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Posted on 11/08/2001 1:41:49 PM PST by white trash redneck

Under the Veil: Islam and Women

by Matthew Tokson

The September 11th terrorist attacks have understandably distressed those on the radical left. Popular support for the president and the military has increased sharply, while their agenda has been put indefinitely on the political back-burner. But the familiar voices of the far left have once again found a reason to make themselves heard. Their newest crusade is against “Islamaphobia,” the fear of a foreign culture and a religion that only they, the enlightened few, correctly understand.

Thus the pages of The Nation and the rhetoric of Dartmouth’s own radicals have sought to glorify the Islamic culture and religion while blaming the global influence of U.S. culture and the imperialism of U.S.-backed Jews for the problems of Islamic countries.

But isn’t it a bit hypocritical, many political commentators have asked, for radical leftists to glorify a culture whose women are often horribly oppressed?

Dartmouth’s Women’s Resource Center recently tried to address this apparent contradiction, hosting Franklin Pierce Law School Research Scholar and Associate Professor Nermien Al-Ali for a speech entitled “Islam and the Empowerment of Women.” She would, it was advertised, “address the historical tenets and modern interpretations of women in Islam, as well as the common misconceptions and myths associated with both.”

After 25 minutes of technical difficulties with the 105 Dartmouth display computer, Al-Ali began her speech by addressing the larger issue of “Islamaphobia.” She defined this as a “fear of Islam as a threat to Western Civilization, and of the American way of life.” This phenomenon leads to the hate crimes that occurred following the September 11th attacks. And one of the harmful myths that “Islamaphobia” is based upon is that “Islam is oppressive of women.”

Of course, no sensible person thinks that Islam itself is evil or that the religion promotes hate or violence. But don’t today’s Islamic countries oppress women far more than most of their non-Islamic counterparts?[Actually, I know a lot of sensible people, on this Forum, who think exactly that. -- WTR]

Al-Ali seems to contend that they don’t. First, she reminds the audience that there is no “Islamic culture,” and that cultural practices differ widely from country to country. She admits that there are cultures in Muslim countries that oppress women, but says, “Islam is not a culture.” Rather, it is a “universal message to all humanity revealed by God to Prophet Mohammed to complete…previous divine relationships,” she explains, rather evangelically. “A Muslim is one who surrenders to the Will of God, not one who adopts a certain culture.”

She goes on to argue that, “Any cultural custom that oppresses women contradicts Islamic Shari’a law,” a highly debatable contention in Islamic circles.

She begins her argument by pointing out that the Quran “revolutionized the rights of women” at the time it was written. It said that women “could keep property, and could not be bought and sold.” It provided them with marital, spiritual, and political rights. Even today, she says, the Islamic basis of law is used by women to fight for additional social rights.

Al-Ali then moves from this valid beginning to a much shakier ground, stating that “Islam is based on gender equality” and that “Islam gives women free choice in all aspects of life.” This has its basis in the Quran, which, unlike the Bible, implies that man and women were created at the same time, and does not blame Eve for the fall from paradise. The Quran guarantees “gender neutrality as to religious practice.”

But even Al-Ali admits that the Quran lists “certain situations” where women are treated as inferior. When giving testimony in credit/debit situations, the testimony of one man is equivalent to that of two women. Al-Ali defends this by giving the Quran’s reasoning, “If one [woman] is confused, then the other woman will remind her of the details.” Many of the female audience members didn’t appear to find this convincing.

Women also inherit 1/2 the share of men, because, traditionally,“men control the financial matters for the family.” However, says Al-Ali, a husband has no right of access to his wife’s wealth or income, and women have the right to work for wages, and not to be coerced into marriage. Taking care of the home, she claims “is not obligatory to the woman.” And, according to Al-Ali, the Quran says nothing about denying due process for women accused of adultery. Rather it stipulates that the man “produce four witnesses to the act of sexual penetration.”

Al-Ali is a lawyer, and she knows how to manipulate evidence to present a convincing case. But her argument is flimsy; it falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. She include Quran verses about the equality of man and woman before God, while excluding several about the inferiority of women in society. A wife’s inferiority and deference to her husband is a central social tenet of the Quran: “And it is for the women to act as they (the husbands) act by them, in all fairness; but the men are a step above them” (2:228). Or, stated even more clearly, “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other” (4:34). The Quran also explicitly permits polygamy, a fact which Al-Ali unsuccessfully tries to gloss over with some rather transparent interpretive trickery.

Al-Ali also misled the audience by failing to acknowledge the countless anti-women teachings of the Hadith, the stories of Mohammed’s deeds and sayings that Al-Ali herself tells us are second only to the Quran in religious importance. Some of the principles taught in the Hadith include: Women are Deficient in Intelligence and Religion, Women are Deficient in Gratitude, Women are Deficient as Witnesses, and The Woman is a Toy. It is doubtful that these principles would find supporters in the Women’s Resource Center.

One subject that does find sympathy in the WRC is that of the clothing requirements for proper Muslim women. As far as the requirement to hide one’s face, Al-Ali says that the Quran suggests only that the woman cover her head and bosom (Al-Ali wore an unrevealing blouse and a head cover). This is included, she says, for the benefit of the woman, as it protects her from the lust of men and keeps her modest. Though the female students of the audience were, to their credit, skeptical of such reasoning, the WRC staff offered comments and asked Al-Ali encouraging questions, trying to rephrase her message in a more palatable form. Their support for such clothing restrictions is based on the theory of “liberation by the veil”. According to this idea, it is Western women who are truly oppressed, because they feel compelled to wear clothes that show off their bodies, while strict Muslim women are free to be judged solely on the basis of their characters. While this theory certainly has an appeal to the increasingly puritan feminists found at the WRC, it has one fatal and obvious flaw. Women in Western countries and the less strict mostly-Muslim countries are free to wear whatever they want, veils or bikinis, while Muslim women have no choice but to wear whatever the men of their country tell them to. To American women, being told what to wear and where to look (eyes averted from men at all times) in public would be far from liberating.

What about Al-Ali’s argument that the Bible contains far more rules oppressing women than the Quran? This may actually be so. Indeed, a popular article among American Muslim organizations, Women in Islam Versus Women in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition: the Myth & the Reality by Dr. Sherif Abdel Azeem, presents a convincing argument that the Bible and Talmud are more misogynistic than the Quran and Hadith. But this should cause us to question the cultures of misogynist Islamic countries even more emphatically, rather than congratulating them on the relative kindness of the Quran.

Women in Muslim and non-Muslim countries have had to fight for centuries against the inequalities embedded in their religions; only those in non-Muslim nations have generally met with eventual success, whereas something in many Islamic cultures has managed to keep women in a position of abject inferiority.

As many historians point out (David and Richard Landes, for example, in their recent The National Review article “Girl Power”), the deep-seated cultural divide as to the treatment of women likely has more to do with Islamic hostility towards the West than recent U.S. policy in Israel. Muslim society began to decline in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as Islam became increasingly dogmatic, as it has been in most Muslim countries ever since. While women eventually became a crucial part of the Western workplace, academy, etc., Muslim women remained barred from many public spaces and productive activities, stifling both the economies and cultures of most Muslim nations and contributing to the inequality between them and the West.

Radical Muslims like Osama bin Laden find the liberation of women in countries like the U.S. and Israel repugnant. Bin Laden himself has expressed particular disgust at the thought of American women soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia.

As Al-Ali points out, not all Muslim countries oppress their women. Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all been ruled, politically at least, by women. Tunisian women activists have managed to secure many of the same equal rights enjoyed by the women of the West.

Unsurprisingly, none of these countries is significantly hostile to the West while countries where women are especially oppressed, such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, are hotbeds of anti-Western fervor. The same openness that leads to the emancipation of women seems to lead to the acceptance of non-Muslims and their ideas.

Al-Ali’s argument that Islam promotes equality and empowerment for women is both misleading and irrelevant. Nor, as a very westernized Muslim (she has joint citizenship in Jordan and Austrailia and lives in the U.S.), is she very qualified to represent most Muslim women. The Women’s Resource Center would serve Muslim women much better by criticizing harshly the countries and cultures that stubbornly continue to oppress them. Sadly, the WRC once again seems more committed to zealously following the latest PC trend than to fighting for the rights of women.

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