HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF WOMEN IN IRAN SPOTLIGHTED NEAR THE U.N. BY: FERN SIDMAN Graphic depictions of the most egregious forms of human rights abuses against women in Iran took center stage at a special seminar in New York City on March 3rd. Sponsored by "Iran180", an organization dedicated to spotlighting the litany of human rights abuses that take place on a daily basis in Iran, the seminar was entitled, "Securing Gender Equality: Iran and the CSW". Held at 777 UN Plaza, a building directly across the street from the United Nations, the objectives of the gathering included raising awareness of Iran's violations of women's rights and the staging of symbolic protests against the welcoming of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the newest member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women at its 56th session. Among the speakers were the Honorable David Kilgour, J.D., co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran - Shabnam Assadollaki, host and producer of Hamseda Persian Radio in Canada - Fakhteh Luna Zamani, CEO and co-founder of the Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran - Renee Redman of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center - Reza Khalil, former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member and author of "A Time To Betray", winner of the 2010 National Best Books Award - Fariba Davoodi, a formerly imprisoned Iranian women's rights activist, and Mertash Rastegar, an Iranian blogger and international law expert. Quoting the findings of exiled Iranian lawyer, Zohreh Arshadi, Mr. David Kilgour, co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran intoned, "the Iranian penal system is a principal means of sustaining inequality of genders. Its ludicrous premise is that women are deficient in abilities." He added that Arshadi stresses that Iranian women, "have managed to achieve equality in one field only: equal right to imprisonment, exile, torture, being killed and now being slaughtered..." Speaking of the many Iranian women who are unjustly imprisoned, tortured and often sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit, Mr. Kilgour relayed the narrative of Sakineh Ashtiani, a mother of Turkic descent (a minority known to be targeted for human rights abuses, especially in Teheran) who did not speak Farsi or understand her charge of alleged adultery. "She was incarcerated and beaten, then humiliated in front of her family by a public lashing. Her plight and narrow escape from death by stoning became a successful test case for the global community's response to the regime's misogyny," he said. Mr. Kilgour also spoke of Irwin Cotler, a Canadian member of parliament and chair of the Inernational Responsibility to Protect Coalition who recently warned that Iran is on an "execution binge", while engaging in a "wholesale assault on the rights of its own people." He added that, "in 2011 alone, the Iranian regime has already executed at least 120 people. It now leads the world in per capita executions, many of which are in secret, taking place after arrests, detentions, beatings, torture, kidnappings, disappearances, and brief trials in which no evidence is presented." Calling for the disqualification of Iran's membership in the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Mr. Kilgour suggested that the CSW convene a special session to discuss women's rights in Iran and act in its capacity to stop the repression of women. "It is our responsibility to act in robust solidarity with the struggle for women's rights everywhere across Iran," he concluded. Addressing the issues facing ethnic minority women in Iran, Fakhteh Zamani of the Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran (ADAPP) said, "In Iran, as throughout the world, women are victims of violence on a daily basis but Iran's justice system provides little or no remedy to the obstacles and violence facing women and girls." She noted that women are not encouraged to bring complaints against their attackers for fear of bringing, "dishonor" on the family as well as reprisals from the attacker and relatives. Quoting the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Ms. Zamani said, "discriminatory law in both the civil and penal codes in Iran play a major role in enpowering men and aggravating women's vulnerability to violence. In particular, discriminatory provisions in the civil code relating to the areas of marriage, child custody, freedom of movement and inheritance may lead to, perpetuate or legitimize violence against women perpetrated by private actors." Highlighting the ubiquitous phenomenon of trafficking in or girls and women, Ms. Zamani said that the UN Special Rapporteur reported that, "most of the trafficking is said to occur in the eastern provinces, which are mainly Baluchi areas, where women are kidnapped, bought or entered into temporary marriage in order to be sold into sexual slavery in other countries." Concluding with an oft quoted phrase used amongst Iran's women human rights defenders, she said, "We are both women and minorities; so, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, we are doubly accused." "I am absolutely opposed to the imposition of Sharia law," declared Shabnam Assadollahi, the producer and host of the Canadian based Hamseda Persian radio program. "Sharia law tells us that female hair has evil energy and those women's rights activists in Iran who refused to wear head coverings were beaten and tortured while their children watched," she said. She detailed gruesome accounts of torture of women in Iran saying, "young girls and virgins were raped prior to being executed and after execution their bodies were burned and electrocuted." Fulminating at the decision to include the Islamic Republic of Iran on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Ms. Assadollahi said, "There is no place for Iran on this commission. Just think about the arrogance of this regime to judge others concerning gender equality and human rights." Speaking in her native Farsi with an interpreter, Fariba Davoodi, an Iranian women's rights activist told of her incarceration in Iran and the barbaric tortures that were inflicted upon her by her captors. "It is the common aspiration of all Iranian women to be free", she said. "When the regime came to arrest me for my activism on behalf of women's rights, they beat me up in front of my children and brought me to their notorious prison where I was kept in solitary confinement in a tiny cell where I was interrogated for long periods of time; where tey kept the lights on all the time and forced me to shower in front of them." "The fear that women's rights advocates in Iran have is not only from the repressive government but from male family members including husbands, fathers and brothers," she said. Trying to remain optimistic about the future of Iran as it pertains to women's rights is a daunting challenge for women such as Ms. Davoodi. "We hope that very soon we will live in a free and democratic Iran, but so long as the regime stays in power, our hopes will not be realized," she said.
 To Muslims, and even to some non-Muslim apologists, Islam is the only religion that has given women their due rights, equality and dignity. It can’t be otherwise: How can then Islam, as Muslims claim, be the perfect, the best and the final religion of God? And Muslim women got due equality and rights alongside men despite the fact that (a) Muslim women have no individuality and independence for themselves as Allah has placed them under the charge of men, who may beat them or deal with as the wish, not vice versa [Quran 4:34]; (b) women are worth only half the men [Quran 2:282]; (c) women can inherit only half that of men (i.e. brothers inherit double that of sisters) [Quran 4:11,4:176]; (d) women are same as slaves and camel, according to an authentic sacred tradition of the prophet [Dawud 11:2155]; and many other such gross discriminations and injustices. While these references from Islam’s sacred texts make it clear that Muslim women, far from being equal, are an inferior being to men, the grossest of indignity that Allah has reserved for them is His allowing Muslim men only to marry up to four women at a time [Quran 4:3, 70:29-33, 4:24], meaning that a woman is worth only one quarter that of a man. And that’s not enough, Allah the barbarian par excellence even allowed men, on top of taking four wives, to keep unlimited number of sex-slaves, who can be procured, according to Allah’s sanction [Quran 33:50], by attacking non-Muslim communities and wholesale enslavement of their women. Notably, Prophet Muhammad himself, when became powerful, had captured women of the tribes of Quraiza, Khaybar, Mustaliq and Hawazin etc. after attacking those communities and slaughtering their men. While it would sounding utterly idiotic to seek to find equality between men and women or high dignity to women sanctioned in Islam, it is easy to say that Allah, the man-god, the alter-ego of Muhammad, has rewarded Muslim men richly at the expense of women. For fourteen centuries, Muslim women have suffered under the degrading status and treatment at the hands of men as per sanctions of the Islamic God. But no unjust system, whether sanctioned by a purported God or dictatorial men, can last for ever; the oppressed and wider humanity will rise up and challenge it one day. Many religions have reformed their unjust institutions and doctrines to survive in the modern civilized world, while the tyranny of Hitler or Stalin has been put to rest. Although Allah’s injustice upon women has lasted fourteen centuries, the oppressed Muslim women have started challenging the unjust status quo of Islam. As of latest, a Saudi female journalist, Nadin al-Badir, has added voice to well-known courageous critics, namely Taslima Nasrin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish et al., against the injustices of Islam. And al-Badir’s challenge is quite unique, unheard of, coming from a Muslim woman: She has taken on the highly trumped-up Muslim claim, that only Islam gives due rights and equality to women, in an article, published in the Egyptian Al-Masri al-Yaum newspaper, by demanding that Muslim women, like men, be allowed to take multiple husbands. Well, indeed, that would reflect true equality between men and women in Islam. And why not! Muslims claim that polygamy is allowed to men only, because they only have the ability to support multiple partners financially. But today, many well-educated Muslim women are becoming confident and pursuing rewarding careers, thus, gaining ability to support multiple sex-partners through legitimate income, unlike Muhammad’s and his companion’s barbarous means of earning livelihood through decoity, raids and wars. I have been told by well-educated Muslims, to support polygamy in Islam, that only men can sexually satisfy multiple sex-partners, not women. While that’s true for certain men, it can well be true of certain women, too. There are prostitutes, predominantly women, all over the world satisfying multiple men on a daily basis.
We come across news of gang-rape all the time, more frequently in Islamic countries and communities, in which multiple men get sexual satisfaction from one single woman within a short time. We don’t here gang-rape of men by women; and one wonders how many men will be able to sustain such assaults by multiple women at a time. The said journalist, for sure, did not earnestly mean to have polyandry for Muslim women, alongside polygamy for Muslim men. Instead, it is obviously an effort to highlight the “unjustness” of Islamic institutions concerning women. What is stunning is the fact that this demand is coming from the pen of a Saudi woman, the community of Muslim women in the world, worst-affected by the cruel institutions of Islam in the most provocative manner. Seeking polyandry for women, not for men, is adultery in Islam, which is punished by stoning to death in Saudi Arabia. If she is living in Saudi Arabia, this column may well bring her death by stoning for questioning an unquestionable divine institution of Islam. This also proves that not all Muslim women, even from Saudi Arabia, are willing to suffer Islam’s gross violation of human rights and equality of women anymore lying low; they are ready, even, to embrace death in order to put an end to Islam’s lasting injustices. And, quite understandably, the article also elicited angry responses from Muslims, particularly clerics. One Egyptian Member of Parliament, according to BBC, has already filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for publishing the provocative article. Surprisingly, however, one cleric has also defended the article, saying that it aimed to highlight the sufferings of women under Islam, not than seeking to promote polyandry among them. Is window of change for Muslim women in the offing? Well it might if voices like al-Badir’s keep joining the growing club of courageous Muslim women, willing to challenge the status quo of Islam’s unjust institutions and doctrines concerning them, some even seeking to put an end to Islam, a scourge of humanity, altogether. Islam Watch 
 Kuwait's highest court granted women the right to obtain a passport without their husband's approval, the case's lawyer said Wednesday, in the latest stride for women's rights in this small oil-rich emirate. Unlike with highly conservative neighbors like Saudi Arabia, women in Kuwait can vote, serve in parliament and drive — and now can obtain their own passports. In many countries in the region, women cannot travel or obtain a passport without the consent of their male guardian. Attorney Adel Qurban, whose case the court was ruling on, said the landmark decision "freed" Kuwaiti women from the 1962 law requiring their husband's signature to obtain a passport. His client, Fatima al-Baghli, is one of thousands of women who have been petitioning courts for this right. The court found the article in the decades-old law "unconstitutional" because it goes against the principal of equal rights for men and women. "It undermines her free will and compromises her humanity," the court explained according to a copy of the decision provided by the lawyer. Activist Aisha al-Rsheid hailed Tuesday's ruling, but said females in this traditional male-dominated society were still a long way from the equality promised by the 1962 constitution. "We want to see women judges and prosecutors, we want women to give their citizenship to their children, and we want women to have the right to state-provided houses," just like men, she said. With its history as a trading community, Kuwait has long been more liberal than the Bedouin societies in the interior of the Arabian peninsula and its 1962 constitution provides for a parliament and equality of the sexes. Conservative elements in the country, however, have long promoted a stricter interpretation of Islam, especially regarding relations between men and women. Source: FoxNews
Hijab (The Headscarf)—Yes; The Burqa—No
Pajamas Media 15 September 2009 Banning the burqa in the West might be one way to ban Islamist fundamentalism and the barbaric subordination of girls and women in certain immigrant communities. For this reason, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and French Minister Fadela Amara have again called for this ban. Earlier today, French immigration Minister, Eric Besson, called the burqa “debased.” I would hope that the French take their argument further. In the past, they have mainly cited security concerns: Burqa wearing women might be “racially” attacked or burqa wearers themselves might be terrorists or criminals who are planning to attack or rob civilians. I would hope that the French also argue for such a ban on women’s rights/human rights grounds, as I have already proposed. Thus, clothing which completely covers the face and head in a way which muffles speech, hearing, and vision, which limits or prevents all human communication and identification, and which, in effect, functions like an isolation chamber is, by definition, a violation of human rights. None of this applies to hijab, the Islamic headscarf, which has already been banned in France in school and which is the subject of protest and controversy across Europe.
With all due respect for the good intentions of the French, perhaps Western governments should not automatically or necessarily ban hijab for women; the matter is tricky and complicated for girls as we have seen, as city after city across Europe has discovered. Indeed, this is a complex and challenging matter. Today, in Holland, in the very country that is putting the sober and very brave parliamentarian,Geert Wilders on trial for exercising his political free speech—another bright Dutch light, Trouw historian Tineke Bennema has called on “women who were born in the Netherlands to voluntarily put on a headscarf ‘out of solidarity’ with the hijab wearers.” You know, like the Danes allegedly once wore the yellow Jewish star. Read All here: http://europenews.dk/en/node/26287
 The institute that the imam founded preaches that women should not wear the niqab,
or face-covering, and that men should not wear beardsBy Ruth Gledhill A progressive Muslim imam from Oxford has won a libel action against a Muslim newspaper in what he claims is a "watershed moment" in the battle between liberal and extremist Muslims in Britain. Dr Taj Hargey, who provoked controversy last year when he invited the first ever woman to lead and preach at Friday prayers in Britain, has been awarded a "substantial" five-figure sum in libel damages against the Muslim Weekly, which takes a conservative line on community issues. In its latest edition, the newspaper urges the Government not to play a "divide and rule" policy over the Muslim Council of Britain. The Government has threatened to cut ties with the council after it refused to sack its deputy leader, Daud Abdullah, who signed a pro-Hamas declaration at a conference on Gaza in Istanbul. Dr Hargey, who is originally from South Africa, describes himself as a "thorn in the side of the Muslim hierarchy" as a result of his liberal theology and his "integrationist, non-sexist views." Read more ...Source: The TimesH/T: A.L. Dr. Taj Hargey
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
A mosque in southern Belgium has named a female Muslim professor to the post of imam, the first such a move in the northwestern European country. "Hawaria Fattah has been granted the rank of imam," Abdel-Jalel Al-Hajaji, the curator of Al-Sahaba Mosque in the southern city of Verviers, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, October 25. "It is the first move of its kind in Belgium and Europe." Chosen along with two male imams, Fattah, a mother of three, will supervise the preaching activities for women at the mosque. "But she will not deliver the sermon of the Friday prayers or lead the prayers," stressed Hajaji. "Her role will focus on supervising the preaching and guidance activities for women at the mosque." Read more ...Source: Islam Online H/T: Islam in Europe
 By Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman Being the host country for the United Nations, every year world leaders arrive that we do not like. Not long after Fidel Castro took over Cuba, he came to New York (as he has many more times since) and American administrations fume. Soviet leader Khrushchev once angrily took off a shoe to pound it on the table. Yasser Arafat arrived dressed in military fatigues, carrying a "freedom fighter's gun" (presumably unloaded) and an olive branch. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela came and noted that the preceding speaker, President Bush, left an odor of sulfur behind, "the devil!" he said, crossing himself. One of my favorite visitors is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, who has admirers among liberal dreamers of "world peace and religious tolerance," and illiberal radicals who believe that the enemy of their enemy (the U.S. and Israel) must be their friend. They seem unaware of the hilarious contractions of this position. Scott Kennedy, a former mayor of notoriously nutty Santa Cruz, California and founder of "the Resource Center for Nonviolence" (very selective nonviolence some say), even managed a private meeting with the Iranian president. Read more ...Source: Family Security Matters
Paris - Women who wear burqas live in a prison, a French minister said in an interview on Wednesday, after a Moroccan woman who wears the head-to-toe Islamic veil was denied French citizenship. "The burqa is a prison, it's a straightjacket," Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, herself a practising Muslim who was born in France to Algerian parents, said in an interview to Le Parisien newspaper. "It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy." France's top administrative court, the state council, on June 27 rejected the citizenship request on the grounds that the woman's Muslim practices were incompatible with French laws on secularism and gender equality. Read more ...Source: News 24H/T: Shariah Finance WatchFadela Amara
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 A comprehensive curriculum detailing the issue of gender equality is required in Islamic countries, experts said yesterday. It would help religious scholars understand the concept of gender equality and abide by Sharia laws at the same time, they said. Cairo University Law College professor Dr Ahmed Kamal Abu Al Majd said that many Islamic nations were hesitant when it comes to women's issues. "People are hesitant and confused because they cannot accept change and are stuck with tradition, most of which are not Sharia compliant since Islam stresses equality," he told a conference on Gender Mainstreaming in Development at the Gulf Hotel's Gulf Convention Centre. Meanwhile, Bayt Mal Al Quds Agency director general Dr Abdelkabeer Al Alawi Al Madghari said that some Muslim women, who are keen to take part in their country's development, are put off due to a series of disappointments. "The answer is to study Islamic societies through people's interpretation on women. We should try to steer this society, controlled by traditions and culture, towards a better understanding of gender equality," he said. "Islamic countries must also take the initiative to spread the correct ideas about the role of women in society through the media." Read more ...Source: Gulf Daily News
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