Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Irshad Manji e Ayaan Hirsi Ali:  Bugie e ignoranza al servizio del razzismo

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060619&s=lalami
The Missionary Position
by LAILA LALAMI
[from the June 19, 2006 issue]
These days, being a Muslim woman means being saddled with what can only
be referred to as the "burden of pity." The feelings of compassion that
we Muslim women seem to inspire emanate from very distinct and
radically opposed currents: religious extremists of our own faith, and
evangelical and secular supporters of empire in the West.
Radical Islamist parties claim that the family is the cornerstone of
society and that women, by virtue of their reproductive powers, are its
builders. An overhaul of society must therefore begin with reforming
the status of women, and in particular with distinguishing clearly
their roles from those of men. Guided by their "true" interpretations
of the faith, these radicals want women to resume their traditional
roles of nurturers and men to be empowered to lead the family. If we
protect women's rights in Islam, they assure us, the umma, the
community of believers, will be lifted from its general state of
poverty and backwardness.
Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), the Egyptian writer and activist who has exerted
such a powerful influence over the radical Islamist movement, fervently
believed that Muslim women belonged in the home. In his 1964 book
Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones), Qutb wrote that "if woman is freed
from her basic responsibility of bringing up children" and, whether on
her own or by pressure from society, seeks to work in jobs such as "a
hostess or a stewardess in a hotel or ship or air company," she will be
"using her ability for material productivity rather than the training
of human beings." This, he claimed, would make the entire civilization
"backward." The misogynistic philosophy has proved enticing, finding
advocates among Muslims throughout the world. Between 1989 and 1991,
for instance, Abbassi Madani, the red-bearded founder of the Algerian
Islamic Salvation Front Party (FIS), often referred to women who
refused to cover themselves with a hijab as "sparrow hawks of
neocolonialism." His co-founder, Ali Belhadj, claimed that there was a
simple solution to the country's high unemployment rate: turn over the
jobs of working women to idle men. Madani summarized his program: "The
system is sick; the doctor is FIS; and the medicine has existed for
fourteen centuries. It is Islam." Reducing Algerian women to birds of
prey, and their faith to a pill: These are good indicators of the depth
of intellect within the leadership of the FIS.
Meanwhile, the abundant pity that Muslim women inspire in the West
largely takes the form of impassioned declarations about "our
plight"--reserved, it would seem, for us, as Christian and Jewish women
living in similarly constricting fundamentalist settings never seem to
attract the same concern. The veil, illiteracy, domestic violence,
gender apartheid and genital mutilation have become so many hot-button
issues that symbolize our status as second-class citizens in our
societies. These expressions of compassion are often met with cynical
responses in the Muslim world, which further enrages the missionaries
of women's liberation. Why, they wonder, do Muslim women not seek out
the West's help in freeing themselves from their societies' retrograde
thinking? The poor things, they are so oppressed they do not even know
they are oppressed.
The sympathy extended to us by Western supporters of empire is nothing
new. In 1908 Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Egypt, declared
that "the fatal obstacle" to the country's "attainment of that
elevation of thought and character which should accompany the
introduction of Western civilization" was Islam's degradation of women.
The fact that Cromer raised school fees and discouraged the training of
women doctors in Egypt, and in England founded an organization that
opposed the right of British women to suffrage, should give us a hint
of what his views on gender roles were really like. Little seems to
have changed in the past century, for now we have George W. Bush,
leader of the free world, telling us, before invading Afghanistan in
2001, that he was doing it as much to free the country's women as to
hunt down Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Five years later, the
Taliban is making a serious comeback, and the country's new
Constitution prohibits any laws that are contrary to an austere
interpretation of Sharia. Furthermore, among the twenty-odd reasons
that were foisted on the American public to justify the invasion of
Iraq in 2003 was, of course, the subjugation of women; this, despite
the fact that the majority of Iraqi women were educated and active in
nearly all sectors of a secular public life. Three years into the
occupation, the only enlightened aspect of Saddam's despotic rule has
been dismantled: Facing threats from a resurgent fundamentalism, both
Sunni and Shiite, many women have been forced to quit their jobs and to
cover because not to do so puts them in harm's way. Why Mr. Bush does
not advocate for the women of Thailand, the women of Botswana or the
women of Nepal is anyone's guess.
This context--competing yet hypocritical sympathies for Muslim
women--helps to explain the strong popularity, particularly in the
post-September 11 era, of Muslim women activists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali
and Irshad Manji and the equally strong skepticism with which they are
met within the broad Muslim community. These activists are passionate
and no doubt sincere in their criticism of Islam. But are their claims
unique and innovative, or are they mostly unremarkable? Are their
conclusions borne out by empirical evidence, or do they fail to meet
basic levels of scholarship? The casual reader would find it hard to
answer these questions, because there is very little critical
examination of their work. For the most part, the loudest responses
have been either hagiographic profiles of these "brave" and "heroic"
women, on the one hand, or absurd and completely abhorrent threats to
the safety of these "apostates" and "enemies of God," on the other.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her father, Hirsi Magan
Isse, was a prominent critic of the Siyad Barre regime, and the family
had to flee the country, first to Saudi Arabia and then to Ethiopia and
Kenya. When Hirsi Ali was 22, her father arranged a marriage for her
with a distant relation. On a layover in Germany en route to Canada,
where the man lived, Hirsi Ali escaped to the Netherlands, where she
applied for and received asylum. She worked as an interpreter for
Somali refugees and studied political science at the University of
Leiden. Hirsi Ali first came into the public eye in 2002, with the
publication of De Zoontjesfabriek (The Son Factory), whose vehement
criticisms of Islam made her the subject of death threats. She joined a
think tank affiliated with the social-democratic Labor Party but a year
later switched membership to the right-wing VVD Party, which had
invited her to run for a seat in Parliament. She won, and became a
member of Parliament in January 2003. Hirsi Ali explained her shifting
allegiance by saying that the VVD granted her greater ability to
advocate for the rights of Muslim women. Then in 2004, she wrote the
script to the short film Submission, which was directed by Theo van
Gogh, a man who was known for his virulently anti-Semitic and
anti-Muslim statements. That fall, van Gogh was slaughtered in
Amsterdam, in broad daylight, by a Dutch man named Mohammed Bouyeri,
whose parents had emigrated from Morocco. A letter left on van Gogh's
body made it clear that Hirsi Ali was the next target. She immediately
went into hiding and has needed heavy protection ever since. A few
years ago, Hirsi Ali admitted to lying on her asylum application, but a
Dutch TV documentary challenged her on other details of her life,
including whether or not she was forced into marriage. The revelations
sparked a row that culminated when Rita Verdonk, the Minister of
Integration and a member of Hirsi Ali's own party, informed her that
she could no longer consider herself a Dutch citizen. Although there
has been no specific move to strip her of citizenship, Hirsi Ali has
already announced that she is resigning from Parliament and moving to
the United States, where she will take up a position at the right-wing
American Enterprise Institute.
Irshad Manji was born near Kampala, Uganda, into a Pakistani family.
When the country's dictator, Idi Amin Dada, announced that the national
economy was to be placed in the hands of black people, he forced the
large and thriving South Asian minority out of the country. In 1972,
when Manji was 4 years old, her family fled to Canada and settled
there. She grew up in Vancouver, where she went to public school. In
her free time, she attended Rose of Sharon Baptist Church, and later a
conservative Islamic madrassa, from which she was expelled for asking
too many pointed questions. She graduated from the University of
British Columbia with a degree in intellectual history, and later
worked as a speechwriter and broadcaster. Manji rose to prominence in
2004, when her controversial book The Trouble With Islam was published.
She received death threats and lived under police protection for some
time before deciding to forgo the bodyguards. "[If] I'm going to have
legitimacy conveying to Muslims that we can dissent with the
establishment and live, I can't have a big, burly fellow looking over
my shoulder. I must lead by example," she wrote. She is currently a
visiting fellow with the International Security Studies Program at Yale
University.
There are some striking parallels between the experiences of Ayaan
Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji. They were both born, only a year apart, in
East Africa--Hirsi Ali in 1969, and Manji in 1968. Both were forced by
politically repressive regimes into exile from their homelands at an
early age. Both can trace their "emancipation" to a single,
significant, life-changing event. Both credit the West for giving them
not just freedom of speech but the very ability to think for
themselves. Hirsi Ali states that she is "the living proof" that
Western culture enabled her to come fully into her own, while Manji
declares, "I owe the West my willingness to help reform Islam." Both
women express an unabashed disdain for multiculturalism, which they
accuse of fostering a climate of political correctness that prevents
dialogue and useful criticism. Both supported the American invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq in the "war on terror." Finally, both women have
recently published books in the United States. For Manji, it is The
Trouble With Islam Today, a slightly expanded edition of her 2004
bestseller. (Manji explains in an afterword why the temporal
specification was added to the title.) For Hirsi Ali it is The Caged
Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam.
The Caged Virgin is a collection of seventeen short essays and articles
on the question of Islam, translated by Jane Brown. Hirsi Ali discusses
the rights of individuals in Muslim countries and in Muslim communities
in the West, she disagrees vehemently with the ways sacred texts invade
secular space and she criticizes what she sees as the lax policies of
Western European states toward their Muslim minorities. "I have taken
an enormous risk by answering the call for self-reflection," she
declares. "And what do the cultural experts say? 'You should have said
it in a different way.' But since Theo van Gogh's death, I have been
convinced more than ever that I must say it in my way only and have my
criticism." Let us then follow Hirsi Ali's example, and look critically
at her words.
The overarching argument in The Caged Virgin is that there is
insufficient freedom for the individual in Islam. This, Hirsi Ali
argues, is because one of the fundamental tenets of the religion is the
submission of the individual to God, which creates a strict hierarchy
of allegiances. At the top of this hierarchy is God, then His Prophet,
then the umma, then the clan or tribe and finally the family. The
individual, she insists, is simply not valued. Whatever one thinks of
this hierarchy, however, it is hardly unique to Islam; one can make the
same argument about other monotheistic religions. Furthermore, many
Muslim countries are in fact secular or military dictatorships
(Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Egypt), while others are to
one extent or another theocracies (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan).
Religious hierarchy does not play the same societal role in
Turkmenistan as in Saudi Arabia. On top of this, there are political,
national and linguistic considerations to take into account,
particularly when one is making claims about fifty-seven nations spread
out across Asia and Africa. But Hirsi Ali addresses none of these. In
her view, they simply do not matter. Rather, she sees Islam itself as
the problem and its fundamental tenet of obstructing individual freedom
as the very reason the Muslim world is "falling behind" the West.
Beginning at birth, she maintains, the child is taught that his life
must be governed by Islam, hatred for the infidel and the preservation
of his honor through the control of women's sexuality. It is as if she
were suggesting the existence of some sort of "genetic" encoding of
Islam in children, which prevents them from thinking for themselves.
"[We] Muslims have religion inculcated into us from birth, and that is
one of the very reasons for our falling behind the West in technology,
finance, health, and culture." "Every Muslim, from the beginnings of
Islam to the present day, is raised in the belief that all knowledge
can be found in the Koran." "For Muslim children the study of biology
and history can be very confusing." Reading these lines, one must ask:
What sociological evidence is there for this claim that Islam makes
people inherently incapable of independent thought and of studying
science? The answer is: None. One is merely given Hirsi Ali's
assurances that she knows what is going on behind closed doors, based
on her own experiences of growing up in Somalia and of working as an
interpreter for Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands.
The notion that there is a breach of individualism that is specific to
Islam is raised again in Hirsi Ali's discussion of "sexual morality."
In the book's opening piece, "Stand Up for Your Rights!" she writes
about the continuing obsession with female virginity, which is
widespread throughout the Muslim world and which, it must be
acknowledged, causes no shortage of heartache. Girls who lose their
virginity before marriage can sometimes face serious consequences in
Muslim countries, particularly in rural areas. "I am distressed," she
writes, "that the vast majority of Muslim women are still enchained by
the doctrine of virginity, which requires that women enter marriage as
green as grass: experience of love and sexuality before marriage is an
absolute taboo. This taboo does not apply to men." Hirsi Ali is correct
to say that the burden of virginity weighs disproportionately on
females in Muslim cultures, though she fails to point out that the
Koran emphasizes virginity and forbids both genders from having
premarital sex. In this respect, the Koran is no different from the
Bible. It is therefore a matter of cultural practice that the "doctrine
of virginity" is still strong in the Muslim world.
This lumping together of various Islams--the geographical region, the
Abrahamic religion, the historical civilization and the many individual
cultures--is symptomatic of the entire book, and makes it particularly
difficult to engage with Hirsi Ali in a useful way. Her discussion of
female genital mutilation (FGM) is a case in point. In at least six of
the seventeen essays, she cites the horrendous practice of FGM, which
involves excising, in whole or in part, young girls' inner or outer
labia, and in severe cases even their clitorises. Hirsi Ali is aware
that the practice predates Islam, but, she maintains, "these existing
local practices were spread by Islam." According to the United Nations
Population Fund, FGM is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa by Animists,
Christians and Muslims alike, as well as by Ethiopian Jews, sometimes
in collusion with individual representatives of the faiths. For
instance, the US State Department report on FGM reveals that some
Coptic Christian priests "refuse to baptize girls who have not
undergone one of the procedures." And yet Hirsi Ali does not blame
Animism, Christianity or Judaism for FGM, or accuse these belief
systems of spreading it. With Islam, however, such accusations are
acceptable.
A few years ago, Hirsi Ali proposed a bill in the Dutch Parliament that
would require young girls from immigrant communities to undergo a
vaginal exam once a year as a way to insure that the parents do not
practice FGM. The suggestion is all the more interesting when one
considers that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants to the
Netherlands are from Turkey and Morocco, where FGM is unheard of. But
there is a personal reason for this passionate stance: When Hirsi Ali
was 5 years old, her grandmother had the procedure performed on her,
without her father's knowledge or approval. The experience marked Hirsi
Ali profoundly, and the fervor and determination she brings to the
fight against this horrifying practice are utterly laudable. By making
inaccurate statements like the one quoted above, however, she muddies
the issues and alienates the very people who would have the religious
standing in the community to make this practice disappear.
On more than a few occasions, Hirsi Ali makes baffling, blanket
statements about women in Muslim countries. "[If] defloration occurs
outside wedlock, [the girl] has dishonored her family to the tenth
degree of kinship." Why not eleven? Or twelve? Where did the number ten
come from? We are never told, and no source is adduced to support this
claim. Not content with making inaccurate and sweeping claims about
various cultures, Hirsi Ali also ventures into the field of literary
criticism: "Alongside [religious textbooks] there are novels by Muslims
about love, politics, and crime, in which the role of Islam and the
Prophet Muhammad are studiously avoided, although the moral
undercurrent is that one should observe religious precepts, otherwise
things end very badly." It might come as news to Arab, African and
Asian novelists of the Muslim persuasion that their fiction is merely
an excuse to proselytize. Is the reader seriously expected to believe
that the work of Orhan Pamuk promotes the observance of religion? Or
that the texts of Assia Djebbar, Tahar Djaout, Tahar Ben Jelloun,
Abdellatif Laabi, Kamal Ghitani, Nawal Al-Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Alifa
Rifaat, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ghassan Kanafani, Nuruddin Farah, Tayeb
Salih, Kateb Yacine, Mahmoud Darwish, Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Tariq
Ali advocate religious morality?
Along the same lines, Hirsi Ali seems to believe that Muslims are
deficient in critical thought: "Very few Muslims are actually capable
of looking at their faith critically. Critical minds like those of
Afshin Ellian in the Netherlands and Salman Rushdie in England are
exceptions." The work of Khaled Abou El Fadl, Fatima Mernissi, Leila
Ahmed, Reza Aslan, Adonis, Amina Wadud, Nawal Saadawi, Mohja Kahf, Asra
Nomani and the thousands of other scholars working in both Muslim
countries and the West easily contradicts the notion. In any case, why
the comparison with Rushdie? Have fatwas become the yardstick by which
we measure criticism? If so, this suggests that the people who offend
Islamists are the only ones worth listening to, which is ridiculous.
The most shocking statement, however, comes from the essay "The Need
for Self-Reflection Within Islam," in which Hirsi Ali writes: "After
the events of 9/11, people who deny this characterization of the
stagnant state of Islam were challenged by critical outsiders to name a
single Muslim who had made a discovery in science or technology, or
changed the world through artistic achievement. There is none." That a
person who has apparently never heard of the algebra of Al-Khawarizmi,
the medical prowess of Ibn-Sina and Ibn-Rushd, or the music of Nusrat
Fateh Ali Khan and Umm Kulthum is considered an authority on Islam is
proof, if ever one was needed, of the utter lack of intelligent
discourse about the civilization and the cultures broadly defined by
that word.
And how does the American press reward such stunningly ignorant
scholarship? Time magazine picked Hirsi Ali as one of 100 "most
influential people" of 2005, people with "the clout and power to change
our world." At the other end of the spectrum, the answer is even more
spectacularly stupid: Islamic radicals have called for Hirsi Ali's
death repeatedly since 2002. Whatever the merits of Hirsi Ali's
arguments, one thing is clear: By making threats against her person,
right-wing Muslims appear to agree with Western conservatives that
Islam as a whole (religion, region, culture) is weak, unable to defend
itself by intellectual reasoning. It is also quite ironic that these
radical Muslims are guilty of violating the first right their faith
grants them: The right to choose their beliefs. "Let there be no
compulsion in religion," the Koran insists. And for good reason, too,
because without the right to choose (new) beliefs, there would have
been no Islam in the first place.
The argument that pervades The Caged Virgin--that Muslim women need
Western advocates--is premised on two assumptions. The first is that
Muslim women somehow cannot speak up for themselves--what Edward Said
once called "the silence of the native." Hirsi Ali demonstrates this:
"The [reason] I am determined to make my voice heard is that Muslim
women are scarcely listened to, and they need a woman to speak out on
their behalf." If, as the title of this book suggests, the Muslim woman
is a virgin in a cage, then by definition she must be freed from the
outside. Someone must break the lock so that the poor woman can finally
step out and speak for herself. But Muslim women are not, nor have they
ever been, silent. For example, a significant portion of hadith, the
Prophet's sayings that form the basis of the Sunna, are attributed to
his wife Aisha. Here is a sample hadith: "Narrated Aisha: The Prophet
said, 'All drinks that produce intoxication are haram.'" But how did
Aisha narrate this saying? Was it by sitting at home, in a cage, or by
actively engaging with her community and teaching the hadith to the
congregation? This tradition of engagement has continued, and Muslim
women have made their marks in all fields--whether religion or science
or medicine or literature. Over the past century, they have organized
in groups dedicated to fight for the advancement of their rights. Even
under the inhumane Taliban regime, the Revolutionary Association of the
Women of Afghanistan remained active, providing literacy courses and
medical services to women and girls. That these women are thought to be
invisible is a testament to the patriarchal systems--on either
side--that want to protect them. But it cannot be a testament to their
silence.
The second premise of the argument is the critic's supposed authority
as a "native informant," which alone, and without scholarly training,
qualifies her to speak of the entire religion. Indeed, Hirsi Ali tells
us,
By our Western standards Muhammad is a perverse man. A tyrant. He is
against freedom of expression. If you don't do as he says, you will end
up in hell. That reminds me of those megalomaniacal rulers in the
Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, and Saddam. Are you surprised to find
a Saddam Hussein? Muhammad is his example; Muhammad is an example to
all Muslim men. Why do you think so many Islamic men use violence? You
are shocked to hear me say these things, but like the majority of the
native Dutch population, you overlook something: you forget where I am
from. I used to be a Muslim; I know what I am talking about.
In numerous passages of the book, however, Hirsi Ali demonstrates
precisely that she doesn't know what she is talking about. Take her
statement on abortion: "According to Islam, an extramarital pregnancy
brings great shame on the family, but you can still redeem yourself in
the eyes of Allah. Abortion, though, the killing of an innocent baby,
is a deadly sin, for which there is no forgiveness." But abortion is
not universally disallowed in Islam, simply because there is not a
uniform position about the issue. In the Hanbali, Shafii and Hanafi
schools in Sunni Islam, for instance, abortion before the fetus has
developed into a human being (what is called "ensoulment") is, in fact,
permissible. Scholars differ on the lengths of time "ensoulment" takes,
with definitions as narrow as forty days and as broad as 120 days
(i.e., the first trimester). All schools of thought allow abortion if
the pregnancy is liable to cause medical harm to the mother.
The question that must be posed, then, is whether the cause of women's
emancipation can be advanced when it is argued in such a sloppy and
factually inaccurate manner as it is in The Caged Virgin. One might go
a step further and ask about the intended audience for such a book.
Given the heavy reliance on the twin premises of "the native is silent"
and "the native informant knows best," it seems possible that the book
is not so much addressed to Muslims--who, in any case, Hirsi Ali
believes to be deficient in individual and critical thinking--as to
Western advocates for Muslim women.
To her credit, Irshad Manji appears to be acutely aware of the audience
question, and tackles it on the first page of The Trouble With Islam
Today. The book is written as an open letter, addressed directly to
Muslims, both in and outside the West. And it also helps the critical
reader that Manji backs her claims with source notes, which are listed
on her website, Muslim-refusenik.com. The Trouble With Islam Today is a
chronicle of Manji's personal journey of introspection and discovery
about her faith, prompted in part by the constant stream of horrendous
news about repression that seems to pour out from (the region of)
Islam. "When I consider all the fatwas being hurled by the brain trust
of our faith, I feel utter embarrassment," she writes.
Unlike Hirsi Ali, Manji has not openly renounced her faith, although,
she says, "Islam is on very thin ice with me." She attributes her
skepticism to her childhood experiences at the madrassa she attended in
Vancouver. In the orthodox, gender-segregated school, she could not
visit the library freely; instead, she had to wait for all the men to
clear the area where it was located in order to be able to browse the
offerings. The imam was a stern man who discouraged questions and
proffered dogma. So woeful was the training Manji received that she did
not know that Islam was an Abrahamic religion until after she left the
confines of the madrassa. Later, when she purchased an English-language
Koran, she finally embarked on her own journey of learning.
Much of what Manji describes will be familiar to those who have read
reform-minded books on Islam. For instance, she questions the
assumption that the Koran is the inviolate word of God and has remained
so for fourteen centuries, without a single diacritic or vowel-length
change. She tells the controversial story of the "Satanic verses" (also
known as hadith al-gharaniq) to show that this point is debatable.
According to some scholars, the Prophet had included verses that
referred to Meccan goddesses while reciting lines from the Koran.
Later, realizing they were not inspired by revelation, he abrogated
them from the sacred text. This, of course, establishes a precedent
that the Koran was changed at least once. Why is it so hard to imagine,
she asks, that other human beings could have added their own changes?
She rightly argues that both the terrorists and the peacekeepers among
Muslims find scriptural support for their views in the Koran.
(Incidentally, this is no different from the Bible, whose most peaceful
and most violent verses have been used at various points in history to
back up the institution of slavery as well as abolition and the civil
rights movement.) A significant portion of the book consists of calling
on Arabs and Muslims to be responsible for their own destinies, and to
stop blaming the West or Israel for their problems. The style here may
be very blunt, but the proposition is wholly unoriginal. One can read
similar statements in commentary and op-ed pieces of many newspapers
across the Arab world.
Unfortunately, like Hirsi Ali, Manji consistently gives individual
examples of malfeasance and then extrapolates to the entire body of
Muslims. In discussing World War II, for instance, she writes, "Let's
be straight about what else happened during the Nazi years: Muslim
complicity in the Holocaust." Here she trots out the story of Haj Amin
al-Husayni, the mufti of Jerusalem who visited Berlin as a guest of
Hitler and approved of his genocidal agenda. But how do we move from
one cleric with authority in one congregation to "Muslim complicity"?
And if it turns out that there are individual Muslims who helped Jews
escape the Holocaust, do we then get to talk about "Muslim resistance"
to the Holocaust? After all, Abdol-Hossein Sardari, head of the
consular section of the Iranian embassy under the Vichy government,
succeeded in convincing the Nazis that Iranian Jews were not Semites,
thus saving their lives. He went a step further and issued 500 Iranian
passports to non-Iranian Jews in France. Similarly, the Sultan of
Morocco flatly refused to hand Moroccan Jews over to the Vichy
government that ruled his country. But people such as these do not fit
the paradigm of Muslim backwardness and outright evil, and so they go
unmentioned.
As with Hirsi Ali, Manji's expertise on her subject is incomplete. Take
the following statement: "The Koran appears to be organized by size of
verse--from longer to shorter--and not by chronology of revelation. How
can anyone isolate the "earlier" passages, let alone read into them the
"authentic" message of the Koran? We have to own up to the fact that
the Koran's message is all over the bloody map." This is simply not
true. Each sura of the Koran is identified by whether it is "Meccan" or
"Medinan," depending on whether it was revealed early in the Prophet's
spiritual life or later on, during his hegira in Medina. Some verses
are addressed to specific communities of believers. Others refer to
specific historical events. All of these details help establish
temporal contextualization. The study of the Koran's chronology is a
whole field unto itself. In addition, and despite having written a book
called The Trouble With Islam Today, Manji has not taken the trouble of
learning to speak, read and write Arabic fluently, nor of visiting any
Muslim country. She left Uganda at the age of 4 and has absolutely no
experience of what it is like to live in a Muslim country. Would a
scholar who has written a book about China without bothering to speak
Chinese or visit the country be taken seriously?
Despite its careful sourcing, Manji's book is a narrow polemic,
selectively citing events and anecdotes that fit one paradigm only:
Muslim savagery, which of course is contrasted with Western
enlightenment. Several of Manji's claims about the Arab world are based
on articles translated by the nonprofit organization Middle East Media
Research Institute (MEMRI), which was founded by Col. Yigal Carmon, a
twenty-two-year veteran of military intelligence in Israel with the
goal of exploring the Middle East "through the region's media." MEMRI
focuses on the following areas: Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Palestine,
Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. There are three
general observations that can be made about MEMRI's work. One is that
it consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find,
translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and
members of Congress in Washington. The second is that MEMRI does not
translate comparable articles published in Israel, although the country
is not only a part of the Middle East but an active party to some of
its most searing conflicts. For instance, when the right-wing Israeli
politician Effi Eitam referred to Israel's Palestinian citizens as a
"cancer," MEMRI did not pick up this story. The third is that this
organization is now the main source of media articles on the region of
Islam, a far greater and far more diverse whole than the individual
countries it lists. The reliance on MEMRI highlights Manji's lack of
direct, unmediated exposure to the news media of the area about which
she expresses such fierce convictions.
Equally troubling is Manji's unsubstantiated assertion that there is
little dissent in Islam: "We Muslims have a lot of catching up to do in
the dissent department." As it happens, earlier this year the Moroccan
government took the commendable step of officially acknowledging that
approximately 10,000 people had been put in prison, tortured or killed
for political reasons between 1956 and 1999. (Human rights
organizations caution that the number of victims may in fact have been
much larger.) Their "crimes" ranged from wanting to overthrow the
monarchy, to questioning official edicts, to simply handing out
left-wing leaflets. The problem isn't the lack of dissent. It is the
lack of a context in which dissent is welcomed rather than repressed.
This repression, furthermore, is tacitly supported by Western powers.
The American government, in particular, is so pleased with Morocco's
methods of repression that it allegedly "renders" some of its
recalcitrant detainees there. The experience of Morocco with repression
is not unique and can be seen in other countries in the region broadly
defined as "Islam"--countries such as Syria, Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt
and so on. To say that there is no dissent in Islam is simply absurd.
The claim must be recognized for what it is: a different manifestation
of the "silence of the native," which brings us back to the need for
outside advocates and to the nifty excuse for outside interference into
the affairs of sovereign states.
Unlike Hirsi Ali, however, Manji takes a much broader view about women
in Islam. She places the question in the general context of civil
rights in Islam. Here she focuses in particular on the status of
minorities. Manji maintains that as a civilization Islam has never
treated minorities with respect, only with contempt. She does mention
that during the golden age of Islam, Jews and Christians held
significant positions within the empire. But, she says, this cannot
cover for the systematic treatment of them as "different." In
comparison, she argues, Israel has a far better record of treating its
minorities. As evidence of this, she recounts a number of anecdotes
from her visit to Israel. An Arab actress headlined a local production
of My Fair Lady. Jews and Arabs alike take to the op-ed pages of
newspapers like Ha'aretz to debate political issues. Religious literacy
is part of military training for the armed forces. Street signs are
labeled in Arabic, and Arabic is an official language of Israel. And
she calls Israel's systematic discrimination against its Arab citizens
a form of "affirmative action" for Jews.
To show how disingenuous this line of argument is, let's turn the
situation around. Consider the case of the Jewish minority in Morocco.
Jews have lived in the country for more than 2,000 years. Newspapers
regularly carry news of the community's cultural and religious events.
Jews and Muslims venerate the same saints. Serge Berdugo, a Jew, served
as minister of tourism in the 1990s and is now an ambassador at large.
André Azoulay, the current adviser to the king, is Jewish. So is the
country's most popular comedian, Gad El Maleh, and one of its most
celebrated novelists, Edmond Amran El Maleh. One could put together a
virtually endless list of these facts, but none of them would detract
from this other truth: Last year, a Pew Research Center poll showed
that 88 percent of Moroccans have a negative view of Jews; as shameful
as this figure is, any serious discussion of Morocco's Jewish minority
would have to include it. Meanwhile, in Israel, the Haifa-based Center
Against Racism found that 68 percent of Jews polled revealed they were
unwilling to live next to an Arab neighbor. Acknowledging anti-Semitism
in some parts of the Arab world, therefore, should not require us to
gloss over anti-Arab and anti-Muslim feelings in Israel. This
reductionist way of thinking permeates The Trouble With Islam Today and
gets tiresome very quickly. When Manji argues that Arabs and Muslims
must learn to think differently about their present, she writes,
"liberal Muslims have to get vocal about this fact: Washington is the
unrealized hope, not the lead criminal." For all her advocacy of new
modes of thinking, she seems not to have entertained another
possibility: Washington can be both.
The Caged Virgin and The Trouble With Islam Today are billed as
profound meditations on faith and searing critiques of Islam's
treatment of women and minorities, but they are riddled with
inaccuracies and generalizations. In their persistent conflating of
religion, civilization, geographical region and very distinct cultures,
these books are more likely to obfuscate than educate.
None of this is to suggest that there are not serious issues facing
Muslim women today. Still less does it mean that we should excuse
violence and oppression, in some relativist fashion, because they
happen to take place in the region broadly defined as "Islam." Those
who believe in gender equality have every reason to be concerned about
radical Islamist parties that view women as mere vessels, defined by
their reproductive powers. These right-wing Islamist parties resist
changes in civil codes that grant women more rights or, worse, want to
impose antiquated and dangerous forms of Sharia. It is therefore
particularly troubling that they have made electoral gains in
Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere.
So now what? Where does this leave feminists of all stripes who
genuinely care about the civil rights of their Muslim sisters? A good
first step would be to stop treating Muslim women as a silent, helpless
mass of undifferentiated beings who think alike and face identical
problems, and instead to recognize that each country and each society
has its own unique issues. A second would be to question and critically
assess the well-intentioned but factually inaccurate books that often
serve as the very basis for discussion. We need more dialogue and less
polemic. A third would be to acknowledge that women--and men--in Muslim
societies face problems of underdevelopment (chief among them
illiteracy and poverty) and that tackling them would go a long way
toward reducing inequities. As the colonial experience of the past
century has proved, aligning with an agenda of war and domination will
not result in the advancement of women's rights. On the contrary, such
a top-down approach is bound to create a nationalist counterreaction
that, as we have witnessed with Islamist parties, can be downright
catastrophic. Rather, a bottom-up approach, where the many local,
homegrown women's organizations are fully empowered stands a better
chance in the long run. After all, isn't this how Western feminists
made their own gains toward equality?
Muslim women are used as pawns by Islamist movements that make the
control of women's lives a foundation of their retrograde agenda, and
by Western governments that use them as an excuse for building empire.
These women have become a politicized class, prevented by edicts and
bombs from taking charge of their own destinies. The time has come for
the pawns to be queened.

luno...@gmail.com
 ha scritto:
/cut/
Mai sottomessa
È l'esempio di come una società che si considera liberale può
contribuire alla sua distruzione
Internazionale 642, 18 maggio 2006
Tre anni fa, durante un congresso in Svezia, ho conosciuto una deputata
del parlamento olandese: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Nata in Somalia, ha vissuto
come rifugiata in vari paesi africani fino a quando non è dovuta
scappare dai suoi stessi familiari: avevano deciso di darla in moglie a
un lontano parente, un uomo che lei non aveva mai visto.
Dato che sperava di sottrarsi a questa prospettiva rifugiandosi in
Olanda, è rimasta sbalordita quando si è resa conto che l'islam
radicale l'aveva inseguita fin là. Anzi, in realtà l'aveva preceduta
e da tempo faceva proseliti tra gli immigrati turchi, marocchini e
indonesiani.
In città come Rotterdam e Amsterdam, che un tempo avevano offerto
rifugio ai profughi della Francia cattolica e della Spagna
dell'Inquisizione, esistevano quartieri in cui le donne musulmane
venivano sottoposte alla mutilazione genitale e in cui la polizia
olandese aveva paura di metter piede.
Entrata in politica per sensibilizzare la sinistra europea su questo
pericolo, è stata eletta come deputata del Partito laburista, ma dopo
l'11 settembre è passata con i liberali. Questo perché, ha spiegato,
molti laburisti tendono a vedere gli immigrati come titolari di
"diritti collettivi".
Sono così presi dalla propria idea di multiculturalismo da ignorare i
diritti di quegli individui, specialmente donne e ragazzi, che vivono
prigionieri nei ghetti. Al convegno svedese, Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha parlato
di questi problemi in modo calmo e razionale. È stata la principale
collaboratrice del regista olandese Theo van Gogh in Submission, un
film sulle donne oppresse e ridotte in schiavitù che vivono nei Paesi
Bassi. Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha scritto la sceneggiatura ed è sua la voce
fuori campo.
Probabilmente ricordate ciò che è successo dopo: una mattina del
2004, mentre Van Gogh andava al lavoro in bicicletta, nella capitale di
uno dei più civili paesi d'Europa, un islamista fanatico gli ha
sparato uccidendolo, e poi ha infierito sul suo corpo con mutilazioni
rituali.
L'assassino, che si aspettava di diventare un martire ma è stato solo
ferito dai pacifici poliziotti olandesi, ha lasciato una lettera da
martire appuntata al cadavere di Van Gogh con un coltello. In quel
foglio avvertiva Ayaan Hirsi Ali che la prossima vittima sarebbe stata
lei e forniva un elenco dettagliato di tutte le colpe che l'avrebbero
condannata all'inferno per l'eternità.
Da allora Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha dovuto vivere sotto la protezione della
polizia. La settimana scorsa, quando l'ho rivista a Washington, non ho
potuto fare a meno di notare che era scortata. Raccomando caldamente a
tutti il suo libro Non sottomessa. Contro la segregazione nella
società islamica (Einaudi 2005).
I tre temi affrontati sono anzitutto la sua personale, graduale
emancipazione dal tribalismo e dalla superstizione; poi il suo impegno
di parlamentare per richiamare l'attenzione sui crimini che vengono
compiuti ogni giorno dagli islamici violenti nel continente europeo;
infine, il silenzio sconfortante di tante femministe e tanti
sostenitori del multiculturalismo.
Prima di essere eletta al parlamento, Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha lavorato come
traduttrice e operatrice sociale con le immigrate che sono considerate
proprietà sessuali dai loro connazionali maschi (o che sono vittime di
"delitti d'onore"). Ha raccolto un repertorio di casi da far gelare il
sangue, ma che comunque sono meno deprimenti delle scuse usate dai
sedicenti progressisti per non intervenire.
A quanto pare, bisogna garantire a tutti i costi che gli altri possano
conservare "la loro cultura" e, quel che è peggio, che venga messa a
tacere qualsiasi critica nei loro confronti: quando si sentono offesi
la loro prima mossa è il ricorso alla violenza e all'intimidazione, a
volte con l'appoggio delle ambasciate degli stati stranieri. Tenuto
conto che l'autrice è una donna che ha subìto la mutilazione genitale
quando era bambina e poi è stata venduta a un estraneo, il libro
mostra un senso dell'umorismo e un senso della misura sorprendenti.
Ci sono però anche delle brutte notizie. Dopo essere stata costretta a
nascondersi dagli assassini fascisti, Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha scoperto che
il governo e i cittadini olandesi erano imbarazzati a ospitare una
portavoce del "terzo mondo" così famosa.
Inizialmente è stata tenuta praticamente reclusa, cosa che di fatto le
impediva di lavorare come deputata. Quando ha denunciato la situazione
alla stampa, le è stato finalmente trovato un alloggio in un edificio
protetto. A quel punto, però, gli altri inquilini hanno protestato,
perché la sua presenza li metteva in pericolo. E il tribunale ha
accolto la loro richiesta, costringendola a trasferirsi. Date le
circostanze, Ayaan Hirsi Ali ha deciso di dare le dimissioni da
parlamentare e di lasciare il paese.
Questa vicenda non è l'unico esempio di come una società che si
considera liberale possa contribuire alla propria distruzione: spero
però che ci induca a vergognarci quanto basta per far diventare Non
sottomessa un best seller. 
Cristopher Hitchens