Maybe I expect too much... ... I don't know.Everytime I hear that Pres. Obama is going to make some pronounced major change, or give a historical major speech: I keep thinking, 'ok...maybe this will show me why a lot of people think he is great.'
Text - http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/04/obamas-speech-in-cairo/
"And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum."
"Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith."
"Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it."
"In Ankara, I made clear that America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam. ""Freedom of religion is central to the ability of
peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat. Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit — for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism. "
As I read through the text, I thought 'is this Obama's 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech?' It was his avoidance of the core of the sixth issue that was problematic for me. In one breath, he speaks of womyn's equality. In the next minute, he is making it sound as if giving Muslim girls an education will gloss over the daily brutality that Muslim girls and womyn face.
"That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right
of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it."
"The sixth issue — the sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights.
(Applause.) I know –- I know — and you can tell from this audience, that there
is a healthy debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that
a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. (Applause.) And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
Now, let me be clear: Issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, we’ve seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead.
Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of
American life, and in countries around the world.
I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. (Applause.) Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity — men and women— to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. And that is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams."
Obama came so close to the point - so close; but became lost in his campaigning persona. He really botched it when he said, "...I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal".
Pres. Obama is supposed to an educated man. Yet, he minimizes the problem more than a few of us in the West have with Islam as if it is a question of fashion preference.
The right of womyn and girls to wear the hijab is not the real issue. It is the brutality and oppression that is forced on them if they decide to make it their CHOICE whether to wear the hijab or not.
The acceptance of violence against womyn as permitted in the Islam religion and under Islamic law is a big part of the problem. It is that the brutality and oppression is viewed as a right of the Muslim man to meter it out as he sees fit to do so. In every country with a government set up under Islamic law, womyn and children are raped, torured, beaten, sold off into marriage, sexually mutilated, and killed with no consequence to the man responsible for it.
Only recently in the U.S. a Muslim husband beheaded his estranged wife because she was filing for divorce. It was deemed under Islamic law as an 'honor killing'. Every day there can be found a number of these 'honor killings' among Muslims.
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Iraqi Women Can Now Say No to Hijab or Head Scarf
http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7168860&page=1
Militants routinely threatened to kill each and every woman who did not dress according to the precepts of sharia law that were put in force in 2007..
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Child of 13 stoned to death in Somalia
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/child-of+-13-stoned-to-death-in-somalia-20081031
A girl stoned to death in Somalia this week was 13 years old. She had been accused of adultery in breach of Islamic law. Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was killed on Monday 27
October, by a group of 50 men in a stadium in the southern port of Kismayu, in front of around 1,000 spectators. Inside the stadium, militia members opened fire when
some of the witnesses to the killing attempted to save her life, and shot dead a boy who was a bystander.At one point during the stoning, Amnesty International has been
told by numerous eyewitnesses that nurses were instructed to check whether Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was still alive when buried in the ground. They removed her from the
ground, declared that she was, and she was replaced in the hole where she had been buried for the stoning to continue.
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Trapped by Violence – Women in Iraq
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/feature-stories/trapped-violence-women-iraq-20090420
17-year-old Rand ‘Abd al-Qader was killed in the city of Basra on 16 March 2008. She was murdered by her father, apparently assisted by two of her brothers, because
she had developed a friendship with a British soldier based in the city. ‘Abdel Qader ‘Ali, who admits killing his daughter, was questioned at a local police station. He told a British newspaper that police officers sympathized with his motive and released him after two hours of questioning. He has still not been charged or tried. Leila Hussein, Rand ‘Abd al-Qader’s mother, denounced her husband’s crime and left him, even though this meant she had to go into hiding. She did so with the support of a local women’s organization. She too was killed on 17 May 2008, shot dead in the street in Basra. Two women accompanying her were shot and wounded. The authorities have failed to identify the perpetrators.
Six years after the overthrow of former President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi legislators have yet to amend legislation that effectively condones, even facilitates, violence against women and girls. The Penal Code, for example, provides that a convicted murderer who pleads in mitigation that he killed with “honourable motives” may face just six months in prison. It also effectively allows husbands to use violence against their wives. The “exercise of a legal right” to exemption from criminal liability is permitted for:
“Disciplining a wife by her husband, the disciplining by parents and teachers of children under their authority within certain limits prescribed by Islamic law (Shari’a), by
law or by custom.”
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Afghanistan: 4 years after the US-led invasion
http://rwor.org/a/020/afghanistan-after-us-invasion-pt2.htm
The situation for women has remained unchanged in many aspects or has even become worse under the occupation. A few months ago a woman accused of adultery was stoned to death by a local court in Badakhshan, while the man was sentenced to a beating. Women are still persecuted and imprisoned for adultery on the say-so of their husband or other men. There are more and more cases of young women burning themselves alive. In the fourth year of the occupation there has been a fifty percent increase compared to the previous year. Women are at much greater risk of rape and kidnap now than before the invasion. Wearing a burqa is no longer legally compulsory, and women might not get beaten by the Taleban morality police anymore, but instead they might get raped or kidnapped or both. Forced marriage is as standard as ever. Girl children are sold for a couple of hundred of dollars. Since the invasion, prostitution has increased tremendously. Violence against women by family members is still as widespread as before, if not worse. The situation of women in Afghanistan cannot be judged by the few women in certain limited areas of the capital who
might now wear a scarf and drive a car. It should be judged by the hell that more that 90 percent of the women are going through.
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Bengali mother caned for talking to Hindu man
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/06/75023.html
A Muslim mother has been caned for talking to a Hindu man in Bangladesh, police said Saturday, prompting fresh concerns about a rise in cases of harsh treatment of women under strict interpretation of Islamic law.The punishment was carried out in a remote village in Muslim-majority Bangladesh on the orders of village elders, local police chief Enamul Monowar told AFP. There is major concern among women's groups in Muslim-majority but officially secular Bangladesh about what they say is a rise in brutal treatment of women under locally applied Islamic laws."In the last few months, we have seen villagers invoking Shariah to mete out barbaric punishments to women," said Salma Ali, the head of rights group Bangladesh National Woman Lawyers Association.
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There are thousands more reports of violence against womyn that result from, and are sanctioned by Islamic law. It's not the "West that views a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal", Pres. Obama; it's Islamic law.
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