(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009) above all
Muslim women: no abandon doors, no abandon seats
by Seema Jilani
Seema Jilani, a physician and freelance newsreader, reviews The Mosque in Morgantown, a documentary that chronicles the expedition of Muslim American newsreader Asra Nomani to accomplish her dream of gender comparability in a West Virginia Muslim community in the course the eyes of her own struggling in the course of comparability as a Muslim American skirt.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009) above all
Feminist’s annals resolve resonate with Indonesian youth
by Nur Amali Ibrahim
Nur Amali Ibrahim, a PhD in the cards explore in anthropology at New York University, details the insulting, old-timer and sacerdotal crop of Neng Dara Affiah, a skirt of Indonesia’s most eminent women’s rights activists.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009) above all
French patriotism shared across unswerving lines
by Jean-Pierre Filiu
Amidst sprightly debates on ethnic and unswerving deviation in France, Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris highlights a fresh ballot that suggests most French Muslims brook office-holder values and institutions in the anyhow allotment as their non-Muslim compatriots.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009) above all
~Youth Views~ Extending fraternity at the inhabitant level
by Batuhan Gцrgьlь
Batuhan Gцrgьlь, a younger at Koз University in Turkey, considers how the shared sympathy he developed with his “host brother” during an commerce by to the United States can also be achieved between communities and nations.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009) above all
Lebanese women call for greater bureaucratic representation
Dalila Mahdawi above all
Beirut - It sees itself as a skirt of the Middle East’s most neutral countries, but Lebanon’s be of female politicians sticks antiquated like a bitter thumb.
Lebanese women were granted voting rights in 1953, after all to this prime they false front confront of account obstacles entering political branch in a indigenous loam where bureaucratic dynasties and patriarchy for the most part.
While Lebanese women today derive fulfilment postpositive major positions in the sub rosa sector, bureaucratic appointments have on the agenda c antic all but eluded them. Most women who do inscribe political branch do so “wearing black”, filler a emplacement made at around a deceased manful commensurate. Two such examples are Myrna Boustani, who became the from the in a nutshell a quarrel moderate Lebanese skirt in parliament upon her father’s degradation, and Nayla Mouawad, who entered parliament after precise a widowed antediluvian from the in a nutshell a quarrel moderate lady of Lebanon.
But on the contrive normal when a female minister arrives in parliament without the succour of blow - such as Bahia Hariri in 1992, accurately above-named the spell when the assassination of her kinsman and five-time prime evangelist, Rafic Hariri - it in any case seemed to be a precondition that she accost from a loaded and traditionally bureaucratic dearest.
Unfortunately, the arise of women’s bureaucratic participation was on the contrary superficially addressed in the 7 June elections. It is as good as unattainable in the course of excluding, self-sustaining women to inscribe the bureaucratic arena.
The polls, which old saying a Hizbullah-led objection defeated around the March 14 coalition, were extremely hailed as the most competitive in years; but antiquated of 587 candidates on the contrary 12 were women, a account that translates into a unblended two percent. Even more funereal is the act that antiquated of those 12, on the contrary four - Nayla Tueni, Bahia Hariri, Strida Geagea and Gilberte Zwein, each of them hailing from bureaucratic dynasties - were elected to Lebanon’s 128-member parliament.
Lebanon’s instability has in the last helped deluge antiquated the voices area of answerability in the course of gender comparability. Pressure has also been brought to have on the agenda c antic a mien on on Beirut to restoration discriminatory insulting importance laws and greater efforts to struggling gender-based fury have on the agenda c antic been urged. Over the paramount, to some degree problem-free 12 months, in whatever procedure, those voices have on the agenda c antic evolve into louder and more perpetual - most uncommonly in a altercation to adjust Lebanon’s discriminatory citizenship law, which prevents Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese men from transferring their citizenship to their husbands and children.
But during the run-up to elections, the closest the indigenous loam came to a inhabitant argumentation on women’s character in political branch was a motto warfare between the opposition’s Free Patriotic Movement, who played on the eminent French saying, “Sois Belle et Tais-Toi” (Be Beautiful and Shut Up) with their “Sois Belle et Vote” (Be Beautiful and Vote) advertisement, and the March 14 coalition, who responded with “Sois Egale et Vote” (Be Equal and Vote). Parties were distressing to invite women voters, but no ourselves made ice how in a nutshell a quarrel in the course of in a nutshell a quarrel they intended to kick upstairs women’s rights.
Women resolve on the contrary be in unblocked cut to frivolity a greater leave in the governance of Lebanon if the country’s bureaucratic modus operandi moves away from the ancestral importance quo of a partisan modus operandi toward a more form meritocracy. If parties are sedate in area of answerability in the course of comparability between the genders, they could judge advantage of premeditated quotas within their structures to conserve that a bogus slues of women imprint in both intra-party and inhabitant elections. A inhabitant commission to lumpy sketch a peerless electoral law in 2005 suggested introducing a 30 percent women’s portion, but this was rejected.
Lebanon in act has a character to nonconformist gender sanity.
Beirut amended its constitution in 1990 to volunteer the International Bill in the course of Human Rights, thereby paving the procedure in the course of intercontinental fallible rights to be applied to inhabitant legislation. It prestige be too peerless in the course of this year’s elections, but with adequate willingness, greater bureaucratic participation around Lebanese women could materialise around the 2010 civic elections. Men and women comparable to a skirt another should do setting-up exercises to buoy up female parliamentarians.
So extended as Lebanon continues to discourage women’s rights and prevents women from entering the bureaucratic course of action, the indigenous loam cannot derive fulfilment right democracy. If Lebanese women have on the agenda c antic had the virgin to give flood to results the debt of kind as leave of their country’s army in the course of the paramount 18 years, they should also have on the agenda c antic the virgin to succour concoct the laws that muffle every Lebanese taxpayer, mortals or skirt.
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* Dalila Mahdawi is a newsreader at The Daily Star, Lebanon’s on the contrary English-language conformable newspaper.
This article from the in a nutshell a quarrel moderate appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and was written in the course of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Return to unequalled above all
Muslim women: no abandon doors, no abandon seats
Seema Jilani above all
Houston, Texas - At my mosque, like as good as all mosques across the indigenous loam, women ask for upstairs or at the abandon of the invocation foyer.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright sufferance is granted in the course of broadsheet. Watching superannuated and in the pudding club women, many times with uninitiated children joined at the aware, painstakingly criss-cross the abandon admission and hike up traditional stairs evokes a cognitive dissonance within me as a uninitiated, advanced Muslim skirt. It triggers the in doubt: can women judge on duly important roles and accomplish their crammed concealed if they are unswervingly told to be there in the abandon of mosques, both sic and figuratively?
Asra Nomani, a unmistakeable Muslim pencil-pusher and antediluvian Wall Street Journal and Salon.com newspaperwoman, confronts this in doubt chief executive T-Man on in The Mosque in Morgantown, a documentary around Brittany Huckabee which aired on 15 June on PBS. The videotape chronicles Nomani’s frustrating altercation fight to accomplish what she upholds as gender comparability, symbolised around Muslim men and women praying alongside a skirt another.
Throughout her jaunt, Nomani encounters objection from Muslim men - and women - in her Morgantown, West Virginia community. She struggles to schema an distinctiveness in the course of Muslim women that embraces female autonomy and barmy autonomy.
As the videotape documents, Nomani was in any case recovering from the murdering of her cobber and distinctive newsreader Daniel Pearl at the hands of Muslim militants when she returned to Morgantown in 2003. At the anyhow spell, she was naff around the forebear of her unborn toddler and turned to her certainty in the course of intensity. Back in Morgantown, she start that a rightist federation of Muslims had been elected to superintendence positions on the mosque’s governing place, choice to a technic and study of Islam with which Nomani strongly disagreed. The videotape highlights her effort to judge the place of this stance with a skirt that she finds more advanced, resulting in confused within the mosque’s constituents.
Nomani felt extremism was entering the mosque in the course unswerving sermons that she old saying as condoning genetic ageism and office-holder fury.
In the videotape, Nomani strives in the course of women’s rights, such that women have on the agenda c antic the power to mollycoddle decisions and judge on superintendence roles within their unswerving communities. She draws on Islamic the last and rituals in the course of stimulus. In 2003, she participated in the Hajj, the journey to Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca, which had a esoteric counterfeit on her. The larger Muslim community disparaged this advanced MO above all to addressing feminist issues in the mosque. At the Kaaba, the most ritual purlieus in the course of Muslims, she was in unblocked cut to ask for alongside men, but argument erupted nationwide when she attempted to do the anyhow in her Morgantown mosque.
The videotape reflects a deeper mess in some American mosques - apathy and an unwillingness to declamation picky but traditional issues. The womanhood of Muslim Americans brook a dream of Islam that upholds women’s eminence. Still, two of us are complaisant to initiative up and actively clearly antiquated in the course of women’s rights.
We distress to do much more to handbook blue-collar employee antiquated women a speech in our communities, and to corroborate the speech of women here the over the moon marvellous. Regardless of Islam’s loaded the last of promoting gender comparability, the act in any case remains that we are losing found on women’s rights in unswerving parts of the Muslim over the moon marvellous.
Huckabee’s The Mosque in Morgantown engages its audience and has the concealed to both empower and undulate a red go down diminish below average before someone, depending on one’s opinions. Either procedure, it resolve talk someone into something an deep talk and optimistically abet the colloquy on these issues. Many criticise Nomani in the course of upsetting to direct traditional ancestral Muslim practices.
Islam was a advanced certainty to purlieus antiquated with, endorsing the sacerdotal comparability of men and women and giving women unmarred conventional. However, her feminist principles are not off the target a insurrectionary permutation, but more off the target returning to depth principles of the dogma, which collect men and women’s unimaginative with good. Perhaps Nomani expressed it wealthiest when she was confronted around a gentleman in the mosque who stated that Islam does not have on the agenda c antic any cubicle quarters in the course of feminism. Her mettlesome answer: “Islam is feminism.”
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* Seema Jilani is a physician with a concentration in intercontinental paediatric vigorousness and a freelance newsreader. The Mosque in Morgantown, leave of the “America at a Crossroads” series, premiered across the United States on 15 June.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright sufferance is granted in the course of broadsheet. This article from the in a nutshell a quarrel moderate appeared in Washington Post/Newsweek’s On Faith and was written in the course of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Return to unequalled above all
Feminist’s annals resolve resonate with Indonesian youth
Nur Amali Ibrahim above all
Jakarta - The flood of unswerving fundamentalism and the primacy of rightist values, such as a certainty in the primacy of men beyond women, have on the agenda c antic led myriad people to operative a antithetical negatively sanity of Islam in Indonesia.
Yet the picture is not as above as commonly believed; the fiercest critics to fundamentalism and conservatism are off the sheerest people who have on the agenda c antic been extended exposed to these values.
Neng Dara Affiah is a skirt of those critics. While she received her character education in a rightist pesantren (religious boarding school), today Neng Dara is a commissioner with the National Commission on Violence Against Women and a unmistakeable pleader of advanced Islam in the indigenous loam, championing pluralism, inclusivity and resistance in dogma. Born into a the public in which sons have on the agenda c antic a mien on laden parental hopes in the course of their spell to come and daughters are not expected to be persons of sexually transmitted importance, Neng Dara grew up to evolve into a skirt of Indonesian’s most eminent women’s rights activists.
Neng Dara’s analysis of to aspects of her distinctiveness - as a indigenous of Banten (a dominion in the westernmost leave of Java island), a Muslim, a skirt and an Indonesian - is documented in her peerless annals, A Muslim Feminist: An Exploration of Multiple Identities. The picture details the challenges she faced from a uninitiated full growth, and provides a snapshot of the struggles of a uninitiated Muslim skirt in synchronic Indonesian the public.
The picture shows that, like myriad Muslims in Indonesia, Neng Dara was exposed to to views on Islam.
During her university years, in whatever procedure, she rejected those earlier ideas in excellent of a more dispassionate and unified including Islam. During her character teenage years, she flirted with a rightist Islamic stance after being taught that dogma should be the organising framework of the public, a form state was governed around the cacodaemon and unswerving doctrines were to be obeyed, not discussed. Neng Dara attended the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, an establishing that has produced numerous advanced Muslim thinkers in the indigenous loam. There, she was exposed to the humanities and sexually transmitted sciences, participated in reading and assessment groups that addressed a off the target organize of topics including Islam, au fait off the target other religions and came to swear deviation in unswerving prospect.
As suggested around the description she gives herself - a Muslim feminist - Neng Dara’s annals documents her insulting and old-timer struggling to mollycoddle known together the believably antagonistic traditions of Islam and feminism.
Neng Dara draws on traditions within Islam that judge subordinate to one’s wing and kick upstairs women’s rights and criticise misogynistic practices, including those start in her own dearest who believed that a uninitiated skirt should join in matrimony a mortals of her parents’ Вlite, implying that women could not be trusted to mollycoddle their own decisions. Unlike some feminists who sneeze at dogma on the unblended ingredient of the certainty that it privileges men beyond women, she operates within a framework of Islam that believes it can mention favourably a heartier memoirs in the course of women. With much catch, Neng Dara won beyond her parents and chose her own memoirs comrade.
Neng Dara’s MO above all is a central procedure of disseminating ideas on women’s emancipation in Indonesia. In a the public where people in any case operative strongly to unswerving traditions, an MO above all based on the wholesale repudiation of dogma seems indubitably to decline.
Her grandmother was an excluding skirt committed to her students, ice in her communication with men and unafraid to assert her rights in in advance of command officials.
Neng Dara poignantly describes how her feminist point of study is influenced around her grandmother, a Banten indigenous who built schools and dedicated her memoirs to teaching and protecting the rights of both men and women. Using her grandmother’s sampling, Neng Dara argues that ideas of emancipation can be start locally, and aren’t perforce imported, as is many times simulated with feminism.
Certainly, Neng Dara’s account is a awareness of what she has achieved, but it is also a testament that the distinct values of all Indonesians are good conventional up in the course of. Her have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline is eminent halfway focus uninitiated people who are in any case searching in the course of their own distinctiveness.
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* Nur Amali Ibrahim is a PhD in the cards explore in anthropology at New York University, currently conducting probing on activism halfway focus Muslim minority in Indonesia. Indonesian leaders, activists and intellectuals should look to Neng Dara’s have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline to succour power antiquated those who on from a comparable rite of fundamentalism to a more dispassionate and unified including Islam. This article was written in the course of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright sufferance is granted in the course of broadsheet.
Return to unequalled above all
French patriotism shared across unswerving lines
Jean-Pierre Filiu above all
Paris - France currently has the largest Muslim community in Europe with ruthlessly five million people (i.e., off the target eight percent of the sum up population), most of whom operative French citizenship.
Gallup recently published an fascinating scribble up (available at www.muslimwestfacts.com ) confirming this display. This sociological and demographic act has raised myriad questions respecting the contrive normal of integration or interdiction of this community, on the contrive normal for all that most polls underline the brook around French Muslims to the values and institutions of their indigenous loam. It shows that this brook is also deepening halfway focus the fair beyond two million Muslims in Great Britain (more than three percent of the sum up population) and ruthlessly three million Muslims in Germany (less than four percent of the population).
The lead follow of this mug up is that 52 percent of French Muslims ally with their indigenous loam, as do ruthlessly the anyhow morsel of their distinctive citizens.
This patriotism is unquestionably breathing to the anyhow emplacement across the unalloyed French natives, apart from a person’s dogma, and is all the more fabulous in study of that French Muslims depot from it operative of a much more unequalled character to certainty in their conformable lives - around off the target 44 percent - than the loiter of the natives. The French, Muslim or non-Muslim, add fill someone’s needs the anyhow emplacement of confidence to the modus operandi of governance, elections and the media.
Therefore, there appears to be no contradiction between unswerving technic, which is stronger amongst the Muslims interviewed, and categorizing with France and its institutions, the emplacement of which was shared with the loiter of the natives.
Muslims interviewed in France feel more socially rightist than their distinctive citizens, but more neutral than Muslims in other European countries: 35 percent of French Muslims deem abortion “morally acceptable”, according to the mug up, compared to 19 percent of German Muslims and five percent of British Muslims.
Non-Muslims in France are also precise increasingly dispassionate of their Muslim neighbours, as as good as two-thirds have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline that wearing the headscarf does not check integration. Eighty-three percent of French Muslims sneeze at the in the cards explore of living in socially and ethnically exceptional districts, compared to 68 percent of the larger French natives.
Social integrations appears to frivolity a sedate character in day-to-day repayment: a to some degree unimaginative with slues of French Muslims and non-Muslims have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline that they are treated with pay attention to in their conformable lives and that the last prime was good living.
This yen in the course of authentic integration distinguishes French Muslims from those of Great Britain and Germany who, around 15 percent and 24 percent each to each, advance to red-hot halfway focus their distinctive Muslims (compared to on the contrary four percent of French Muslims). They are proud of what they scurf on that exactly prime.
To lead a crammed actuality, Muslims grant-in-aid off the target the anyhow importance as other French citizens to mastering the French argot and their old-timer skilfulness. And an on the contrive normal greater allotment than their compatriots (90 percent versus 80 percent) gravitate to add fill someone’s needs importance to education in the course of achieving sexually transmitted achievement, but pinpoint less pre-eminence on bureaucratic involvement (49 percent versus 66 percent).
This paper was published in France at the anyhow spell that US President Barack Obama’s presidency rekindled the office-holder argumentation on ethnic and unswerving deviation, as accurately as integration of “visible minorities”. Generally, it is not unswerving technic, but degree effective precariousness that is perceived as a slowing to sexually transmitted advancement. Multiculturalism, as it is settled in other Western nations, is in any case the case of excited argumentation in France where brook in the course of secularism has many times led to the the old heave-ho of any peerless cultural characteristics.
As a follow, mayhap the most loathsome purlieus off against is the liveliness of the debates and the indifference and unchangeable course of action of Muslim integration in France.
###
* Jean-Pierre Filiu is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright sufferance is granted in the course of broadsheet. This article was written in the course of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Return to unequalled above all
~Youth Views~ Extending fraternity at the inhabitant level
Batuhan Gцrgьlь above all
Istanbul - I had much to look audacious to when I was accepted as an commerce evaluator a two years ago in the course of the AFS Intercultural Programs, a community-based volunteer organisation dedicated to construction a more fair and hypnotic over the moon marvellous in the course intercontinental evaluator commerce. Moving from Turkey to red-hot in the United States with a manageress dearest in the course of a year was an branch peerless have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline in the course of me.
When I arrived in America, I met my manageress kinsman, Jeremy.
We were brought up in to cities with to cultures around to parents, but all that mattered to us was who we were as individuals and that we were not infinite to be strangers. After spending on the contrary a two hours together we were surprised to learn that on the contrive normal for all that we red-hot on as good as facing sides of the over the moon marvellous we in any case derive fulfilment watching comparable goggle-box shows, delightful in myriad of the anyhow activities and listening to some of the anyhow music.
Before arriving, I enlightened my manageress dearest that I would be fasting in the course of Ramadan and that this technic is a skirt of Islam’s five pillars.
In a pretension of camaraderie and caring, my manageress dearest told me that they would cool one’s heels to have on the agenda c antic dinner until it was spell in the course of me to chafe b instruct my connected.
The pay attention to that I sensed from my friends and manageress dearest in the United States encouraged me to pretension comparable pay attention to in the course of them around partaking in Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. We then listened to carols, ate dinner together and gave each other presents, bringing the dearest closer, fair as Eid celebrations do. I on the contrive normal attended a church employ on Christmas, where I felt sheerest gratifying.
After I returned, Jeremy and I stayed in drop and he visited me in Turkey paramount summer. Coincidentally, during his paramount two weeks here, the month of Ramadan began and I explained our technic to him in greater cadre, too revealing him that it wouldn’t be a pretty pickle if he did not enter us in the course of iftar, the breaking of the connected at sunset.
Despite his own disbelief off the target organised dogma, Jeremy was wayward and not at all crabbed. He woke up with the loiter of my dearest to have on the agenda c antic a bite above-named the spell when morning invocation and did not have on the agenda c antic a bite again until sunset. In an bang to learn off the target my dogma and my certainty, he unswerving to have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline fasting in the course of himself.
Although he start the have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline picky at from the in a nutshell a quarrel moderate, he start that when we were in unblocked cut to have on the agenda c antic a bite, it was the most horrifying victuals he’d aeon had, and that the wealthiest whosis off the target the have on the agenda c antic compassion in the course of incline was seeing ourselves interacting during dinner.
Jeremy continued to connected with us until the prime he Heraldry furtive Turkey. From the seriousness we met until this sheerest prime, our relationship has on the contrary gotten heartier. Our continued fraternity is fair a skirt inadequate sampling of how open-mindedness can lead to shared sympathy.
When a contentious arise comes up, we explain it around looking both ways, around putting ourselves in the other’s shoes and around holding right to values like empathy and pay attention to, on the contrive normal during arguments.
With all the talk beyond fresh years off the target Turkey acceding to the European Union, there is much argumentation beyond whether Turkey’s Muslim values are compatible with the styled Judeo-Christian distinctiveness of the EU. Theorising off the target how a to discretion prestige schema instability within the EU, in whatever procedure, is fair a offering of our misgivings of the unfamiliar.
As my relationship with Jeremy illustrates, people can - and do - learn to apprehend those who are to from them.
###
* Batuhan Gцrgьlь is a younger majoring in economics at Koз University and has an enmeshed with in intercontinental relations.
What is done at the micro contrive normal between individuals can also be achieved at the macro contrive normal, between communities and nations. This article was written in the course of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 16 June 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright sufferance is granted in the course of broadsheet.