Women are progressing all around the world, and regressing in Arab and Muslim countries. I already knew this without needing to read it in the International Herald Tribune magazine, which dedicated its last issue for women's affairs, and was entitled The Female Factor. In Liberia, women are the backbone of the United Nations mission working to rebuild the country in the aftermath of a devastating civil war. The President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is a woman. She was once a prisoner and was almost killed by the rebels. Women in India have attained the highest posts in the banking sector. In China, women enjoy more freedoms in tandem with economic growth. In Bulgaria, women are occupying high political posts, and are leading an anti-corruption campaign, and in Cambodia, Mu Sochua leads the opposition. She is, as everyone agrees, a bold outspoken woman. From the Philippines to California, women have made tremendous progress when it comes to scientific achievements. But in an article that fell in two pages complete with images, I did not find even one name of an Arab or Muslim woman, although three women (again, non-Arabs and non-Muslims) won the Nobel Prize in scientific fields last year. I read that women receive 42 percent of science degrees in the thirty member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes 33 countries including Israel- but not one Arab country, even the large producers of oil-, and countries like Slovakia and Slovenia. There were other reports on women in the United States and Sarah Palin's influence on them, and about reconciling work with family life with the increasing number of career women in Germany, the role of French women when it comes to the division of labor, and whether they really have it all, and about equality between women and men in terms of parental leaves in Sweden. The magazine issue included six reports on women in several Arab and Islamic countries, which ranged between the negative and the extremely bad. I read that Afghan businesswomen are active, but that they need the protection of American soldiers, because the humanly and religiously retarded among the Taliban are opposed to women before being opposed to the occupation. They often attack girl schools, and murder the non-veiled. Other reports included one that detailed the difficulties facing the education of girls in Afghanistan, and another about a park for women in Kabul where they can enjoy some freedoms away from men. I read that the park has an outer wall and an inner wall, as though women are a plague. I believe that the “awrah” [indecency] is in the heads of the Taliban, not in women. While women are assumed to have made a lot of progress in Bangladesh, having attained the post of prime minister, another report paints a horrific image of oppression against women in the 1971 war which led to the division of the country between an eastern part and a western part. I read that the figures in this regard are disputed, and range between 200 and 400 thousand women who were raped during the war, and were not given justice in four decades of independence. The magazine issue included two reports about women in Saudi Arabia and their demands for more rights, and about the supporters of intermingling between the sexes and its many opponents, in a very conservative country. But King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is a bold reformer, and he will continue the march of reform in the face of conservative zealots. The investigation about Egypt was also painful, and is almost entirely about the veil in the country of Huda Shaarawi and Siza Nabrawi, who returned in May 1923 from an international feminist conference in Europe, and removed their veils as they left the boat in Alexandria and threw them on the ground. This started the women liberation movement in Egypt and the Arab world, which has suffered setbacks in recent years with the return of suppression and oppression. The bottom line here is personal freedom. I support all Muslim women on this planet whether they want to wear the veil or bare their head, both on the basis of their freedom to choose. The veil is tradition, not an ordained act of worshipping. The verse in Surat al-Nour known as the “Verse of the Veil” [in the Quran] “and to draw their veils over their bosoms […]” clearly means covering the opening in the bosom at a time when underwear was not yet invented. The wives of the Arab Christian Ghassanid kings were also veiled, for example, and so were the Persian king's three daughters who were taken by the Muslims after the conquest of Al-Hira. The daughters cried when the Caliph Umar ordered them to remove their veils when the spoils were distributed. Also, every icon of Christian women saints shows that they wore headscarves, while Orthodox Jewish women still wear headscarves to this day. But I want to focus on my people the Arabs and our television preachers after Mohmmad Abdo and Al-Afghani, and say that Arab women have indeed progressed a little in spite of, and not thanks to, men. Women are oppressed in the name of religion sometimes and at others in the name of ancient traditions. But the nation will not take its rightful place among other nations unless it attempts to do this with both its men and women. Arab men have failed over the past century on every level, and stubbornness does not help. They will surely benefit if they made women their partners and not an object and a commodity. Women cannot possibly make matters worse than men, and so things will surely get better with them and through them. [email protected]
