Se lo chiede Tojan al-Faisal – giordana, ex ministro, attivista dei diritti delle donne e intellettuale molto conosciuta nel mondo arabo – in un articolo che volta seccamente le spalle all’Occidente:
But while fighting for our rights, the ongoing discrimination between male and female rights should not prevent us from winning other human rights as well.
What we should really be doing is to stand up against governments’ collusion with the US and the West in general.
While doing this, we should be careful not to forfeit the whole array of human rights for partial rights of a certain section of the oppressed society, in this case women.
Arab women should realise that any right they win will
strengthen them to win the rights of their nation, and not turn them into a Trojan horse that gives birth to invaders.
Metto l’articolo nel “continua”, ché Al Jazeera ha il vizio di spostare i link, ogni tanto, e questo l’ho dovuto recuperare attraverso la cache di Google.
Tuesday 12 October 2004, 19:08 Makka Time, 16:08 GMT
To say women’s struggle for their rights has succeeded where other struggles for vital human and citizen rights have failed, is self-deception.
As a veteran women’s rights activists, I do not want women and Arab societies to have their intelligence insulted and be brainwashed into believing that women have won their fight for equal rights.
The battle is for a complete set of rights, not just women’s or men’s rights. It is a clash between authoritarians and the suppressed; it must be a fight against all political oppression.
A study of the history of mankind since the early ages would reveal that women’s political and religious authority has always caused men to rebel against female theocracy.
This eventually put an end to the “women-dominated” age and gave rise to the male theocracies.
Thus the battle goes on.
This article is not an attempt to label the relationship between men and women as a hostile one, but an attempt to highlight the nature of struggles which have dominated history and have involved dimensions that even participants in the struggles never grasped.
Researching history of struggles for the rights of women should not be based only on extinct religions, history or heritage, especially when we are talking about the rights of Arab Muslim women.
Being a believer should not stop one from analytically approaching religion from different social and political perspectives. There is no conflict between believing and questioning.
Islam has definite political and women’s rights. Those rights differ from the ones that existed in the Arabian peninsula before Islam and are also at odds with human rights definitions laid down by Makka theocrats.
Makka was the richest and most famous city in Arabia before Islam. Islam originated in it, and faced fierce resistance from the city’s affluent elites.
Like all attempts at reform, divine or human, and like any movement rising up against the authorities, recruiting supporters – mainly from the oppressed – would be the first move, as was the case with the Prophet Muhammad and prophets before him such as Jesus.
If we analyse the very early stages of Islam in Makka, we will find that when Islam reclaimed the rights of poor people from Makka’s infidel leaders, it found favour among a certain section that belonged to the ruling class: Women.
Khadija (the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad) was also the first to believe in his message (she was then the richest woman in Makka).
Many researchers fail to pay attention to the significance of the first Muslim’s gender.
Being an extraordinary woman, she was able to avoid the state of social and political isolation that women suffered in Makka.
The proof of that is her subsequent dedication to Muhammad’s message, as her work went beyond the role of just being the Prophet’s wife to being Muhammad’s companion (Muhammad’s companions were a group of first Muslims credited with helping the Prophet in spreading Islam).
Another example is Asmaa bint Abi Bakr.
History showed that she was not merely the daughter of one of the greatest companions, but was a gritty political activist who gave Umayyad rulers a hard time. (Umayyad was a Muslim
dynasty that ruled from 661 to 750).
Realising the importance of women who could be active not just among themselves but also among others, Prophet Muhammad would not accept the pledge of allegiance by Yathrib’s men unless the city’s women were also incorporated into the process (Yathrib is the city to which the Prophet had moved to avoid the Makka leaders’ harassment).
Thus, in Islam, the process of abolishing tribal casteism went hand in hand with the process of removing the discrepancies in the rights and duties of men and women in order to put them on an equal footing.
Women’s rights in Islam resulted in social and political changes which have distinguished the Islamic era from the pre-Islamic period.
These changes were demonstrated by granting women their rights, abolishing class divisions and working towards a sustainable development formula, especially after the failure of compulsory and hasty development plans.
The persistence of such a reformist approach makes Islam a religion for the ages, despite the rise of selfish theocrats during the reign of the Umayyads – whose rule was marked with self-seeking and politically motivated fatwas (religious rulings).
Although some Islamists – and even some Arab governments themselves – have promoted the idea that political Islam is the main opposition against oppressive Arab regimes, the historical alliance between these governments and Islamists is too obvious to overlook.
This alliance is inevitable because they both adopt the same strategies: Rejecting dialogue and refusing to share power and privileges with others.
Women have been the weakest community for well-known historical reasons, and political leaders of the day have always abandoned them to the religious powers, so that political power will remain the prerogative of men.
This gave religious leaders the chance to rule over women in society. So both political and religious power remained male dominated.
The current disengagement between Arab regimes and the clergy cannot be trusted, because it is imposed by foreign powers.
The present zeal for excessive modification of women-related laws has actually neutralised popular support for these reforms.
Also, these reforms do not give a fair indication of genuine governmental concern for human rights, because very often the same governments indulge in far more serious violations of other human rights, and these pro-women reforms are
seen as nothing but an attempt to cover these greater sins.
Human rights are indivisible. The history of mankind is the history of defending those rights. Anyone who tries to violate those rights is an enemy of mankind, regardless of the identity of the violator – be it an occupier, a repressive government or a corrupt legislator.
I am not against women’s rights per se. But while fighting for our rights, the ongoing discrimination between male and female rights should not prevent us from winning other human rights as well.
What we should really be doing is to stand up against governments’ collusion with the US and the West in general.
While doing this, we should be careful not to forfeit the whole array of human rights for partial rights of a certain section of the oppressed society, in this case women.
Arab women should realise that any right they win will
strengthen them to win the rights of their nation, and not turn them into a Trojan horse that gives birth to invaders.
Tojan al-Faisal is a former Jordanian MP. She is a well-known Arab politician, women activist and intellectual.
Aljazeera
