Never in the history of Islam have women
The joys of sharia again.
Islamic authorities in the northern Nigerian city of Kano have told organisers of a planned protest by divorced women to cancel the event. The head of the Sharia police, or Hisbah, said the planned protest was an “embarrassment”, and is “un-Islamic”…Women’s rights activists say divorced women are often thrown out of their homes, lose custody of their children, and many end up destitute. The Director General of the Hisbah…said the idea of street protests was “un-Islamic” and “morally wrong”. “Never in the history of Islam have women taken to the street to press for their demands,” he said.
Well of course they haven’t, because they haven’t been allowed to, but that is not a reason for continuing to not allow them to. It’s just a long history of oppression and coercion, which is not the same thing as a reason.
The Hisbah are in charge of policing the morals of Muslims to make sure they are “Sharia-compliant”…One of their duties is to reconcile quarrelling spouses and prevent divorce. But divorce in polygamous northern Nigeria is very common.
That is, the dumping of unwanted women by men in polygamous northern Nigeria is very common; the dumping of unwanted women who are thrown out of their homes and left destitute and without their children. But sharia forbids women to protest this, and the Hisbah are in charge of forcing all Muslims to be ‘Sharia-compliant’. It’s a nice racket for the men, not so nice for the women. Ho hum.
There’s nothing worse than the alliance of totalitarian religion and pig-headed conservatism.
In southern Africa, the usual story in mining towns is that men come from the villages looking for work in the mines. When the wives hear nothing for six months or a year they come down to look for the husband, and find he has a job and a new 12-year-old wife, and the first wife and children are left destitute.
We met a woman who was organising to help these women get training and work. She had left RSA with her activist husband to escape state murder in the apartheid era, and had eventually come to Australia. On a visit back she saw this situation in a mining township, seeing the women gambling in the footpath for a few cents to try and get bread for the kids when they came from school. She asked a few of them if they wanted to help fix the situation, and a hundred or so turned up to the meeting.
She walked into a white area, rang at the gates to ask for help; sewing stuff and fabrics for the women to make clothes for sale. One of the first homes she came to the ‘boer lady’ asked her what her story was, and told her to come back later. She had no great hopes.
When she came back, the lady had a bakkie (pickup truck) loaded with sewing machines, fabrics and used clothes. She had called her friends, they were all right there with what they could bring. The (black) woman who started this was shaken at the actions of the women who she thought of as rich, racist and inhuman.
This continues. The lady who founded it showed us photos of the centre they established, the women with the clothes they made and the children whose mothers had gained work and hope. She took a seatainer of gear from Australia back to do it again in another mining town.
THe greater act was the entrepreneurial action of the woman activist who founded it, but it was made effective by the free giving of church women – including women of the church that apartheid was rooted in.
Thanks for that Cris what a great story.
How about some names, Chris? There’s no need for anonymity, surely, and if I can find anything online I could put it in Flashback.
street protests was “un-Islamic” and “morally wrong”.
I would have thought that protesting for one’s rights was a very moralistic thing.
“un-Islamic”
What a load of pappekak!
Yeah, though, on reflection, when one thinks about it -exerting one’s rights would be very un-Islamic.
I will try to find the woman’s name and that of her project from our old church. We met her about 5 years ago and saw the slide show of the people there.