Asra Nomani Quotes
I think that we don't have, here in the Middle East or in Africa, as much threat to our physical and economic livelihood as women in other parts of the world. But the continuum is the same. The pressures on women to fit into a certain image of a good Muslim girl is the same. The controls and rules are the same, but there are different degrees of it. So, in America, a father will threaten a daughter that he will disown her if she marries the American boyfriend and in Pakistan she faces acid thrown on her face. The power dynamic is the same, it just expresses itself differently.
Nomani, Asra Q. "Interview with Asra Nomani." Interview by Marianne Schnall. Feminist.com, 2006.
The Israeli cabinet was discussing an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One minister suggested a nighttime curfew for women:
Some modern versions of the Koran annotate the “beating” injunction and argue that this should only be used as a last resort. This is an example of socially unacceptable anachronisms that are found in the scripture of most older religions. All but the radical fundamentalists do not take these passages literally.
There are over 600.000 reported rape cases in South Africa each year. Since most rape goes unreported the real total is much larger, making South Africa the worst country in the world on a sexual violence scale. There are many reasons suggested for the South African extreme. However, since apartheid was overthrown, all ANC Governments had had a reluctance to have heavy police action for anything and there is a general reluctance to imprison people as this was what the apartheid regimes did. So all criminal activity is relatively high in South Africa.
In some cultures of the world women are considered to be under the control of or even the property of men. As such they are allowed to “discipline” the women. However there are a few religious fundamentalists in America who believe that God has ordained the man as head of the household and they oppose prohibiting husbands from “chastising” their wives. In some nations, especially in Islamic cultures, families are allowed to even murder a woman relative if she “brings dishonor upon the family. In many cultures, including some in the US, rape is not seen as a felonious assault, but as a natural thing for males to do.
Asra Quratulain Nomani is an American author and former Georgetown University professor. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student, investigative-reporting project into the kidnapping and murder of her former colleague, The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
