MEENA (1956-1987) was born on February 27, 1956 in Kabul. During her school days, students in Kabul and other Afghan cities were deeply engaged in social activism and rising mass movements. She left the university to devote herself as a social activist to organizing and educating women. In pursuit of her cause for gaining the right of freedom of expression and conducting political activities, Meena laid the foundation of RAWA in 1977. This organization was meant to give voice to the deprived and silenced women of Afghanistan. She started a campaign against the Russian forces and their puppet regime in 1979 and organized numerous processions and meetings in schools, colleges and Kabul University to mobilize public opinion. Another great service rendered by her for the Afghan women is the launching of a bilingual magazine, Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message) in 1981. Through this magazine RAWA has been projecting the cause of Afghan women boldly and effectively. Payam-e-Zan has constantly exposed the criminal nature of fundamentalist groups. Meena also established Watan Schools for refugee children, a hospital and handicraft centers for refugee women in Pakistan to support Afghan women financially. At the end of 1981, by invitation of the French Government Meena represented the Afghan resistance movement at the French Socialist Party Congress. The Soviet delegation at the Congress, headed by Boris Ponamaryev, shamefacedly left the hall as participants cheered when Meena started waving a victory sign. Besides France, she also visited several other European countries and met their prominent personalities. Her active social work and effective advocacy against the views of the fundamentalists and the puppet regime provoked the wrath of the Russians and the fundamentalist forces alike and she was assassinated by agents of KHAD (Afghanistan branch of KGB) and their fundamentalist accomplices in Quetta, Pakistan, on February 4,1987.Meena gave 12 years of her short but brilliant life to struggle for her homeland and her people. She had a strong belief that despite the darkness of illiteracy, ignorance of fundamentalism, and corruption and decadence of sell outs imposed on our women under the name of freedom and equality, finally that half of population will be awaken and cross the path towards freedom, democracy and women's rights. The enemy was rightly shivering with fear by the love and respect that Meena was creating within the hearts of our people. They knew that within the fire of her fights all the enemies of freedom, democracy and women would be turned to ashes.

For all women, hijab (the veil) universally and unquestionably signifies subjugation and servitude. It is so everywhere and in every case. It is argued that there are some adult women in Europe who 'choose' to wear the hijab. This is a seemingly sound 'legal' argument. In real life, however, few veiled adult women ever get to taste any degree of freedom of choice in any respect of family, married and social life, be it in clothing, social life, behaviour, or even a simple thing like food. Few adult hijab-wearing women have not experienced the fear and terror of Islamic environments hanging over their lives. They are not citizens with freedom of choice but human beings fearful of jack knives, deprived of social rights, subjugated, and alienated by the atmosphere of terror existing in Islamic patriarchal environments. Under such conditions, speaking of 'volition' or 'free choice' in dress is a travesty of these concepts. Choosing the hijab as a mode of dress by adult women is no more 'voluntary' than, for instance, the 'choice' to stay in family relations that abound in terror and torture. In fact, in today's world, the concepts of volition and choice have clear, comprehensible meanings. They can hardly be interpreted arbitrarily. However, these clear concepts are easily made obscure when it comes to the rights of women living in Islamic environments due to concessions made to religion and racism towards those born into Islamic environments.

It is not hard to understand the reason why women living in Islamic environments surrender. In Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Somalia where honour killings are daily threats to women's lives, speaking of choice in dress is an offensive joke. In Islamic environments where even women's breathing is measured, there are some adult hijab-wearing women who stop attempting to bring about change. 'Choice', or, more precisely, surrender, can be understood by reviewing the deprived childhood and adolescence of these women. They have simply surrendered in order to 'survive'. We know surrendered human beings want dignity to survive. They need to make themselves and others believe that they have some control over some corner of their lives. They 'deceive' themselves in order to be able to cope with the limitations. 'Voluntary hijab' of adult women is supposed to provide a sense of control over something in their life, as well as give a little self-confidence.

In fact, the surrendered justify their captivity and slavery and portray it as logical and tolerable in order to gain some respect in their lives. It is here that some racists take snap shots of the 'high' status of these victims, share in the victims' self-deception, justify their servitude and theorize this justification through cultural relativism. They say that the hijab is the 'free choice' of these women. This choice is made as 'freely' as the choice made by a European woman to remain in an abusive relationship! Legally, this choice is as legitimate as the choice and freedom to remain in a sadistic relationship!

Child Hijab

The veiling of children is another matter all together. It is where discrimination and force are imposed on children. It is where society, the family, and adults attack children. The veiling of children must be declared illegal all over the world as a form of violence against children. Children do not have any type of 'voluntary' or 'compulsory' hijab. The deprivation of under-age girls from freedom of comfortable, prevalent, nice-looking clothing, despite any justification to the contrary, must be forbidden just as it is prohibited to cover their mouths, cuff their hands or blindfold their eyes. The former should be prohibited with the clarity of the latter. If one's conscience, public opinion or a 'contemporary' state categorically rejects the idea of allowing a group of young girls being paraded around one part of town with their eyes blindfolded, their hands cuffed, and their mouths duct-taped, then they should categorically not tolerate child veiling either. However, we have seen, and continue to see, that this is not the case. We have seen, and continue to see, how Western states like Sweden, Canada, Britain, and Germany have for years watched such parades without moving an eyelid. For such 'modern' states, the girls being paraded under the shroud of hijab, prior to being human beings and citizens, are 'immigrants', 'foreigners', 'outsiders'. They measure the rights of these 'immigrants', even if they are residents and citizens, with the yardsticks of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Their rights are not covered by international conventions pertaining to human rights, women's rights, children's rights, elderly rights, criminals' rights and civil rights. Their basic rights are conditional to the religion, ethnicity, and traditions of their family and place of birth. And they call this sickening hypocrisy 'respect for all cultures'. Cultural relativism is thus a practical platform for discriminating against girls and women. It leaves the life, education, and health of girls at the mercy of religious families, religious schools, and the ethnocentric values of the father. They have no belief in the universality of the rights of children or human beings. They are racist!

The veil is not just another kind of clothing; opposing it is not just defending the right to freedom of clothing even though it is put forward as such. It is not something that a woman decides to put on for a change one day and to take it off the next. It is not a costume put on a young girl who is going to a costume party! Veiling young girls teaches them that they belong to an inferior sex and should be ashamed, and that they are sex objects and must limit their physical movements. By the same token, young boys are taught they belong to the 'superior' sex, and that girls are inferior and sex objects. An unbridgeable gap is thus created and institutionalized between the two sexes at the expense of young girls' deprivation and young boys' 'empowerment'. That is when the license for violence against women is issued. This marks the beginning of 'sexual apartheid', the official subjugation of women during childhood and the nipping in the bud their potentialities to enjoy a happy, creative life. It marks the beginning of the process of making two unequal sexes out of two born-equal ones. This is the beginning of human alienation. The goal is to produce two 'deformed' sexes, i.e. superior and inferior, master and slave, bread-winner and dependent, strong and weak. Much more than an item of clothing, the hijab is a decree of prohibition enforced on young girls; it is a series of laws, threats and tools designed to subjugate and enslave them.

Child hijab is an extreme form of violence against children:
* Children are deprived of sports and movement.
* Girls are transformed into sex objects from the age of nine. Their 'coming of age' is celebrated and they are virtually prepared for all sorts of sexual abuse.
* They are robbed of their self-respect, self-esteem, ambitions, aspirations, and sexuality.
* They begin to see boys as inherently 'dangerous', rapists and cruel.
* They are deprived of the right to freely socialise with boys and are perceived by boys as sex objects, weak, ignorant, wrongdoers who must be put under men's guardianship.
* They are denied music, dancing, and skipping around, of practically all sports, and of certain fields.
* Their freedom of personal taste is denied and divided into sacred and profane.

In a nutshell, child veiling is a system of brainwashing girls and boys; it is a tool to marginalise half of society's children. It aims to alienate the two sexes. It must be eliminated.

The Hijab and Honour Killings in the 'West'

Western governments have paid so much 'respect' to the violations of girls' and women's rights in Islamic environments in their countries, that their contemporary and progressive societies have become 'unsafe' and slaughterhouses for a large number of girls and caused alarm among people. We know that they would continue to portray their society as 'safe' were there not progressive activists from protest campaigns opposing these atrocities.

The honour killings of young girls are not accidental. They are the natural product of the imposition of the hijab over the lives of young girls and boys in Islamic environments. One cannot be outraged by honour killings and at the same time ignore the roots and cause of these atrocities. Every decent person who reads about the tragic lives of Fadime, Sarah, Pela, and tens of other young girls will undoubtedly search for the cause. Islamic violence occurring in the centre of the 'civilised' West is no accident. These atrocities are not the result of desperation, poverty or addiction. These murders are official Islamic sentences for 'disobedient' women. If a father, brother and husband do not kill their 'wanton' daughter, wife, and sister, they will be stripped of their 'honour'. These are what they put in the heads of young innocent girls in Islamic schools and with the veil.

There is only one way to stop these atrocities. By giving them real protection, the killing of children and young girls in Islamic environments can be opposed. It is only by rescuing their lives, freedom, and education from the influences of Islamic environments that these tragedies can be efficiently prevented. This protection should undoubtedly begin with prohibiting child veiling. Children's rights as human rights are universal and must be applied to Islamic environments as well.

It is five years now that the communists from Iran and Iraq have been saying that something must be done! Children and girls in Islamic environments must be helped. They must be able to enjoy the same rights as other children and women. We have said that the veiling of children and under-age girls must be prohibited. Religious schools, which are the centres for teaching inequality between sexes, misogyny, discrimination, violence, and so on, must be closed. Mansoor Hekmat wrote extensively about the prohibition of child veiling five years ago (Islam, Children's Rights and Hejab-gate, June 1997). If it is not right to deprive 'Mike' and 'Helen' from a life in which the two sexes freely mingle and socialise, and if it is not right to send them to religious schools, then it is not right to do so with 'Mohammad' and 'Nahid' who are born in an Islamic environment! If it is wrong to cover 'Rosa' or 'Julia' from head to toe in a shroud-like, dark piece of cloth called the hijab, then it is equally wrong to do so with 'Shahin' or 'Maliha'. If it is prohibited to teach children violence, inequality, and patriarchal ideas in schools, then Islamic schools must be eliminated. Understanding these objective truths about the equality of human beings irrespective of sex, race, religion and nationality in the 'centre of civilisation' is being reached at the expense of the rights tens of girls in Britain, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Canada.

'Immigrant' children and young girls are daily struggling for their rights as equal citizens. These rights, including the right to the freedom of clothing and socialising with members of the opposite sex, must be taken for granted like the right to breathing is. These rights cannot be taken away from a Swedish, German or British girl; it must be made impossible to do so in the case of those born children and girls born into Islamic environments

Kilde.

Burka:  

Khimar:  

Tørklæde:

(hvis jeg har misforstået forskellen, må I altså meget gerne skrive til mig og rette mig)

I hvert tilfælde er et tørklæde ikke en burka og heller ikke en khimar – et tørklæde er et tørklæde og du kan stadig se personen – det er noget af det afgørende for mig – og så selvfølgelig friheden. Et tørklæde er i langt de fleste tilfælde et frivilligt valg – men kan man sige det samme hvis vi lovgiver mod tørklæder? Handler det så stadig om et frit valg? Er vi så ikke bare røget over i den modsatte grøft, hvor vi fratager nogen det frie valg, fordi andre mener at vide hvad der er bedst og mest korrekt for alle? Nej – jeg mener stadig at ”kvinder for frihed” bør gentænke deres navn. De ønsker jo ikke frihed, de ønsker at få lov at tilpasse kvinder i deres eget billede af hvad en fri kvinde er. Men de glemmer at så er friheden jo forsvundet. Friheden består i muligheden for at træffe et valg. Det handler om muligheden for at kunne være anderledes, men selvfølgelig også om muligheden for at være som andre. Det er blot ikke længere en mulighed, et frit valg, hvis der bliver lovgivet om hvorvidt man må bærer tørklæde eller ej.

Og hvordan så med tørklædeklædte dommere?

Jeg synes godt vi kan stille krav til dommeres påklædning. Men ikke til hvorvidt de har et tørklæde på eller ej. Lav i stedet en ”uniform” hvori tørklædet indgår – så kan jeg ikke se der er problemer. Det vigtige er at man kan se ansigtet. Håret er ligegyldigt. Skaldede må vel også være dommere? Og kan man så være neutral når man har et tørklæde på? Ja da. Eller nej, for kan nogen være 100 % neutrale? En person der er født og vokset op i DK (med eller uden tørklæde) er jo heller ikke neutral, vi er jo alle påvirket af vores opvækst, samfund og omgivelser. Vi har alle en kulturarv og samfundsarv, som gør at vi ikke er neutrale. Men det diskvalificere os jo ikke i at være dommere. Det er ikke hvem som helst der bliver udpeget til dommere. At blive udpeget handler ikke om religion, men om kvalifikationer. Og derfor mener jeg det er absurd at tale om at dommere ikke må bære tørklæde.

Men det er desværre et faktum at det er et stort problem blandt muslimer. Hvor stort et problem er svært at sige, men foregår det i bare én familie er problemet for stort.

Jeg faldt over disse videoer på imam Suhaib Webbs blog. Må Allah belønne ham og de folk der står bag videoerne. En trist, sørgelig og desværre ikke urealistisk historie om en ung kvinde der tvinges til at gifte sig med en hun ikke elsker. Historien har en tragisk afslutning, der burde få os som muslimer til at reflektere over den situation mange unge muslimer befinder sig i.

A Walk in the Park [1 of 2]

A walk in the Park[2 of 2]

Må Allah hjælpe alle de kvinder (og mænd) der oplever noget så forfærdeligt som et tvangsægteskab.

Historien rejser en række spørgsmål, som, om Allah vil, vil blive diskuteret senere.

Racisme blandt muslimer?

Kvindeundertrykkelse, vold og tvangsægteskaber hos muslimer?

Er mellemøstlig kultur problematisk?

Baghdad: Efter fem års blodig konflikt, mister flere og flere unge irakere troen på religion. Den endeløse religiøse fanatisme og vold, har gjort dem skeptiske overfor religiøse autoriteters budskaber. Flere unge, fra alle samfundets lag, bebrejder de gejstlige for den stigende vold og de personlige begrænsninger på befolkningens frihed.

Sara Sami, en gymnasieelev fra Basra udtaler:

"Jeg hader islam og præsterne fordi de begrænser vores frihed hver dag. Deres påbud hviler tungt over os. De fleste piger fra skolen hader islamisternes kontrol af autoriteterne, fordi den er ufortjent."  

Atheer, en 19-årig dreng fra Baghdad fortæller:

"De religiøse mænd er løgnere. Unge mennesker tror ikke på dem. Fyre i min alder er ikke interesseret i religion længere."

En 24-årig kvindelig universitetsstuderende indrømmer:

"Jeg plejede at elske Osama Bin Laden, nu hader jeg islam! Al Qaeda og Mahdi Hæren spreder had. Folk bliver dræbt uden mening."

Læs den dybdeborende journalistik hos International Herald Tribune.

Dubai: "Support Denmark, defend freedom" lyder de nye toner. I anledning af Kvindernes Internationale Kampdag, har arabiske medier lanceret et fremstød imod den intellektuelle terrorisme, praktiseret af fundamentalistiske islamiske grupper.

Læs den positive feel-good historie hos al-Arabiya

Det vi oplever nu er den positive bi-effekt ved muhammed-tegningerne. For hver islamistisk demonstration, går det op for tusindvis af mennesker, at der findes en demokratisk oase - hvor mennesket lever frit, og hvor mænd og kvinder er lige. Igennem den massive mediedækning, og den hadefulde retorik fra minaretterne, har vi fået spredt frihedsbudskabet ud i de yderste afkroge af civilisationen.

Danmark: Bestyrelsesmedlem i foreningen Muslimer i Dialog, tilkendegav idag sin holdning til flerkoneri:

"Karen Jespersen vil kæmpe imod bigami
Posted on marts 10, 2008 af Gülay Kocbay
Karen Jespersen vil sætte gang i en undersøgelse, der skal afsløre om der blandt indvandrere i Danmark findes mænd med flere koner.

Denne undersøgelse vil Karen Jespersen iværksætte efter den omdiskuterede irakiske tolk, der lever med sine to koner med to parallelle husholdninger på det offentliges regning.

Sagen er blot det seneste eksempel på det kvindesyn, som en gruppe reaktionære personer med indvandrerbaggrund forsøger at
introducere i Danmark, siger Karen Jespersen.

Karen Jespersen mener, at der er tale om et undertrykkende kvindesyn, som er grundlæggende forskelligt fra danske principper om ligestilling - og her spørger jeg så om Karen Jespersen også vil forholde sig til de utallige mange kærester og elskerinder mænd kan have, selvom de er gift eller har en kæreste på? Er det ikke også noget, der strider imod danske principper og værdier?
Hvis det skal være DANSK så skal alt være DANSK!

- Derfor må vi undersøge, hvor og hvordan det her foregår, så vi kan sætte en stopper for den diskriminerende praksis, siger Karen
Jespersen. (DR.NYHEDER)

Nå nu skal politikere luske rundt i folks privatliv, men hvad den stakkels Karen Jespersen ikke ved er, at hvis der er nogle indvandrer mænd, der gerne vil giftes med nr. 2 kone, så kan det sagtens lade sig gøre uden om reglerne, man skal bare henvende sig til en imam, og der vil ikke være nogen imamer, der vil sige nej til dette - sorry Karen Jespersen, hvis jeg er en lyseslukker for din gode undersøgelse."

Dokumentation (10 marts, 2008, 12:35):

Kilde: Gülay Kocbay

Man kan altså forstå at foreningens bestyrelsesmedlem, opfordrer sine læsere til at omgå lovgivningen ved at henvende sig til den lokale imam. Ikke nok med at der opfordres til lovbrud; indlægget afslører måske også, at Muslimers i Dialogs reelle ønske er, at modvirke integrationen, skabe parallelsamfund og fastholde kvinder i rollen som andenrangs-mennesker.

---

17 marts. 2008, opdatering: For en god ordens skyld, skal jeg fortælle, at Gülay Kocbay erklærer sig uenig med min udlægning af historien. Hun mener, at jeg misbruger og fordrejer et af hendes indlæg, med ønske om at tilsvine forening 'Muslimer i Dialog'. GK erklærer, at hun er stærk modstander af polygami, og at ikke alle hendes indlæg behøver at tages 100% seriøst. Kometen beklager hvis indlægget er opfattet/misforstået som et personligt angreb.

 

(Foto: Kvinder får tæv af tørklædepolitiet)

Tyrkiet: Det sekulære og demokratiske tyrkiet er vrede. Idag ventes tusinder at gå på gaden i hovedstaden Ankara, for at demonstere imod regeringens plan om, at ophæve tørklædeforbuddet på landet skoler og universiteter. 70 fagforeninger og græsrodsorganisationer har sluttet sig sammen om demonstrationen, da de frygter at opdelingen imellem stat og religion vil blive udvisket. I sidste uges demonstration deltog mindst 125.0o0 borgere. Rektorerne på landet universiteter advarer, at ophævningen af tørklædeforbuddet kan føre til vold og optøjer.

Kilde. Kilde. Kilde.