Women? What women?
The PBS documentary show Frontline did a special on the Egyptian revolution last night, the first part on the events overall, the second part on the Muslim Brotherhood.
The second part was reported by Charles Sennott. He was on Fresh Air last week, talking about the same subject. I thought the Frontline piece was abysmal. Interesting, to be sure, and informative in its way, but abysmal. He never so much as mentioned women. Not a word. He didn’t mention the implications of a political movement that is a “brotherhood”; he didn’t mention women’s rights; he didn’t mention women in Egypt; he didn’t mention hijab; he didn’t even mention women, period.
Hello? Hello hello hello hello? Is anybody listening? I’m not talking about some tiny group of people after all, I’m talking about half of humanity. Sennott went on for half an hour about the MB, much of it in a fairly approving vein, without ever even mentioning how Islamists view women’s rights.
It was much the same on Fresh Air: lots of cuddly talk about how hip the MB yoof are and how cool it all is and how different the yoof are from the “sclerotic” oldies. But there at least Terry Gross did manage to ask him about women’s rights, so he was forced to admit that yes, the MB does believe in segregation of the sexes and yes it does ultimately want sharia. Gross didn’t press him on that, unfortunately, but she did at least mention it. Frontline, on the other hand – not a god damn word.
That’s pathetic.
I have just finished Ibn Warraq’s piece entitled “Islam, Middle East and Fascism.” It is very troubling, but it also makes it very clear that there is nowhere in Islam where women are accorded rights. He points out that some Muslim feminists pretend that the “‘real Koran’ is progressive towards women,” but he points out that it is a totalitarian construct which governs “every single aspect of an individual’s life from the way he or she urinates and defecates, the way he/whe eats, dresses, works, marries, makes love, thinks on every conceivable subject.”
He goes on to point out that the “rationalising” (!) tendency in Islam, according to the theology of the Mu’tazilites, held that those who rejected their doctrines should be assassinated, and advocated jihad in every region where their doctrine was not in the ascendant.
Mona Eltahawy in the New Humanist (which you link to) tells us not to worry: “Egyptians will get it right.” Well, pardon me for not being reassured. I am reminded that Plato thought, not unjustly, that “democracy” was a step before tyranny. How does Ms Eltahawy know that they’ll get it right? There’s a lot of history to overcome, and a lot of irrationality too. And Islam is only one of the hurdles.
There is a point about Islam that a lot of people miss, and it is important. The idea that you can point to the majority of Muslims and say, “See, most of them are peace loving,” is misleading. For according to Warraq, expansionist jihad is a collective duty, and this duty is fulfilled “if a sufficient number of people take part in it. If this is not the case, the case, the whole umma … is sinning.” (It is not clear where this quote comes from in Warraq’s text.) And in jihad, terror is the first order of business, and then those who have not been slaughtered may be disposed by the imam as seems best to him, whether as slaves or as dhimmis. This is a troubling religion, for anyone who is not Muslim, and then, of course, for Muslim women, or for any women who may be considered as booty of those who carry on jihad. To suppose that these things have not been said is a very foolish thing, and we are supposing this too often. It is very hard to make this religion seem worse than its own words make it.
Male dominance as a natural state of affairs is so deeply entrenched in many socieities, ours as well, that it is invisible to even civilized males. A tribal vestige that need to be eradicated.
Look, Benson, why can’t you females get it into your tiny minds? You’re a minority. Course you are, ’cause we sexist chauvinist bastards don’t see you (‘cept to look at ho ho) and don’t think about you (‘cept as, well, you know, nice legs and all that) and don’t need you (‘cept for a nice bit of hanky-panky and shut up complaining you’re gettin’ it aren’t you and wot’s all the fuss about?). In fact you’re invisible, as ordered – ‘cept when we want you to be there, and you’d better be or else. Simple, reelly. Why don’t you ged it?
But you see, the important thing is that they demonstrated how enlightened and non-Islamophobic they are.
I think, Eric, that Islam makes very clear what has often been said: that as long as there is a written tradition moderates will never really win. As often as apologists point to muslim societies that appear to be trying to improve the lot of women, one can point to brand new examples of all the horrors which men (i.e. men) justify by the Koran and the hadiths. And just recently we have seen that Catholicism fares no better, and for that matter, even the nice old C of E seems to be going on the warpath. And whatever they say, it is all down to their bloody (i.e. bloody) scriptures. The moderates belong, too, so they can’t really argue, can they?
And another thing, those Egyptian women aren’t really people, cuz you can’t see their faces. They’re just sort of like cattle, not like our good Merkin women who will get all sassy and in-your-face when you disrespect them.
And Locutus is right: “male dominance… is invisible to even civilized males”, though I would say, that because of the unconscious assumptions held by even civilised males, women as humanity are still invisible – or at least only dimly to be discerned.
And (sorry about all this) to amplify Hamilton’s point, you can’t see women’s faces SO THAT they aren’t people (excuse grammar), because the thought of women actually being people has to be hidden away – a very long way away – ‘cos otherwise we chauvinist bastards will be confronted with our internal conflicts and inadequacies, and we can’t have that, now, can we?
I think that a very large area of religion is occupied by male inadequacy, or fear of inadequacy, or fear of admitting to being not absolutely adequate. Machismo, anybody…?
I like Mona Eltahawy, but I too don’t know how she knows “Egypt will get it right.” That’s what the non-Islamist revolutionaries in Iran thought, too, right up until they were eliminated.
I hope Egypt will get it right, but I don’t think pretending the MB is benign will be helpful.
Egypt happened before, almost exactly the same events back in 1977. Don’t believe me? See this 15 min clip of a 60 minutes documentary way back in 1977. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7316962n
As animals, we react to this stimulus or that, and our reactions are partly conditioned on what we have learnt about the world in our formative years. And we are very good at seizing opportunities and solving practical problems. But reason is a wholly different ball-game. It is a much higher faculty, because it divorces us from our early influences and makes us look at them from another perspective: and the use of that faculty has to be learnt. The question is, how much opportunity does a traditional society have to engage and develop that faculty? Egypt is a very traditional society. Is it possible for its people to allow themselves to think (or attempt to think) clearly, irrespective of all the teachings of their traditions?
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LinkTV *did* run a doc on Shayfeen — twice — in the last week
Perhaps there’s a key here. The accommodationists want us to shut up and the “civilised” want us to .. well, shut up. They all fear for the “traditional ways” of (not actually) thinking. So they all want lots of people to be like specimens in a zoo (Example of Traditional Aborigine, Example of Traditional Iraqi…), and they don’t want anybody to be free of THEIR WAYS OF KNOWING. ‘Cause they know. So nobody can be free till they give their assent. Sorry, off topic; just can’t help it.
How do you talk about the MB without mentioning women???? Even in Egypt, where the MB is relatively moderate (and even has flashes of liberalism), there’s a nasty anti-women streak in at least a significant if not an outright majority of its leaders and members. Hopefully the non-theocratic wing wins out (although that hope hasn’t won out with the American theocrats) but ignoring the theocratic wing doesn’t make it go away!
Where are the women of Egypt? Not all veiled or hidden by any means. Salma el Tarzi is the focus of an excellent piece of TV reporting by Mark Corcoran at http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/s3136526.htm
Should be downloadable soon; for those with the bandwidth & capacity – which sadly does not include me.
There you go again, demanding “special rights” for your tiny minority.
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I keep telling liberals this, too. Nobody in Egypt is agitating for women to vote.
To be fair, though, the American cultural revolution in the ’60s was almost as unconcerned with women. And look at us now!
:D
But didn’t Sennott’s Fresh Air anecdote about that one time he saw one young Egyptian man who was willing to speak in a friendly way to one young woman just warm the cockles of your heart?
Ha! Yes, the whole interview was totally heart-warming.
In fact it sounded like something out of the 60s – all that drooling about the youth (he meant young men, but is too stupid even to realize that’s what he meant) and the generation gap, as if young males were automatically progressive and right on.
Yahzi – yes – but women in the 60s American cultural revolution weren’t segregated!