HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF WOMEN IN IRAN SPOTLIGHTED NEAR THE U.N.

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.

An Honorable Subjugation

We just received an email from "AL MU'MINAAT (A project of Tayyibun Institute)" inviting everyone to an event titled 'THE HONOURABLE STATUS OF WOMAN IN ISLAAM'

Yes, nothing command more respect than excluding from speaking and being segregated from males.

Source: Tayyibun Institute

Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan: "The Subjugation of Women Reduces Them to a Level Lower Than Beasts"

Wafa Sultan: "If Islam really treated women with honor, we would see the positive consequences of that honor over the course of the past 14 centuries. Islam did not treat women with honor. On the contrary, it has distorted the concept of honor.

"My brother Rashid, I can call this pen a knife for 14 centuries, but it will never become a knife. It will remain a pen. Islam has turned these concepts upside-down, and has forced its followers to see things as their opposites - to view killing and beheading as an act of tolerance, to view taking a woman captive as an act of compassion, to view the plundering of spoils of war as their right, and to view masturbation against a little girl's thighs as marriage.

"Thus, it has destroyed the intellectual structure of the Arabic-speaking nation, and has produced people who cannot distinguish between things and their opposites - people with distorted thinking and warped mentality, as infertile as barren land, which cannot yield a thing.

"The best proof of this is the reality of Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad married the child 'Aisha, this was not an act of honor toward her childhood. When Muhammad married Zaynab, the wife of his adopted son, after seeing her naked and desiring her, this was not an act of honor toward married women. When Muhammad married the Jewish woman Safiya, upon his return from a raid in which he killed her father, brother, and husband, this was not an act of honor toward her. The same goes for all his marriages." More ...

Source: MEMRI

Muslims Launch Television Campaign To Make Women Wear Islamic Veil

Television channels throughout the Muslim world have recently publicized advertising campaigns demanding young Muslim women to wear veils, especially in the modern era of globalization, religious openness and progress. The female veil, called the hijab in Arabic, is one of the most powerful symbols of Islam, wearing it represents the upholding of ancient Islamic Law and its contemporary incarnation. At a time when many countries including France, Tunisia and Turkey are trying to prevent Muslim women from wearing headscarves in public institutions such as universities, schools and government institutions, this religious campaign resolutely refuses to abandon this symbol of Islamic piousness. Muslim religious leaders are now using Arab television channels to exploit their revered status in Islamic society to convince Muslim women to wear the hijab. Campaign tactics span from gentle encouragement to harsh threats, with one Islamic marketing company, Fatadabaroh, saying that all Muslim women who refuse to wear the restrictive head scarf are dominated by Satanic thoughts. This new Islamic war against female freedom and equality, has spawned a serious social conflict in the Muslim world, allowing Islamic religious institutions to preserve their papal supremacy over stagnant Muslim societies. 09/11/08. Video

Source: InfoLive

Yemen: the worst place on earth to be a woman

By Rachel Cooke

In Yemen, women belong to men. Most are illiterate. They are arrested in the street. They die in childbirth. In this special report, Rachel Cooke meets the brave few who are campaigning for midwives and against early marriage.

Say’un is a town of 30,000 people in the biggest wadi or watercourse, Wadi Hadhramawt, in the Arabian peninsula. Hadhramawt is extremely inaccessible. To get here, we flew from Sana’a, the capital, to the port of Al-Mukalla, and then drove over the desert and down through the lush wadi - it has surely changed very little since Dame Freya Stark became one of the first western women to see it in the 1930s - for nearly five hours. In Say’un, Oxfam is trying to improve reproductive healthcare, chiefly by funding the training of midwives and traditional birth attendants (TBAs). This is more important work than you may realise. In this part of Yemen - rural, religious, isolated - women are often unwilling to be treated by doctors, for the reason that they are men; it would be shameful for a woman to show her body to a man, even if the alternative meant that she might bleed to death. Getting more women into the healthcare system is therefore vital. ‘Our midwives work in the hospital in Say’un,’ says Basima Omer, a doctor involved in the programme. ‘They save lives. But they also go back to their communities with new information about hygiene, high blood pressure …’ She sips her coffee - in the country that gave the world coffee, everyone drinks Nescafé with condensed milk - behind her veil. So how on earth did she become a doctor? She laughs, quietly. ‘Oh, I went on hunger strike for three days until my father agreed.’ Read more ...

Source: Guardian

The Plain Truth About God

A serialization of the book, The Plain Truth About God.

Chapter 11. Jihad Inc.

The Arab Muslim.

The Islamic State, as it has come to be known, exists in the Middle East on the principal of obedience being due to God only and that Muslims reject the Western, secular idea of separation of church and state!

This is a nice trick fostered by the Islamic clergy to hold on to as much power as possible in spite of the emergence of democratic and populist movements in the world at large.

One of the greatest drawbacks to Islam is that it operates on the surface as being infallible, much as Christianity does.

Among Muslims however, it is acknowledged that the Prophet Muhammad left no actual interpretation of the Koran, but rather said it should be read and taken literally as the word of God. This means we have a Divine text that is adding to the confusion by being interpreted differently from scholar to scholar and person to person.

This interpretation by individuals depends on every one’s personal understanding, experience, social, political, and economic environment.

In fact, this happened almost exactly the same way among the early Christians.

In Islam, no one, not an individual dictator, an elected national body, or a scholar of religion, theoretically has the right to make any legislation that contradicts what is stated in the Koran or the Hadith of the Prophet.

If they do so, they are committing an act of grave Shirk, or “putting themselves in God’s place.”

Naturally, the clergy interprets and decides which part of the Koran they want the general population to use. They are also the ones that give guidance as to “what it really means.”

It is also one of the greatest con-jobs in history since anything that goes wrong or not according to their particular plan is obviously “God’s Will.”

(It is also the one of the main reasons that a Muslims will end every second sentence with the phrase “Insh-Allah” - or –“ God willing!” Being as pragmatic as they are, this puts the onus back on God for whatever happens and absolves them of being in “Shirk.”)

As a believer, a man (remember this is a male dominated organization that would put the Catholic Church to shame) can offer his own proposals for the renewal of his religion, so it is always open to change.

The sad truth of the matter is that in Islam, as in every other religion in the world, there are no shortages of people who try and put themselves in positions of influence and power. This, for the purpose of spreading their own version of reality amongst the masses.

Another one of the other great threats to the Islamic state comes from a source that has been kept in check for the last 1400 years. Of course, we are talking about the subjugation of women throughout the Muslim world.

Men are concerned that any loosening of the reins that keeps their females in a position of subservience will lead to an all out revolution by women.

They also stand to loose face amongst their Arab brothers and be referred to as un-manly for not being able to control their women!

In light of this, it is interesting to note that women enjoyed an almost equal position with men in Arab society before the coming of Islam.

This makes us wonder how much of the abolition of rights for women was a cultural phenomenon and how much can be attributed to a misogynistic group of men using religion to undermine a woman’s place in society.

We are not just pointing the finger at Muslim society here, since it is a fact that the Christian community has also done its fair share in the subjugation of women.

(After all, it was Jesus who championed the cause of women, only to have it put on the back burner again by Paul!)

It might seem a bit unfair to bring this subject up in the section on Islam but the Muslims are, for the moment, the greatest perpetrators of injustice to women, and since the matter must be addressed, it may as well be here.

As we saw earlier in this book, throughout history it has been the men who waged war, made laws, and generally ran things according to their outlook. That was fine when the men went hunting while women stayed back at the campsite or early settlements.

Over the centuries, however, we have seen a gradual shift in responsibilities and division of work, with females taking an ever more proactive role in society, as they should!

Men, by their very nature of being the hunter-gatherers, have always had the inclination to “shoot first and ask questions later.” This might have worked well in the past, but society is at a point now where the more reasoned and analytical approach employed by women might be a lot better for us in the long run.

The natural balance that the female mind gives to a male deserves to be listened to much more than it had been so far in history.

Remember, in the jahili culture of old, women used to mix freely with men. They used to dress in the same way as women in the secular societies now dress themselves. It was only after the advent of Islam that it became the custom for Arab women to spend most of their time at home, to cover their bodies, and be kept away from other men.

You will now find some people who tell you that the hijab (women’s Islamic dress) is an Arab custom, and not an Islamic requirement. Wrong!

Arab society was at one time much more enlightened than now and it is through the diligence of a few religious extremists through the centuries that the population has become narrow-minded in their world and cultural views.

This is one of the first things that have to be changed for women to take their rightful place in Arab society.

But then again-the difference between the wishing and the doing is great.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com