Islam's shame
/Today I awake on Easter Sunday morning and I am ashamed. It is a time of rebirth for Christians; a time when we celebrate Jesus' overcoming death and yet... I open the Guardian as I do each morning and find that there are hundreds of thousands of women all over the world who are enduring a living death.
I have always been considered a feminist. I have always vociferously fought against the male chauvinism that abounds in Australia (particularly when I was young). I hated the subtle manipulations and false civility that hid wisecracks against women and the inevitable "Got your period love? I was only joking."
So when I read Tracy McVeigh's article How Egypt's radical rulers crush the lives and hopes of women I became ashamed. What the hell do I know about misogyny? What could I possibly say about how tough my life was growing up in male dominated Australia? I can't. We have a female primeminister, we have laws governing equal pay and rights and Amnesty has little to complain about with regard to human rights here, unless of course you're black and indigenous. So we put up with anachronistic male chauvinists. At least I can put him in his place without threat of being stoned to death.
But to read that under Islam- what I understood to be the gentle religion- women and children under the care of male patriarchs are being raped and forced into marriage as young as 9 years old, you have to wonder what's gone so horribly wrong?
McVeigh interviews a couple of young men on the street: "Children need to have their rights but also you want to marry a girl who is much younger so she will stay young and beautiful when you are old. Also you can control her better and make sure she is not one of these girls who goes around wanting to be harassed," said Abdel Rahman, 17."
How can you fight that attitude? How has a woman a hope in hades of making any headway against a whole community of men who give a nod to the western idea of human rights for children on one hand and then in the same sentence qualify that it's his right to have a young, attractive wife? Really, there is no logic in it. There is no hope for these poor women and I despair for them.
When unscrupulous marriage brokers arrange marriages for young 14 year olds to rich Saudi business men the families are ecstatic that their daughters will be well looked after. But after a fortnight's holiday and a lovely two weeks of legal rape of a minor, the tourists return whence they came and the young bride is thrown back to her family- DISGRACED FOREVER mind you, because she is now a prostitute. Yes, the entire community collude in this, rather than vilifying the marriage broker and his rapist clientele, the young innocent who thought she was doing the right thing is flung on the dung heap for the rest of her life.
In addition, any women who try to publicly protest against their treatment are brutally silenced. "The Muslim Brotherhood, the current ruling party", posted Mariz Tadros on such violence is politically motivated, intended to intimidate women against engaging in activism against the government."
McVeigh goes on to assert that clerics from the Muslim Brotherhood find marriage at the age of nine for girls is acceptable. As though we're talking about cattle here. Surely these brides are not deflowered straight away. I mean a girl is not yet physically ready to be a woman at such an age. Surely her husband must wait for several years. But perhaps I'm naive. Egypt is a country where female genital mutilation is still carried out on an estimated three quarters of all women.
You do understand that this is a practice to ensure a woman does not stray as she has no desire for sex and will therefore only perform for her husband. Apparently Muslim men are so unattractive and so poor in the bedroom that they KNOW their women will naturally turn to other men so they must stop them straying at all costs. I say this tongue in cheek, but it's a working theory as to why you would enforce such appalling punishment on your wives and daughters.
Maulana Muhammad Ali in her article says, "[Islam] preaches equal love for all, equal respect for all, and equal faith in all."