“Profiles in Courage: Human Rights Defenders in the Struggle to End Violence Against Women”
The public is invited to this official NGO parallel event in connection with the 2013 annual session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
WHERE: V-Hall Armenian Convention Center, 630 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10016 WHEN: Monday, March 4, 2013 TIME: 10:30 am
While there’s a general context for the above event, the role women have played in the Islamic Small Wars, directly and indirectly, has been extraordinary.
Rationality has its kernel in cogent observable and measurable correlation giving rise to hypotheses and theories that may be disproved. The realm of things that may be disproved, like the idea that the earth is flat or that the sun and stars revolve around the earth, may be limited and dissatisfying, for most Homo sapiens sapiens prefer some share of the immeasurable by way of imagination invested in divinity and faith, and there may be in that, much observed, the freedom to soar.
At this point, I’m inclined to take my own narcissistic eloquence with a grain of salt, communion with God, nature, and the universe being probably as dangerous, intellectually and socially, as it may be romantic, enthralling, and wholesomely Jewish in its assertions.
From a more practical perspective, I’m a proponent of producing improvement in “Qualities of Living” universally and regardless of assigned legacy or appropriated religious or spiritual stance. Faith in God is good, but food supply, health care and its distribution, and appropriate employment are good things too and more the sort of things on which we humans may work together.
Even so, poor or rich, animist or monotheist, let’s not be too quick to dismiss what is joyous and right in living.
In December 2011 Canada banned wearing of “burqa” within its territory.
Earlier on France, Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria did the same.
The Canadian ban was meant to ensure that those taking the oath of Canadian citizenship were actually reciting the oath.
The fact remains that wearing of clothing that completely or almost entirely covers the face is fundamentally at odds with public life.
Is wearing the “burqa” a religious obligation?
Perhaps not!
Women do not wear “burqa” when they perform Hajj.
Does it have to do with culture?
Yes, but which culture?
Is this Culture of tribal areas where women wear shuttle cock “burqas”, or Punjab where we find those black “burqas?”
If the objective is “show of chastity” then for those women who are not allowed to leave their houses, the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks are immodest. To the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks, those wearing the black “burqa” are essentially culpable. To the ones’ wearing black “burqa”, the ones wearing a “chadar” are downright unchaste. To the ones wearing a “chadar”, the ones wearing a “dupatta” are promoters of obscenity.
So on and so forth.
In more than half the Muslim countries women wear skirts. But typical Pakistani women would prefer wearing a “shalwar kameez” worn by Hindu women, than wear a skirt put on by a Muslim Tajik or Turkish or an Iraqi woman. So local cultures determine the dress code and it is not appropriate to set universal standards of so called chastity; as every culture has its nuances and niceties, these have to be respected.
We find female visitors from the West coming to Pakistan and India wearing “shalwar kameez” or jeans while rarely visible in skirts or shorts.
Similarly the Western culture has its own values which should be respected by those who have opted to live there. Those who get remuneration in dollars, francs, pounds and liras; who enjoy full social security benefits in the West; who have sought asylum in there while their lives were not secure in their own countries.
Those who enjoy the Western lifestyle should also have respect for Western values and should try to assimilate them or should abandon the West and come back to Gujaranwala or Kabirwala and put on “burqas” of any color or texture.
From a purely scientific perspective “burqa” is not suitable to wear in hot climates. It obstructs peripheral vision. It also deprives you from the positive effects of nutrients you get from sunlight.
It also seems bizarre when we find pictures of “burqa” clad women on passports and NIC’s.
One should also remember that numerous acts of terrorism in many parts of our country were committed by women wearing “burqas”. Hence “burqa” is also a security threat. It also imprisons you and isolates you from your surroundings and distances you from those around you, creating a trust deficit. It also reminds of medieval constraints where despotic monarchs would hide their concubines from others lest they were exposed to an outsider, endangering their absolute ownership of the “live object”.
As “satti” was banned by the English which did have sacred connotations, banning of “burqa” by Western countries should also be welcomed.
Finally, if you have opted to settle in the West while begging for citizenship, you have no right to contaminate the West with nonsense.
Or if you think it is good to wear a “burqa” put it on in your own country — that is Pakistan or if at all you want to enjoy the civil liberties and social security benefits and human rights and special allowance for the jobless and pizzas and burgers and Western standards of health and education and lavish housing and entertainment and sights of bikini clad babes on the beach then please for God’s sake respect the cultural niceties of those who are providers of all this stuff which you cannot have here in Pakistan or for that matter from the so called heartland of Islam.
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Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.
As we remain enamored by our past achievements in the sciences, we forget that there is very little “original” we as Muslims can celebrate and be proud of.
It was during the reign of Abbasid caliphs, particularly Mamun-ur-Rashid (around 813 CE) that in his Dar-ul-Hikmah (the house of wisdom) in Baghdad, the Muslim scholars would begin translating the classic Greek works, primarily toeing the Aristotelian tradition.
In addition, they were heavily relying on Persian and Indian sources.
They also penned huge commentaries on works by Greek philosophers. However, the Muslim translators were small in number and were primarily driven by curiosity. More than ninety nine percent Arabic translations of works of Greek philosophers were done by either Christian or Jewish scholars.
It is interesting to note that Islamic astronomy, based on Ptolemy’s system was geocentric. Algebra was originally a Greek discipline and ‘Arabic’ numbers were actually Indian. Most of these works were available to the West during 12th century when the first renaissance was taking place. Although Western scholars did travel to Spain to study Arabic versions of classical Greek thought, they soon found out that better versions of original texts in Greek were also available in the libraries of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium.
However, it would be unfair not to mention some of those great Muslim scholars, though very few in number, who genuinely contributed in the development of philosophy and science.
Al-Razi (865 – 925 CE) from Persia, the greatest of all Muslim physicians, philosophers and alchemists wrote 184 articles and books, dismissed revelation and considered religion a dangerous thing.
Al-Razi was condemned for blasphemy and almost all his books were destroyed later.
Ibn-e-Sina or Avicinna (980-1037CE), another great physician, philosopher and scientist was an Uzbek. Avicenna held philosophy superior to theology. His views were in sharp contrast to central Islamic doctrines and he rejected the resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood. As a consequence of his views, he became main target of Al-Ghazali and was labeled an apostate. Ibn-e-Rushd (1126-1198 CE) or Averroes from Spain was a philosopher and scientist who expounded the Quran in Aristotelian terms. He was found guilty of heresy, his books burnt, he was interrogated and banished from Lucena.
Al-Bairuni (973-1048 CE), the father of Indology and a versatile genius, was of the strong view that Quran has its own domain and it does not interfere with the realm of science.
Al-Khawarazmi (780-850 CE) was another Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The historian Al-Tabri considered him a Zoroastrian while others thought that he was a Muslim. However nowhere in his works has he acknowledged Islam or linked any of his findings to the holy text.
Omar Kyayyam(1048-1131 CE), one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers and poets was highly critical of religion, particularly Islam. He severely criticized the idea that every event and phenomena was the result of divine intervention.
Al-Farabi(872-950 CE), another great Muslim philosopher, highly inspired by Aristotle, considered reason superior to revelation and advocated for the relegation of prophecy to philosophy.
Abu Musa Jabir- bin- Hayan or Geber (721-815 CE) was an accomplished Muslim alchemist cum pharmacist. Although he was inclined towards mysticism, he fully acknowledged the role of experimentation in scientific endeavors.
Ibn-ul-haitham or Hazen (965-1040 CE) was an outstanding physicist, mathematician, astronomer and an expert on optics. He was ordered by Fatimid King Al-Hakim to regulate the floods of the Nile, which he knew was not scientifically possible. He feigned madness and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
As we go through the life history of these great men we find that they were influenced by Greek, Babylonian or Indian contributions to philosophy and science, had a critical and reasoning mind and were ‘not good’ Muslims or even atheists. A significant number of them were reluctant to even reveal the status of their beliefs for fear of reprisal from the fanatics.
They never ascribed their achievements to Islam or divinity.
And they were scholars and scientists because of a critical mind which would think and derive inspiration from observation and not scriptures which set restrictions on free thinking and unhindered pursuit of knowledge.
Hence bringing in Islam to highlight achievements of Muslim scientists is nothing but sheer rhetoric as these men did not derive their achievements out of Islam or flourished due to Islam.
And we find that whatever little contribution to science was made can be owed to ‘imperfect Muslims’. In fact, It was the ‘perfect Muslim’, the Islamist, from the 12th century who was to give the biggest blow to scientific thought in the Muslim world: Imam Ghazali (1058-1111 CE) who still occupies a center stage among Muslim philosophers openly denounced the laws of nature and scientific reasoning.
Ghazali argued that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. He would assert that a piece of cotton burns when put to fire, not because of physical reasons but because God wants it to burn. Ghazali was also a strong supporter of the Ash’arites; philosophers who would uphold the precedence of divine intervention over physical phenomena and bitterly opposed the Mu’tazillites; the rationalists who were the true upholders of scientific thought. In other words Ghazali championed the cause of orthodoxy and dogmatism at the cost of rationality and scientific reasoning.
Today we find that all four major schools of ‘Sunni’ Islam reject the concept of ‘Ijtehad’ which can loosely be translated as ‘freedom of thought’. Hence there is absolutely no room for any innovation or modification in traditional thought patterns.
We also find that as Europe was making use of technology while transforming into a culture of machines, the acceptance of these machines was extremely slow in the Islamic world. One prime example is that of the printing press which reached Muslim lands in 1492; however printing was banned by Islamic authorities because they believed the Koran would be dishonored by appearing out of a machine. As a result, Arabs did not acquire printing press until the 18th century.
It also stands established that science is born out of secularism and democracy and not religious dogmatism. And science only flourished in places where religion had no role to play in matters of state. Hence there is an inverse relationship between religious orthodoxy and progress in science.
Rational thought in the Muslim world developed during the reign of liberal Muslim rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who patronized the Mu’tazillites or rational thinkers. After the religious zealots’ compilation of the Ahadis and the rise of scholars like Al-Ghazali that all scientific reasoning came to an end in the 13th century. As a consequence the Muslims contributed almost nothing to scientific progress and human civilization since the dawn of the 13th century. And while science and technology flourish in the modern world, a vast majority of Muslims, engulfed by obscurantism, still find solace in fantasies of a bygone era——the so called ‘golden age’ of Islam.
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Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.
From this I shall probably hear what yeshiva students have to say about the famous apple.
I have never sat in a yeshiva — a school for the study of Torah — and been part of or listened to the arguments over every passage, line, and word.
Moreover, having lived thus far an American life, I’ve missed also the rich literature that has accompanied my religion, apparently, through the ages. Such as Hillel the Elder seems to have done his thinking before the Common Era and a thousand years before Maimonides played physician to the Kurdish General Saladin.
However, one might take a lesson not from the old text and figures varying in their historical placement and stature, but from what they lived and promoted in aggregate: a lively, long, and open argument about considerations involving others, nature, and God.
Such a conversation, whether between two debating partners over a book or a few books on a table or between a whole world diverse in experience, history, and lore, need never end and may be a part of the point of living as men and women: to know life well, take joy in it, and open the passage in time for others to live even better lives, more just, more in beauty, more with nature, ultimately more with God, the Divine, the Greater Spirit.
I don’t think evil, or what we call evil, was placed in the world for the convenience of the good to do good.
Evil — such as that in Syria today — may be part of the natural condition from which the good have arisen, reformed, and with every generation turned about and made smaller and, where possible, less virulent.
We have said since Exodus, “With each generation a little more freedom is won.”
But it has to be won.
I think Adam would have been poorer — less developed, less human, less conscious, less a man, frankly — had he never tasted that apple and experienced delight and life.
The emphasis may be placed on the blossoming of humanity, not so much on obedience, which God controlled in any case.
And for us mere humans, perhaps it is the conversation, the good and searching, compassionate, and caring quality of it, that is our purpose.
Nature would seem by nature anti-monoclonal. It is elaborate and vigorous in invention, and perhaps “the survival of the fittest” refers not only to niche competitions among species over time but “survival of all that fits!”
In anthropology, culture, language, and religion, a great variance fits (and as great a legacy has been buried by time and left to recovery by scholars).
As a Jew, I believe in God in two dimensions: Tevye’s, to whom one may speak, and Einstein’s, the presence of which in every aspect of the universe fills one with awe.
Be that as it may, the world’s confrontation with Islam, which shimmers in perceived scale and threat, looming large at times when violence against any of its avatars’ endless array of targets has made it the news focus of the day, growing small in the company of Muslim associates and friends facing the same foe, comes freighted with an unseemly anti-Semitic streak, a fair part of it supported by officials in Muslim-majority states. Herewith a haphazard assembly of excerpts and links to more on the lowest standard of all: the quiet acceptance of the promotion of anti-Semitic bigotry (which usually belies other prejudices as well) in the Arab sphere.
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First, however, a paragraph of rose colored counterpoint:
“Amongst the politicians elected in Egypt’s first democratic elections, one still hears the occasional anti-Semitic remark. Fayza Abul Naga, a secular 61 year-old woman who is a holdover from the Mubarak regime, recently claimed that Freedom House, an American NGO that conducts research into democracy advocacy, was ‘a tool of the ‘Jewish lobby.”’
This is ugly and regrettable, but not, I think, insidious — and not because there are almost no Jews left in Egypt, but rather because Jew hatred is a relatively new, imported phenomenon that has little history in Egypt and does not seem to run very deep.”
“Whatever you do, don’t accuse the person of being Jewish. That may cause an irrevocable breach, and could even provoke violence.
“Anti-Semitism, the socialism of fools, is becoming the opiate of the Egyptian masses. And not just the masses. Egypt has never been notably philo-Semitic (just ask Moses), but today it’s entirely acceptable among the educated and creative classes there to demonize Jews and voice the most despicable anti- Semitic conspiracy theories. Careerists know that even fleeting associations with Jews and Israelis could spell professional trouble.”
“During World War II, the leader of the Palestinians lived in a Berlin villa, a gift from a very grateful Adolf Hitler, who clearly got his money’s worth. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and as such the titular leader of Muslim Palestinians, broadcast Nazi propaganda to the Middle East, recruited European Muslims for the SS, exulted in the Holocaust and after the war went on to represent his people in the Arab League. He died somewhat ignored but never repudiated.”
“The cartoons in this compilation are consistent with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic caricatures regularly appearing in the Arab and Muslim world depicting Jewish and Israeli power over the international community, demonic imagery to stereotype Jews – including big noses, black coats and hats Ð blood libels and animal references Ð snakes and spiders – to sinisterly portray Israel.”
“In the run up to the 2012 US presidential elections, media outlets across the Middle East have been featuring cartoons depicting the candidates – President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney – as well as the Democratic and Republican parties and the US electorate as subservient to Israel and the Jews.”
“We have to build a society of respect and brotherhood in accordance with the Prophet’s commandments,” he told me in Urdu. “We will treat non-Muslims kindly, but we have a big fight against the Jews ahead of us. We will take that up, God willing.” This manifesto for the future was identical – almost word for word – to what Yahya Mujahid, a senior leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based outfit charged with carrying out the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, told me in Lahore in 2009: that the LeT would take up the “fight” with the Jews after “liberating” Kashmir from Indian rule.”
“The purported “Franklin Prophecy” has been an anti-semitic staple since it was created in the 1930s. The version quoted in Al Madinah is similar to this:
There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.
“Several years ago, there was a survey (methodology unknown) that asked Saudi school children what they thought of Jews. Now, none of these children had actually met a Jew. They were uniform in their reactions, though: they should be spat upon or chased away with stones or simply killed. That reaction did not spring unattended from the minds of these children: it was put there.”
“Despite a promise to the USA in July of 2006 to undertake a program of textbook reform by eliminating all passages that disparage or promote hatred toward any religion or religious groups,” the report finds that “the encouragement of violence and extremism remains an integral part of Saudi Arabia’s national textbooks. As before, there continues to be a great preoccupation throughout the texts with Jews and with Israel. Rank antisemitism saturates the curriculum. Repeatedly, Jews are demonized, dehumanized, and targeted for violence.”
“The Saudi justice minister said that the Protocols is treated as part of Islamic culture because it is a book that has long been found in plentiful supply in Saudi Arabia (one of the relatively few non-Muslim books to be so), and was a book that his father had in his home.”
“They lived out the Koranic commandment that there is no compulsion in religion and also that God said in the Koran I made you into many tribes so you might know one another, and as such, they enrolled me and my siblings in a Hebrew day school for nine years, where we learned Hebrew, read the Torah, prayed in a synagogue almost every morning. They always wanted us to learn about other faiths and they always made sure we knew the difference, though, between Islam and Judaism, they also made sure we respected our Jewish sisters and brothers in faith. My story is just one of 1.5 billion stories in some 57 countries.”
Many of my Facebook buddies who may glance at the “status update” accompanying this post’s distribution either know this clip or the territory it represents, and they’re not going to give it five minutes, much less an hour and forty-seven minutes; however, as the signal travels from Riyadh to Islamabad, to young and old, to Christians, Jews, and Muslims and others, to high school graduates and Ph.Ds, some may take a few minutes to hear how some of the sharpest minds in this arena field the proposition.
Also Debating
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: ” “I respect and admire Zeba Khan, and I want to acknowledge that indeed you are a demonstration of the assimilation of a Muslim woman into western society, and that you come from a middle class family that was very eclectic and respected pluralism . . . and I think you are an example to others; however, I disagree with you that you represent Islam or that you speak for Islam. The problem that is inherent in Islam from the time of its foundation up to this moment is who speaks for Islam?”
Majid Nawaz: “This debate is not about making excuses for suicide bombers, even inside of Israel . . . we . . . acknowledge that Muslims do need to speak out against extremism and to challenge it, and more Muslims need to do that more actively. We acknowledge that Muslims bear responsibility for reclaiming their faith from those, the minority, who have hijacked Islam and who have captured the public imagination in their definition of Islam.”
Not to tease my few readers to watch (at 23:34), but Nawaz will go on to talk about Islam as a religion integrated with (this is my term) the global campus of religions on behalf of the cause of peace. It is a stunning turnabout and worth the listen.
Douglas Murray: “let’s not have a debate about Islam and whether Islam is a religion of peace without talking about the facts to do with Islam. It’s an absurd situation we’re in where nothing that anyone does whilst being Muslim has any responsibility of Islam, yet anything anyone does whilst being a Christian or Jew is the responsibility of all Christians or Jews.”
I didn’t mean to watch the whole thing, but even while posting I am.
🙂
At about 45 minutes, Ayaan: “It would be more accurate if you said, Zeba, the scholars that you find attractive say that, but there are a bunch of scholars” — and she starts with Bin Laden and ends, not quite but close, with Ayatollah Khamenei and by no means misses Hassan al-Banna or Qaradawi — “they are attractive to many Muslims, not thousands, but in the millions, and what they say, that’s why they’re influential, they challenge every single Muslim individual, ‘Are you a true Muslim? If you are a true Muslim, you live by what the Koran dictates, you follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad,’ and those scholars who insist on that are far more influential and more powerful than you” (Zeba intended, I think, with a social verbal wiggle to include Majid) “who are soft spoken, wonderful, cuddly scholars.”
“S.” is a Pakistani civil servant who corresponds with some western writers, at least two Jewish ones.
In the above referenced piece, Judith Greenberg writes, “One of my new friends, S., a reader from Pakistan, teaches me over and again about the gift of writing. She responds to my blogs with thoughts about her own experiences with writing, also full of heart.”
The use of italics and an initial are mine, and S., so far as I know, is a he (this by way of a profile picture elsewhere).
Hi, S.,
It’s good to see you reading The Huffington Post.
Welcome to America!
I wrote a song a long time ago titled “Solstice Season”.
The truth is in Christian-majority America, everyone celebrates or experiences Christmas: the atmosphere of it is pervasive; however, it’s the Christians who go to Mass on the 25th, and the rest of us have a cheerful day — or try to wherever life has placed us — as it’s just about impossible to go on with anything mundane.
For going out, there are always a few Chinese restaurants open for business as usual — and for them, the traffic may be a gift.
For other enterprises, the staffing is sketchy but paid well for the holiday time. For example, around here, the groceries stores are closed but convenience stores may fill in in a pinch.
Hanuka, the not-quite-coinciding Jewish holiday, may have evolved into the present cheerful children’s gift-giving holiday in relation to Christian practices; however: the Hanuka menorah has an ancient past:
JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists have uncovered one of the earliest depictions of a menorah, the seven-branched candelabra that has come to symbolize Judaism, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Friday. The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000 years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee.
Pottery, coins and tools found at the site indicate the synagogue dates to the period of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, where the actual menorah was kept, said archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The Jewish holiday and tradition — and Maccabee story — are completely culturally and historically authentic. It’s the manner of the celebration that may be responsive to the Christian flavor of the season.
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When the “European Invasion” displaced the indigenous of the continent, the settlers could not imagine, I’m sure, developing an American culture separate from the European one, but that is what has happened in every area of expression even as the Christian tradition asserts itself at this time of year (and at Easter). “American Transcendentalism” and the unconscious and seldom self-conscious relationship with the earth itself, something in the air and shared with the indigenous love of the land, may comprise the larger part of the American spirit.
To really head off on this topic, I need my full typing skill, but I think there is in every human a primitive love of being alive with the land and with nature.
As in Rome, as before Constantine, as it has been always on this continent, EVERYONE knows the shortest day of the year, the bitter cold weather to come, the longer days to come too, and poor or rich, by way of donations or presents, from home to the homeless shelters, the country gets cozy and enjoys itself.
Perhaps all is not not quite as bright as I paint it — there’s tragedy too revolving around the “Hellidays”, an immense period of review, a difficult time for the dysfunctional within families that have been somewhat artificially forced to gather for a meal, a most depressing time for those on the outs with society, and an unsafe period for those with problems plus alcohol and drugs and fast cars and such (and those unlucky to be in their path) — but all that too is America at this time of year.
Celebrate the differences, my friend: take it all in. We’re all here on an hospitable “blue marble” floating in a universe that for as far out as man can see is overwhelmingly inorganic .
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