November 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
China: Scapegoat or Sputnik

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Shanghai

As I was saying, Mr. Rove, Americans aren’t as stupid as you think.

Now that we’ve settled that, and now that we’ve had an election that clarified which country is most important in shaping U.S. politics in 2006 — Iraq — I’ve come to visit the country that’s most likely to shape U.S. politics in 2008: China.

The civil war in the Republican Party, which you are about to see, will be all about Iraq — whom to blame and how to withdraw before the issue wipes out more Republican candidates in 2008. But the coming civil war among the Democrats will be all about China.

I still believe that when the history of this era is written, the trend that historians will cite as the most significant will not be 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It will be the rise of China and India. How the world accommodates itself to these rising powers, and how America manages the economic opportunities and challenges they pose, is still the most important global trend to watch.

It really hits you when you see the supersize buildings sprouting in Shanghai, or when you look at the world through non-American eyes. Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, told me the other day that Asia right now “is the most optimistic place in the world.” More people have come out of poverty faster there — particularly in India and China — than at any time in the history of the world, and as a result, he notes, more people in Asia than anywhere else in the world today “wake up every morning sure that tomorrow is going to be better than yesterday.”

But one person’s optimism can be another person’s flat wages. And that is why the Democrats and China are almost certain to butt heads. The Bush team’s focus on Iraq and terrorism, coupled with the Democrats’ lack of control over either house of Congress, has kept China-U.S. relations largely out of the headlines and on a relatively even keel during the Bush II years.

But two things will change that. One is the Democrats’ return to control of both the House and Senate — powered by politicians like Nancy Pelosi, who has long taken a hard line vis-à-vis China on both economics and human rights, and Sherrod Brown, the newly elected senator from Ohio, who comes to D.C. with strong protectionist leanings from a state that has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs to Asia.

The other is the mood reflected in a Nov. 2 analysis in The Financial Times, headlined: “Anxious Middle: Why Ordinary Americans Have Missed Out on the Benefits of Growth.”

Technology and globalization are flattening the global economic playing field today, enabling many more developing nations to compete for white-collar and blue-collar jobs once reserved for the developed world. This is one reason why growth in wages for the average U.S. worker has not been keeping pace with our growth in productivity and G.D.P.

“Economists call this phenomenon median wage stagnation,” noted The Financial Times. “Median measures give the best picture of what is happening to the middle class because, unlike mean or average wages, median wages are not pulled upwards by rapid gains at the top. As the joke goes: Bill Gates walks into a bar and, on average, everyone there becomes a millionaire. But the median does not change.”

Many Americans lately have started to get that joke, and it is one reason that with this new Democrat-led Congress we are likely to see a surge in protectionist legislation, more Wal-Mart bashing, a slowdown in free-trade expansion and increased calls for punitive actions if China doesn’t reduce its trade surplus — which surged to a record in October.

China, in other words, is inevitably going to move back to the center of U.S. politics, because it crystallizes the economic challenges faced by U.S. workers in the 21st century. The big question for me is, how will President Bush and the Democratic Congress use China: as a scapegoat or a Sputnik?

Will they use it as an excuse to avoid doing the hard things, because it’s all just China’s fault, or as an excuse to rally the country — as we did after the Soviets leapt ahead of us in the space race and launched Sputnik — to make the kind of comprehensive changes in health care, portability of pensions, entitlements and lifelong learning to give America’s middle class the best tools possible to thrive? A lot of history is going to turn on that answer, because if people don’t feel they have the tools or skills to thrive in a world without walls, the pressure to put up walls, especially against China, will steadily mount.

Are Muslim Women Oppressed?
An exploration of the place of women in Islam
Cathy Young

Britain has been in turmoil over veils in recent days, after a school in Yorkshire suspended a Muslim teacher's assistant for wearing "niqab"—a form of the traditional veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes. Further stoking the flames, House of Commons leader Jack Straw revealed that in meetings with constituents, he had asked niqab-wearing women to remove their veils for better face-to-face interaction.

The niqab controversy has focused on thorny questions of cultural integration and religious tolerance in Europe. However, it is also a debate about women and Islam.

For Westerners, the veil has long been a symbol of the oppression of women in the Islamic world. Today, quite a few Muslims regard it as a symbol of cultural and religious self-assertion and reject the idea that Muslim women are downtrodden. In our multicultural age, many liberals are reluctant to criticize the subjugation of women in Muslim countries and Muslim immigrant communities, fearful of promoting the notion of Western superiority. At the other extreme, some critics have used the plight of Muslim women to suggest that Islam is inherently evil and even to bash Muslims.

Recently, these tensions turned into a nasty academic controversy in the United States, as the Chronicle of Higher Education has reported. In June, Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-born professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University, published an article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram attacking Azar Nafisi, Iranian émigré and author of the 2003 best seller "Reading Lolita In Tehran." Nafisi's memoir is a harsh portrait of life in Iran after the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution, focusing in particular on the mistreatment of women, who were stripped of their former rights and harshly punished for violating strict religious codes of dress and behavior.

Complaining that Nafisi's writings demonize Iran, Dabashi branded her a "native informer and colonial agent for American imperialism." In a subsequent interview, he compared her to Lynndie England, the US soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

While Dabashi's rhetoric is extreme, it is not unique. Even in academic feminist groups on the Internet, criticisms of the patriarchal oppression of women in Muslim countries are often met with hostility unless accompanied by disclaimers that American women too are oppressed.

A more thoughtful examination of Islam and women's rights was offered earlier this month at a symposium at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The keynote speaker, Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, an outspoken critic of Islam, described an "honor killing" of a young Middle Eastern woman that occurred with the help of her mother. In a later exchange, another participant, Libyan journalist Sawsan Hanish, argued that it was unfair to single out Muslim societies, since women suffer violence and sexual abuse in every society including the United States. Sultan pointed out a major difference: In many Muslim cultures, such violence and abuse are accepted and legalized.

Yet the symposium's moderator, scholar Michael Ledeen, rejected Sultan's assertion that Islam is irredeemably anti-woman. He noted that the idea that some religions cannot be reformed runs counter to the history of religions. Several panelists spoke of Muslim feminists' efforts to reform Islam and separate its spiritual message from the human patriarchal baggage. Some of these reformers look for a lost female-friendly legacy in early Islam; others argue that everything in the Koran that runs counter to the modern understanding of human rights and equality should be revised or rejected. These feminists have an uphill battle to fight, and they deserve all the support they can get.

Meanwhile, using the language of tolerance to justify oppressive practices is a grotesque perversion of liberalism. The veiling debate is a case in point. No amount of rhetorical sleight of hand can disguise the fact that the full-face veil makes women, literally, faceless. Some Muslim women in the West may choose this garb (which is not mandated in the Koran), but their explanations often reveal an internalized misogynistic view of women as creatures whose very existence is a sexual provocation to men. What's more, their choice helps legitimize a custom that is imposed on millions of women around the world who have no choice.

Perhaps, as some say, women are the key to Islam's modernization. The West cannot impose its own solutions from the outside—but, at the very least, it can honestly confront the problem.

Cathy Young is a Reason contributing editor and the author of Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood. This column appeared in the Boston Globe.

Reason Magazine
http://www.reason.com/news/show/38399.html

Islam Needs Renewal From Within,
Not Withdrawal Into Itself, To Overcome Its Crisis
Samir Khalil Samir SJ

The absence of a recognised authority and the ignorance in which Islam’s religious world has fallen are among the main reasons for Islam’s increasingly tragic situation. A re-interpretation of the Koran is needed but no one dares talk about. Here is the fifth and final article in a series about Islam in crisis by Fr Samir Khalil Samir.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - La riforma del pensiero islamico e della società islamica appare alla maggioranza dei musulmani una necessità assoluta. Il confronto con il pensiero occidentale (quasi sempre visto come cristiano) e la società occidentale rende questa necessità ancora più urgente. Per attuare questa riforma, le proposte sono varie. Tutti concordano però sulla priorità a dare all’attualizzazione della lettura del Corano, cioè a una ermeneutica moderna del testo sacro, dalla quale deriva l’attualizzazione delle norme di vita della comunità, cioè della sharia. In particolare, un punto appare con evidenza a tutti quanti, anche se le reazioni sono molto divergenti: l’atteggiamento verso le donne; è lì che appare in modo più evidente il contrasto tra la tradizione islamica e la cultura moderna.
1. The interpretation of the Qur’an
The first point to put into effect towards new approaches in training is the reinterpretation of the Koran. The sacred text of Islam, like all texts, needs to be interpreted, in the search for its overall meaning and striving to contextualize what is read. Until the beginning of the 20th century, there had been great reformers who had pushed in this direction: they were from India, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, North Africa, etc. Then came the religious deterioration of imam training and this desire for reform, which had lasted for centuries, was extinguished.
Reinterpretation is necessary also because the Koran is full of internal contradictions which have always been evident, due to the varying circumstances of the "revelations". It is for this very reason that Muslim theology developed the science of the "revelation circumstances" (asb?b al-tanz?l) which is by now often forgotten or neglected. To resolve the contradictions, ancient Muslim tradition developed the theory of "the abrogating and the abrogated": i.e., there are verses that abrogate, cancel, override other verses. This theory comes from the Koran itself, where at a certain point God says to His prophet: “Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?” (Koran 2, 106).
The problem then becomes: which are the verses that cancel and which are cancelled? And who determines which is one and which is the other? This matter is very ambiguous as there has never been any kind of consensus. Thus the interpretation depends on pre-understanding of the individual. Those who take a violent, political, radical line will say for example that the verse known as "of the sword" (?yat al-sayf) overrides all the preceding verses that speak of tolerance and welcoming. This verse is found in two very similar parts of the Koran (2,193 and 8,39): “And fight with them until there is no sedition (fitnah), and religion should be only for Allah” .
An even more ambiguous point is that concerning the veiling of women. There are three verses in the Koran which speak about the veil, but they are not clear. The interpretation varies depending on the meaning given to the words. Even the historical information on the way in which the veil was applied varies considerably. In Egypt, for example, from the 1920s onwards, very few women wore headscarves, and those who did, wore them discretely. They were reintroduced in the second half of the 1970s under the influence of the Saudis and their financial support. In other regions, the practice of wearing headscarves has existed for a long time. The interpretation of the Koran is decisive because there are women who suffer verbal or physical offence if they do not veil themselves, or who are simply forced to do so...
Interpretation becomes even more a key question in the important question of apostasy: there is no verse in the Koran that says that the apostate must be killed. Yet the sharia, Islamic law, requires that a convert from Islam be killed .
There are many intellectuals in the Islamic world who ask that exegesis, interpretation, be applied to the Koran. But often they risk being condemned, excluded, exiled by their community. A typical example is that of Egyptian-national Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid who, having suggested that exegesis be applied to the Koran, was deemed an apostate. Thus, in a short time, he lost his university teaching post, his wife was pressured to divorce from him (but she refused), and to save his life, he was forced to emigrate to Holland. Through God's grace, his wife was eventually able to join him in Europe where they live as exiles.
The fear of being condemned holds many scholars back. Years ago in Tunisia, I participated in a conference on the exegesis of holy texts, along with 6 other Christian theologians and 7 Muslim. The sessions had been decided upon by the Muslim faculty of theology and were to be on the very question of the interpretation of sacred texts. Well, everyone spoke in general about exegesis, but no one dared to apply its principles to the Koranic text. A veritable impasse exists on this question. This depends on the fact that for Muslims, the Koran is a revealed text which descended upon Mohammad, and not a text simply inspired by God. In this latter case, interpretation is possible; in the former case, everything remains at a standstill. Speaking at a seminar on Islam held at Castel Gandolfo (location of the Pope's summer residence, near Rome) in September 2005, Pope Benedict XVI stressed quite correctly that this Islamic conception of the Koran is one of the main difficulties in dialogue with Muslims.
2. Sharia and human rights
Another problem which stands in the way of the development of Islam is the interpretation of sharia. To be noted: the (bad) interpretation of sharia also depends on the (limited) training of imams.
Sharia is the concretization in daily life of Islam at the juridical level. It has, in this sense, a great influence because it generates binding laws. The sharia too is based on the Koran, on the sayings of Mohammad and on the circumstances of Mohammad's life. The sayings and circumstances are called Sunna. The Koran is the main source for sharia. Another source is analogy, which relies on sayings (the authenticity of which no one wants to investigate). And here lies the problem: there are hundreds of thousands of sayings, which often contradict each other; the authenticity of the sayings are not certain, and yet imams and Koranic scholars strive to apply the experiences and criteria of centuries ago to present day situations.
Many Muslim jurists today are proposing the suspension of the part of the sharia called hud?d, which foresees precise punishments: death, hand cutting, stoning, flogging. Traditionalists say that these punishments have a basis in the Koran. But, at least a part of the community, mainly intellectuals, affirm that this style of punishment is contrary to human rights. Thus, various jurists maintain the principle that it is necessary to reinterpret the Koran and sharia from the basis of internationally recognized human rights.
3. Women's rights
And this brings us to the question of women's rights. Many Islamic apologists maintain that Islam, unlike other religions, gives value to all women's rights. Actually, if taken literally, Islam does not give any equality with men. And this at the juridical level, not only that of customs or mentality.
Here are few examples. A man can repudiate his wife with practically no limitations; a woman cannot repudiate her husband: at the most, she can ask him the favour of repudiating her. Men have total authority over their wives, in accordance to the Koran (4,34: “Men have authority over women, due to the preference that God concedes to the former over to the latter and because they spend their property [for them]”) and a wife is obliged to obey her husband even if he forbids her to go to the mosque (hadith). A husband has the right to have sexual relations with his wife whenever he wants, and she does not have the right to refuse him (Koran 2, 223: Your wives are a tilth (harth) for you, so go into your tilth (harth) when you like). In court, the testimony of a male is worth twice that of a female: it takes 2 women to counterbalance a man’s testimony. Sons inherit twice as much as daughters. There is a radical difference also in matters of prayer and acts of worship: being impure during menstruation or when she gives birth, a woman’s prayer or fasting or any other religious act is not accepted by God. She must strive to "recuperate" the days lost. It was decided, a few years ago in Egypt, that a woman could not be a judge, because a well-known prophetic hadith says "a woman is imperfect in terms of worship and intelligence" (al-mar’ah n?qisah d?nan wa-‘aqlan); as for worship, because she is impure during menstruation and would therefore contaminate the entire assembly, and as for intelligence, being too emotional, she would not be able to judge equitably. (This whole question was the subject of a television programme!) Furthermore, in the case of adultery, current practice is unfortunately to condemn the woman to stoning, while the man is not condemned, even though the Koran condemns both to flogging and never to stoning (24,2: “(As for) the fornicatress and the fornicator, flog each of them, (giving) a hundred stripes, and let not pity for them detain you.”)
This is why some countries are striving to reformulate family law. As already mentioned, new laws have been enacted in Morocco. In Algeria, a country that was once progressive, where women had given an enormous contribution to the fight for independence, no progress has been made. On the contrary, family law reforms tend to restrict the rights and legal equality of women.
Reform in Tunisia dates back to the 1950s thanks to the strength of political leader, Bourguiba, who was backed by an eminent Muslim jurist, Tahar Haddad (1899-1936). Often, Bourguiba established laws and asked muftis to justify them according to tradition. For example, Tunisian legislation recognizes monogamy only. But the Koran speaks explicitly of polygamy, allowing up to four wives plus all the servants that your right hands have (4,3). How then can the prohibition of polygamy be justified? The verse in question goes on to say: " but if you fear that you will not be equitable (ta’dil?), then (marry) only one ". Now, verse 129 of the same chapter explicitly says: "And you have it not in your power to be equitable between wives, even though you may wish (it)". Thus, the Koran authorizes up to four wives, adding however that if a man fears not being fair, he must limit himself to one. And further ahead it states that a man cannot be fair. Bourguiba concluded: "In fact, the Koran wished to guarantee monogamy. But keeping in mind the weakness of Arabs and the customs of the time, it temporarily authorized polygamy, subordinating it to a practically unattainable condition.”
As can be seen, free interpretation can allow for much adaptation. It should be said in all truth that the meaning of the verse on treating wives "fairly", is not in the sense of "equal justice" – as is the interpretation of many Muslims – but in the sense of affection and sexuality: polygamy foresaw equal shares of sexual enjoyment, the same number of nights. Though many deny this, there are many examples from the life of Mohammad himself that support this.
The question of divorce also needs interpretation. According to a saying of Mohammad, "divorce is the most hated of the things permitted by God" (al-tal?q abghad al-hal?l). But then, in the life of Mohammad and in other sayings, the opposite can be found. What then is the proper Islamic position?
The current tendency among certain Muslim jurists is that of preferring human rights to sharia. The reformist, Libyan scholar, Mohamed Abdelmottaleb al-Houn, for example, says, "If we must choose between human rights and sharia, then we must prefer human rights." But he is giving the reading of the enlightened, or let's say, of the liberal.
Another reformer that I admire very much, a Lebanese named Ridwan As-Sayyed, is very explicit. He says: "Laws must...conform to human rights, seeking in private matters, where there is the possibility of choice, to tend towards sharia. But it is not a principle; it is not a necessary rule."
Others instead relativize sharia, especially for Muslims living in the West. A typical example is what has been said by Tariq Ramadan, a famous Swiss Muslim thinker (grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), who has many times said: Sharia cannot be applied word for word, due to the fact that we are not in a Muslim country." Ramadan is speaking of Europe, of Egypt... but what country can truly call itself Muslim? Even Saudi Arabia and Iran can be criticized! Actually, Ramadan's reasoning is a small legal trick to justify that sharia not be applied. Some go even further, such as Elham Manea of Yemen, lecturer at the University of Zurich, who simply says that all the contents of the Koran that do not correspond to the mentality and principles of contemporary man must be left out as belonging to the mentality of 7th century Arabia.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, no one is denying the reality of a profound crisis in Islam. It is rendered even more serious by international conflicts, which risk resolving the crisis through a short circuit of holy war. But there are increasing numbers of figures who are pointing to problems within the Muslim community.
The first problem is the lack of a recognized authority. Attempts are made to get around the problem by recognizing the Organization of Islamic States (which has no legal authority); or else, the European association of muftis is relied on, but it too is without authority.
The second problem is the ignorance in which the Islamic religious world has fallen. How can all this be reformed? We have seen various attempts: better training for imams; reopening the door of interpretation; suspension of Koranic law, at least "temporarily": in order to reduce the negative impact on the most fanatical elements of the population; recognition of human rights or at least the attempt to integrate them into Islamic principles...
In concrete terms this means problems pertaining to democratization at the political level; social justice problems at the socio-economic level; family law and women's rights at the basic level. At this point, everyone recognizes that the Islamic system that covered all these fields is out-dated, is no longer managed, nor is it manageable.
Being challenged by other cultures, Islam needs a renewal of its thinking from within, in order to regain strength. Instead, for the very reason that it feels weak, it protects itself by closing in on itself, thinking that it can save itself by going back to a "golden age" of the first caliphs. Muslim history teaches us the opposite: Islam was strongest and able to conquer when, in the 10th century, it opened itself to other cultures, in particular Greek culture, assimilating it and surpassing it. It thus offered the world its contribution in almost all sectors of knowledge, from philosophy to medicine, from technology to astronomy, etc.
To get out of the crisis in which we find ourselves, we all, Arabs and Muslims, must above all accept teaching from those who have surpassed us in the sciences and the arts. Once this entire heritage has been assimilated, we can begin to criticize it and to discern between what can be kept and what is to be rejected. Above all, we must accept the risk of abandoning acquired balances, passing through the rejection of many things, to find a new balance. But we are gripped by fear and this makes us lack courage. At the time of my youth, there were those who would say "workers of the world unite to fight the capitalists." I would say today, "Thinkers of the Arab and Islamic world unite to fight obscurantism and the fear of what is different!"
samirksj@hotmail.com

Diary of an Arab Woman
For a Humanistic Islam
Elham Manea

So what was it that made me angry? That is the funny part. I know it was a Fatwa (an Islamic religious edict issued by a Sheikh) that made me decide to write "Diary of an Arab Woman”, but I do not seem to remember exactly which Fatwa it was. Is not that strange? I wrote a book and the very reason that made me decide to write it escapes my memory.

Was it the Fatwa that decreed that a married couple should not make love while naked? If they do so, they have committed an act that turns them into heretics! Perhaps that was it. Or was it the one that answered the question of a worried woman who did not know whether she can undress in front of her dog. The Sheikh who answered her question came with an ingenious question of his own: is your dog male or female? No. It was not this Fatwa either; this came later.

Regardless of which Fatwa it was, I felt angry. So angry that I made a decision at that very moment: silence no more. I had enough of observing and not responding. I had enough of listening to this nonsense and not calling it by its own name: nonsense! And I had enough of hearing the argument: this is how Islam is, take it or leave! Well, I am not leaving it, but I am not accepting it either! Time is ripe for a new discourse. The next day I started to write the diary which was published in a series of articles in the reformist liberal Arab website “Middle East Transparent”. That was in September 2005.

Message of Four Components

In the “Diary of an Arab woman” I had a message. We live in a time where a version of Islam, Wahabbi Islam exported from the heart of Saudi Arabia, has become dominant in the Arab world. It is dominant in the mosques, dominant in the media, and it is propagated actively with the support of Saudi oil money.

Another version of Islam, Shi’ti Islam, exported from the Islamic Republic of Iran, is also being disseminated in parts of the Islamic world though on a lesser scale than its former Sunni counterpart. Both are expressions of a religion that has become politicized. While the two countries needed religion to legitimize their political systems, a re-Islamization of secular Arab societies was taken place as a result of the failure of the Arab state in fulfilling its promises made after the end of the colonial era.

Secular Arab States failed to fulfill their promises to launch a successful development process (Arab countries are lagging behind other regions in their development); to improve people’s lives (it will take an Arab citizen 140 years to double his or her income in comparison to 10 years in Asian countries); and to restore by force what the Arabs consider as the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people (the 6 days war of 1967 put an end to such claim).

Since democracy has been also postponed by Arab regimes with the pretext that development has the priority, a real sense of betrayal was disseminating fast in the region. Failure bred a sense of dissatisfaction, deeply intensified with the lack of future prospects. Religion became a refuge.

The re-Islamization of Arab societies gave ground to the belief that there is indeed only one version of Islam, the one exported from the heart of Saudi Arabia, Najdi Wahhabi Islam. People seem to have forgotten how colorful and divers Islamic traditions were. Islam in Tunisia or Morocco was different in its interpretations and scope from that of Oman or Yemen, and Egyptian Islam was certainly different in its spirit from that of Saudi Arabia. People also seem to have forgotten that their identity was rarely revolving around their religious beliefs as one made to believe today. They were Arabs or Kurds, Egyptians, Yemenis, or Tunisians, not Muslims in the first place.

This re-Islamization of Arab societies was combined with constant calls, made by Islamic parties who have become a powerful political force in Arab political landscapes, for the implementation of Shari’a laws. "Islam is the solution", so was the new motto espoused by these Islamic political parties. Society seems to have bought this claim. It was time to challenge this
claim. It was time for a humanistic Islam.

This humanistic Islam presented in the Diary bases its argument on four components:
Identity; a free and rational Islam; forbidden areas of thinking; and the woman - a human.

1) A Complex Identity

Identity is complex. Islamists would like us to believe that we are Muslims, full stop. Europe and the Unites States have started to adopt this perception after the September 11, 2001 attacks. A humanistic reading of Islam, on the other hand, considers the identity of a person as far more complex than to limit it on its religious dimension.

Explaining this in personal terms I am an individual with several identities.

The first of these identities is simple and straightforward: I am a humanist. And I am not saying this because it sounds good. I believe in it. That is, I believe that the well being of the human is the ultimate goal; that there are universal values which transcend every race, colour, culture, and religion; that these values allow me to look in the eyes of the person talking to me, regardless of his or her identity, and see something very valuable, something to cherish.

The second of these identities is more cultural oriented: I am an Arab. You might have expected me to say that I am a Yemeni. This is also an accurate observation. Being a Yemeni is the nationality that I was born with. But again it does not describe correctly who I am.

Born to a Yemeni diplomat, I travelled with my family around the world. I have lived in many Arab, Islamic, as well as Western countries.

The experience allowed me to recognize how people are similar in many ways. Their life styles, customs, and standards may be different, but in the end they love, they hate, they have their worries, and certainly, they have their prejudices.

It also enabled me to recognize how Arab countries differ from each other. Yemen is not Egypt, and Egypt is not Morocco, and the latter is not Kuwait or Syria or Oman, etc. But as much as they differ, something brings them together: a rich language, high culture and civilization. This Arab identity represents the second layer of what I am. I relish it in the literature that I read, the music I listen to, and certainly the food I take time to cook.

Now comes the third layer of my identity, which is: I am a Muslim. This is the very private identity of all of the above. It is where I experience my spirituality, and where I feel I have a soul as a contrast to the material flesh. But it does not encompass the whole of my being; it is not “the identity”.

2) A Free and Rational Islam

If being a Muslim represents my third layer of identity, which Islam I adopt then? A free and rational Islam.

Free, means that it respects the choice of the human being, and situates the well being of this human as its ultimate goal. The human is born free; free to choose the life he or she wants; and free to choose his or her religion. And his or her freedom is his or her responsibility; it is also his or her right. A natural right imbedded in him or her by the mere fact of being born human.

And rational means that this Islam does not only call for reading the religious texts within its contextual and historical settings; it does not only call for a careful and critical scrutinizing of these religious texts and how they were gathered and came about; nor does it content itself with putting rationality first before the holy texts. It takes these arguments a step further and stipulates that Quranic doctrines or Shari’a laws should be disregarded if they stood against Human Rights as we understand them today, citizenship rights, or gender equality.

This perception requires that we distinguish between two levels of the Islamic religion:

a) A spiritual side, which regulates the spiritual relationship of the human with God.
b) A legalistic and Shari’a side, whose provisions should be seriously reviewed and put to questions.

This free and rational reading of Islam needs a secular and democratic state to thrive in. Separation between religion and the state gives the human the freedom of believing or not believing. Only a secular and democratic state can protect the human and his or her dignity, respect him or her as an adult capable of making his or her own decisions, and treating him or her as a free and rational being.

3) Forbidden Areas of Thinking

A free and rational reading of Islam requires that we do not believe in the existence of “forbidden areas of thinking” nor should we confine ourselves with thinking within the “safe boundaries of thoughts”. Over the history of Islamic thoughts certain accepted ways of thinking have developed, became formed, ready to be used for anyone who would like to think about a certain Islamic issue.

If we examine the way ideas are being produced in the Arab world especially when it comes to issues that are fundamental to Islam, we realize that any intellectual endeavor has been inherently constrained by the “forbidden areas of thinking” and the “safe boundaries of thoughts”.

How the Quranic verses were gathered and the role played by the Prophet and his companions in this process is one forbidden area of thinking. To say that this human role only managed to protect the Quran as “God’s literal word” is how to discuss this issue within a safe boundary of thought. But if you dare to discuss the “humanistic nature” of Quran, you will be treading outside of that boundary, stepping inside a dangerous area of thinking - one that could lead to your death.

The existence of these areas, boundaries, and accepted ways of thinking, and the fears that accompany the process of thinking, has been symbiotic of our inability to set the basis of an enlightenment movement. How can you possibly dare to think if you are constantly threatened with death as a punishment?

This humanistic Islam does not accept these restrains on thinking. It rejects them, and insists that everything including the holy texts is subject to critic and scrutinizing.

4) A Woman = A Human

The status and treatment of women belongs safely to these forbidden areas of thinking. The issue of women rights have been subject to much discussion in the Arab world and in international media specifically after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Islamists’s argument regarding the status of women in Islam is straightforward: Islam respects women’s rights; the problem has mainly to do with the society that is implementing these rights. My argument on the other hand is of twofold.

First, while Quranic verses treated women as equal to men in front of God, these verses put women at a disadvantaged position legally. In other words, men and women are not equal in front of the law according to Quranic verses. This could be simply proven by looking at the provisions regarding divorce (a man can divorce a woman without her consent by repeating the sentence “you are divorced” three times); inheritance (the sister inherits half of what her brother gets); testimony (the testimony of two women equal that of one man); Polygamy (a man has the right to marry four women); and the list could go on. Some of these provisions may well have been logical and progressive 1400 years ago. Today they are not. It is past time for secular family, inheritance, and criminal laws that treat men and women as equal.

Second, if we set Quranic verses aside and look at the actual perception to women, it is imperative to emphasize that a woman is a human being just like the man. She is equal to him in front of God. This may sound as a matter of fact and you may even reproach me for stating such as obvious thing. But is it really that obvious? If a woman is not allowed to pray with men in the mosque for fear of distracting them, if she is required to cover herself when she prays even if she is praying alone, and if she is not allowed to pray or even touch the Quran when she has her period, do all these provisions make her equal to the man in front of God? Not really.

All these provisions simply state that she is a “female”. She is not a complete being like the man; for he prays everyday, and he prays as he is (no need to cover his hair). In short, he is treated as equal to a God, while the latter is perceived as male in gender.

Precisely because of that I insist that women have the right to pray with men in the mosque; they have the right to pray without veiling their hair; and they should pray during their ministration period.

Again, these are no trivial matters. The fact remains that one saying (Hadith) of the Prophet which has become instrumental in Islamic conscious states that “women are less in their brain and religion”. The Hadith explains this statement by saying that her testimony equals half of that of a man, and her ministration period forces her to stop praying and fasting in certain times.

Conclusion

These are the four basic components of the humanistic reading of Islam presented in Diary of an Arab Woman.

Though I still can not remember the content of the Fatwa that compelled me to write the diary, one thing remains unchanged as before: Time is ripe for a humanistic reading of Islam. This humanistic reading of Islam emphasizes that no religion is perfect when it comes to the matter of human rights. Every religion on the other hand, including Islam, is capable of reform. The reforms espoused by this reading puts religion at its proper place: at the spiritual side. At the same time it insists that no religion can be a solution to our daily lives or political matters. Islam is not the solution. The human is the solution.
elham.thomas@hispeed.ch

Dr. Elham Manea is of dual nationalities, Yemeni and Swiss. She is Post-Doctoral Fellow and a Lecturer at the Political Science Institute, Zurich University.

Article first published at:
http://www.sicherheit-heute.de/gesellschaft,Tagebuch_einer_modernen_arabischen_Frau.htm

Kirkuk and its dependencies: Historically part of Kurdistan - II

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

KurdishMedia.com - By Mufid Abdulla

Part II

Under Islam and the Caliphs

After the fall of Medes, it was natural for the Kurd to welcome to Islam and try to move forward after what happen to their country. Islam never touched the heard of Kurds and Kurdistan but enhanced that identity in the face of non Islamic ethnic groups and regimes neighbouring Kurdistan. The Kurds always safeguarding their own identity and language under Islam and Islamic civilisation, at the same time Kurds welcomed Arabic as a language of the Qur’an. That is the main reason that most Kurdish poets of the middle and modern ages were simultaneously great religious men. The Kurdish Qur’an schools and religious school in Kirkuk had been taught side by side with Kurdish literature.

The Kurds kept the spirit of Islam in Kirkuk as the mosques of the city within its dependencies and their religious meeting centres.

Arab historians did not recognise the name Kirkuk as its current name but still always refer to Kirkuk by the name of Kirkheni.

As stated in “Sumer”, the highly –regarded Iraqi journal (37)

As for Kirkheni, when al-Qalqashindi (died 821 hegira/1418 AD) defined its Kurdish character as a place and dwellers, basing it on “Masalik Al-Abssar fi Mamalik Al-Amssar-Road Paths of discernment in possessions of large towns” by the Damascusian Geographer, Ibn Fadhul Allah Al- Omari (died 748 Hegira /1347-1348 AD).

Al-Qalqashindi wrote:

“The Kurdish mountains: he said in ‘Msalik Al-Abssar’:and by these mountains, the intended are the mountains separating between the land of the Arabs and the land of the Persians, without places of infiltration by the Kurds in the Persian country .He said: and their beginning, Hamazan and Sharezoor mountains and their end, Siahi Al-Kafara of the Takfoor country, and with it, the Sies kingdom and what is added to it by the Lawin family (Bait Lawin) hands. Then he mentioned twenty places, in each one of them, a sect of Kurds”

Furthermore, the Al-Qalqashandi elaborated on those twenty places as follows:

“The country of Kirkheni and Daquq Al-Naqa, and which has a sect of them (of the Kurds) whose number exceeds seven hundred and they have a prince of their own.”And it is worth mentioning that the seven hundred is a considerable number by the demographic criterion of that era and time.

In those days Daquq used to be more famous than Kirkuk, Kirkuk, up to the end of the eighth century Hegira/towards the end of the fourteenth century AD, often administratively and economically belonged to Daquq and they were both at the same time in contact with Arbil and Sharezoor and their extentions.

In the beginning of the eighth century Hegira (the fourteenth AD),the geographer and historian scientist Hamadalla Al-Mistawfi Al-Qazwini,described Daquq, in his book: “Nuzhat Al-Qulub: Picnic of the Hearts” as follows: “Daquq is of the fourth province, a small town, its weather is better than Al-Iraq’s Arab provinces”. (p24)

Baghdad’s relations with Kirkuk were weak in Islamic times as they were more tied to Sharezoor country reflected upon the administrative and economical situation. In the middle of the seventh century Hegira (Middle of the fourteenth century AD), Ibn Khillikan, described Sharezoor as: “….. a large town, belonging to Arbil”. The same matter is established in “Taqwim Al-Buldan’s: Assessment of the Countries “ by Abi Al-fida and “Subh Al-A’sha” by Al-Qalqashandi and others.

Of “Sharezoor country” he said as follows: “…. and the people of these regions are all Kurds.”

Many researchers, including the specialist, Guy Le Strange, in his: “Historical Geography of the Islamic Countries” and Ibn Huqil, Qazwini and Almistawfi summarise the following facts about Kirkuk city and the province of Sharezoor:

“…And upon four journeys walk north east of Al-Dinor is the city of Sharezoor in province of Sharezoor. Ibn Huqil has mentioned ,in the fourth century (tenth century AD) that Sharezoor is a fortified city with a fence ,inhabited by the Kurds.

He cited names of their tribes established in that area and that they were “…of comfortable living, much cheapness, fertile area, in a wholesome condition and wonderful image.

And the Traveller Ibn Muhalhal , in the fourth century (the tenth AD) described Sharezoor, towns and villages, include a large city and it is its capital city in this time of ours”

As per the classical Arab sources, the Arbil Etabak Emirate was established: “on the rubble of the Hazbania Emirate and Qabhaqya (Al-Qabjafya) Emirate, which neighboured Arbil, and contained Sharezoor fortresses and the Kirkheni area (Kirkuk). During the Etabuck Emirate, Kirkuk became a dependency of Arbil for the duration of a century and half.