Asra Nomani and the Mosque Crusade: Lofty or Ludicrous?

June 15, 2009 By

Mosque in Morgantown, a documentary about Asra Nomani’s quest to eradicate gender segregation in the mosque, airs tonight on PBS at 10 pm EST.

I watched the film this weekend. Twice. I took three pages of notes, but still had a difficult time writing a review. This could be because my head has been in another place this weekend with the aftermath of Iranian elections.

But the reason could also be that the documentary just didn’t work. It begins with Asra Nomani, sharing her personal stories. Then the film is about the Morgantown mosque. Then the film is about Asra. Then the film is about Asra and the mosque. Then the film is about Asra’s book tour and “trouble-making” at mosques around the country. Then the film is about the Morgantown mosque again. Then the film is about banning Asra from the mosque. You can see a trailer here:

This jumping around irritated me: though I understand the value of illustrating how Asra’s personal life influenced her behaviors concerning the mosque, I think that the jumping around created a lack of cohesiveness. If you asked me what the purpose of the documentary was, this is what I’d tell you: it was about Asra Nomani…sort of…and the mosque in her hometown…sort of.

Almost as soon as she introduces herself, Nomani brings up the fact that she has had a child outside of marriage, and is thus a “criminal in the eyes of Islam”. Her “child outside of marriage” story bothered me because that it’s one of the first things a viewer knows about her–why was that necessary? It felt as if she was using it as a badge to prove that she’s a “black sheep” Muslim, which takes us into the next scene: her victimization.

Nomani describes going up to the newly-built local mosque and trying to enter through the front door for prayer. She was turned away because the front door is for men and the side door is for women.

What the documentary does not tell us is whether other women were turned away, whether other women were irritated about the segregation, what happened to Morgantown’s old mosque (the one she went to as a child), and whether men and women had separate entrances there. Is the entrance segregation a new phenomenon? Or is it as old as the beginning of Islam, which is how most media outlets described it?

The documentary, and even Nomani herself, cast the beginnings of this crusade as a personal vendetta: she feels she has been humiliated at the mosque and so, ten days later, she marches through the mosque’s front door and prays next to male worshippers, seemingly pissing everyone off. She talks about having a child outside of marriage, 9/11, and how “militant Muslims who prayed five times a day” killed her friend and colleague, Daniel Pearl.

All of those things somehow add up to Nomani wanting women to pray alongside men. The documentary follows her on her book tour, watching her talk to Muslims and go to mosques elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada, on a quest to make everyone pray the way she wants them to. Notice I didn’t say “quest for equity in the mosques” or “quest for gender equality in Islam.” Nomani is very much a feminist, but the picture we get from the documentary paints Nomani more as a televised guerilla activist who lives out a personal spat with her local mosque on a national platform.

During her trip to Los Angeles, Asra sits in a McDonald’s parking lot after upsetting the “most progressive mosque in the country” and eats ice cream. This scene constructs Nomani as a victim that we should feel sorry for: the Big, Bad Muslims don’t like her (most likely because she stormed into their mosque, flouted their rules, and told community elders they were wrong about the religion they’d studied longer than she’d been alive) and so she’s forced to eat ice cream alone at McDonald’s.

But it’s hard to feel sorry for Nomani because she builds herself up to be a victim when she usually isn’t. This is apparent during her meeting with the Morgantown mosque board, where she argues even with the community moderates, and walks out of the meeting after calling board members “naïve” and the meeting “a waste of time” because they didn’t agree with her way of doing things.

I hate to admit that I didn’t like this documentary, because I wanted to like it. Though I hated how she did it, I personally very much agree with the idea of equity in the mosque. Edina Lekovic made a great appearance in the film during Nomani’s ruckus in Los Angeles and voiced my thoughts exactly, stating that Nomani’s shenanigans detracted away from what was really important: women gaining full and equal access to the mosque and positions of power therein. Instead of working with mosques, Nomani worked against them and expected them to comply.

I hated the documentary because it highlighted all the things I hated about how Asra Nomani did this entire “campaign”. Long-lasting change does not happen unilaterally or without dialogue, and there is no dialogue when no one else’s viewpoint counts except Nomani’s.

Readers, what are your thoughts on the documentary? Consider this an open thread, but don’t forget comment moderation rules!

Filed Under: Cinema, Television Tagged With: , , ,

Are Afghan Women Really Canada’s Top Priority?

April 13, 2009 By

A few weeks ago, the news of a new law for Shi’a Muslims in Afghanistan was met with outrage in governments and media around the world.  This law would, among other things, force women to have sex with their husbands and obligate them to seek permission for activities outside the house. News since then has indicated that the law will be reviewed. I hope that this is a situation where the widespread condemnation will actually force a change in the law, which, from all that I’ve read, sounds incredibly violent and oppressive.

That said, I was puzzled at some of the statements coming out of Canadian media and politicians on this issue.  Focusing on the fact that the Canadian military has now been in Afghanistan for over seven years, many Canadian figures seemed to take it as a personal slight that the Afghan government had passed such an oppressive law.  The tone of many of the comments suggests that Afghanistan owes it to Canada to treat women better, and that the recent law is a sign of ingratitude.

For example, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated that, “Obviously our men and women (of the Canadian Forces) have been in Afghanistan to defend human rights and that includes women’s rights,” and International Trade Minister Stockwell Day argued that, “The onus is on the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities for human rights, absolutely including rights of women. . . If there’s any wavering on this point from the government of Afghanistan, this will create serious problems and be a serious disappointment for us” (emphasis mine.)   A member of parliament further asked, “How can we say that our soldiers are there to protect women’s rights when the Western-backed leader of this nation pushes through laws like this?”

What I find troubling about these statements is that they seem to assume that the situation of Afghan women is the primary reason that the Canadian forces are there, and that it is entirely the Afghan government’s fault that things are not as rosy as they should be.  No one seems to remember that Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are there as part of the “war on terror,” and that women’s rights have been, at best, a side issue, and at worst, an issue raised only to drum up support for the mission.  The mere presence of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, surprisingly enough, is not going to magically result in improved conditions for Afghan women.  From the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, there have been various instances of leaders in some parts of the country being supported by the allied forces in their efforts to get rid of the Taliban, with little attention given to their own misogynistic policies (see here for one example.)

As James Laxer of Rabble.ca writes,

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is adept at playing to different audiences. In the West, he is an eloquent supporter of human rights and women’s rights in particular; at home, he governs under a constitution based on Sharia Law and reaches out for the political support of misogynist constituencies. As sometimes happens, Karzai’s initiatives at home can cause trouble abroad. American, Canadian and European officials have roundly condemned the reported law. And Karzai will doubtless bow theatrically to acknowledge their expressed concerns at the same time as he does next to nothing to broaden the rights of women in Afghanistan. [...]

Let us suppose the Canadian government had actually cared about the rights of women and the education of girls. Instead of entering the lists in a protracted civil war, had Canada invested ten billion dollars to provide schools for girls in parts of the world where the schools would be welcomed, we would have made an enormous contribution. This would have been the most important international development project ever undertaken by Canada.

Instead, we are paying in blood and treasure for a relationship with a regime that is no better than Taliban-lite.

In other words, it should be no surprise that the government there (even a Western-backed, non-Taliban one) doesn’t have women at the top of its priority list, or that Canada hasn’t exactly demonstrated that women are its main concern either.  Interestingly, this article even suggests that many people within the Canadian government and foreign service saw this law coming and remained surprisingly silent about it for quite a while before it was formally passed.

Afghan-Canadian journalist Nelofer Pazira also writes that, while this law is obviously problematic, legal constraints represent only a small part of the challenges that many Afghan women face:

This week more than 100 Afghan women from 34 provinces met in Kabul to discuss the situation of women in the country; they highlighted insecurity as the biggest impediment to their freedom and equality. Most women fear to leave their homes, to attend school or go to work – not because of their husbands, but because they don’t feel safe. Their rights to education, freedom of movement and action are guaranteed in the Afghan constitution, but the gap between words and reality is too huge to be bridged simply by revising a few clauses in a legal document. Sure, we must fight to protect the legal rights of women. But we must also seek ways to bring about change so that legislation is relevant to the lives of women and men in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghans cannot read and write; an even greater majority don’t go to the courts to resolve family and marriage problems. The few who are educated who might seek legal help are sceptical about the rule of law because of the corruption and lack of trust in the Afghan government and the judicial system.

As Pazira says, “spare me the hysteria.”  It’s all well and good to criticise this law, but let’s not pretend that we’re surprised that sexism still exists even without the Taliban, or that we really believe that Western forces in the country are there for the sake of Afghan women.

This piece also appears at Muslim Lookout.

Filed Under: News, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Oppressed and Downtrodden: The New York Times Profiles Abused Afghan Women

March 25, 2009 By

Covering Afghan women must be an especially hard task for many Western journalists. I say this because every piece I have read about Afghan women makes them seem like they are some of the most oppressed women in the world, with little to no hope for happiness, sans intervention by a Western savior or “Western” inspired program of some sort. A recent New York Times piece on Afghan women fleeing domestic violence, unfortunately, does little to break from this pattern.

Mariam. Image via Lynsey Addario for The New York Times.

Mariam. Image via Lynsey Addario for The New York Times.

Even before reading the article, the reader is already presented with a big image of the poor, oppressed Muslim woman, literally. A picture of Mariam (shown left), a woman who fled an abusive husband, is shown with her face covered by what appears to be a knitted scarf. Reading the story, it appears that she probably had her face covered to protect her identity. However, I still question why that image was the image to introduce the story when there were plenty of images to choose from including a few of women doing ordinary tasks. The picture has obvious Orientalist overtones and instead of humanizing the women, Miriam included, in the story, it instead otherizes them. We don’t see them as victims of domestic abuse but instead as victims of a foreign Muslim culture that abuses women.

The article itself is no better. We’re told Miriam’s story, which is tragic, and then we’re basically given a spin on “the West saved Muslim women from the Muslim brutes” idea with this statement:

Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, a more egalitarian notion of women’s rights has begun to take hold, founded in the country’s new Constitution and promoted by the newly created Ministry of Women’s Affairs and a small community of women’s advocates.

You would think from this quote that there hasn’t been a grassroots women rights movement in Afghanistan for decades now and long before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. However, that isn’t the case. The wording is also troubling. What does “a more egalitarian notion of women’s rights” mean? If activists are fighting for women’s rights, wouldn’t it be assumed that they want equality? Were women’s rights activists in Afghanistan fighting for non-egalitarian rights before the U.S. invasion?

The rest of the article highlights stories of other abused women and blames the plight of the women solely on culture, tradition, and patriarchy. While patriarchy certainly has a part in what happened to these women, I am tired of the narrative that blames culture and does not look at other factors. Miriam was sold to pay off the drug debt of her father. Why is there no discussion of the abject poverty that created the condition for her to be sold? Why is there no discussion of the role that Western countries played in creating this poverty? Blaming the abuse that women receive purely on “culture” and “tradition” is very over-simplistic. It doesn’t help the reader to actually relate to the women in the article and, once again, it makes a Muslim culture look inherently oppressive and misogynist.

The article did discuss the efforts of Afghan women activists to help abused women, but it was hard to focus on these efforts in the face of an overwhelmingly biased story. Because we’re presented with the usual narrative of oppressed Muslim women, it’s difficult to read the article and feel that Afghan women have much agency or hope. The article isn’t nuanced and presents an all-t0o-familiar narrative on Afghan women.

Filed Under: Culture/Society, News Tagged With: , , ,

The Commercialization and De-Politization of IWD: A giant leap backwards for woman kind

March 16, 2009 By

This was originally published at Hurriyet Daily News. The author is unknown.

In a Fethiye beauty salon window, I saw an advertisement suggesting customers celebrate International Women’s Day, or IWD, by getting a manicure and a new hairdo. I received messages from my bank wishing me “Happy Women’s Day.” And then there were the ads on TV: “Buy a diamond for your darling on World Women’s Day!” I was confused. This wasn’t my idea of what this globally recognized day was supposed to be about, but perhaps I was mistaken and times had changed.

Curious about IWD events in other parts of Turkey and the world, I checked out the web site and was dismayed to see that Turkey does not appear on the list of countries in which this day is celebrated. Of course, this did not mean that nothing was happening in Fethiye, it just made it more difficult to find out.

I wondered if IWD as I knew it was not recognized in Fethiye, if women here saw it as an event in which gifts and beauty treatments figured more highly than women’s economic, social and political roles. Should women in 21st-century Turkey paint our nails, or consider women’s rights? Maybe both? At the national level, there were articulate newspaper articles, well-attended marches and a lively debate spanning the range of Turkish media. But it seems that this politically charged day is being de-politicized, and thus rendered impotent.

Seeing Turkey ranked 123 out of 130 countries in the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report made me speculate on what I hoped were incorrect assumptions: Were Turkish women complacent? Apathetic? Oppressed? Fortunately, I discovered that while there was not any widely advertised Women’s Day event in Fethiye, there was something happening at the town’s cultural center.

Despite heavy rain, there was a good turnout at the statue of Atatürk, who enshrined gender equality in the Turkish Constitution. During the War of Independence, women gave their lives delivering supplies to the front. The young Republic strove to emancipate its women in the 1920s, ahead of other European countries. Paying tribute to the man behind all this was nothing less than I expected. But is what has happened since really a cause for celebration?

International Women’s Day was a golden, if damp, opportunity for our exclusively male local-election candidates to appear, handing out heart-shaped candies. (For a brief moment, I thought it was Feb. 14) At the Turkish municipality level, there is only 0.56 percent female representation, and just one woman running for mayor in Olüdeniz and Fethiye. As we are undisputedly half the population, this is unacceptable. Sweets do not make that bitter taste go away.

A modest audience retired to the comfort of the theater, where a panel of professional women gave a series of passionate educational speeches about the historical role of women in Turkey, the country’s inequitable insurance and pension system and the inevitable struggle that women will face during the current economic crisis.

Though their talk was well received, there was still a nagging doubt in my mind. I suspected the majority of people who attended came out of curiosity and the inclement weather, rather than a desire to understand the problems faced by Anatolian women. As I asked others around me what they thought, it seemed that there were different opinions as to the purpose of the day.

To me, this experience represents one of the paradoxes in Turkey: While I do not reject the idea that women should receive gifts (I am not so crazy!), in this context, it does not draw attention to women’s strength and achievements, or to the uphill struggles that await them. Rather, it smacks of a tacit acceptance of an unacceptable status quo.

Is International Women’s Day about handing out candies and flowers? Sending celebratory text messages? Buying wives and girlfriends presents? If that’s what turns you on, maybe it is, but we cannot afford to be complacent. Couldn’t we also make this day an opportunity to learn about women from other cultures and join the global discourse about female emancipation, entitlement and empowerment in the face of the obstacles and impediments thrown up by a society in which patriarchy and religion rule? When I suggested this to a woman friend, I was firmly told not to spoil the celebrations by asking “difficult questions.”

“Hey,” I answered, “If we women don’t ask them, who will?” We de-politicize this day at our peril. If we do, it will be our loss.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

A Look at Women in Iran 30 years after the Islamic Revolution

February 11, 2009 By

It has been 30 years since the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Western media has a slew of various features looking at Iran. The subject of many of these features is Iranian women and, the common themes in these stories are that Iranian women have made some progress, but that more progress has to be made.

There is the usual focus on hijab, with stories pointing out that hijab is mandatory. The AFP seemed particularly focused on hijab: “The Islamic republic still struggles to keep women properly covered by clamping down on defiant dressers in tight coats, with their hair tumbling out from under flimsy headscarves.” To be fair, the AFP mentions immediately afterward: “But ironically, the ubiquitous head-to-toe chador, the scarves and long coats that more liberal Western eyes view as oppressive for women have actually helped them achieve a greater presence in public life.” Vermont Public News also mentioned this: “But if the law imposing hejab were repealed tomorrow many Iranian women would continue to dress this way out of habit and religious conviction. The more universal issues for women in Iran concern legal rights and economic opportunity.” I am happy that the media finally has a more nuanced view about hijab in Iran and mentions that there are other issues that are more important to many Iranian women.

In addition to discussing hijab, the articles I read discuss how the Islamic laws put in place after the revolution took rights away from Iranian women. Honestly, I found this really disheartening, because I did get the feeling that Islam was being once again blamed for leaving women with fewer rights, instead of patriarchal interpretations of Qur’an and hadeeth, which form the basis of Islamic law. In the AFP article, the author writes: “And they still suffer from a whole raft of inequalities, much stemming from the Islamic legal concept that a woman is worth only half of what a man is. For example, under inheritance law, daughters received only half of what their brothers do.” There is no Islamic legal concept which says that a women is only worth half of what a man is. The author gets her support for this assertion by citing Qur’anic inheritance laws, which gave daughters half of what their male siblings received. However, that is not the same as saying a woman is a half a man. Additionally, there have been Muslim reformers, including Iranian ones, looking to reform inheritance rules on the basis that it was applied to a society where women did not have control over their financial affairs. However, Islam is once again made to seem monolithic.

The BBC also quotes an Iranian lawyer who believes that women’s issues cannot be dealt with in an Islamic regime:

Giti Pourfazel, a lawyer and female activist, believes those liberty-seeking women who supported the Islamic revolution were unaware of the true nature of a religious state.

“Some women felt they would stand a better chance of achieving their demands if they could emancipate themselves from political entanglements, but it was too late when they realised that a religious regime, due to its boundaries, could hardly deal with women’s issues intellectually.

“Women had already hit home some of their demands but lost them after the revolution, such as the Family Law, which was annulled immediately after the revolution. The reason was women were rallying under a religious flag, which had other priorities and ignored female rights.”

This quote seems troubling to say the least. It seems to provide little hope to those women who want a religious regime but also want their rights; plus, it makes women who supported the revolution seem like they had no idea what they were doing.

While I cringed at some of the ideas about Islam and women, a bright spot in the coverage was the mention of Iranian activists, men and women. Of course, there was mention of Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Laureate who has been a staunch supporter of women’s rights and human rights in Iran. There was also mention of former president Mohammad Khatami, who was elected in part because of a pro-woman agenda. There was also mention of the rights achievements that Iranian women have gained during the last 30 years: more Iranian women attend university now. In fact, they account for 60% of Iranian university students. Women have served in cabinet positions and in municipal and local governments. And more women have their own businesses.

Still, women on all ends of the ideological spectrum continue to fight for more rights and to keep the rights they have. Women were instrumental in bringing about the Islamic revolution and have been instrumental in gaining more rights. Shirin Ebadi summed up the women’s rights movement in Iran aptly with this quote:

Women took part in the revolution beside men. They felt their freedom and independence would be guaranteed when the country shifted into an Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, they did not obtain the freedom worthy of an Iranian woman.

That’s what activists like Ebadi fight for: “the freedom worthy of an Iranian woman” and all women.

Filed Under: News, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,
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