Sisterhood is powerful
I love it when women push back against exclusion and demand their rights, don’t you?
Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida’s refusal to include – or at least acknowledge – women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam. In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters. His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists.
Well I should think so. The nerve of that guy! A woman’s role is limited to house and children, indeed – doesn’t he know it’s the 21st century?! Jeez – wake up, dude, we got past that awhile ago. Women can do anything! Free to be you and me! Our bodies ourselves – our bodies belong to us and we can blow them up just as well as men can. We probably do it better – we’re better at planning and patience, you know.
“A lot of the girls I speak to … want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression,” said Huda Naim, a prominent women’s leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. “We don’t have a special militant wing for women … but that doesn’t mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad.”
All right! Way to go Hamas, not stripping women of their right to explode themselves and others. Solidarity forever.
Mr. Al-Zawahri’s remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida’s attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large.
Uh…so it comes as a newsflash to these women that al-Qaida isn’t really a feminist outfit? Have they been paying full attention?
On the other hand, noted SITE director Ms. Katz, Mr. al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.
Well quite. This is what I’m saying. Many al-Qaida supporters do not believe women should drive cars, or have jobs, or get medical attention when ill, or refuse to marry when told to, or leave the house. Playing a military role kind of fits into that larger picture, if you see what I mean.
Mr. Al-Zawahri’s stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. air strike…“I say to you…[I have] tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favourite wife’s chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling,” he wrote in a 2005 letter.
Oh…that’s a shame. So sad that it wasn’t his least favourite wife instead. Poor guy.
Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called “al-Khansaa”…has popped up online…Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August if 2004 with the lead article “Biography of the Female Mujahedeen.”
Excellent! Kind of Sex and the City for the abaya set.
Can someone help me here – what aspect of human psychology is on display in this case?
I was once reduced to spluttering incredulity by a newspaper article about a young lesbain woman who joined a fundamentalist Christian sect, and was astonished to find that they were anti-gay. Now who’d have thunk it!
I have to second Amos what a smashing piece of ridicule that was O.B.
Just add another K. From now on it will have to be Kinder, Kirche, Küche, und Kämpfe – Die Fahne hoch! What’s not to like about that?
Women fighting for equal chance at defending their inequality. Amazing.
Women who got involved in 60’s radical movements found they were expected to take on the role as handmaidens to the revolutionary boys, and from this 70’s feminism was born. So I’d be hopeful about this new trend. From consciousness raising and encounter groups among the suicide bomb deprived may arise a new wave of islamo-feminism.
Ah ah ah, JoB, naughty – you changed the wording and thus the meaning – Rosie said “from this 70’s feminism was born” – meaning, from the staggeringly reactionary attitudes of the 60s New Left.
Mind you, I find myself quite reluctant to welcome feminist jihadists into the club, unless they do a really thorough Ed Hussain.
This is one of those situations where the word ‘irony’ seems somehow inadequate. A lot of people mistake ironic situations for something unfortunate, or a paradox.
The story you highlight is the exact opposite of this, it’s hyper-irony, Irony+(tm), irony with added vitamins and ginseng extract. It is what marketing people would come up with if they thought that the definition of irony needed some kind of a poster child, a case-study that let people know what 21st century irony was all about.
OB, naughty indeed, and I´m a-caughty. Rosie, you say, & I thought the player was male, you see, this gender stuff´s really not working anymore.
I don´t know Ed Hussain but I like him already. I´m an optimist; I believe it is in everybody´s power to do an Ed, & some feminism sure will not hurt.
Yes, true – Ayaan Hirsi Ali did an Ed herself, or perhaps I should say Ed did an Ayaan since she got there first. I too think it’s in everyone’s power, and I strenuously hope everyone hurries up about it.
I’m not usually much of an optimist, but I have to admit I have some rather wild hopes that a President Obama will cause various attitudes to shift. A US president with family in Kenya – how can that possibly fail to shift things?
Take a look at Rosie’s blog, it’s a good one!
OB,
Better hurry, yes, definitely, we have all the time in the world to wait once we get there.
Barack, hmm, I´m rooting but I´d be as happy as can if he stopped all of this shiftin´ his predecessor began.
Gimme a link, will ya?
See, postmodernists? Equality IS a universal desire!
yet they have not comprehended the exclusion of women from islam, except as exponents of Kinder, Kirche, Küche.
Well, because for them “Islam” isn’t so much about what’s actually in the Quran as it is about a tribal identity. And they think Al Qaeda is defending that tribal group, and they want an equal share in it. Understandably enough, I suppose.
Janavir. You seem to read the Qu’ran is a very different way to the way that I read it. There, women come off second best every time. Paradise is a place where men are served by houris (or is this just a reference to a specially delicious kind of grape?), remember. What do women get? And also, don’t forget, most people seem to end up with renewable skin that keeps being burnt off only to regenerate again so they can suffer the torment of burning all over again. Something like the priest’s description of hell in James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’, where the fire has this quality, though it burns tormentingly forever, it does not consume. Actually, what’s in the Qu’ran is about tribal identity, just like the Bible, and most other religious books. That’s when they were written, for Christ’s sake!
I watched a programme on telly two nights ago – it was about the Mujahedeen in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Not once (for one whole hour) did I see to the forefront a woman. There was a fleeting moment whereby the cameras caught sight of a bunch of them sitting with children on a big mat (on their haunches) in the background. The absence of women – as the cameras took the viewer into two countries – was terribly eerie. It was as if someone back to centuries past had transported one. A man was very distraught about the disappearance of his son. He kept mentioning how sad it was for him as a father. There was not an ounce of thought given to what the mother may have thought of her vanished son. It was a real eye-opener.
“Ah ah ah, JoB, naughty – you changed the wording and thus the meaning”
Naughty! I thought that would be a felony on this site.
Slogans for these doubly oppressed women:-
Make jihad, not jam
Bear bombs, not babies
“Slogans for these doubly oppressed women:-“
Revisited:
Make Trouble, not tripe
Bear B&W burdens, not bunions