Sima Samar Quotes
I am used to playing with fire. Somebody has to do it.
In Afghanistan and other Islamic nations where there is a fundamentalist view of women, many advocates of women’s rights have been assaulted and/or murdered. In some cases, on the grounds of blasphemy.
Sima Samar, Chair, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Comment about trying to protect women’s rights in an Islamic nation like Afghanistan, “100 Top Global Thinkers”, Foreign Policy, December 2012
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This statement is referring to the custom of women covering their eyes whenever a man who they did not know passed them. Turks did not ever use Burkas the way some other Muslim countries do, but they wore headscarves and covered their eyes when a strange man appeared. This was a shocking statement in a sexist Islamic culture. Although the process of modernization and reform in Turkey was relatively bloodless, Ataturk was prepared to and did use force to defend it. This and many others made the role of women not only uniquely equal in the Islamic world, but women were suddenly elevated to the level of most Western nations and in voting rights were ahead of most. He used his own family to set an example. See {584503}.
This 12th century observation which appears so obvious has been ignored by the vast majority of Islamic scholars and writers subsequent until modern times, and even then they represent the small reform minority of Islamic thinking.
Jinnah was a modern Islamic reformer as this quotation demonstrates. Pakistan is not as backward as most of the Arab Islamic countries on the role of women. There are many Pakistani businesswomen and professionals. Pakistan has even had a female president. However, the fundamentalist Islamic forces that dominate the culture constantly preach and advocate the literal interpretation and following of Sharia which calls for a traditional, subservient traditional role for women; “honor killings” are common; “a rapist cannot be convicted on a female victims testimony; there are calls for the killing of adulteresses and other primitive throwbacks. Jinnah’s vision has not come to pass yet.
This is one of the most positive statements about women and women’s rights to emanate from a leader of a Muslim Middle Eastern nation.
Sima Samar is an Afghan woman's and human rights advocate, activist and a social worker within national and international forums, who served as Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to 2003. She is currently the Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and, from 2005 to 2009, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan. In 2011, she was part of the newly founded Truth and Justice party. In 2012, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world."
