The bliss of harmony
The beauty and compassion of religion:
A new family law in Mali is causing a furore, partly because it no longer stipulates that wives have to obey their husbands…[Article 312] says that, once married, husbands and wives owe each other “loyalty, protection, help and assistance”. Mali’s current law specifically states that a wife must obey her husband, and that is the way things should stay says Mahmud Dicko, president of Mali’s High Islamic Council.
You bet – because that has to be a matter of national law so that if a wife is disobedient she can be arrested, charged, and imprisoned (or do they whip them?).
“We’re not trying to make women slaves. Not at all,” he says. “It’s just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him. It’s like that to create harmony.”
No – it’s like that to create a situation in which everyone in a family has to obey ‘the man’ – which in other contexts is recognized as inequality and tyranny rather than harmony.
Hadja Safiatou Dembele, president of the National Union of Muslim Women’s Associations (NUMWA), says the Koran is clear that a wife has the obligation to listen to her husband. “A man must protect his wife. A wife must obey her husband,” she says. “It’s a tiny minority of woman here who want this new law; the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country, the real Muslims, are against it.”
And of course laws that illiterate people prefer are obviously much better than laws that intellectuals think are a good idea. God damn intellectuals – they should all be smothered.
But it’s no good complaining, there were giant protests and Mali’s imams made a big fuss and that’s that. No women’s rights for Mali! No pesky secular government for Mali! No sirree. That would be too modern and intellectual and unIslamic.
“It’s just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him. It’s like that to create harmony.”
No, you can’t have harmony when only one person’s singing.
The Real Muslims. . . the poor and illiterate women are the Real Muslims. Nothing like appeals to the Real X’s, especially if they are poor and illiterate and powerless and are legally bound to obey their husbands. I’m sure the Real X’s wear their Real-hood in solidarity.
This sounds horribly familiar. I wonder if Real Muslims are affiliated with the Real Americans?
I just gave a frustrated, forehead-slapping chuckle when I read that. He’s basically saying, “The women who are kept ignorant by our oppressive laws are too ignorant to oppose our oppressive laws. So it’s all good! Good Muslims are dumb Muslims!”
Oh, and the link you posted is wrong. ;)
Claire, perhaps there’s a rule that Real X’s are always (1) largely nonexistent (you can always find something about someone’s identity to show they’re not a Real X), (2) bigoted, and (3)happy to accept their own oppression so long as they have the fun of bullying the heathens? No matter what “X” is.
I just had the pleasure of someone today telling me that Sarah Palin is a real woman. Presumably women who don’t like her are fake, or something.
“I’m not racist, but…”
“I’m an atheist, but…”
“We’re not trying to make women slaves… It’s just…”
Same thing, different context.
Well, the prophet was illiterate so only real Musims should be too……hang on, there’s something wrong with that…….
Cheap shot time:
Dicko – well named.
Remember, kids, when you can’t think of a good reason, claim it’s God’s will.
Good one Cody! :-)
What amazes me is how thick and fast these stories are coming at us, one after the other, without intermission. Whipping for drinking beer, whipping for wearing trousers, acid for going to school, a ‘rape your wife’ clause as a vote getting tactic, etc. etc. Really, the religion revealed by these things is primitive, cruel, and an offence to humanity. And yet we have Ziauddin Sardar telling us in the Guardian that the whole problem is in the translation of the Koran. If we would just read it in the Arabic we’d see how enlightened it really is, how concerned for human values it is, how modestly encouraging it is, and so on. The Koran even gives people the right to dissent from its teachings! Of course, you go to hell and all that if you do, and believers are likely to treat you as someone who deserves that, but, it provides for all the freedom your heart could desire. And just a few days ago we were favoured to Nesrine Malik’s idea that we need to see the faces behind the burqa – though she didn’t tell us how we were to do this. Well, here they are, all crying out to be allowed to remain subservient to men. Now we understand. Really, religion is getting so tiresome. Time to change the channel.
Actually, what amazes me is that these stories are coming at us at all. None of the headline-grabbing “faith-based initiatives” of recent years represent new phenomena – but now they are actually reported on and decried by decent people and defended by apologists, where before they proceeded with little or no notice or comment from outside the insular little worlds that hierarchal religions exist to generate and enforce. I think the time for religion’s free pass is over, which is why the forces of oppression are trying so very hard to institutionalize their protected status with “hate speech” and blasphemy laws. They didn’t used to need those protections because they weren’t being challenged.
Yes, it’s all very depressing to read about every day; but I think the very fact that we are reading about it (instead of just being vaguely aware that bad things are probably happening somewhere out there – but not here, ironic thanks to God!) is a sign that more and more people around the world are and want to be liberated from religious oppression. While some of the oppressed have always resisted oppression, the very nature of institutionalized majoritarian power makes it somewhere between difficult and impossible to overcome without allies from outside the oppressed class. The very fact that the struggles of the oppressed are regular news indicates the extent to which the oppressed already have outside allies, and bodes well for them gaining more.
Oh, I hope you’re right, G. I confess I feel much more dismal, what with the left’s abandonment of defending women, the poor, and gays against theocracies (in other countries, at least).
Yeah – I think G has a point. There is a lot of coverage of this stuff – though it’s also just much easier to collect it and be aware of it now because of this here internet thingy. As Humera Khan so wisely said – sheik google. Yes indeed: hooray for sheik google.
It is an interesting experience to visit Tombouctou (‘Timbuctoo’) using Google Earth. Surprisingly, although Islam is the majority religion in Mali, 9% of the population adhere to ‘indigenous beliefs’.
I may be wrong, but there seems to be no great rush of westerners seeking to emigrate to Mali, or any other Islamic country for that matter. Quite the reverse.
Though it would appear that Muslims go west seeking a better material life, it would be interesting to know how many are attracted by the liberalism of the West, as against whatever number repelled by it.
But to my mind, whichever way you look at it, it says that The Enlightenment has won. ‘Go west, young believer’ would seem to be pretty common advice.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ml.html#top