Miss Kelly

Islam, Human Rights and Activism in Malaysia and Iran

And now for something completely different - a man with three buttocks! 

Even more unlikely than a man with three buttocks is a lecture at Harvard that's critical of shariah law, and I believe that's on the agenda this week.

What: Islam, Human Rights and Activism: The Cases of Malaysia and Iran. The speakers are Zainah Anwar and Akbar Ganji.
When: Tuesday, April 1, 2008, 4 PM to 6 PM.
Where:  Pound Hall 101, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA.

"Zainah Anwar is the recently retired Executive Director of Sisters in Islam. It is widely regarded as one of the most successful women’s advocacy groups in the Islamic world. A grassroots Malaysian organization formed in 1988, it promotes women’s rights and challenges discrimination against women. They run a legal clinic, legal literary programs, public awareness programs, and perform research in law reform. She is currently Board Member and Project Director for the Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family."

"Akbar Ganji is an Iranian human rights dissident and writer. He has won the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders and the John Humphreys Freedom Award. He won the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Academic Freedom Prize (2006)."

I hope the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) members attend this, it might give them a different side of shariah.  Recently Shaykh Jihad Hashim-Brown spoke to HIS members about the goals of shariah, the "sacred and divine law" that purportedly comes from the Koran. People who live in countries were shariah is applied generally aren't so enthusiastic about it. 

Great article about Zainah Anwar here.  She sounds like an amazing woman, capable, high energy, strong-minded, a dynamo.  Here's just a few interesting items from the article about Anwar:

• Sisters in Islam (SIS), the organization that Anwar has headed for many years, tackles such issues as polygamy, and domestic and sexual violence within marriage.  The SIS maintains that the concerns of Muslim women are “not the monopoly of religious scholars. Everyone has the right to speak”. 

• "SIS has been at the forefront of NGOs influencing amendments to Islamic Family Law. It has espoused equality and justice for women, discussed dress and modesty, the right to guardianship, women as judges, fundamental liberties in Islam, and apostasy and freedom of religion."

Ms. Anwar did graduate studies in the U.S., a masters at Boston University in 1978, and was at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy, Tufts University until 1986.  Note to former Sharon imam Muhammed Masood: that's what you're supposed to do when you come to the U.S. on an J-1 Exchange Visitor visa. It's an opportunity for people to come to the United States to study, and then take what they've learned and go back home to serve the interests of their fellow countrymen.  Not stay here, bring over kids, have more kids, bring over more relatives, live large on a 52-acre estate, etc, etc. 

On the headscarf, which apparently Zainah doesn't wear - Zainah attended Islamic religious schools from ages 10 to 14, but she says that "Even my cikgu agama (religious teacher) didn’t wear the tudung (headscarf). It was such a different world then.”  What has caused the headscarf to assume such importance only in the last 30 years or so, and outside of the Middle East in a country like Malaysia which has no tradition of covering the hair?

I bet this will be a fascinating lecture!

More on Aqsa Murder and Hijab Controversy

A follow-up post on the honor killing of Aqsa Parvez in Toronto last week.  There's been controversy over whether this honor killing reflects Islam or not, and whether wearing hijab is really voluntary or not for young Muslim women.  I'm posting two pieces by Muslims on that subject, an article by Khalid Hasan in the Daily Times of Pakistan and an article by Tarek Fatah of the Canadian Muslim Congress. First, Hasan's article on the pressure for North American Muslims to wear hijab:

"Many Muslim families in North America are forcing their daughters to don the hijab against their will, which has led to tragic outcomes, the latest being the murder in a Toronto suburb of 16-year old Aqsa Parvez by her own father."

"According to a commentary by Natasha Fatah, broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Aqsa Parvez did not want to wear the hijab, 'the Middle Eastern head-covering that has become the most significant icon for Islam in the West, which is unfortunate, since 90 per cent of Muslim women in this country don’t wear one … This superficial measurement of ‘Muslim-ness’ has become so prevalent that a small but increasing number of families are pushing it on their daughters. Aqsa, a Pakistani-Canadian, was just one of the victims of this growing obsession. Now that Aqsa is dead, who will speak for her? Who will speak for the countless Muslim girls who lead double lives and who suffer in silence in their homes? Who will make sure they aren’t abused or killed? Most Islamist men and women say that a woman chooses to wear the hijab. But, all too often, that choice is taken away from young Muslim girls, and they are being told by their parents and their imams that if they don’t wear the hijab, they are no longer Muslim, even though the Quran, Islam’s holy book, does not say that a woman has to cover her hair.' ”

"Why Do Muslim Women HAVE to Cover Their Heads?"

Now there's a loaded question. 

Not "Why do some Muslim women cover their heads?" but "Why do Muslim women have to cover their heads?"  This question and others are posted at a blog offered by Boston Now.  Boston Now is a free Boston daily paper which also offers blogs for members. 

Is this "blog" what Boston Now had in mind? I doubt it.  Most of the blogs are commentaries on local events, sports and politics.  This blog, however, is a front for fundamentalist dawah (proseletyzing) sites, Ask About Islam and Ask Muslims.  One "author" of this fake blog is AElfwine Mischler, an American convert to Islam who was born in California, married an Egyptian and moved to Cairo.  The dawah site is hosted at Islam Online, What's the Boston connection?  There is none.  According to Wikipedia:

"IslamOnline.net is owned by Sunni Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Al-Balagh Charity Society in Doha, Qatar. IslamOnline.net has a small administrative office in Doha, while its content is managed from Cairo, Egypt, where more than 200 employees work full-time."

Right, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, there's a name we know.  Other "blog entries" are lifted from Islam101.com.  The relentless infiltration of Wahabi/Salafi Islamism into every aspect of our society's media should be making us a bit nervous.  Who's really behind this supposedly local Boston blog?

What the heck is this Islamist dawah site doing on Boston Now, masquerading as a blog?   

Here's an e-mail address if you want to report an abuse of the Boston Now community blogs: [email protected]. 

Friday Miscellania

Happy Friday!  A few links:

• General Abizaid's lecture at Harvard about two weeks ago.  "We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us," Abizaid told the forum audience during a discussion titled "The Long War."  Same thing that Carolyn Glick said at her lecture a few days ago. "We have not failed yet and we will not fail if we all understand what we have to do. If we can stay together nothing can stop us and we can make the world a better place."


• Overview of the veil controversy by Olivier Guitta at The Weekly Standard.  Key concepts: "...in both Tunisia and France the recent banning of the hijab has actually helped Muslim women who are subject to Islamist indoctrination. ... Wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. In fact, millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution."  He cites examples from France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia, Egypt and the U.S.

• Excellent column Chales Jacobs of The David Project on the Global Jihad, with numerous examples of its manifestations.  “Think Globally, Act Locally” is actually Osama’s message."

Have a great weekend!

Veil Controversies Continue in England

UPDATE BELOW

Just because you think someone is after you doesn't mean you're paranoid.  The veil controversies continue to pile up in England, one on top of another. This simply has to be a campaign of intimidation  (one might say a mini-jihad) by radical Muslims in England.  The latest refusal to remove a face-covering veil in court:

"An immigration tribunal had to be stopped after a lawyer twice refused a judge's request that she remove her veil. Shabnam Mughal appeared at the tribunal dressed head-to-foot in black and wearing a fullface veil with just her eyes showing. She was representing a Sikh businessman appealing against the Home Office's refusal to grant his nephew permission to visit the UK. "

"At the original hearing tribunal chairman George Glossop asked her to remove the veil during the tribunal hearing in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She refused and the case was adjourned until the afternoon. When the case was reconvened Judge Glossop said: "I am not very happy that you are appearing in a veil. Would you kindly remove it to assist with communications? It will allow me to see your face and I cannot hear you as well as I would like." "

Ms. Mughal refused to remove her face cover.  One wonders what mosque she attends.  She cares not that in Western society, we don't hide our faces (unless you're a bank robber or KKK member).  There will be more to this story, likely including lawsuits, stay tuned.  England has quite a pattern of veil/niqab/jilbab challenges, from the high school girl in Bedfordshire who sued the local school to wear a body-covering gown, to Aishah Azmi, the teaching assistant in West Yorkshire who sued to wear a face-covering veil (despite her job of teaching English language).  What a shame the legal system has to waste its time (and taxpayers money) this way. Why are so many Muslim reformists from the Middle East, and why are so many fundalmentalists in England?   

UPDATE/11-10-06:  Senior tribunal judges issued a temporary ruling yesterday, saying that lawyers can wear the Islamic veil in court.  The president of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal noted that Ms. Mughal had appeared veiled in court previously without any problems.   More details:

"Yesterday's ruling is only temporary, ahead of a full declaration from the Judicial Studies Board, which issues advice to judges on questions of race and faith equality. The Board is notorious for publishing a list of banned words and phrases which it told judges to avoid in the interests of equality. Banned terms included 'immigrant','Asian', 'postman' and 'man and wife'. (Oh. My. God. Animal Farm, here we come!)

The judgement has some loopholes, allowing individual discretion by judges to require that the veil be removed if the veiled legal staff cannot be heard clearly by all participants, or if the veil interferes with the "interests of justice."   

Spray Their Faces with Rosewater Not Acid

Are these rules for the religious police in Iran real, or is this satire?  (Answer: real as can be.)

• Don't use a razor blade to slash their faces (as has been permissible and very much done by the disciplinary forces patrolling the cities), use Kleenex.
• If you see too much makeup on women's faces, don't spray their faces with acid (as has been permissible and very much done by the disciplinary forces patrolling the cities), use rosewater.

I think these guys have a leg up on the Saudi muttawa.

Woman Who Assaults Cop "Outraged" to Remove Scarf

Rehana Khan, a 24-year-old Muslim woman, was arrested in Chicago on October 15.  She and four other people were demonstrating in Arlington Heights in support of immigrant rights. Khan was charged with battery and resisting arrest, and she's accused of hitting a female officer.  During processing at the police station, Ms. Khan's scarf was removed (normal practice and done for safety reasons).  Not surprisingly, this incident has outraged some Muslims.  CAIR held a news conference in which they demanded that the Attorney General drop all charges against Khan, and the arresting officers be disciplined. Dream on, CAIR. 

“For Muslim women who wear it, removing the hijab in such a manner is equivalent to a forced state of nudity,” said CAIR-Chicago Civil Rights Coordinator Christina Abraham.   

How about not assaulting a cop in the first place?  At MSNBC, Tucker Carlson interviewed Ahmed Rehab, the spokesman for the Chicago CAIR about this (scroll down the page about halfway).  Carlson gives it pretty good to Mr. Rehab:

CARLSON:  She may have that—I don‘t know.  You seem to be making up your own rules, but the rules in America are she may have that right, but she forfeits it when she punches a cop, as she did.  So she no longer has that right to do whatever she wants. 

REHAB:  And if she tells the officer not to remove the scarf because she has it on for religious reasons, then that officer has to respect her civil right to dress the way she wants and to practice her religion because she‘s not...

CARLSON:  You can say that all you want.  I can say, “I‘m carrying my sacred handgun.  And to take it away from me, you‘d be violating my religious rights.”  And you know what I mean?  “I‘m going to sue you.”  OK, fine.  But the cops are still going to say, look, that‘s a threat to my safety.  I‘m sorry.  You may say that‘s your religious right, but I feel it‘s a threat.  OK?  So you know, we have conflicting interests.

REHAB:  See, that‘s the difference...

CARLSON:  And in a secular society the secular interest, the interest of safety wins.  I‘m sorry.

Don't apologize, Tucker.  CAIR and Ms. Khan should be apologizing for wasting taxpayer's dollars  That the Police Department and the Attorney General office have to respond to this is ludicrous.  Surely CAIR has more pressing concerns than this.  Only in America. 

More about Ahmed Rehab and his writings here.