Pakistan: Female Students Groomed for Extremism

Researcher and journalist Farhat Taj takes a tour of Jamia Hifsa, a madrassah for female students, and comes away shaken by what she hears.

VIEW: Jamia Hifsa must close down

Farhat Taj (Daily Times)

The students of the Jamia wake up every morning at 5:00 am. They are not allowed any games, out-door trips or TV. Watching TV, they said, was banned in Islam. They live in strict gender segregation and believe in the subordination of woman to man. They study Islam in its most extremist form. The students and teachers told me the madrassa is grooming wives and mothers for jihadis, female suicide bombers and female foot-soldiers who will clash with the law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, if necessary…

San Antonio, TX: Sarwat Husain, CAIR Representative

This is a very nice profile of Sarwat Husain, a member of the San Antonio, TX chapter of CAIR. However, the article states it is part of her mission to explain Middle Eastern culture. I suppose she can do that. But she is Pakistani. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe her function as educating people about Islam and Muslim social norms and practices?

She’s Muslim — and determined

Lisa Marie Gómez (San Antonio Express-News)

Before 9-11, Sarwat Husain rarely wore a hijab — the Muslim headscarf.

But just as the attacks on the United States changed the world, they transformed Husain.

Practically overnight, this product of a privileged upbringing in Pakistan became an activist, determined to defend Muslims from discrimination and to educate San Antonians about Islam and Middle-Eastern culture.

Florida: Orlando Islamic School to Forced to Close; Code Fight over Portable Classrooms

Muslim school at ‘dead end’ in code fight
Orange closes portables, so children must stay home until new building is ready

Babita Persaud (Orlando Sentinel)

A hundred Muslim students are out of school as their administrators squabble with Orange County code enforcement over staying in portables until their $2.3 million building is finished.

“We have 100 kids here with nowhere to go,” said Imam Tariq Rasheed of the Islamic Center of Orlando.

Buena Vista Muslim Academy, on 7 acres owned by the Islamic Center, has until Monday to remove five portables on its property at 11543 Ruby Lake Road in the Lake Buena Vista area.

[The elementary school]… is opening a two-story, 27,000-square-foot facility, which is being renamed Muslim Academy of Greater Orlando. The building is nearly done, administrators say.

“We need four to eight more weeks,” said Abrahim Mamsa, Buena Vista’s director of administration.

But code-enforcement officials say they have given the school enough time to remove the portables, which never received permits.

“Time has run out,” said Mitch Gordon, Orange County zoning manager…

Tariq Ramadan: So-called Identity Issue

The NY Times article is entitled “Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue“. Really, he does not. He practices Islam and urges the integration of practicing Muslims into Western society. Yet he is branded as a covert extremist selling stealth Sharia because he is not a “secular Muslim.”

Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue

Ian Buruma (NY Times)

Tariq Ramadan, Muslim, scholar, activist, Swiss citizen, resident of Britain, active on several continents, is a hard man to pin down. People call him “slippery,” “double-faced,” “dangerous,” but also “brilliant,” a “bridge-builder,” a “Muslim Martin Luther.” He wants Muslims to become active citizens of the West but four years ago was himself refused permission to enter the U.S. He could not take up the teaching position he’d been offered at the University of Notre Dame. Oxford University took him on as a visiting fellow instead…

…To his admirers, he is a courageous reformer who works hard to fill the chasm between Muslim orthodoxy and secular democracy…

…His critics see things differently: they accuse him of anti-Semitism, religious bigotry, promoting the oppression of women and waging a covert holy war on the liberal West…

USA: Tensions Rising Between Sunni, Shia

Iraq’s Shadow Widens Sunni-Shiite Split in U.S.

Neil MacFarquhar (NY Times)

…Escalating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East are rippling through some American Muslim communities, and have been blamed for events including vandalism and student confrontations. Political splits between those for and against the American invasion of Iraq fuel some of the animosity, but it is also a fight among Muslims about who represents Islam.

Long before the vandalism in Dearborn and Detroit, feuds had been simmering on some college campuses. Some Shiite students said they had faced repeated discrimination, like being formally barred by the Sunni-dominated Muslim Student Association from leading prayers. At numerous universities, Shiite students have broken away from the association, which has dozens of chapters nationwide, to form their own groups.

“A microcosm of what is happening in Iraq happened in New Jersey because people couldn’t put aside their differences,” said Sami Elmansoury, a Sunni Muslim and former vice president of the Islamic Society at Rutgers University, where there has been a sharp dispute…

Arab Human Development Report: Status of Arab Women

The latest Arab Human Development Report, fourth in a series, discusses the educational, legal, financial and cultural status of women. The report urges reforms in the status of women, including equal rights and a reinterpretation of religious jurisprudence.

Arab Development and Women’s Role

Samih Massoud (Al-Hayat)

The fourth Arab Human Development Report is part of a series of reports issued by the United Nations Development Programme and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development…

The two organizations were joined by the Arab Gulf Programme for United Nations Development Organizations since the third issue of the report series, which have been compiled and researched by independent Arab authors and advisors with diverse intellectual and cultural affiliations…

…Each of these reports dealt with a specific humanitarian development issue. The first report consisted of comprehensive and elemental treatments for the Arab humanitarian development, while the second focused on examining obstacles to the acquirement of knowledge, and the third consisted of an in-depth study of the phenomenon of the lack of freedom and good governance, seen as among the most critical and controversial topics in Arab States.

…[T]he fourth report was issued last December about ‘Women Empowerment in the Arab World’, after being postponed more than once for a whole year for reasons that so far remain unannounced.

…[According to the report,] women’s share of the total Arab work force remains low. Gender discrimination could also be seen in many venues of pubic life, where Arab women lag considerably in assuming public posts, and involvement in the decision-making process, even though a majority of Arab States have granted women their voting rights decades ago, and even though some have taken ministerial positions…

…The report also reveals that the percentage of girls enrolled in secondary school education does not exceed 80% with the exception of only four Arab States, while illiteracy affects as many as half the population of Arab women compared to a third of the male population, and which is among the highest female illiteracy figures worldwide…

Saudi Arabia: Professor Reinterprets Kingdom’s History

Saudi Writer Recasts Kingdom’s History

Faiza Saleh Ambah (Washington Post)

When university professor Khalid al-Dakhil was growing up, clergymen had a say in everything…

…How had these Wahhabi clerics come to wield so much power and authority?

After decades of research and a doctoral thesis on the history of the Wahhabi movement, Dakhil came up with an answer. The clerics had inherited their power from Wahhab. The fiery, puritanical preacher had been instrumental in catapulting the House of Saud ahead of others vying for power at the time and became an influential and trusted partner in the first Saudi state. That alliance between the ruling family and the clergy continued down the generations, with the Wahhabis eliminating all other doctrines, taking charge of education and enforcing their strict brand of Islam in mosques and schools…

Not everyone is happy to read Professor Dakhil’s conclusions:

Dakhil was allowed to publish only the first two of a set of three articles, and a rebuttal to attacks in the Saudi press on his work, before his newspaper, al-Ittihad, asked him to stop writing on the subject and then put him on indefinite leave. The paper is based in the United Arab Emirates, a close Saudi ally.

UAE: Eight Women Appointed to Advisory Council

The Federal National Council is a non-voting body. One elected woman is also serving on the council, along with those 8 women who have been appointed. Only 1% of the population was permitted to vote in the previous election. Voters were specially chosen, supposedly from a cross-section of the population. The government states that it intends to extend the voting franchise to more citizens in the future.

UAE names eight women to advisory council

(Reuters via Washington Post)

United Arab Emirates leaders have named eight women to a 40-seat advisory council, in addition to one female member elected in the Gulf state’s first elections in December, the state news agency WAM said on Sunday.

The eight women were among 20 members of Federal National Council (FNC), nominated by rulers of the Gulf emirates that make up the UAE federation.

The rest of the body, which has no legislative powers, were elected in the polls in which under one percent of the native population was allowed to vote…

Indonesia: Growing Disaster in Flood-Stricken Indonesia

340,000 flee flooded Indonesia capital

Irwan Firdaus (Associated Press via Yahoo)

Boats ferried supplies to desperate residents of Indonesia’s flood-stricken capital on Sunday as rivers burst their banks following days of rain. At least 20 people have been killed and almost 340,000 forced from their homes, officials said.

Hundreds of people scrambled to the second floors of their houses to escape the rising waters. Some found themselves trapped, while others refused to leave despite warnings that the muddy flood waters — running over 13 feet deep in places — may rise further in the coming days.

”Jakarta is now on the highest alert level,” said Sihar Simanjuntak, an official who monitors the many rivers that crisscross this city of 12 million people. ”The floods are getting worse.”

Abstinence Movement: Purity Balls

Muslims don’t have “purity balls”, but many do share the same obsession with the condition of a woman’s hymen. Curiously, there is no similar obsession with the man’s “purity” at marriage.

As for the “purity balls” where the father is the girl’s date and presents her with a a “tiny lock”, telling her he will present the key to her husband when she marries — well, that just sounds creepy.

Focusing on virginity also sexualizes girls

Betsy Hart (Chicago Sun-Times)

Years ago, a dear young friend of mine married, and at the reception, her mother-in-law commented to me how thrilled she was to have learned that her son’s new bride was a virgin.

I remember making a note to myself: Never get or share information about the ”history” of my children’s betrothed…

…Glamour magazine this month reports on the growing popularity among some evangelical Christians of ”purity balls,” apparently now the cutting edge of the teen abstinence movement. These are elaborate parties that young women and girls attend, gowns and all, with their dads. The theme is the girls’ sexual purity. The girls pledge to stay ”pure” until marriage.

At one ball, the young ladies piled flowers under a ”V” formed with swords. (At least one dad recounted how he presented his adolescent daughter with a tiny lock. The key he will give to her husband on her wedding day.)

But just like my friend’s mother-in-law commenting on the new bride’s virginity, while this is surely well-meant, I find it unsettling…

See also, the article in Glamour to which Betsy Hart is referring:

Would you pledge your virginity to your father?

It’s like a wedding but with a twist: Young women exchange rings, take vows and enjoy a first dance…with their dads.

Jennifer Baumgardner (Glamour Magazine)

Race in America: A Girl Like Me

A disturbing documentary on black self-image in America by high school student Kiri Davis.

A Girl Like Me

From ReelWorks.org

In a re-enactment of the black doll/white doll study from the 1940s originally conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark, the black children in Kiri’s film still preferred the white doll to the black doll. They indicated that the black doll is “bad” and not pretty.

The 1960s slogan “Black is Beautiful” has yet to be internalized.

I identify with the young woman who talked about how our heritage has been truncated by only knowing that we are from “Africa” but not having access to where our ancestors really from or what they believed.

Her statements made me recall sitting in a history class in junior high. The teacher asked students to discuss their ancestry.

There were students whose people hailed from France, Sweden, Germany, China – specific places with specific names. Most of the students also had some idea of exactly when and how their people had first arrived on these shores. I remember when the teacher came to me and asked where my ancestors were from. I didn’t know what to say!

“I guess I’m just from Africa.” The teacher sniffed and walked away.

It would have been nice to say “Ghana” or “Mali” or wherever. But, as with so many African Americans, that knowledge has been taken away from me.

Hamza Yusuf: The Incompetence and Ineffectiveness of the War Mongers

Below are excerpts from an interview with Sheikh Hamza Yusuf that took place in September 2006.

INTERVIEW With Sheik Hamza Yusuf

(Frontline on PBS)

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and I think that’s really what we’re dealing with here, incompetence. Both sides have been incredibly ineffective at achieving their goals – at least their stated goals…”

Israel: Lawsuit Against Segregated Buses Goes Forward

Women taking a stand to sit up front
Canadian joins group bringing segregation on buses to court in Israel

Carolynne Wheeler (Toronto Globe and Mail)

It began as a peaceful morning, with a religious woman boarding a bus just after daybreak to take her to the Old City to pray.

But Miriam Shear’s day quickly turned ugly when she was ordered by a religious man to move to the back of the bus, a common practice on many routes serving the religious population.

Ms. Shear, a 50-year-old Toronto-area resident who was in Israel that November day for religious study, refused politely when he demanded her seat, pointing to several others nearby. He yelled and spat on her. Incensed, she spat back. In the 20-minute scuffle that followed, which was joined by four other men, she was slapped, pushed out of her seat and onto the floor, beaten and kicked; her hair covering fell off, a great shame for a married religious woman, and she suffered bruising to her cheek…

Related posts at:

Israel: Woman Kicked and Punched for Refusing to Move to the Back of the Bus

and

Israel: The Bleach Underground

Bassam Aramin: Co-Founder Combatants for Peace

Bereaved activist renews peace call

Martin Patience (BBC News)

A Palestinian peace activist whose 10-year-old daughter was killed during a clash between Israeli police and stone-throwing Palestinians says his daughters death will not stop him from working with Israelis to promote peace.

Related post: Former Enemies Now Combatants for Peace