and Israelis. It has also recognized Israel as a Jewish state and supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But has it really? The statement Rabbi Yoffie refers to reads: "ISNA rejects all acts of terrorism, including those perpetrated by Hamas, Hizbullah and any other group that claims Islam as their inspiration." While there appears to be forward progress in this statement, there are several problems with it:
- ISNA does not say it condemns but says it "rejects" acts of terrorism. What does reject mean? Why not say "condemn"? Rejection is not synonymous with condemnation.
- Yes, ISNA seems to be acknowledging that Hamas and Hizballah carry out acts of terrorism but nowhere do they say come out and say that Hamas and Hizballah are terrorist groups. Only the other day we saw witnesses on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation in Dallas claim that Hamas can be divisible by its "military (terrorist) wing" and its "social-humanitarian wing." The failure to unequivocally condemn Hamas or Hizballah as a terrorist group is like me saying that I reject the tactics used by anti-abortion doctors who "claim to be inspired by Christianity." The use of the term "claim Islam as their inspiration" is another attempt by ISNA to deny the unequivocal fundamental Islamic basis for groups that carry out acts of terrorism. This is in line with ISNA's statement which claims the use of the term "Islamic terrorist" is racist. Now, how can one be said to condemn Hamas or Hizballah while simultaneously denying the existence of "Islamic terrorism"? ISNA's statement "condemning terrorism" from http://balancedIslam.org quotes approvingly the European Council of Ifta and Research. This is a council that has justified suicide bombings by Hamas. One of its leaders is Yousef Al-Qardawi who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of Jews (not Israelis) and Americans in Iraq.

We all remember bogus fatwa issued by Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA). The same FCNA whose chairman, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Gihad (PIG). Is ISNA's rejection of terrorism any different?

Prior to his praise for ISNA, Rabbi Yoffie stated the following: "Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true." I am a bit confused. Does this mean that the Rabbi realizes that ISNA is an extremist organization? ...

Cinnamon Stillwell on Honor Killings

Cinnamon Stillwell:

Throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, young Muslim women are being targeted for violence. Lest it be thought hate crimes are to blame, it is, in fact, their own relatives who are the perpetrators. So-called honor killings, whereby a Muslim male family member, typically the father, murders his daughter in order to defend the family's honor, is a growing problem.

While statistics are notoriously hard to come by due to the private nature of such crimes and the fact that very few are reported, the United Nations Population Fund approximates that as many as 5,000 women are murdered in this manner each year worldwide. Undoubtedly that's a low estimate ...

Read the full article at the link.

Zero Dimensional

“No, I mean they would kill me.”

There are problems, and then there are problems.

Nicholas Kulish, writing in the New York Times' Berlin Journal, tells us about the lives of gay Muslims in Europe, as seen at a gay dance club in Berlin.

But most of the people filling the dance floor on Saturday at the club SO36 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and of Turkish or Arab background. They were there for the monthly club night known as Gayhane, an all-too-rare opportunity to merge their immigrant cultures and their sexual identities.

Well, that's nice. But there are a few harsh realities to be dealt with. Here's how Kulish explains it:

European Muslims, so often portrayed one-dimensionally as rioters, honor killers or terrorists, live diverse lives, most of them trying to get by and to have a good time. That is more difficult if one is both Muslim and gay.

Our friend Nicholas Kulish wants you to know he won't have any of this nasty stereotyping; far be it from the New York Times to portray Muslims - one-dimensionally or otherwise - as honor killers or terrorists. So we learn that

To be a gay man or lesbian with an immigrant background invites trouble here in two very different ways.

“Depending on which part of Berlin I go to, in one I get punched in the mouth because I’m a foreigner and in the other because I’m a queen,” said Fatma Souad, the event’s organizer and master of ceremonies.

And these two things are exactly equal to one another, right? But there's something odd going on here:

But gay men and lesbians from Muslim families say they face extraordinary discrimination at home. A survey of roughly 1,000 young men and women in Berlin, released in September and widely cited in the German press, found much higher levels of homophobia among Turkish youth.

You don't say?

Hatin Sürücü was shot dead at a bus stop in Berlin, Germany, on February 7. The 23-year-old Turkish woman was mourned by the lesbian and gay community, but not by her family. Deutsche Welle reports:
To the people who came to this bleak part of Berlin's Tempelhof district for Tuesday's solemn vigil -- called not by the city's Muslim community but a gay and lesbian organization -- the image of the young woman in a headscarf, a baby in her arms, was familiar from newspapers and television. A few notes at the memorial read, "Hope you get a better deal in your next life," and "Live a life on your own terms."

"It's a scandal," said Ali K, 33. "All Muslims in Berlin should take to the streets to protest." Yasemin, 22, said, "It's horrific. All Hatin was doing was leading her life the way she wanted."

But it was a choice she paid for with her life. On Feb. 7, 23-year-old Hatin Sürücü was gunned down at the aforementioned bus stop. She died on the spot. Shortly afterwards, three of her brothers -- who reportedly had long been threatening her -- were arrested. Investigators suspect it was a so-called "honor killing," given the fact that Sürücü's ultra-conservative Turkish-Kurdish family strongly disapproved of her modern and "un-Islamic" life.

Sürücü grew up in Berlin and was married off at 16 to a cousin in Istanbul. ...

Here's more from the DW article on Hatin Sürücü:

Days after Hatin Sürücü was killed, some male students of Turkish origin at a high school near the scene of the crime reportedly downplayed the act. During a class discussion on the murder, one said, "She (Hatin Sürücü) only had herself to blame," while another remarked "She deserved what she got --the whore lived like a German." The school's director promptly dashed off a letter to parents and students, castigating the students and warning that the school didn’t tolerate incitement against freedom.

Oh, but wait. Silly me. I've gotten distracted. We were talking about the wonderful gay night life in Berlin. Let's get back to Nicholas Kulish. Now where were we? Ah, yes, "... much higher levels of homophobia among Turkish youth."

“These differences are there,” said Bernd Simon, who led the study and is a professor of social psychology at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. “We can’t deny them. The question is how do we cope with them.”

“The answer is not to replace homophobia with Islamophobia,” he added, pointing out that homophobia is also higher among Russian immigrants and in other, less urban parts of Germany.

Well that certainly is enlightening. "The answer is not to replace homophobia with Islamophobia," the good professor instructs us. Homophobia, islamophobia ... six of one, half a dozen of the other. And we may not know what the answer is (Professor Simon hasn't even attempted to answer his own question) but at least we know what it is not. I feel better already.

But what are those gay Muslims themselves saying?

Kader Balcik, a 22-year-old Turk from Hamburg, said: “For us, for Muslims, it’s extremely difficult. When you’re gay, you’re immediately cut off from the family.”

He had recently moved to Berlin not long after being cut off from his mother because he is bisexual. “A mother who wishes death for her son, what kind of mother is that?” he asked, his eyes momentarily filling with tears.

Hasan, a 21-year-old Arab man, sitting at a table in the club’s quieter adjoining cafe, declined to give his last name, saying: “They would kill me. My brothers would kill me.” Asked if he meant this figuratively, he responded, “No, I mean they would kill me.”

And so, at the end of his 1100-word opus, Nicolas Kulish has his epiphany. Like a sort of reverse Balaam, he wanted to say only nice things about gay life for Muslims in Germany. But reality had other ideas.

***

Last week, two young lives were snuffed out in Texas.

Yaser Abdel Said, 50, was wanted on a warrant for capital murder after police say he shot the girls Tuesday and left them to die in his taxi, which was found parked in front a hotel in Las Colinas, a suburb north of Dallas. Police said Mr. Said should be considered armed and dangerous.

Friends of Amina Yaser Said, 18, and Sarah Yaser Said, 17, described the girls to the Dallas Morning News as "extremely smart — like geniuses," saying the slain sisters had been enrolled in advanced placement classes and were active in soccer and tennis at suburban Lewisville High School.

While police refused to discuss a possible motive for the crimes, family and friends told reporters that the girls' Westernized lifestyle caused conflict with their Muslim father, who immigrated from Egypt in the 1980s.

This comes on the heels of the murder of Aqsa Parvez in Canada last month.

A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.

Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.

Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.

Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.

Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.

Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.

Here's Phyllis Chesler:

Just yesterday, an Egyptian Arab Muslim father in Dallas, Texas allegedly shot his two beautiful teenage daughters to death because he disapproved of their American-style ways. Their names were Amina and Sarah Said and their father’s name was Abdul Said. The girls looked sassy and full of life; they looked like Dallas teenagers. They were 17 and 18 years old and their friends considered them “geniuses.” Abdul was a taxi driver. (In parts of Europe, taxi drivers are known to aid and abet honor murders).

Perhaps how Amina and Sarah dressed, and how they thought, shamed their father Abdul. He was no longer in control of his women—a mark of shame which provoked his need to kill them. Perhaps their flowering sexuality enraged him because it made him desire them—and from this he concluded that other men might desire them too and if he could not have them, no man could.
The blogs and the local Texas media (the Dallas Morning News) were all over this. Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, were too. The only national coverage of this story was contained in the Washington Times. Why did the national and international media so far shy clear of this story? Perhaps they chose to dig deeper first or maybe they were waiting for an arrest to be made. But one also wonders: Were they afraid of being accused of “Islamophobia” if they reported the truth?

There's that word again. Where is all this islamophobia coming from, anyway? Via Muslims Against Sharia, here's an article in the Yemen Times arguing unironically that there must be violence against women:

This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must. ...

Perhaps Abdul Said, fine upstanding chap that he is, was just doing his Islamic duty. We know he was a good Egyptian Muslim; perhaps of the same moral fiber as those Egypt-based internet users who populate my site statistics with searches like "egypt women fuck", "pics of egyption woman for fuck", "egyptian fucking pictures", "fucking girls from egypt", "fucking egyptian girls", and similarly inspiring sentiments. Or perhaps there's some profound cultural and moral value that's being upheld by the sexual harassment of women in Egypt. But I'm digressing again.

And I'm probably being unfair by picking on the Egyptians, so I'll turn now to Irshad Manji, a lesbian Muslim of South Asian background, on Aqsa Parvez:

Aqsa Parvez told friends and adults at her public high school that she feared what her father would do if she stuck by her decision to reject the hijab — the Islamic headscarf. She also said it’s better to live in a shelter than at home.

Nobody listened. Now she’s dead.

Moderate Muslims have warned that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Who knows what other dynamics infected her family, spout hijab-hooded mouthpieces on Canadian TV. Not once have I heard these upstanding Muslims say that whatever the “family dynamics,” killing is not a solution. Ever. How’s that for basic morality?

Irshad goes on to make an important point: even "progressive" non-Muslims fall into the trap of confusing the hijab (which Irshad contends is itself of pre-Muslim, tribal origin) with the basic Muslim injunction to "dress modestly".

And this brings us to the idea expressed in the title of Irshad's post - "Covering up the diversity of Muslim women." By refusing to see women in the Muslim world as individuals with hopes, needs, fears, dreams, and faces of their own, the self-styled "progressive" left buys into the notion of women as objects - expressions of an exotic oriental culture more primitive, and yet somehow ineffably wiser, than our own, decadent, materialistic, industrialist Western world.

***
Times Online reports: Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos.

THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.

Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile. [That's Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for those of you who may need a reminder. - aa]

This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.

“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct. ...

I can picture Sooreh Hera patiently explaining the death threats to the Dutch police: "No, I mean they would kill me."

Read the rest at the link. You know, when the words "woman", "artist", "gay", and "death threats" all occur in a single headline, you'd think this would be just the kind of thing the liberal left ought to be on top of. Well ...

Wouter Bos, the deputy prime minister, seemed to take a stand for freedom of speech, saying: “In a democracy, we do not recognise the right not to be insulted.” The left wing de Volkskrant newspaper, by contrast, praised the museum for its “great professionalism” in excising the images.

Gateway Pundit has a roundup; and here's a link to Sooreh Hera.

***

To worry, as the journalist quoted in the first section above did, about the "one-dimensional" portrayal of terrorists and honor murderers, is to forget the victims. Not merely to forget, but to deliberately blot out of memory. As if it was only the aggressor, and not the victim, who had any reality to begin with. Then one must dance, so to speak, around the reality of violence and fear that rules the lives of so many dissidents, women, and gay people in the Muslim world.

Ironically it's exactly these people - folks like the well-meaning journalist - who help to create the "one-dimensional" picture of Islam, while ignoring the lives of those who sought to reimagine, reinvent, reform, question, rebel against, or abandon Islam entirely.

I am not going to split hairs over whether these atrocities were committed "by Islam", "in the name of Islam", "by extremists who hijacked Islam", or whatever. The common thread is a hatred of joy, creativity, diversity, and life itself. It is a nihilistic desire to reduce the rich flower of the living world to a zero-dimensional state of uniformity and nothingness.

This time last year, Aqsa Parvez and Sarah and Amina Said were active, healthy, determined young women. Now all that's left of them is a collection of pixels on the screen of your computer, and the memories they left behind with those who knew them.

Remember their faces. Remember their names.

Aqsa Parvez

Sarah and Amina Said

Free Mark Steyn!

Free Mark Steyn!

Phyllis Chesler on "The Kite Runner" and Islam

Phyllis Chesler, who knows whereof she speaks, has praise for the film The Kite Runner and its portrayal of Afghanistan:

Last night I finally saw the film based on Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. I loved it—yes, even if it captures a pre-Taliban country more mythical than real. Nevertheless, the musical soundtrack, the recitation of classical poetry, the innocent kite-flying competitions in Kabul, (not to mention Homayoun Ershadi who strongly resembles Marcello Mastroianni), all comprise utterly charming scenes and characters carefully chosen and calibrated to help us distinguish between sophisticated and westernized Afghans who are non-violent, (I know many), and the barbarians amongst them.

I think that the film is also brave. First, it depicts a tall, thin, slightly effeminate, incredibly brutal pederast (“Assef”) who, although he is an Afghan through and through, reminds one of none other than Osama bin Laden. Both figures walk languidly; both teach “harsh” lessons. The film also shows us how the Taliban publicly stone a sobbing woman in a pink burqa to death and how they kidnap or purchase Afghan orphans, mainly girls, but sometimes also boys, as “dancing” sex-objects.

True, as shown, wealthy and western-educated Afghans did have private, gender-integrated dancing parties in the 1970s in Kabul—but the nature of Afghan society is better represented in both the novel and the film in how they depict Afghan marriage and family customs in America. Even those immigrants who live in San Francisco guard their women, expect would-be suitors to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. ...

She goes on to explore the dynamic of misplaced "sensitivity" among Western liberals that creates a culture of leniency toward Islam-sanctioned barbaric actions. Go read the whole post at the link.

Irshad Manji on Aqsa Parvez

Irshad Manji:

This week in Toronto a 16-year-old Muslim girl was murdered, allegedly by her own father.

Aqsa Parvez told friends and adults at her public high school that she feared what her father would do if she stuck by her decision to reject the hijab — the Islamic headscarf. She also said it’s better to live in a shelter than at home.

Nobody listened. Now she’s dead.

Moderate Muslims have warned that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Who knows what other dynamics infected her family, spout hijab-hooded mouthpieces on Canadian TV. Not once have I heard these upstanding Muslims say that whatever the “family dynamics,” killing is not a solution. Ever. How’s that for basic morality?

You know I could go on about the hypocrisy of moderate Muslims - the fact, for example, that Muslim Girl magazine reinforces the lie that the hijab is mandatory. This supposedly hip (and certainly glossy) publication routinely features covered girls as their cover girls. So much for representing the full diversity of the Muslim sisterhood.

Even “progressive” non-Muslims fall into this trap. ...

Read the whole thing. Go to Irshad's translations for resources.

Simon Deng Speaks Out

... at the International Humanist and Ethical Union:

I am standing before you today, ladies and gentlemen, a victim of Sudanese Arab enslavement in Sudan. I was a slave. I am not ashamed to say it. When I was nine year's old, my village was raided by Arab troops in the pay of Khartoum. As we ran into the bush to escape I watched as childhood friends were shot dead and the old and the weak who were unable to run were burned alive in their huts. I was abducted and given to an Arab family as a "gift." A "gift," ladies and gentlemen. When you look at me, do you see a gift? Do I look like an object or a commodity? I am a human being, a person created in the image of God, a simple truth the jihadists did not and can not recognize.

As a child, I lived as a slave for several years. I was beaten time and time again for no reason at all - even the whim of my "master's" children could produce these beatings. I was subjected to harsh labor and indignities of every sort. A beloved child in my own loving family, I had to become accustomed to sleeping next to the animals and to clean the ground where I slept. I became accustomed to awakening first in the household to begin my labor, eating the leftovers from the plates of my "master's" and going to sleep last - only after every bit of heavy work had been performed. I will not dwell on this time in my life. I speak of it because you need to understand that if you take my experience as a child slave and multiply hundreds of thousands of times only then can you begin to understand the nightmare of the African peoples of Sudan at the hands of the jihadists.

While the life of a slave is like hell, there is no shame in being a slave; it is not a choice. There is only shame in being a "master." If any one is to feel shame for the suffering of the people of the Sudan who have lost 3.5 million lives at the hands of a barbarous regime, it is the radical Muslims in Khartoum and their Islamist allies throughout Sudan and across the whole of the Islamic world.

It is important to bear in mind that by definition the African Christians of the Southern Sudan are the victims of jihad Islamism. The war against us (I should add that the word "war" is misleading because it has not been conventional war we have experienced but a genocidal war of extinction) has been and is being conducted in the name of jihad. According to the murderers, rapists and slavers - they are engaged in a holy war in the name of Allah. The Sudanese jihadists have a simple-minded, cruel, binary worldview. If you are not a Muslim you are a khoufar, an infidel, an enemy, a human being with no right to life who may be treated with terrible inhumanity. The jihadists in Khartoum have a great challenge in Sudan, the Land of the Blacks. Those Arabs and Sudanese who have chosen to be culturally Arab are so comparatively few - and the blacks are so many. Still, they have done their work with great efficiency. They have been well-armed by their friends in the Arab world. They committed genocide against us in the South and they got away with it: the world simply looked away. Now they have turned their attention west, to Darfur. Some are watching; most are not.

When millions of African blacks were being slaughtered and hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese children were and are being enslaved, the world was indifferent. Perhaps worst of all - the UN turned its back. ...

... and on Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Israel:

Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.

The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families -- even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.

I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.

Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? ...

HT: Gateway Pundit. Also posted at Sefer Chabibi by Rabbi Baruch Melman.

Against "White Europe"

Epaninondas on Vlaams Belang:

Shall we assert PRECISELY that we can't help it if white power is among our allies?

Shall we assert that white power is a natural cultural defense because europe was all white, against all demographic perils as we fight off sharia and 9:29 and 9:5? [link added - aa]

This is precisely what I have been told in the last few days, and precisely what David Duke says. He just likes the jews less than Mr. DeWinter. ...

Is there anyone who thinks the mantle of god's blessing will fall on them simply because they are NOT anti semitic?

I assert that it is the GOOD FIGHT to oppose those who believe these things. I assert that to be for white europe as a metaphor or in reality is equal in every single way equal to what Stormfront and David Duke proselytize, regardless of what one thinks of the existence of Israel, and as a jew I can tell you IT SHAMES ME PERSONALLY to have the support of these people in the belief that Israel must exist. ...

Go read every word.

HT: Israel Matzav.

The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

Video available here.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Coudhury Won't Let Islamists Run Him Out of Bangladesh

Judith Apter Klinghoffer:

It is easy to lose heart, become cynical, give up on the human race. One has to look at Saudi King Abdullah's visit to Britain, the feminists efforts to justify the subjugation of Muslim women (recently joined by Laura Bush!) or, for that matter, the current preparation for the upcoming "no concessions" Israeli Palestinian conference in Annapolis. But it would be wrong. For it would fail Salah Uddin Shoaib Coudhury and no one has the right to do that.

Last night I had the unique honor of shaking his hand. I knew of his plight. Only six months ago I asked you to sign a petition on his behalf so I was delighted to discover that he is safe, in the US. He is charged with "Sedition - treason -blasphemy" because he tried to board a flight from Dhaka to Tel Aviv to attend a peace conference in 2003. Yes, "is" is the correct tense. International agitation led to his release on bail in 2005 but not to the dropping of the charges. That means he can be rearrested any minute, tortured and placed in solitary confinement or even worse.

What can be worse? He can be held in the same prison that holds Bin Laden supporters of the type who do not tolerate sharing space with Muslims who have a moderate interpretation of Islam. They have tried to assassinate repeatedly and he has narrowly escaped them at least twice before.

So, imagine my surprise when he told be that he is going back on November 5th . Even Sharansky did NOT go back. Yet, this smiling 42 year old insisted that he is. "I have a family there. I have followers there. If I leave they will be disappointed, lose heart. I must go back." I could only shake my head in wonder. We have asked where are the Muslim moderates? He stepped forward and in so doing demonstrated the price such moderates have to pay. I hope those who advocate cutting and running from the Muslim world realize who they are leaving behind and who they are embracing in their stead.

With these thought swirling in my head, I sat down to listen to his talk. Trust Choudhury to surprise me yet again. "Do not think that if you let Israel fall, the US will be safe," he said. "Israeli flags are always burned together with the American ones. I heard a former Bangladeshi supreme court judge say that peace will come only after Israel and the United States will be erased from the map." ...

Go read the rest.

Hitchens on Islamo-Fascism

Christopher Hitchens at Slate:

The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements. ...

This makes it permissible, it seems to me, to mention the two phenomena in the same breath and to suggest that they constitute comparable threats to civilization and civilized values. There is one final point of comparison, one that is in some ways encouraging. Both these totalitarian systems of thought evidently suffer from a death wish.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Incorrect U

Incorrect University is your main campus for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

Phyllis Chesler: Some Questions about Wellesley's Khalil

Phyllis Chesler:

At issue is whether Nancy Khalil, who is listed as the Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley, actually did any of these things or not.

I will give Nancy Khalil space to rebut these charges here if she so chooses.

THE COMMENT POSTED reads as follows:

“If this can happen at Wellesley then the intimidation level at other schools may be outside the scale.

How is that possible?

Here are some research questions for students. They should find the answers and many of their concerns will be proven legitimate.

Q1. How did Nancy Khalil (The Muslim Chaplain? An impersonator of Nancy Khalil?) project herself into Wellesley? Trace her whole history, the agitation about the former Muslim Student Adviser, etc.

Q2. Why is it that the name of the Muslim Student Association was changed?

Q3. Is the role of an adviser to be that of a link to outside organizations (that do not reveal their denomination) and to coerce students to join retreats (weekend jaunts, away from campus, with holy men who also do not reveal their denomination? (Do the parents know, this is happening? Wellesley may be in for a big lawsuit…)

Q4. How many times (has) Nancy Khalil take(n) Wellesley students to the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge to be lectured to by Mr. Basyouny Nehela during the overnight Tarbiya sessions? Does Wellesley have a complete biography of Mr. B. Nehela or at least his “denomination”? (Then parents can intelligently discuss the MSA scene at Wellesley with students.)

Q5. Has Nancy Khalil revealed to Wellesley Administration the money flow through her hands to the Wellesley students? Where she gets it? Why it is given as “scholarships” to certain students and secretly? Is it not against the honor code to keep financial help secret and against the financial aid office rules to keep financial awards hidden?

Islamo-Fascists and Leftist Supporters in Full Panic Mode

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch: '... So the campus Left is placing itself squarely on the side of those who want to implement the institutionalized oppression of women and religious minorities sanctioned by Islamic Sharia law, who deny the freedom of conscience, and want to impose upon the world a supremacist and totalitarian code. Why am I not surprised?'

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week: Already a Success

Neocon Express has a link roundup.

More at FrontPage.

Phyllis Chesler on Nonie Darwish

Phyllis Chesler:

“The radical Muslims on American campuses are getting more belligerent, far more militant,” author and lecturer Nonie Darwish tells me. “They have perfected their intimidation and disruption techniques.”

Darwish is a beautiful and passionate speaker. She is an expressive, emotional orator, dramatically thrilling (as so many Arabs can be), but Darwish is also soft, almost maternal when she speaks. She is also very clear, very firm, and totally uncompromising. She grew up in Cairo and in Gaza and now lives in America. She has founded Arabs for Israel. She is pro-American and also concerned with women’s rights. Her first book, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, is clear-sighted, well-written, and extremely brave.

Darwish is the daughter of a high-ranking Palestinian-Egyptian military officer who died in battle against the Israelis and who is considered a “shahid,” or martyr. While she continues to love her father, she has “shaken off,” renounced, the hate propaganda with which she was raised.

Last week, on October 18, 2007, our hero Darwish spoke at the all-female Wellesley College as the guest of Hillel on campus. She was not treated as a hero; then again, maybe she was, maybe her treatment is precisely how heroes are greeted on American campuses today. ...

Read the rest at the link. And don't forget to bookmark The Chesler Chronicles on your browser.

Lethal and Non-Lethal Action

Psyop Cop at OpFor:

World War Two was won through sheer industrial might and brute force. It was the conventional warrior’s wet dream and something that will probably never be seen again (and thank God for it).

The War on Terror is something entirely different. Inasmuch lethal action has a role to play (because, as they say, “some men you just can’t reach”), non-lethal action has to be the driving force in this war. Otherwise, logic demands that you must wipe out vast swaths of population to convince them they’re wrong and we’re right (essentially the driving strategy behind WW2). ...

What's on Psyop's mind? This article -
Ahmed al-Shayea renounces terrorism:

The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004.

Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.

At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. ...

Ahmed concluded that “There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death.”

Psyop continues:

The trouble is that, in the Arab world, you cannot communicate with another person without referencing Islam. It is as much a part of those people’s culture and mindset as oil is a part of the ground there. And, by simply refusing to play, the Army allows the extremists to dominate the field and convince the fence-sitters that Allah commands them to go and kill Americans and those who support them. Without another opinion to listen to on the matter, the issue is pretty much decided for them.

A low literacy rate contributes to this. It is not unlike the Catholic church in Europe during the Middle Ages. Liturgy was in Latin only, as was the Bible. Because the local priest was the only man who could speak or write Latin, he could pretty much tell the people whatever he wanted and, because it was the “church” speaking, it was the truth. Burn a heretic, send your kids on a crusade, give me money… you get the idea. Imams in many of the towns and villages across the Arab world have that same power.

Convincing detainees (or EPWs or whatever you want to call them) of the wrongness of their actions can be done. This story proves it. However, it has to be done through the venue of Islam and Arab culture, not the progressive, western, Christian way of doing things.

Instead of locking ‘em up and throwing away the key, which will ultimately NOT pass a Constitutional litmus test, they could be turned and then let loose to spread their new ideology.

Meanwhile, another battle on the ideological front goes down in Britain, reports the Counterterrorism Blog:

In yet another landmark legal case in the United Kingdom regarding Internet-based terrorism, a judge in London has sentenced a group of five British-born youngsters to a total of 13 years in prison for conspiring to use the web in order to accumulate vast amounts of terrorist propaganda in hopes of eventually traveling to Pakistan and joining Al-Qaida's forces there. The convicted defendants--Mohammed Irfan Raja, Usman Malik, Aitzaz Zafar, Awaab Iqbal, and Akbar Butt--were all between the ages of 17-21 and had made contact with each other through an Internet chatroom. In explaining his decision, Judge Peter Beaumont admonished the defendants: "Each of you is British. You were born here, your families lived here, you went to school and university here, you hold British passports. You live under the protection of its laws, which give you freedom of speech and religious observance, yet each of you were prepared to break its laws. Why? Because in my judgment you were intoxicated by the extremist nature of the material each one of you collected - the songs, images and the language of violent jihad - and so carried away by that material were you that each of you crossed the line. That is exactly what the people that peddle this material want to achieve and exactly what you did... To stop them and you and to protect this country and its citizens abroad, a message has to be sent."

Speaking of messages, M. Zhuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy will be on the air in Arizona tonight. Here's the release:

M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD Chairman will be a guest today with William Wolf on "Middle East Radio Forum" on KKNT 960AM from 12PM-1PM PST. They will discuss Islam vs Islamists. Topics will include the controversial PBS documentary (see www.freethefilm.net ) which is set to appear locally on Channel 8 KAET on August 14, 2007 at 10 PM and other national and global issues related to the topic of Islam and Islamism.

For those outside Arizona, the program can be heard online at:

http://www.middleeastradioforum.org

Jasser sounds a cautionary note in this NRO symposium on the apparent erosion of support for suicide terrorism in the Muslim world:

This week’s Pew study results are dangerously oversimplified. Improvements in economics and moods in the developing world are in no way reason enough for the sharp decline in support for suicide bombing. The recent 45-doctor plot in London and Glasgow told us that much. For now, it is not only too early, but downright irresponsible to have a collective sigh of relief.

As we have often seen, Pew avoids the why. In their latest report, they again ignore the most central global question: Islamism and its conflict with America and the West.

What if, in fact, the general support for the tactic of terror was decreasing simply because the Islamist enemy was beginning to achieve their ideological goals in their native countries? What if the Islamists were actually sensing a general global retreat of the uniquely American ideologies of pluralism?

Terror is only a means to the ends of political Islam. If political Islam is on the rise, doesn’t it stand to reason that apologetics for terrorism may then actually decrease?

Certainly freer markets, economic growth, and education may ultimately drive Muslim populations away from autocracy and corruption. But to where will it drive them? What alternative Muslim narratives are available in this war of ideas? With the current American mainstream-media (MSM) distractions, Islamists are free to control Arab and Muslim media alongside their dictators and monarchs and spread political Islam in the Middle East and in the West.

Our private and governmental resources have yet to hardly focus on the anti-Islamists and anti-Wahhabist Muslims. The Bush administration and MSM would similarly rather avoid any critical ideological engagement of Islamist movements around the world. Our public diplomacy has actually turned into “Islamist facilitation.”

Manifestations of Islamist fascism (i.e. terrorism) may wax and wane depending upon how threatened the Islamist ideologues are with extinction. The underlying disease — political Islam— however, will never go away without a direct ideological counter-jihad and counter-Islamism from within the faith. ...

Muslim reformer Irshad Manji is doing her part. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail conversation:

"I'm an Iraqi agnostic that lives in the UAE. I was part of an online community where everybody was free to share his ideas. Until I started talking about the Israeli-Arab conflict. I said that Arabs were making a lot of massacres, as well as the other side. I was insulted and kicked out.

After that, a lot of users asked me make another free Arab forum. The forum is now in the design phase. I have a handful of thinkers, believers and non-believers. I am now looking for Arab Israelis who can give their side. I grant full freedom of speech, providing that everything is supplied with evidence. Looking forward your help, Irshad." - The Free Arab

NOTE: Irshad put The Free Arab in touch with with another Arab dissident, who wrote this to him:

"In agreement with what you said, here are only some examples of Arab/Muslim atrocities committed against our own which we are too proud to admit:
Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan slaughtering Bengali Muslims in 1971.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein slaughtering the Kurds and Iranians using chemical weapons.
The Taliban slaughtering Shi'a Hazaras, committing war crimes comparable to the Serbs killing the Bosnians.
Jordan’s King Hussein and Pakistan’s General Zia ul Haq slaughtering Palestinians during Black September.
Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad slaughtering 40,000 Muslims and leveling the city of Hama.
The Amman bombings of November 2005 when Zarqawi even proudly claimed responsibility for the attacks.
On-going ethnic cleansing in Darfur...

Remarks. Some men you just can't reach. But there are some people who can be reached, and that's where the real action is in this war.

UK: Honor Killers Sentenced

It won't bring her back. But it's a step in the right direction.

The father of a Kurdish woman tortured, raped and murdered in a "barbaric and callous" honor killing in Britain was jailed for at least 20 years on Friday. Banaz Mahmod's father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and her uncle Ari Mahmod, 51, who received a 23-year minimum sentence, were found guilty of murder last month. ...

How to End Islamophobia

By way of Oceanguy, here's Tawfiq Hamid in OpinionJournal:

Islamophobia could end when masses of Muslims demonstrate in the streets against videos displaying innocent people being beheaded with the same vigor we employ against airlines, Israel and cartoons of Muhammad. It might cease when Muslims unambiguously and publicly insist that Shariah law should have no binding legal status in free, democratic societies.

Free The Film

"Islam vs. Islamists" - the film PBS doesn't want you to see.

Irshad Manji: State of the Ummah

Irshad Manji, writing in the Wall Street Journal, sees good news in the recent Pew poll on Muslim Americans.  In particular, she contrasts Muslim attitudes - that is, attitudes both of and toward Muslims - in Europe and America.  My friend Michael Totten recently expressed curiosity as to why the Muslim population in Europe was so radicalized - even more so than Muslims living in the Middle East.  Irshad Manji's comparison of Muslim life in Europe and the United States might offer some clues.

Here are the main points:

In Berlin recently, an audience buzzed nervously when I suggested that Europe can learn from America about integrating Muslims. Afterwards, several people confided to me that they know the U.S. is getting something right. What is that something? As I engage with young Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic, I see three factors: economics, diversity and faith.

• For plenty of Muslims in the United States, ambition and initiative pay off. The Pew survey reinforces this lesson, telling us that 71% of Muslim Americans believe most people in the U.S. "can make it if they are willing to work hard."

Meanwhile, in Europe, young Muslims face blatant discrimination in employment, educational and social opportunities, even when they are citizens. Many subsist on welfare, which only gives them time to stew and surf the Web for preachers who spew a rigid identity. This is the path that led Mohammed Bouyeri to murder Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

• In much of America, diversity is a reason to intermingle. The Pew study reveals that most Muslims are close friends with non-Muslims.

In much of Europe, diversity has become an excuse to self-segregate. Many of Europe's mosques, and the Muslims who attend them, refuse to communicate in the language of their new surroundings. As a result, young Muslim men drift away from moderate religious authorities and fall for online opportunists. That is how Mohammad Sidique Khan, mastermind of the London transit bombers, fell under the sway of "Sheikh Google," the collective nickname for Islamist Web sites.

• To Americans, it is not the fact of having faith that invites scrutiny, but what one is perceived to be doing with that faith. Western Europeans, still steeped in a backlash against the Catholic Church, often show suspicion or outright contempt to people of faith. Such "secular fundamentalism" leads some Muslims to believe that they will never be accepted by their adopted countries. So why integrate?

Small wonder that young Muslims in Western Europe whisper to me, "I wish I lived in the United States." The honesty doesn't end there. Muslim men in their twenties have complained to me that, in an effort to appear sensitive, Europeans downplay shared values. This confuses many Muslim youth and creates a vacuum that radical clerics can exploit.

Translation: A common aspiration such as the American Dream is crucial to giving Muslims a sense of belonging to something larger and more dynamic than cultural enclaves.

Go read the rest.

The new face of Pakistan?

And now for something completely different.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Begum Nawazish Ali flirts with the country's law minister, batting her long eyelashes and calling him darling. She kisses one of the minister's sons on the cheek and practically asks another son to marry her. All in front of the television cameras.

"Look at my hands," she tells the minister, showing off her French manicure.

"Your hands are beautiful," he responds. "I feel like kissing them."

This is the most outrageous TV program in Pakistan, one that has regularly violated conservative Islamic rules and Pakistani customs while becoming a top-rated talk show. But Ali is more than just a mouthy woman, and that's what makes this popular show truly revolutionary, even subversive.

Ali is actually a mouthy man in drag. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Muslim children destroy classroom; anti-Semitic attack in France.

Via IRIS:

Nine year-old Muslim children destroy a Dutch classroom because of a discussion of a pig on a farm and the only response is to expunge pigs from the curriculum.
A school in Amsterdam has halted lessons on rural life because the Islamic children refused to talk about pigs. Reporting this, Alderman Lodewijk Asscher said he wants to take "tough measures." Subsidies for all kinds of dubious groups must stop and parents of unruly children penalised financially.

Asscher told newspaper De Volkskrant: "A primary school in Amsterdam-Noord has decided no longer to teach about living on a farm. Various pupils began to demolish the classroom when the pig came up for discussion. Apparently it has gone that far. These children, 9, 10 years old, have not been given even the most elementary rules at home about why they must go to school."

Vicious anti-Jewish attack in France.
A 22-year-old Jewish woman suffered a vicious anti-Semitic attack by two men of Middle Eastern appearance in a train station in Marseille, France on Thursday night.

The attackers tore the Star of David chain from around the young woman’s neck, lifted up her shirt, painted a swastika on her stomach and then fled the scene.

Local police opened an investigation into the attack but had not yet found the assailants.

American Islamic Congress: latest news.

From Zainab al-Suwaij, American Islamic Congress, via e-mail bulletin:

I just returned from a month-long trip to the Middle East, where we conducted three training conferences for young reformers in:

- Amman, Jordan, where we brought together 25 young leaders from eight countries for in-depth training in techniques of non-violent activism;
- Karbala, Iraq, where despite constant danger we taught 27 young Iraqis how to promote non-violent methods of conflict resolution and national reconciliation;
- Ifrane, Morocco , where we joined with the student Human Rights Club of Al-Akhawayn University to host 45 young Middle Eastern leaders from 12 countries to lay the foundations for a region-wide civil rights movement.

While I enjoyed my trip, my experiences reminded me of the challenges before us. The day I arrived in Morocco from Iraq, for example, multiple suicide bombings rocked the country. I was instructing young activists on implementing nonviolent reform at one moment, only to find myself comforting Moroccans devastated by the tragic actions of radical fundamentalists. The attacks (repeated the next day in Algiers and four days later in Casablanca) provided a stark example of the crises - and opportunities - that stand before us. Radicals seek to dominate the Muslim community. Basic human rights are denied by unelected rulers. And terrorists threaten the safety of all of us, regardless of our religious beliefs.

But we will not be silent in the face of these challenges.

Entering our sixth year, the American Islamic Congress has been at the forefront in advancing a platform of tolerance and understanding by creating grassroots networks for reform in the Muslim world and by promoting the moderate Muslim voice to the American public. We rely on the support of kind people of all backgrounds who are committed to promoting peace and progress - and to helping us move forward a positive agenda for the Muslim community. ...

Go to the link to find out more about AIC, and consider helping them out if you can.

Violence Against Women

France: Man rips out wife's eyes.

A man who ripped out his wife's eyes in a fit of rage was sentenced by a French court to 30 years behind bars on Tuesday.

Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari's eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him.

Bari, who had demanded a divorce before the attack, was permanently blinded.

Hadfi, a Moroccan, initially fled to Germany. He was arrested and sent back to France, where he was indicted for "acts of torture and barbarity leading to a permanent disability".

Prosecutor Dominique Tourette demanded that he be sentenced to 30 years in prison, two-thirds of which must be served in full, calling the defendant a "diabolic torturer".

Once his sentence is served, Hadfi will be deported and barred from ever returning to France.

His lawyer Jean-Pierre Cabanes meanwhile insisted there were extenuating circumstances.

"This is the result of a marriage that was arranged, not chosen," he said, pointing to the gulf separating his client, who came from southern Morocco, and his young wife, who had grown up in France.

Germany: Judge excuses Koran-based wife-beating.

A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.
A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the "hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.

In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.

Phyllis Chesler Unedited

What The Times didn't print:

For example, I was invited by Cambridge (UK) to deliver a keynote address at an international feminist conference to be held on March 9th of this year. When I raised questions about security and about the utter absence of kindred spirits, and despite the fact that I had stressed that neither factor would keep me away—I was summarily dis-invited. (These feminists subsequently invited me to lecture alone, to a smaller British-only group; how