Islamic Action Front Quotes

This type of religious sexism is not unique to Islam. Fundamentalist Christians place women in a secondary role as do fundamentalist orthodox Jews although both allow a man to take only one wife. The Islamic scripture tells us that the Prophet allowed multiple wives only if the man had the resources to care for the wives and all the children. 4 is the maximum.

This technique she describes is consistent with Sharia—Islamic Law. It however is used by very few women who are sophisticated and courageous enough to do so.

In much of the Islamic world if a woman commits adultery or becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she will often be killed by her own father or brothers who perceive that this is the only way to maintain the honor of the family. The primitive custom really becomes gross when a woman who is the victim of rape, ends up being killed by her own male family members. In some Muslim countries honor killings are against the law but that prohibition is rarely legally enforced.

Dr. Saadawi was fired from her government post for revealing the status of women in the country. She was also actually arrested and jailed as well for impairing national “values.” See .{586709}.

The quotation is self explanatory except for the “curriculum” and “manliness.” The curriculum refers to the Saudi Arabian fundamentalist Wahabi educational curriculum that has been sent all over the world, including the U. S. These tech hatred and violence. America and most non Islamic countries have put great pressure on Islamic groups not to use these extremist materials. To Kharabshe, this in itself is a sin because he sees this curriculum as the authentic and proper one. See {606337} for an example of the violence in the curriculum. He and many like him believe that the attempts by Western nations to provide any rights for women beyond what they have under the Koran diminishes the manliness of Islamic men who would become the victim of these females who would not be under proper control of the men.

Islam is no more monolithic than any of the other major religions. This view is not held by most Muslim Coutnries or Islamic leaders throughout the world. It is held by a significant minority however.

This proverb is a large part of the conceptual basis of the concept of honor killing. It starts with the notion that women are property. However, being animate property women are in the same class as livestock. And if a camel or a donkey get lose and does damage, the owner is responsible. So if a woman does something wrong, it is the father or the husband who is responsible. Since sexual behavior of most kinds is contrary to the Islamic custom and law, any activity in this regard, demonstrates that the father of husband has not been up to his obligations and is therefore dishonored. Therefore, the least he can do, to provide a deterrent to other women is to kill the offending female. Without the concept of property, the entire chain of logic collapses under its own weight.

This quotation is the basis for the insistence of fundamentalist Muslims on the separation of the sexes, in stores, schools, restaurants. In the most extreme case the Taliban of Afghanistan would not allow female doctors or nurses to treat males or work in a hospital. Women were not even allowed in the hospital and many died of medical neglect.

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.

Formally and informally orthodox Islam is one of the most sexist of the religions. In addition to the fundamentalist Christian and Orthodox discriminatory view of females, Sharia—Islamic Law—makes a woman’s testimony in court with half that of a man, prohibits women from clerical leadership, will not allow females to pray in Mosques in the main section but segregates them, and many others. Islamic customs require women to be covered head to toe in a cloak, forbids them from driving in some countries, does not allow them to be in the presence of men outside the family, mutilates young girls in brutal circumcision rituals, and many others. Not all Muslims are sexist and many call for reforms like Nomani. Turkey, the most modern and successful Islamic nation, outlawed all these discriminatory aspects of Sharia, and gave women the vote BEFORE America did.

This is a particularly interesting passage of the Koran. On the one hand it provides the religious justification for the sexist dominance of the male in a marriage. However, at the same time, it gave wives rights at a time when few cultures and religions did--such as the right to own and inherit property. Women in the Western world did not obtain some of these rights until the last hundred years. So historically, Islam was somewhat ahead of Christianity when Muhammed lived, but while most Western interpretations of gender role and rights have changed and advanced, a small minority of Islam has been reformist and modern so Islam has gone from a leader in modern gender relations to an obstacle to equality and fairness by not changing and reforming.

Article 17 of the Egyptian criminal code allows judges to reduce or even suspend sentences after a conviction. That has been used to effectively exonerate murders where “honor killing”—the killing of a woman or man whose alleged behavior was contradictory to existing mores, thus bringing dishonor upon the family. Women who were suspected of adultery or even dressing immodestly were murdered by husbands, brothers or fathers without any serious criminal punishment. Some have called for repeal of Article 17.

It would take almost a thousand years for the relationship between women’s role in society, standard of living, poverty and development would be recognized by all but the most fundamentalist religious orders. Yet, at the flowering of Islamic intellectualism, the idea was discussed.

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.

Erdogan, though a very successful politician, was not a very sophisticated or well educated man. He appealed to the poorer, more Islamic, poorly educated, rural population, and while this statement, among others, made him a laughing stock and disgrace to more sophisticated Turks and to most of the industrialized world. While many people tend to believe that modern TC programming weakens traditional morals and norms, the thought that TV could induce nymphomania, is itself laughable. And to argue that girls should not laugh in public is extreme, even for most Muslims of the world.