Knowing Our Rights by WLUML Available

Dear friends,

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws network is delighted to announce
that the following publication is now available to freely download
from the WLUML website:

Knowing Our Rights: Women, family, laws and customs in the Muslim
world – 3rd edition WLUML (Published: December 2006)

This third and completely revised version of the “Knowing Our Rights”
handbook is an essential resource for those taking a critical and
questioning approach to rights, laws, and constructions of womanhood
in Muslim countries and communities and beyond. “Knowing Our Rights”
forms part of the international synthesis of the Women & Law in the
Muslim world Programme and is based on some 10 years of field
experience, research and analysis by multi-disciplinary teams of
networkers in over 20 countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle
East.

The third edition of the publications is now available to download!

http://wluml.org/english/pubsfulltxt.shtml?cmd%5B87%5D=i-87-563155

Call for Action Against Domestic Violence, Acid Attacks and Honor Killings

Muslims for Progressive Values have sent out this Call for Action. This is an important step in being proactive against these crimes against women.

Call for action against Domestic Violence, Acid Attacks and Honor Killing

We the undersigned affirm that:

Assaults on women and young girls, especially the domestic violence, acid attacks and honor killings that have become a growing problem in some Muslim countries, are barbaric, inhumane and completely contrary to Islamic teachings.
Islam never condones humiliation, beatings, mutilation, or outright murder, especially not as a means to exert one’s own authority, or to enforce one’s own opinions upon other people. Rather Islam teaches us to approach differences in opinion with tolerance and forbearance, saying even to the clear disbeliever, “To you your way, and to me mine.” (109:6) and that “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” (2:229)
In particular, men are commanded to treat women with respect and kindness. “Live with them (your wives) in kindness; even if you dislike them, perhaps you dislike something in which Allah has placed much good” (4:19). In fact, in Surah Baqara the importance of kindness is emphasized with direct reference to marriages where conflict has arisen: “Then keep them in kindness or part from them in kindness.” 2:229 The Prophet left no room for doubt as to how men should treat women, saying, “The most perfect of believers in belief is the best of them in character. The best of you are those who are the best to their women.” (Tirmidhi 1/217)
In light of the clear teachings that women are to be respected and treated with kindness — not subjected to the vilest attacks, endangered by the very individuals who should have their best interests at heart, or murdered by those who should love them the most dearly — and at the prompting of our consciences, our reason, and the Quranic verse which says “O ye who believe! Be staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or your parents or your kin” (4:135), we call upon the governments of Muslim countries to:

enact laws prohibiting and criminalizing honor crimes, acid attacks, and domestic violence
endow laws against domestic violence, acid attacks and honor killing with stiff punishments and/or fines
ensure that these laws are enforced and that perpetrators are brought to justice consistently and swiftly
provide resources for women who must flee dangerous familial situations, such as safe houses and long-term shelters
engage in educational campaigns to foster a national culture of respect for women’s human, civil, and Islamic rights
Only when women can live with dignity, in safety, not fearing bodily harm from family members, and with freedom of conscience as the Qur’an demands, can a country rightfully call itself ‘Islamic’.

Sponsoring Organizations: Sponsoring Individuals:
Muslims for Progressive Values

Sisters In Islam

Musawah

Partnering Organizations Partnering Individuals

Indian Muslims Refuse to Bury Terrorists

CNN article

Joe Hussein the Plumber

A friend of a friend – a physician – declared categorically almost 18 months ago that she could never vote for anyone whose middle name was “Hussein.” In stark contrast, a Jewish friend of mine recently joined a Facebook group of over a thousand participants who have all adopted the middle name, “Hussein.” The purpose of this group, of course, is to protest against the unflagging use of Obama’s middle name as a negative propaganda tool, not to mention as an occasional near-expletive. But I like to think that the Jews and Christians and Muslims and others who are adopting Hussein as a middle name are doing so not only in solidarity with Obama, but with the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide named Hussein, which is, after all, just as common a name as “Joe.”

In his manifesto advocating the middle-name movement, Jeff Hussein Strabone wrote, in February of 2008, “We are all Hussein.” And he’s right. But, loosely speaking, the converse is true, too.

Because plenty of Husseins are American. In fact, plenty of Muslims are Joe-Hussein-the-Plumber average Americans who are being vilified by the very politicians who claim to care so much about average Americans. Those who elevate Joe the Plumber as the symbol of America while simultaneously denigrating Obama for being Hussein miss the point: Obama, along with his American Joe-Hussein-the-Plumber namesakes, are symbols of the greatness of America, too.

Even more troubling, though, is that never have religious prejudices, xenophobia, and racism been so widely exported to the rest of the world. The prejudice that we export rebounds back upon us. Our images are no longer limited to American media, but are spread far and wide by global media.

These attitudes are exported because Muslims – not just Arabs, who constitute only one-fifth of Muslims worldwide – watch television. They watch Hollywood movies, too, in which the vast majority of Arab characters that are depicted are racist caricatures. And they read the hate literature that abounds in the United States concerning Muslims.

These images are so potent that Muslims abroad have wondered, since long before 9/11, why Americans hate Islam and Muslims. Just as Osama bin Laden’s or Ahmadinejad’s statements are broadcast all over the American media, American anti-Islam and anti-Muslim statements are broadcast all over media in Muslim-majority countries.

Take a recent example of what Muslims abroad might see. We Americans pride ourselves on our separation of religion and state, and many Americans erroneously assume Islam requires a unity of religion and state (it doesn’t). Yet, last week CNN covered a McCain rally in Iowa, at which Reverend Arnold Conrad delivered the invocation, including this passage: “there are millions of people around this world praying to their God – whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah – that [McCain's] opponent wins… and Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens.

Add this incident to negative campaigning, the racist movie caricatures, and the hate literature, and what’s the result? Extremists can say with impunity to Muslim populations: “Look; the West despises Islam and means to destroy us.” Just as extremists in the West use translated hateful statements by Muslims to say: “Look; Muslims despise the West and mean to destroy us.” The net result is that we have shown each other the very worst of ourselves.

Just this weekend, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell spoke on how damaging negative campaigning can be, specifically referring to “who’s a Muslim, who’s not a Muslim.” In his interview, General Powell insisted, “Those kinds of images going out on al-Jazeera are killing us around the world….we have got to say to the world, it doesn’t matter who you are – if you’re American, you’re an American . . . We have got to stop this nonsense, pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity, in our diversity.”

This week has seen prominent Americans of both political parties urging the negative campaigning to stop, because finally media and political personalities are beginning to understand that hate hurts America. It divides and conquers us.

We can continue to highlight the worst of both sides and render the “clash of civilizations” a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or we can use our freedom of speech with responsibility, not with insulting carelessness; we can use our freedom of religion with pluralistic understanding, not with dogmatism. We can stand up and adopt “Hussein” as a middle name in celebration of our common humanity. It’s our choice.

Sumbul (Hussein) Ali-Karamali, author of The Muslim Next Door: the Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing.

Obama Is Not A Muslim — (But Would it Be So Terrible if He Were?)

I was recently conversing with a local schoolteacher, a thoughtful woman I admire, when she exclaimed, “I would love to talk to you more when we have time! I mean, I’d love to know what you think about Obama, since he’s black and, oh, well, Muslim.”

I’m afraid my face must have communicated the sudden blankness of my thoughts. Obama may be black, but he’s not Muslim. I am Muslim, but I’m not black. My momentary lack of response reflected the disconnect in the logic of her statement.

I do understand, as a troubling number of Americans do not, that Barack Obama has never been Muslim. Merely living in Indonesia does not cause metamorphosis Islamica, some (imaginary) loathsome disease to be contracted from environmental contact. Wearing Somali dress in a laudable attempt to show multicultural respect is not proof of religious convictions. Attending a madrasa as a child does not a Muslim make, since madrasa is simply the Arabic word for school and, as such, can be applied to Harvard Law School with as much accuracy as it can be applied to a Taliban religious school.

I understand all these points. That is why I admit to difficulty understanding why the hazy suspicions surrounding Obama’s connection to Muslims have not dissipated. To be a Muslim, it is absolutely necessary to believe in this declaration of faith: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” The first phrase signifies belief in one God, the God, as opposed to many gods. The second phrase indicates belief that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam who died in 632, was the messenger of God who brought God’s word to his fellow humankind.

Obama has unequivocally stated that he is not a Muslim. If he does not believe in the declaration of faith, then he cannot be Muslim.

Amongst the many flying rumors is one that goes like this: because Obama’s father was Muslim, Obama is Muslim, too — no matter what he personally believes. But this is not true. In Islam, there is a presumption of faith based on parentage. In pre-modern societies of all faiths, religion was one of many factors that contributed to identity and citizenship. Therefore, there were rules regarding religious adherence. But it is only a presumption. It is rebuttable by faith itself. The definition of a Muslim is not “someone whose father was a Muslim.” Rather, the definition of a Muslim is someone who believes that there is only one God and that Muhammad was the messenger of God. Obama does not fit this definition.

What I find most troublesome about this entire subject is the xenophobia involved. After all, even if Obama were a Muslim — which he has repeatedly denied — why would that be so catastrophic?

As an Indian-American, Muslim, female, corporate lawyer and author, I typify American Muslim women far more accurately than the do the images of the black-clad, oppressed Muslim women featured in the media. I am just as American as my Irish-Catholic best friend. I speak English with a standard West Coast American accent. I have no first-hand memories of the country from which my parents emigrated. Yet, I was recently asked by a new acquaintance whether I would “go back” to the Middle East, since I was Muslim.

Well, I am not from the Middle East. I’m from Southern California.

This attitude does enable me to empathize with the probable feelings of Victorian English Catholics. In 19th century England, English Catholics paid an extra tax for the privilege of remaining Catholic and not belonging to the Anglican Church. They were often viewed as treasonous because of suspicions that their allegiance would belong to Catholic France or Catholic Spain rather than to England, the country in which they were born and raised.

American Muslims are already integrated into American society. We don’t get much of a voice in the media, but we are, as a group, middle class and mainstream. Only about 15-20 percent of us attend the mosques in the U.S. — not because we’re unobservant, necessarily, but (in many cases) because mosques since the early 1980s have come under the influence of Saudi-type Islam, which is just not what most American Muslims are about. The Pew Research Center notes that we are “decidedly American in [our] outlook, values, and attitudes.”1 Moreover, our allegiance is not to the country our parents or grandparents emigrated from, but to the United States — our own country.

During World War II, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps because they were presumed to be loyal to Japan (no matter how many generations their families had lived in America). The destruction of the World Trade Towers was a type of Pearl Harbor, casting suspicion on American Muslims this time instead of Japanese Americans. But al-Qaeda is no more representative of Islam than the Ku Klux Klan is representative of Christianity.

So even if Obama were a Muslim, he wouldn’t be any less American or any less intelligent or any less competent. The unabating furor reminds me of how John F. Kennedy’s Catholic faith was considered a factor in his presidential campaign.

Obama’s childhood years in Indonesia are a factor in his campaign, too. But why a negative factor? Should we not wish for a president with global understanding? The President of the United States interacts not only with Americans, but also North Koreans, Russians, Iranians, and people of all faiths and nationalities. Should we not aspire to bridge cultural gaps and elect a president who views the world through a big-picture, worldwide, multicultural lens rather than through a narrow one limited to his own faith and background?

Several of my acquaintances have tried to convince me over the years that I should send my children to Catholic schools. “No,” I say, “we have good public schools; I’d rather just send them there.” Someone actually said to me in response, “Well, going to mass and taking religion classes won’t force your children to be Christian or anything!”

Yet the thought of Obama attending both Islamic and Catholic schools in Indonesia strikes fear into some hearts. Instead, it should give us hope that finally we might just have a president who would know how to communicate with the leaders of both Muslim and Christian countries. It is not civilizations that are antithetical and which must clash – it is the misunderstandings of those civilizations that cause clashes. Perhaps, in Obama, we might have a president who would know better than to characterize post-9/11 military actions as a “crusade.”

The tendency to disbelieve Obama’s unequivocal statements that he’s a Christian reminds me of what Norman Daniel writes in his history of Western perceptions of Islam: “It was with very great reluctance that what Muslims said Muslims believed was accepted as what they did believe.”2

Of course, Obama isn’t Muslim, so I guess that analogy doesn’t apply.

The American Crescent: Islam in America

In a special two-part documentary Rageh Omaar journeys across the United States exploring the story of Islam in the country.

He attempts to discover if – far from being fundamentally incompatible – Islamic America holds the seeds of a lasting solution to global discord between east and west.

Watch Online

Commanding to Good

Only when the underlying philosophy of a nation is fairness and justice can such a report as the FAIR Report be published. American Muslims, disheartened by the presence of Islamphobia in the media, can now hold onto a tangible sense of hope that someone has heard their prayers.

FAIR, a national media watchdog group, has been offering well-documented criticisms of media bias and censorship since 1986. They describe themselves as follows: “We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled.” 

Unlike the innumerable reports watchdog groups issue, the FAIR Report (see link below) actually provides the names of journalists – the “dirty dozen” – as well as case studies of how these journalists have manipulated the media to promote their own point of view and to discredit Muslims in America. The Report’s authors provide a critical behind-the-scenes account, detailing the specific strategies and tactics of this highly-effective smearcasting.

One of the co-authors, Isabel Macdonald, describes how some right-wing pundits use mainstream media to smear American Muslims. She says:

Islamophobia has emerged in the 2008 presidential election, from nefarious whisper campaigns directed at Sen. Barack Obama to the recent distribution of the anti-Muslim propaganda DVD “Obsession” to 28 million newspaper subscribers in swing states. 

She quotes a co-author of the FAIR “Smearcasting” Report, Steve Randall:

These Muslim-bashing attacks have a real impact, not only on Muslims in America but on our civil discourse We’re in the middle of a historic election in which Islamophobia has already played a role, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the dirty tricks and the smearcasting. Media need to step up and do their job of separating fact from innuendo, and they should distinguish the impartial experts from the smearcasters.

Whereas the Qur’an asks humanity to “command to the good and prohibit evil,” which the FAIR Report does, we find a group of people commanding evil and hatred. This commanding evil and hatred is the same tactic used by Muslim extremists, to instill hatred against anyone who disagrees with them. Both groups are what scripture describes as hypocrites. Though they outwardly claim to “try to make things right,” their real intention is to pit human beings against each other, to separate and divide between them. They use misinformation and innuendo against entire ethnic and religious groups. 

This is exactly why many Americans – or their ancestors – immigrated to our great country: to avoid hate and persecution and to enjoy the fruits of tolerance and freedom. Yet, with the rise of Islamophobia, American Muslims have had this hope in the American dream tarnished by certain journalists and media personalities. They attempt to distract our country from its historical position as “the world’s developed conscience,” just as Muslim extremists move our religion away from its historical position of “a faith based in conscience” and back to the Age of Ignorance and tribalism. 

What the “dirty dozen” and Muslim extremists have forgotten is that humanity is one. Our goal must be to teach and practice love and respect for one’s fellow human being. While the ugly face of hatred has indeed reared its head in the America that we love, the FAIR Report represents an important step in the right direction. 

 

Laleh Bakhtiar, Ph. D.

 

The below link features the interview with FAIR senior analyst Steve Rendall:

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/10/10/07

 

For those of you who have yet to see the report you can find it at: www.smearcasting.com