newswire

'My wife wears hijab. I wish she didn't'

By Robin Yassin-Kassab

When I first saw my wife, she was seated in the middle of a crowded room, she had her eyes fixed on me, and she had a luxuriously unruly cascade of hair. We started talking, and from then on her hair's startling blackness seemed emblematic of the force of her character.

In a city where half the women covered their hair in public, and just because she had such beautiful hair, Rana's hair became for me her sign, the feature by which I'd pick her out at a distance, my symbol for understanding her and what she meant to me. So when, five years into our marriage, Rana decided to cover her hair, I was somewhat bothered.

We'd moved from Syria via Morocco to Saudi Arabia, we'd had children, and Rana had worked as a teacher and TV presenter. She'd always been an elegantly modest dresser, but here, amid the compulsory dress codes of Saudi Arabia - which annoyed us both - she'd decided to introduce something new The hijab bothered me not just for the personal reasons above: I didn't agree that it was Islamically required. While most Muslims have interpreted Koranic guidance on women's dress to require head covering, the text itself is open to interpretation. 'And tell the believing women,' it says, 'to lower their gaze and to be mindful of their chastity, and not to display their charms (in public) beyond what may (decently) be apparent thereof; hence, let them draw their head-coverings over their bosoms.'

Source: [Guardian]

Continue reading "'My wife wears hijab. I wish she didn't'"

When We Torture

By Nicholas D. Kristof

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system. Mr. Hajj's fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That's us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America's Image, it couldn't have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

President Bush is now moving forward with plans to try six Guantánamo prisoners before a military tribunal, rather than hold a regular trial. That will call new attention to abuses in Guantánamo and sow more anti-Americanism around the world.

Source: [NY Times]

Continue reading "When We Torture"

Sharia Delusions in Canterbury

By Mona Eltahawy

NEW YORK -- When it comes to Islamic law, or Sharia, words certainly do come easy if you're a man. You can marry four wives, receive double the inheritance a woman gets and you can end your marriage simply by saying "I divorce you" three times. So why not pontificate?

Words are especially cheap if you're the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ignited a social storm in the UK last week by saying that the adoption of some parts of Sharia alongside Britain's legal system "seems unavoidable" in certain circumstances.

Remember please that Dr. Rowan Williams is the head of the global Anglican community, the U.S. branch of which ordained a gay priest in 2003. But the archbishop clearly does not believe in wishing unto others as you would unto your own. He extends no such progressive ideals to Muslims. Most interpretations of Sharia consider homosexuality an abomination. He probably thinks his "tolerance" for Sharia is progressive enough in light of the rabid Islamophobia that mars parts of Europe today.

Source: [MonaEltahawy]

Continue reading "Sharia Delusions in Canterbury"

Backward, Christian soldiers, marching as to peace

By Daoud Kuttab

During the run-up to the 1998 Christmas celebrations, U.S. president Bill Clinton, along with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, visited the Palestinian town of Bethlehem to light up the Christmas tree in Manger Square, outside the Church of the Nativity. With that symbolic visit, and the understanding that Mr. Clinton was showing to the needs of the region, Palestinians of all faiths had high hopes that the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict might soon end. It didn't.

Early next month, President George W. Bush will be also visiting the West Bank and, like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before him, will likely visit the birthplace of Jesus. If he does, he will join members of the dwindling Palestinian Christian community, the majority of whom are Eastern Orthodox and who celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7.

Coming after renewed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the visit to the occupied territories will be welcomed by Palestinians. But it will be hard to quickly forget the last seven years of the Bush administration and its unconditional support for Israel, with its heavy-handed policies toward Palestinians and Lebanese. Most Arabs don't understand the ideological underpinnings for U.S. support to Israel, which many believe contradicts overall U.S. interests in the region.

Source: [Media Monitors]

Continue reading "Backward, Christian soldiers, marching as to peace"

Saudi Arabia's 'Islamic' gender apartheid

By Mona Eltahawy.

NEW YORK -- Once upon a time, in a country called South Africa the color of your skin determined where you lived, what jobs you were allowed, and whether you could vote or not. Decent countries around the world fought the evil of racial apartheid by turning South Africa into a pariah state. They barred it from global events such as the Olympics. Businesses and universities boycotted South Africa, decimating its economy and adding to the isolation of the white-minority government, which finally repealed apartheid laws in 1991

Today in a country called Saudi Arabia it is gender rather than racial apartheid that is the evil but the international community watches quietly and does nothing. Saudi women cannot vote, cannot drive, cannot be treated in a hospital or travel without the written permission of a male guardian, cannot study the same things men do, and are barred from certain professions.

Saudi women are denied many of the same rights that "Blacks" and "Coloreds" were denied in apartheid South Africa and yet the kingdom still belongs to the very same international community that kicked Pretoria out of its club. To understand the heinous double standards at play, look no further than the case of a 19-year-old Saudi woman who was gang-raped last year.

Source: [Middle East Online]

Continue reading "Saudi Arabia's 'Islamic' gender apartheid"

Iranians unlikely to overthrow the Mullahs

By Michael Hirsh

Where the heck are the mullahs? And what happened to all those angry young Revolutionary Guards eager to take you hostage -- or, at the very least, spit in your face for personally representing the Great Satan? This is the most jarring impression an American caught in the time warp of 1979 has upon landing in today's Tehran, where Islamic fervor has been replaced by Islamic bling. Luxury stores are loaded with jewelry, leather handbags and knockoffs of Western designer brands, and coffee shops and restaurants are crowded late into the night.

This is still the Islamic Republic of Iran, of course, so there are no bare shoulders or legs in sight, much less midriffs, even in the summer heat. But many Iranian women have long since cast off their chadors and gone defiantly chic, despite an abortive attempt by the government this past spring to reassert strictures on modesty, when it sent carloads of basij -- or young paramilitaries -- out to harass females who dared show too much skin or hair.

The typical look around town consists of perfect makeup (spread over exquisitely straight noses; cosmetic surgery is a huge business here), faded jeans under form-fitting Islamic "manteaus" -- a sort of truncated raincoat that comes to mid-thigh -- and colorful silk higabs loosely arrayed over the backs of their heads. Iranian males, meanwhile, are looking less and less menacing and more and more metrosexual. The younger ones often wear their hair long, which 10 years ago might have provoked a brutal barbering on the street by enraged Islamists.

Source: [Newsweek]

Continue reading "Iranians unlikely to overthrow the Mullahs"

The threat to al-Jazeera

By George Galloway

Since its launch just over a decade ago, the al-Jazeera satellite TV station has transformed the politics of the Middle East. For the first time, people in the region had access to a genuinely free and independent source of news and comment that was neither under the control of dictatorial regimes nor western states or corporations. Under its slogan of "The opinion ... and the other opinion", al-Jazeera gave an Arab world hungry for information and debate the means to talk to itself and shape its future.

It spawned imitators across the region and has launched an English language station that is beginning to challenge the western monopoly of international news as a "voice of the global south". And the station also put Qatar, which sponsors it, on the political map and gave it unprecedented prestige throughout the Arab world and beyond.

But now that achievement is being put at risk. The evidence is clear that the US government is using its influence in Qatar to try to neuter the station's independence, bring it to heel and shift its coverage in a pro-western direction. If it succeeds, it would be a disaster for the Arab world and its chance to shape an independent and democratic future.

Source: [Guardian]

Continue reading "The threat to al-Jazeera"

Jordan: Lessons in freedom

Are we never going to learn that silencing the voices of dissent is, ultimately, a self-defeating act? Whether we like it or not, what former Royal Court chief Adnan Abu Odeh recently told Al Jazeera Television should be his right. That he should be charged with sedition is preposterous.

First of all, someone engaging in what might be called a seditious enterprise usually intends to create public disorder or disturbance and thereby cause violence. This certainly, by any stretch of the imagination, was not Abu Odeh's intent.

He was simply, once again, and like many courageous others, bringing to issue the need to address Jordanian-Palestinian relations. While his perception of those ties indicates discrimination against the Palestinian community in Jordan, studies have shown the reverse perception is held by many in the East Bank community. Enlightened politicians, Middle East scholars and even government officials have long attempted to forge an opening up of this subject in various fora. But their positions have regularly been swept under the carpet.

Source: [The Jordan Times]

Continue reading "Jordan: Lessons in freedom"

In Iraq, a journalist in limbo

By Tom Curley

NEW YORK -- Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues.

The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at least a sympathizer. It is a measure of just how dangerous and disorienting Iraq has become that suspicions such as these are considered adequate grounds for locking up a man and throwing away the key.

After more than five months of trying to bring Bilal's case into the daylight, AP is now convinced the Army doesn't care whether Bilal is or isn't an insurgent. The Army doesn't have to care. Bilal is off the street, and the military says it doesn't consider itself accountable to any judicial authority that could question his guilt.

Source: [CNN]

Continue reading "In Iraq, a journalist in limbo"

'It Is Time for Muslims to Reciprocate'

By Akbar Ahmed

The voluntary closing of the Deutsche Oper Berlin because of the anticipated sensitivities of Muslims hearing about their Prophet's severed head assumes great symbolic significance in the age of globalization in which we live. Images, events and words -- as we saw in the case of Pope Benedict a few days ago -- have the capacity to inflame societies across the world in a matter of hours.

Although I totally support free speech and freedom of expression, and have been saying so publicly, all of us need to be sensitive to the culture and traditions of other faiths. I am not talking of a purely academic or idealistic discussion but the possibility of people losing their lives as a result of some perceived attack on faith made across the world.

I believe that the lives lost and the properties destroyed -- including mosques and churches -- after the Danish cartoons controversy erupted could have been avoided had there been people of greater wisdom and compassion at the start of the crisis. The first crisis that acted as a catalyst in the context of our discussion was that of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses. It appears that we did not learn any lessons from that controversy.

Source: [Newsweek]

Continue reading "'It Is Time for Muslims to Reciprocate' "