irshaddering thoughts

Rejoice at Saudi rape decision? Pardon me?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 17, 2007

Pardon me for being confused, but as a reform-minded Muslim am I supposed to get giddy that Saudi Arabia’s king has pardoned a woman who’s been gang-raped?

Think about it: The notion of excusing a rape victim is patently crazy. Victims don’t need to be let off for a crime committed against them. Rather, they need to be empowered with the dignity and authority to help determine the fate of their assailants.

There’s so much kookiness in the system of “honor” that led to this young woman’s imprisonment (and the continued incarceration of the man she was with — himself raped by the same criminals who attacked her).

This is why I’m linking you to two major interviews that I recently conducted about women, men, tribal culture and Islam.

Here’s the (MP3 link) of my interview on “Culture Shocks,” a national radio show hosted by Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Now here’s the video of my interview on “The Agenda,” TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program. The host and I discuss the case of Aqsa Parvez, the Toronto-area Muslim teenager allegedly killed by her own father last week.

Aqsa Parvez: Covering up the diversity of Muslim women

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 13, 2007

                                Why are they all covered?

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?

Of course, mainstream Muslims will argue that I’m the one who needs to learn basic morality. After all, they’ll say, the Qur’an obligates pious women to wear the hijab.

Not quite. The Qur’an asks women and men to dress modestly. That could mean wearing long sleeves. The hijab itself comes from tribal culture that pre-dates Islam. And culture, far from being God-given, is man-made.

You need venture no further than Muslim Girl magazine to witness how mainstream Muslims reinforce 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. Study the photo above. It’s a post-card flogged by the Interfaith Center of New York. Can you detect even one Muslim woman who’s not covered?

I see the veiled chick at the far end. It gets less conservative from there — but not to the point of depicting a Muslim woman who prays without submitting herself to a scarf.

Worse, the blurb on the back celebrates the “diversity of Muslim communities in the city.” Show me where.

Of course, the diversity exists in spades. So does the tension between Muslim parents and their daughters. In Berlin earlier this year, a group of young Muslim women — not a hijabi among them! — approached me to express gratitude that I’d posted an Islamic defense of inter-faith marriage.

Because this document is written by an imam, they can use it to legitimately challenge parents and clerics who want to force girls into loveless marriages with other Muslims. These young women told me that the Islamic inter-faith marriage defense is being downloaded by their friends. It’s also being used by German social services to counsel distraught Muslim girls.

For all of my readers who feel powerless to help another Aqsa Parvez, I have simple advice: Listen to her. Then come to this website for resources in various languages. Be not afraid of anything except complacency.

Meanwhile, may Aqsa rest in peace. Finally.

Anne Hutchinson: agent of moral courage

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 10, 2007

For all that’s been blogged about Mitt Romney’s speech on faith and politics, here’s what hasn’t yet been said: He approvingly (and quickly) mentioned the name of a woman whom he probably wouldn’t defend if she were alive today. That’s because she’d outrage Christian evangelicals and plenty of Mormons with her defiance of religious leaders.

The woman is Anne Hutchinson. She was a Puritan convert who spoke out for freedom of conscience — even going on trial for it.

Hutchinson, a midwife, came to America with her husband and eleven children in 1634. She began hosting salons in which she’d propose her own interpretation of the Bible and encouraged others to do the same. Pissed off that a highly literate layperson (and a woman, to boot) would show the moxy to challenge their power, Puritan ministers ordered her to stop. She didn’t, choosing instead to argue in court.

Listen to the “charges” laid on her by then-Governor John Winthrop:

“Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here; you are known to be a woman that hath had a great share in the promoting and divulging of those opinions that are causes of this trouble… you have spoken diverse things as we have been informed very prejudicial to the honour of the churches and ministers thereof.”

Honour. Remember that word? I recently blogged about the rancid effects of “honour” on Islam today. We Muslims could take a few cues from Anne Hutchinson about how to be thoughtful and faithful, regardless of the verdict that religious courts reach about reformists.

The court convicted Hutchinson of heresy, jailed her, then banished her to a wilderness where, not to be outdone, she helped found a city. Gotta love the lady’s chutzpah!

But I don’t love Mitt Romney’s chutzpah. He’s got some nerve slipping Hutchinson’s name into the same speech in which he justifies (but never explains) his allegiance to the Mormon church — a church that still doesn’t tolerate dissent.

The story of Anne Hutchinson reminds us that America was born as a theocracy ironically set up by those who suffered religious oppression in their homelands. It’s only through doubters like Hutchinson, and later Jefferson, that freedom of worship became a guarantee.

To proclaim “God bless America” is, ultimately, to celebrate those who bust the monopoly of the God Squad.

Mitt, you’re no Jack Kennedy

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 06, 2007

Today, Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney delivered a deep yet shifty speech about faith in politics.

I say “deep” because he tackled mammoth philosophical issues, chief among them: Should church and state be separate in American society? Romney’s answer: Yes. Religious leaders, including those of his Mormon church, would not influence public policy under his administration.

But, Romney hastened to add, that doesn’t mean politicians should be separated from God. Nor should faith should be ejected as a topic of discussion from the public square. And make no mistake — classrooms are part of the public square.

I agree with Romney’s position, and I’ll soon post a column to explain why. Feel free to clobber me with your doubts, suspicions and insults in the meantime.

More immediately, let me explain why Romney’s speech was ultimately shifty. It literally attempted to shift attention away from his specific Mormon beliefs to grander and more abstract intellectual questions like the meaning of secularism. With no Q & A after the speech, he could hastily leave the stage and avoid addressing media inquiries about Mormonism.

Put bluntly, Romney ran scared. The result? He did a big disservice to his faith by squandering the opportunity to de-mystify it.

Now contrast Romney’s approach to that of the equally blow-dried but far more courageous John F. Kennedy. In 1960, Kennedy faced a pack of journalists — mostly Protestant men from the US South — to address their conspiracy theories about Catholicism.

These guys didn’t just pepper Kennedy with questions. Hell no. They pelted him. Over and over Kennedy explained what kind of a Catholic he is while assuring that priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope would have no voice as policy-makers in his White House.

In his closing statement to the media pack, Kennedy said that he didn’t consider their questions to be bigoted. Rather, he said, the only unreasonable reaction comes from those who believe that America should reject him merely because he’s a member of the Catholic church, regardless of his stated commitment to keep Rome out of Washington.

Kennedy’s message: Interrogate me, but make it worth your while by taking my replies seriously.

Today, we the people would denounce such media questions as intolerant. But without inviting biased journalists to express their prejudices, Kennedy would have left too many Americans wondering what his convictions are — and why. Which is exactly what Mitt Romney has just done.

Some would argue that’s a tactical necessity to re-frame Romney as a Mormon vying for president to an American vying for president. Yet Kennedy cast off the label of “Catholic candidate” by squarely confronting myths about Catholics.

And don’t tell me the media are more rabid today. Of course they are. But watch the Kennedy footage, then tell me that journalists would pummel Romney any harder. Even if they did, so what? You’d think that Romney would relish the chance to let reporters sound hostile, narrow-minded and stridently secular. That’s red meat for the Republican base.

Fact is, Romney wimped out. To paraphrase from a previous presidential campaign, “Mitt, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Shiraz Maher: agent of moral courage

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 02, 2007

Finally, a Muslim man speaks out, uneqivocally, about the insane imprisonment of the British school teacher in Sudan. Here’s a taste of his message to fellow Muslims in the UK:

“I spent 14 years in the Middle East, so I’m quite accustomed to Arab culture and its easily offended sensibilities.

But the decision to arrest and jail the English school teacher Gillian Gibbons is so far removed from even the remotest sense of logic, I wondered if the date on my Arabic calendar was April 1.

Sadly, this was no joke.

The truth is, as we’re beginning to realise, we’re locked into a battle for hearts and minds at the core of which lies a battle for the essence of Islam itself. And we can’t expect anyone to fight this on our behalf.”

Read Shiraz Maher’s entire commentary in today’s Sunday Times.

With Muslims like these, who needs infidels?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 01, 2007

Editorial cartoon in November 30 Los Angeles Times

Judges in Sudan have sentenced a British school teacher to 15 days in prison. She narrowly escaped a harsher sentence of 40 lashes. Why? For accepting a democratic vote in her class to name their teddy bear “Mohammad.”

Yesterday, hundreds of protestors gathered outside the presidential palace to demand more a brutal punishment, even execution. You can bet that was orchestrated by the government itself, which hopes to look “moderate” when compared its subjects —the ones who haven’t been slaughtered by Sudan’s on-going genocide, that is.

To appreciate the infidel-icious irony of lashing an educator for naming a teddy bear “Mohammad,” we have to shift focus slightly: Ask not how Sudanese officials treated the school teacher. Ask how they treated the Prophet Muhammad.

Put bluntly, Sudan treated Muhammad as untouchable — and thus as God. That, my friends, is blasphemy.

Even in classical Islamic tradition, Muhammad has never been deemed God. Not even close. He was a trustworthy, kind, yet illiterate trader bankrolled by Khadija, his wealthy, self-made entrepreneurial wife.

It’s not the school teacher who deserves to be whipped into shape; it’s the ridiculous clerics who pose as judges. They’re turning the human Prophet into a icon of worship and thereby challenging Allah’s ultimate authority. The infidels are these Muslims.

But let’s not flog their brains out. They can’t afford to lose what little they’ve got up there. Instead, knock some bear-like stuffing into their heads. There’s plenty of room to work with.

Why the Annapolis talks matter

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 29, 2007

Above: a basketball court in Jerusalem

I’ve learned from my naiveté over the Iraq war, so let me state upfront: The Annapolis talks toward peace in the Middle East could be a PR gimmick, a joke, a ruse, a farce, a choose-your-fav-adjective that translates into “abject failure.”

But maybe, just maybe…

Here’s why the Annapolis negotiations can matter. Given that Iraq has blown up in President Bush’s face, Annapolis amounts to his last go at a modest foreign policy legacy. If anything meaningful is achieved through these talks, Bush will score bragging rights about what he accomplished and what Clinton didn’t. You know that matters.

With or without Bush’s self-interest, here’s why Annapolis should matter. Ever since Yasser Arafat’s death, I’ve heard Palestinian youth express their willingness — sometimes bordering on eagerness — to accept a two-state solution for the sake of getting on with their lives.

I remember visiting An-Najah University in Nablus, the heart of the West Bank, in 2005. “Now that Arafat is gone,” announced one of the students, “it is time to accept the state of Israel.”

“Wait,” I blurted. “You mean the Jewish state of Israel?”

He rolled his eyes in lieu of a “Duh.” Then he explained. “Look, of course we want the occupation to end. But we are also human beings with dreams and hopes for the future. We know that to reach our dreams as individuals, we have to find ways to co-exist peacefully with the Jews, with Israel.”

He made that statement in front of other students, any one of whom could have disagreed in order to defend the honor of the liberation struggle. But with Arafat buried, they finally felt the freedom to speak their truths. Like university students around the world, these kids imagined using their education to tap their talents “as individuals.”

I immediately picked up on the phrase “as individuals.” It represented a stark break from tribal identity. It meant that they’d had enough of being lumped by their leaders into some amorphous collective that stifled their unique voices.

A year later, I got the same message from different Palestinian students. We met at a roundtable of Middle East youth organized by the World Economic Forum. The Palestinian delegation complained bitterly that their own politicians treated them as “suspect” and “deviant.” Innovative ideas, they said, are branded “dangerous” by “inaccessible” elders.

Then came this bombshell: “We cannot keep blaming the Israelis for our problems. We all know that opinions in our Arab societies are determined by family loyalties instead of reason. My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin, brother and I against an external threat.”

Once again, nobody argued with his point. Not because they weren’t capable of arguing (you should have seen the Saudi girls rip into the guys at the table), but because everyone understood that true liberation happens once individuals are allowed to succeed on their own terms. That means ending two occupations — one by Israeli soldiers, and the other by Palestinian oligarchs whose status is made untouchable by a conflict without conclusion.

In short, for a new generation of Palestinians, regional peace is a pre-condition of personal growth. They’re not turning their back on community. Rather, they’re desperate to displace the tribal mentality that spawns intra-communal violence.

Amnesty International recently exposed the civilian abuses that Palestinian representatives are inflicting on their society. Do you get why the youth of that society deserve to define the future for themselves? These are the stakes of the Annapolis talks.

George W. Bush, icon of the multicultural Left

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 24, 2007

On November 23, NBC Nightly News aired a story about women in Iraq becoming the targets of murder by Shiite fanatics. The TV story pointed out that even police are too afraid to investigate these killings.

What a damning indictment of my own belief that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would lead to a better human rights scene in Iraq. I’m embarrassed but honest about how wrong I was.

Here’s one of the reasons I got it so wrong: I assumed the Bush administration would forge ties with Iraq’s most consistent champions of democracy — secularists and feminists. Any serious alliance with them would have ensured that the new Iraqi constitution gives civil law more prominence than religious law. This, in turn, would have put Muslim fanatics on notice that they can’t get away with human rights violations by invoking Islam as cover.

But the exact opposite has happened. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have adopted Sharia supremacy clauses in their constitutions, with the blessing of the Bushies.

Article Two of the new Iraqi constitution makes clear that “no law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed laws of Islam.” Likewise, Article Three of Afghanistan’s constitution states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”

Washington enthusiastically endorses each constitution, indicating that the Islamization of democracy is either harmless or unstoppable. In so doing, neo-cons have succumbed to the logic of the multicultural Left: namely, that’s the way those people do things over there and who are we to tell them otherwise?

Welcome to the essence of cultural relativism, the ideology that insists there is no universal standard of human dignity or decency. Thus, anything goes as long as it doesn’t directly affect me or my kids.How individualistic. How selfish. And how revealing that when it comes to re-building Iraq and Afghanistan, cultural relativism unites the post-modern Left and the neo-conservative Right.

To be sure, it doesn’t stop with Iraq and Afghanistan. You can detect cultural relativism in America’s response to the now-notorious Saudi rape case. The US reaction as reported by Reuters:

“This is a part of a judicial procedure overseas in the court of a sovereign country,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack when asked to comment on the case. “That said, most would find it relatively astonishing that something like this happens,” added McCormack.

The state department’s moral cowardice outraged my American lawyer-friend, Ann. In a personal email, she wrote:

“What’s especially troubling to me is McCormack’s apparent attempt to explain the ‘legitimacy’ of this by noting that it’s part of a judicial procedure in the court of a sovereign country. He went on to say that the US could not ‘get involved in specific court cases in Saudi Arabia dealing with its own citizens.’ So my government can’t criticize human rights violations because another government is committing them?! Hmmm. No question of the legitimacy of their sovereignty, so long as the sovereign’s judicial machinery is chugging along ‘normally.’ Really? How’s that for due process! This is an absurd relativist argument.”

Ann then corrected herself. To say “absurd” in the same breath as “relativist” is redundant, she half-joked.

Frankly, Ann’s onto something. Today’s Left and Right are redundant, mimicking each other in their abandonment of our shared humanity. May they be happy occupying the same bed.

Saudi rape case: What’s honorable about “honor”?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 20, 2007

The White House isn’t protesting. The Muslim world isn’t protesting. Those polite Christian theologians who wrote a letter of peace to Muslims last weekend — nope, they aren’t protesting.

Thank God CNN is making a federal case out of the absurd treatment of a young Saudi woman who’s been imprisoned and sentenced to 200 lashes. Her crime? Consorting with man not related to her, then being abducted, then getting gang-banged, then speaking to the media.  All neatly packaged as “illegal mingling.”

Her real offense is that, in being raped and speaking up about it, she has tarnished the “honor” of her entire family. Honor trumps justice in much of the Muslim world, and we’d better understand how that works if we’re going advance human rights.

Honor is the Arab tribal tradition that requires a woman to sacrifice her individuality to maintain the reputation of the men in her family.  This, in effect, turns women into communal property. Their lives don’t belong to them. Their lives belong to a wider group of people — their clans, tribes, even nations.

Which means when a Muslim woman is accused of dishonoring — of shaming or breaking moral codes — the punishment against her can be mammoth. Again, that’s because her life doesn’t belong to her, but to a bigger body. So that in “smearing” her personal reputation by being the victim of rape, she winds up tarnishing the reputation of many more people — with the penalty having to be large enough to compensate them all.

Why must Muslim women bear such a heavy burden when the Quran clearly tells us that in the eyes of Allah, actions and not gender define one’s piety (3:195)?

The pre-Islamic tradition of honor is a cultural weapon, pure and simple. For more analysis, and evidence that a few feminists are finally speaking up, read my blog entry of last month. In it, I applaud Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat from Texas, who introduced a resolution against honor crimes in the U.S. House of Representatives.

CNN phoned me about the Saudi rape case. I told them everybody knows where I stand; Americans need to hear somebody in political power condemn this travesty. I recommended Rep. Jackson-Lee.

Meanwhile, kudos to CNN’s Carol Costello, who looked into the camera today and stated flat-out: “It’s not a woman’s tale of woe. It’s a human rights issue.”

What part of that point do George W. Bush and moderate Muslims not understand?

Your say - November 17, 2007

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Q & A on Nov 17, 2007

 

With high school students in Ottawa

As you can see from the pic above, I adore meeting my readers. I also love hearing from them. But little did I realize how much you love hearing from yourselves!

What I mean is, a lot of you are writing to say that you miss the reader feedback I used to post on my site. I haven’t run your comments since launching this blog. Bad Shad.

Let’s rectify this immediately. Herewith, some recent reactions:

* “The people like you are in deep shit, you are gonna stay in the hell’s most fiercefull area. God help Muslims from the tactics of yours and the satan.” - Ahsan, Pakistan

* “Congratulations on saying what has been on my mind for a long time. Islam today, as we know, is not what Islam could have been if we had asked these questions earlier. I wish my daughters (19 years old) had this book at an age when they were naturally starting to ask questions, but living in an extended family they were shut up by others. I was a rebel anyway.

Many people haven’t read your book because they don’t understand the need for evolution in Islam. I bet more people will agree with you once they read it.” - Arshad

* “all your efforts which I can see are to get the media attention by disrespecting islam and muslims bcoz it has become an industry now. If u want to become famous just write a book against islam and then u r in media and talk shows. all you have done is please the enemies of islam.” - qasim

* “Let me say to those who think you are greedy for fame and money, or accuse you of being paid to insult Islam, you are clearly a talented writer who easily could have chosen to delve into many other subjects from which to make a fine living.

But I believe that out of deep commitment, you chose to do something about the state of this faith because you, like so many of us, are tired of lowering our heads in shame every time a suicide bomber does his awful work in Allah’s name, every time we watch the evening news and see the horrors committed by Muslims against Muslims in places like Darfur, or the killing of innocent children in Iraq…

It’s time we acknowledged our own faults. Kopp to your krap as they say in American ‘hood language, and attempt to catch up with the modern, secular world which is advancing at a dizzying rate. All I wish is for Islam to take its rightful place once again among the world’s great religions, offering guidance, knowledge, hope and comfort to those who seek. Your work is noble and generous, and liberating for a great many, many of us.” - Ismail

Ismail: I, too, wish — and work — for the day when a critical mass of Muslims will kopp to our krap. And do we ever have krap to contend with. Check out this story about a 19-year-old Saudi woman who was raped, then sentenced to 200 lashes.

Where are the protests of European, American and Canadian Muslims? Where are our cries that the basic human rights of Muslims are being violated? I’ll tell you where they are: buried in the sand, along with our heads.

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