Wacana Islam

New York Muslims to snub Bloomberg breakfast in surveillance protest - The Guardian

2011-12-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

A group of prominent Muslim figures in New York City have said they will boycott an annual meeting on Friday with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in order to protest against police surveillance of their communities.

Bloomberg is scheduled to hold a multi-faith "Bagels with Bloomberg" breakfast with religious leaders from across the city on Friday morning, but the group has written to the mayor's office outlining their reasons for refusing to attend.

In particular, the group says it is outraged at details that emerged earlier this year of a concerted effort by the New York police department to monitor activities of Muslims in New York. A series of reports by the Associated Press detailed the activities of a unit within the NYPD, called the Demographics Unit, that monitored daily life in Muslim communities, including eavesdropping in businesses and infiltrating mosques.

"According to the investigation, the police department monitored and collected information on New Yorkers at about 250 mosques, schools, and businesses throughout the city, simply because of their religion and not because they exhibited suspicious behavior," the letter said.

It added: "Mayor Bloomberg, the extent of these civil rights violations is astonishing, yet instead of calling for accountability and the rule of law, you have thus far defended the NYPD's misconduct. We, on the other hand, believe that such measures threaten the rights of all Americans, and deepen mistrust between our communities and law enforcement."

The letter was signed by 15 prominent Muslim New Yorkers, including
Khaled Lamada, head of the Muslim American Society, Omar Mohammedi, president of the Association of Muslim American Lawyers, Aisha al-Adawiya, founder of Women in Islam, and Iman Al Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, who president of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York.

Another signatory, Linda Sarsour, the director of the Arab-American Association of New York, told the Guardian that the AP reports had confirmed her worst fears. "This confirmed what we already knew. It gave validity to our concerns that we are being spied upon just because of our religion. That undermines the security of all New Yorkers," Sarsour said.

Sarsour added that lawsuits against the NYPD were being considered in the wake of the AP investigation, and called for an independent inquiry into the activities of the department when it came to monitoring Muslim communities.

So far, that call has fallen on deaf ears. Senior police figures have denied that they targeted Muslim communities in general, claiming they only followed leads. Bloomberg has also strongly and consistently backed the city's police department and its tactics.

An investigation by the CIA had looked at its role in helping the NYPD and recently concluded no wrongdoing had taken place.

But Sarsour remained unsatisfied.

"How can someone from the CIA be the one to investigate the CIA? We are asking for an independent investigation," she said, saying it should be carried out by the Department of Justice or a Congressional committee.

A spokesman for the mayor's office downplayed the impact of the letter and the boycott, saying that other Muslim leaders were still planning on attending the breakfast gathering. "We have a couple dozen Muslim community leaders who have RSVP-ed that they will be at the breakfast, which is about the same as previous years," said Stu Loeser.

NYPD officials also weighed into the spat, saying that the AP story had exaggerated its activities. "The NYPD lawfully follows leads in terrorist-related investigations and does not engage in the kind of wholesale spying on communities that was false alleged," said Paul Browne, an NYPD deputy commissioner.

But the revelations about the Demographics Unit are not the only controversy surrounding NYPD actions around Muslim Americans and terrorism. An NYPD operation last month arrested a suspected "lone wolf" terrorist in the shape of New Yorker Jose Pimentel. NYPD officials hailed the arrest, which occurred after a lengthy undercover operation that saw an NYPD informant supply Pimental with bomb-making equipment, as a major triumph.

However, it later emerged that the FBI had passed on co-operating on the case, because it believed the target was not a viable threat. That has led to accusations that the NYPD "entrapped" Pimental.

Woman says she visited husband minutes before he was murdered - ABC Action News

2011-12-31T05:19:00.000-08:00

A manhunt continues in Pinellas County. Authorities are looking for the person they say robbed the JFS Food Mart in Seminole and killed the store clerk.

The victim, Mohammod Islam, 38, came to the US from Bangladesh a decade ago looking for a better life. Now the family at his Clearwater home is devastated.

"To see him go like that. That's not fair. It's just not fair," said sister in-law Sherry Rahaman.

Islam's wife says she had just stopped by the convenience store where he worked moments before the robbery. She went there to drop off dinner.

"I wish if I was there with him, maybe I could prevent something. You never know," said Bibi Narisha Rahaman.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office says sometime before 7 pm, Wednesday night, a man seen on the store's surveillance video walked into the J-F-S Food Mart, robbed the store, and killed the clerk.

Witnesses say he was riding a bike before the robbery and left on that bike as well.

Islam's wife says she is still numb. And didn't believe it when the detectives knocked on her door with the news her husband was dead.

"I tell them that could not be real. I was right there a couple minutes before," said his wife.

Family members say was loving and generous to those around him. They also wonder why a robbery had to end with his murder.

"He could have just taken whatever he wants. Just leave him alone. Let him live his life. Just like him. I just want justice," said Rahaman.

As of now, detectives aren't releasing information on how Islam was killed.

His wife told us he used to come from Port Charlotte to Clearwater just to drop off a flower or snack when he courting her. They were married four years ago.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crimestoppers at 1-800-873-TIPS.

Women status in Islam - Pakistan Observer

2011-12-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

Before the advent of Islam, women were treated in such a evil way. They had no rights to live. They were treated worse as compare to animals. Young girls were buried alive. Women were treated like cattle, devoid of humanity. In those days of darkness and evil society, the people had not any sense about women as they are also creation of Allah. The advent of Islam gave bright light to everyone. Islam gave equal rights to both male and female. Islam recognises the position of women to be the same as that of men. Islam also recognises that women are not one of the lower specie. Islam has given women rights and privileges which she has never enjoy under other religion. GHULAM TAHIR
Resident Editor

Raghida Dergham: Rise up and be heard, Arab sisters - The Independent

2011-12-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

Their situation today is tragic. It stands as a warning to Arab women: beware of committing the same mistakes. If you do not rise up now, the moment will be lost.

For it isn't impossible to imagine a similar scenario unfolding in countries like Egypt and Libya. Too often politics is considered to be "men's work". But if Arab women stand up for themselves, they could represent an extraordinary instrument of change. If they were to organize themselves with the aim of causing political, economic and social change, they could pose a powerful challenge to the attempts of Islamists to hijack the idea of the secular state.

Sadly, there are few regional examples that are likely to inspire that process. Even in supposedly enlightened countries like Lebanon, women are absent from political decision-making institutions: the men in power have not "found" any women qualified enough to fill even a single ministerial position under the current prime minister, while there were only two female ministers under the previous one. In fact, the country of freedom and democracy, as it boasts, has failed to adopt a decision to outlaw violence against women in compliance with the desires of religious institutions. The women of Egypt, or most of them, are digging their own graves as long as their burkas are blinding them to the possibility of such a fate.

Here, the women of Lebanon, a country not reached by the Arab Spring, have one thing in common with the women of Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, where change has arrived, as well as with the women of the Syrian opposition, who have played striking political roles and whose fate remains unknown under the alternative forces that would come to power. To engineer change they need to form feminist political parties – not unions or associations – with clear programs and goals, and a clear focus on the roles played by women in decision-making. They need parties that are bold and courageous in calling themselves feminist, then run in elections and demand a 30 per cent quota of posts for women, as adopted by the United Nations 35 years ago.

Women were troublingly invisible in some of the protests that consumed the public square. But the younger generation did play its part. If those young women have truly reached political maturity, they should take the initiative now – before the Islamists finish hijacking their revolution – to raise Arab women as a slogan, an instrument and a feature for the democratic road to reform and freedom.

If that happens, a confrontation could arise between the women of modernity and the women of tradition – especially religious tradition – in view of their different aspirations. Well, so be it. Just as there is an acceptance of the struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists for power, or between Leftists and Islamists, let the difference between the women of modernity and the women of tradition be accepted and dealt with democratically.

There are some encouraging signs. Libya's women activists are characterized by a great deal of courage, as they enter into a fateful battle against the Islamist revolutionaries, and even against the leaders in power who have rushed to degrade women by reinstating men's "right" to marry four of them. But these women may fall victim to the alliance between the North Atlantic Alliance (Nato) and the revolutionaries if the western sponsors do not exercise their influence – as they can when they want to – instead of merely speaking empty words about women's rights. Libyan women have taken part in getting rid of Muammar Gaddafi's regime – and some of them have been active for 40 years – but they are now alone in a fateful battle against the men of the revolution, who are determined to monopolize power, exclude women and impose their own narrow-minded version of Sharia rule.

The United Nations has a role it must now play through its Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who spoke boldly against Gaddafi, and must now speak with the same boldness for the rights of Libyan women. The UN's record is mixed. In Afghanistan, where it played a key role in shaping the new political regime after the fall of the Taliban, then-UN Envoy Ambassador Al-Akhdar Al-Ibrahimi made sure to include the participation of women in decision-making and a clear quota for them according to the constitution, giving women 25 per cent of seats in parliament. But it failed to do the same in Iraq – although it would have been able to if it had tried. Before it today is the opportunity of a Security Council term for the Secretariat, as well as that of the presence of a dedicated entity, UN Women. This entity must prove itself courageous and bold by supporting and providing all assistance to Arab women. If it does not, it will not be fulfilling its mission.

The male Arab youths, who are waging the battle for change in their respective countries, have not yet risen to recognizing the rights of young women to freedom, liberalism and self-expression. Most of them fell between chivalry and tradition, as they watched the Islamists in Tahrir Square in Egypt expelling young women by "pushing" them and pulling their hair, to punish them for violating tradition. Some of them have overlooked harassment, and even rape. As long as they keep this mentality, they will not rise to the level of being able to cause the required radical change in Arab societies, not just because this is a fundamental part of freedom and liberalism, but also because it will not be possible to develop Arab societies without women.

If the young men stay in the Tahrir-style Squares of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Syria in such a state of want, their battle for power against the Islamists will be a losing one. They will surely fail without the participation of young Arab women, who have truly begun work that is organized, bold and qualitatively new. They are active in all of those countries as well.

The young men are not the only ones who need to decide if they are willing to stand up. So must the women of the Muslim Brotherhood. We know that Salafist – ultraconservative – women have neither a say nor a role, but only exclusion and submission, as admitted and clearly declared by the Salafists themselves. We know that the worst thing that could happen to Arab women would be for the Salafists to come to power. They have made this unequivocally clear. What is unclear is the women's program within Muslim Brotherhood organizations, which pay lip service to modernity as a tactic, so as to reach power then monopolize it.

Turkey, perhaps in partnership with Qatar, has promoted so-called moderate Islam to circumvent extremism. Now it has to take a clear stance towards the role of women in particular. The wives of all high-ranking officials in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, including the President and the Foreign Minister, wear the hijab as a political statement, and not just as a religious choice. Turkey has the ability to stop the descent, because secularism there is strong, and because its geography prevents it from such a descent. Things are not so elsewhere in the Middle East. Turkey must speak publicly of the situation of Arab women, especially as it is a partner in the drive to bring the Islamists to power.

Most importantly, while Arab women begin to work for local change, they also have to start communicating with their campaigners in other countries. It won't be easy to found the new political identity, but it's an urgent task. If the serious work doesn't start now, the Arab Awakening could end up as a slumber that leaves the region in the dark ages.

Raghida Dergham is a columnist for the London-based Arabic daily 'Al Hayat'

Tomorrow: Robert Fisk on how the dictators clung on for so long – and what the Arab Spring will bring next

Nigeria attacks stir fears of reprisal across ancient divide - Irish Times

2011-12-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Day bombings, claimed by Boko Haram, could inflame historical rivalries and rekindle the idea of partitioning Nigeria along religious lines, writes TIM COCKS in Jos, Nigeria

THE LINE dividing Christians from Muslims that runs along a rocky valley in the central Nigerian town of Jos may not be visible to the eye, but it burns in the minds of local people.

The mosque lies barely 200m from the main church in the Congo-Russia neighbourhood, a huddle of tin-roofed homes winding up a hill, and on its sandy pavements women in Muslim headscarves politely greet men wearing shiny crucifixes.

Jos, in Nigeria’s volatile “Middle Belt”, is historically a religious and ethnic tinderbox in the country’s sensitive North-South divide between Muslims and Christians.

Christmas Day bomb attacks by shadowy Islamist sect Boko Haram – suspected of links to al-Qaeda and with ambitions to impose Islamic sharia law in Nigeria – have stoked fears again of sectarian conflict in Africa’s top oil producer and most populous state.

“Over there is the dividing line,” said trader Anthony Baya (30) nodding at some houses cloaked in a haze of windborne dust.

“You can’t just go over to that place as a Christian. The Muslims can kill you,” he said, describing how six youths were hacked to death with machetes and dumped down a well during Jos’s last bout of inter-communal violence in November.

Nigeria’s 160 million people are roughly divided between Muslims and Christians, who mostly live side by side in peace.

But in towns like Jos, ruined buildings with charred walls sprouting weeds testify to past violence, and other flashpoints bear the material and mental scars of bouts of sectarian strife that have periodically bloodied Nigeria since its independence from Britain in 1960.

The Congo-Russia neighbourhood itself is named after the Congolese and Russian UN peacekeepers who kept the two communities from each other’s throats during Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s.

Boko Haram claimed three bomb attacks on churches on Christmas Day, including one that killed 27 worshippers in a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja, and one in Jos which had no fatal victims.

The co-ordinated strikes by the northern-based Islamist group, whose name translates as “western education is sinful” in the Hausa language of the region, appeared aimed at prising open Nigeria’s religious faultline in a direct challenge to the government of president Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner.

“Boko Haram is seeking to provoke retaliatory attacks on Muslims in predominantly Christian parts of the country,” said former US ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell, who is the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In Jos, local Muslims were wary of a possible Christian backlash.

“We are just beginning to live in peace, so we hope our Christian brothers can help us keep that peace,” said Mohammad Kabir, who like many Nigerian Muslims resents being associated with violent extremism.

“Boko Haram is not all Islam,” he said.

Stirring such fears, unknown attackers threw a crude homemade bomb into a madrassa, or Islamic school, in Nigeria’s southeastern Delta state on Tuesday, wounding seven people including six young children.

For some, such as Papa Jimba (46) leader of the Christian community in the Congo-Russia neighbourhood in Jos, the Boko Haram bombings have rekindled the idea of partitioning the country along religious lines.

“Let us divide Nigeria,” said Jimba, using his hand to trace a line between two halves of his wooden bench by the roadside.

“The Muslims go to their side and the Christians stay on our side. Then peace can come back. I’m even praying for that.”

The latest attacks in what seems to be an escalating campaign of anti-Christian and anti-establishment violence by Boko Haram are also being linked to a long-running political power struggle in Nigeria between north and south.

“There is a clear political dimension . . . there are political forces at play here that are using the religious dimension as a mobilising and amplifying force,” said Jennifer Giroux, senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the university of ETH Zurich.

Nigeria’s internal politics have soured again since Jonathan assumed the presidency earlier this year.

His election victory was seen in the eyes of many northerners as breaking a tacit deal to rotate the Nigerian leadership between north and south every two terms.

More than 500 people were killed in post-election violence in the north after Jonathan’s victory, reflecting long-standing northern grievances about perceived alienation and exclusion by the central government from the fruits of national oil riches, concentrated in the south.

In Jos, the bombings also have the potential to inflame local rivalries that are really about land, ethnicity and power, but which have taken on a religious dimension that local politicians have a habit of using to settle scores.

The late deposed Libyan strongman Col Muammar Gadafy, who had long coveted ambitions of leading Africa, suggested in March 2010 that Nigeria split into ethnic regions.

The idea sparked outrage at the time, but has gained currency in some circles.

“People thought Col Gadafy was mad, but I’ve started to see the sense in what he said. If we can’t exist together with our Muslim brothers, then they can build their houses over there, and we build ours here,” said Rev Philip Mwelbish, head of the Christian Association of Nigeria (Can) for Plateau state, where Jos is located.

“We have a proverb in Nigeria: if you push a goat to the wall, he will bite you.

“They’ve pushed us to the wall,” Mwelbish said.

Ayo Oritsejafor, national head of the Christian association, told Jonathan on Wednesday that the bombs were “a declaration of war on Christians” and he accused Muslim clerics of failing to take responsibility for their followers.

Muslim leaders retort that they are not to blame for the actions of a few extremists in the name of Islam.

At the green, yellow and white painted Central Mosque on the busiest street in Jos, Christian and Muslim leaders met on Tuesday in an effort to calm tensions.

“They should understand that we don’t consider the authors of these attacks to be Muslims,” said the mosque’s spokesman Sani Mudi.

“What are their teachings? Don’t forget Islamic scholars have been killed by them too.”

Concentrated mainly in the northern Nigerian states of Yobe, Kano, Bauchi, Borno and Kaduna, Boko Haram became active in about 2003 and is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

It considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they are Christian or Muslim, and its followers wear long beards and red or black headscarves.

The group made international headlines in July 2009 when its attacks led to clashes with Nigerian police and army in northeast cities, including its stronghold of Maiduguri. About 800 people were killed in five days of fighting.

In the same month, sect leader Mohammad Yusuf was captured by Nigerian security forces and shot dead in police detention some hours later, triggering vows of revenge by surviving adherents.

From early drive-by shootings against police officers in the remote northeast, the group has moved to more ambitious high-profile attacks, such as the August 26th bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja that killed at least 24 people.

Iranian Embassy Holds Conference on Women's Rights - Fars News Agency

2011-12-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

Top Iranian and Indonesian figures participated in the conference on "Rights of Muslim Women," which was held by the Cultural Department of Iran's Embassy in Jakarta and Islamic University of Sonan Kolija.

During the conference, Iran's Cultural Attach? Mohammad Ali Rabbani touched on a range of issues pertaining to Muslim women, including the role of women as half of the Islamic community, Muslim women's capabilities and their influence on ideological and cultural changes, role of women in the current events of the world, cultural invasions and negative advertisements regarding the status of Muslim women as well as problems of western views on women in Islam.

The Iranian official referred to some of the most concise and precise legal discussions on the rights of Muslim women, and demanded Iranian and Indonesian elites to cooperate in explaining the rights of Muslim women to the world.

Women lecturers from Iran and Indonesia in this conference elaborated on Women in Islamic Fiqh (jurisprudence), virtual space and the role of Muslim women in preventing the damage of virtual space to the family, responsibilities and duties of Muslim women in Islamic thinking and also legal and social challenges for Muslim women.

Position of women in the West, collapse of family in the West, impacts of an ideological and cultural system of the West regarding women in Muslim societies and also achievements and problems of women in Iran and Indonesia were among other topics discussed in the conference.

Sexual thoughts : Islamic cleric asks women not to touch bananas,cucumbers - TruthDive

2011-12-26T23:21:00.000-08:00

An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, as they have sexual resemblance and may invoke “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh who was featured in an article on el-Sawsana news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third-party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.” He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

The opinion has stirred a storm of irony and denouncement among Muslims online, with hundreds of comments mocking the cleric.

One reader said that these religious “leaders” give Islam “a bad name” and another commented said that he is a “retarded” person and he must quite his post immediately.

But the cleric seems to have some merit in his statement scientifically.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D, Founder and CEO, The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in his website has said “All cultures have foods that are considered aphrodisiac. For example, saffron in Spain, bird’s nest soup in China, camel’s hump among the Arabs, cocoa for the Aztecs. It was said, for example, that Montezuma had 600 concubines, and to satisfy them he drank 50 cups of cocoa per day from a golden goblet. Over time, almost every interesting or exotic foodstuff, particularly if reminiscent of the male or female sex organs, has been used to inspire desire and stimulate performance: bananas, peaches, berries, figs, dates, asparagus, nuts, seeds, stuffed dates, sea urchins, to name a few”.

“Food can be sexually enticing or suggestive because of its texture (soft, slithery, slurpy, such as oysters), shape or appearance (think bananas, asparagus, cucumbers, pomegranates), and even the attitude with which it’s eaten (if slowly, sensually, with eye contact)”, he added.

Saudi Arabia beheads woman for 'witchcraft' - Chicago Tribune

2011-12-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

A woman was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for practicing witchcraft and sorcery, the kingdom's Interior Ministry said, prompting Amnesty International to call for a halt in executions there.

Amina bint Abdel Halim Nassar was executed Monday for having "committed the practice of witchcraft and sorcery," according to an Interior Ministry statement. Nassar was investigated before her arrest and was "convicted of what she was accused of based on the law," the statement said. Her beheading took place in the Qariyat province of the region of Al-Jawf, the ministry said.

In a statement issued late Monday, the human rights group called the execution "deeply shocking" and said it "highlights the urgent need for a halt in executions in Saudi Arabia."

"While we don't know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's interim director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, practices a puritanical version of Islam and is governed by Shariah, or Islamic law. In the deeply conservative kingdom, sorcery, witchcraft and blasphemy are all offenses that can be punishable by death.

The London-based Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat quoted a source in the country's religious police who said authorities searched Nassar's home and found books on sorcery, a number of talismans and glass bottles filled with liquids supposedly used for the purposes of magic. The source told the paper Nassar was selling spells and bottles of the liquid potions for about $400 dollars each.

CNN could not reach Saudi Arabia's religious police or Justice Ministry for comment.

Amnesty says Nassar's execution is "the second of its kind in recent months. In September, a Sudanese national was beheaded in the Saudi Arabian city of Medina after being convicted on 'sorcery' charges."

The human rights group said the number of executions in Saudi Arabia has almost tripled in 2011.

"So far at least 79 people -- including five women -- have been executed there, compared to at least 27 in 2010," the Amnesty statement said.

This is not the first sorcery case in Saudi Arabia to spark outrage from human rights groups. In 2008, Lebanese TV host Ali Hussain Sibat was arrested on charges of sorcery while in Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage. In 2009, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. While Sibat has not been executed, he remains in prison.

Saudi Arabia's judicial system also made headlines this month for the sentence imposed on Australian national Mansor Almaribe, who was convicted of blasphemy while performing the Hajj in the kingdom, and sentenced to 500 lashes and a year in prison. The Australian government is pleading Almaribe's case

The Role of Women in Arab Post- Revolutionary Regimes - Al-Arabiya

2011-12-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

The subjection of Arab women will be inevitable if Islamist political parties seize power in the countries of change, where coups or uprisings took place this year. The condition of women in Iran in the wake of Khomeini’s revolution in 1979 bears living testimony to the fate of Arab women, if they make similar mistakes and fail to rebel early on and in a comprehensive fashion. For one thing, Arab women today would represent an extraordinary instrument of change, if they were to organize themselves with the aim of causing political, economic and social change, so as to form a clear response to the attempts of Islamists to hijack the idea of the secular state. Resisting subjection may force women to resort to violence, and this would require courage, boldness and initiative.

Yet civil disobedience would also require these qualities. And so would “thinking outside the box”, through new means and approaches, some of which entailing confrontation, while others requiring an innovative and creative strategy. While traditional women’s associations have played and continue to play a necessary role, most of them have dissociated themselves from politics, considering the latter to be “men’s work”.

Women have played significant roles within political organizations, liberationist or Islamist, yet they have most of the time been excluded as soon as the revolutionaries or the Islamists came to power.

The condition of women in countries that claim to be enlightened, such as Lebanon, is also shameful given the absence of women from political decision-making institutions, as the men of power had not “found” any women qualified enough to fill even a single ministerial position under the current Prime Minister, while there were only two female ministers under the previous one. In fact, the country of freedom and democracy, as it boasts, has failed to adopt a decision to outlaw violence against women in compliance with the desires of religious institutions. The women of Egypt, or most of them, are digging their own graves as long as their burkas are blinding them to the fate of their fundamental rights – women’s rights from the perspective of human rights at the very least.

Here, the women of Lebanon, a country not reached by the Arab Spring - which has become an autumn and a possible prelude to a winter storm-, have one thing in common with the women of Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, where the fast train of change has arrived, as well as with the women of the Syrian opposition, who have played striking political roles and whose fate remains unknown under the alternative forces that would come to power. What they have in common is the necessity for them all to form feminist political parties – political parties, not unions or associations. They are in need of political parties with clear programs and goals, and a clear focus on the roles played by women in decision-making. They need parties that are bold and courageous in calling themselves feminist, then run in elections and demand a 30 percent quota of posts for women, as adopted by the United Nations 35 years ago. These parties would organize protests, demonstrations and local and international workshops to benefit from the experiences of women around the world. In fact, the first of such workshops should be held in collaboration with the women of Iran.

And more still, such workshops should examine ways to make use of the Arab women’s money and their abilities (independently as holders of capital), yet within a strategy of influence capable of transforming the standards of an investment in which women would be pioneers and decision-makers, and which would have a massive impact on the country’s economy. This way it will be possible to redefine the role of women in the Arab region and also to reshape their relations with the new generation of both young men and women. And if the young generation, which took part in the revolutions of change and in the overthrow of the regimes, has truly reached political maturity, it should take the initiative now – before the Islamists finish hijacking their revolution – to raise Arab women as a slogan, an instrument and a feature for the democratic road to reform and freedom.

It may be said that a crisis and a confrontation could arise between the women of modernity and the women of tradition – especially religious tradition – in view of their different aspirations. Well then, so be it. Just as there is acceptance of the struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists for power, or between Leftists and Islamists, let the difference between the women of modernity and the women of tradition be accepted and be democratic.

The Libyan women activists are characterized by a great deal of courage, as they enter into a fateful battle against the Islamist revolutionaries, and even against the leaders in power who have rushed to degrade Libyan women by reinstating Libyan men’s “right” to marry four women. Libya’s women may well fall victim to the alliance between the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) and the revolutionaries to overthrow the regime, if the sponsors of this alliance do not go ahead and exercise their influence – which they do when they want to – instead of merely speaking empty words about women’s rights. Libyan women have taken part in getting rid of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime – and some of them have been active for 40 years – but they are now alone in a fateful battle against the men of the revolution, who are determined to monopolize power, exclude women and impose their own narrow-minded version of Sharia rule.

The United Nations has a role it must now boldly play through its Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who spoke boldly against Gaddafi, and must now speak with the same boldness for the rights of Libyan women, from the perspective of human rights as well as that of political participation. In Afghanistan for example, where the United Nations played a role in shaping the new political regime after the fall of the Taliban, then-UN Envoy Ambassador Al-Akhdar Al-Ibrahimi made sure to include the participation of women in decision-making and a clear quota for them according to the constitution, giving women 25 percent of seats in parliament. The United Nations failed to do the same in Iraq – although it would have been able to if it had tried. Before it today is the opportunity of a Security Council term for the Secretariat, as well as that of the presence of an entire UN entity dedicated to women, called UN Women and headed by the former President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. This entity must prove itself courageous and bold by supporting and providing all assistance to Arab women. This is a fateful phase for them, and that is the mission of the new entity.

A workshop for Arab women must adopt a new political discourse, based on women leading, not following, or demanding to be granted a right here or to have a restriction removed there. The women of Iran have hesitated, they have been patient, they have waited and they have dreamed. And when they awoke to their bitter reality, it was too late. Even the execution of some of them went by without any international notice. Their situation today is tragic, and they are warning Arab women, as if to say: beware of committing the same mistakes. If you do not rise up now, it will be too late.

The Arab youths, who are waging the battle for change in their respective countries, have not yet risen to recognizing the right of young women to freedom, liberalism and the right to express themselves. Most of them fell between chivalry and tradition, as they watched the Islamists in Tahrir Square in Egypt expelling young women by “pushing” them and pulling their hair, to punish them for violating tradition. Some of them have overlooked harassment, and even rape. As long as they keep this mentality, they will not rise to the level of being able to cause the required radical change in Arab societies, not just because this is a fundamental part of freedom and liberalism, but also because it will not be possible to develop Arab societies without women.

If young Arabs stay in the Tahrir-style Squares of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Syria in such a state of want, their battle for power against the Islamists will be a losing one. They will surely fail without the participation of young Arab women, who have truly begun work that is organized, bold and qualitatively new. They are active in Tunisia, Syria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt as well.

The burden of the fate of Yemeni women, meanwhile, falls on the shoulders of Tawakel Karman, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, amid the West’s zeal to accept the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Tawakel is affiliated – considering them to represent moderate Islam, as per their own definition. It is not clear whether Tawakel Karman intends to make use of the standing given to her by such a prize in defending the rights and the role of Arab women in a secular state that separates religion and state. Tawakel Karman has the right to take on the role of an activist for the overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime, but she does not have the right to take on that of a supporter of Arab women, as long as she does not clarify her position within the context of the Muslim Brotherhood being in power.

It is time to clarify one’s identity, particularly by the women of the Muslim Brotherhood. We know that Salafist women have neither a say nor a role, but only exclusion and submission, as admitted and clearly declared by the Salafists themselves. We know that the worst thing that could happen to Arab women would be for the Salafists to come to power. They have made this unequivocally clear. What is unclear is the women’s program within Muslim Brotherhood organizations, which pay lip service to modernity as a tactic, so as to reach power then monopolize it.

Turkey, perhaps in partnership with Qatar, has promoted so-called moderate Islam to circumvent extremism. Yet it is today required to take clear stances towards the roles and rights of Arab women. We know that the wives of all high-ranking officials in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, including the President and the Foreign Minister, wear the hijab as a political statement, and not just as a religious choice. Turkey has the ability to stop the descent, because secularism in it is strong, and because its geography prevents it from such a descent. Things are not so in the Arab region. Turkey is required to speak publicly of the situation of Arab women, especially as it is a partner in the drive to bring the Islamists to power.

Most importantly, Arab women must begin to work for local change while coordinating or at least communicating with the feminist work being done in other Arab countries. The challenges are many, benefiting from the lessons of others is necessary, and adopting a new methodology based on political discourse and on establishing political parties has become urgent. The time for serious work is now, because the Arab Awakening will end in the Slumber of the Dark Ages if Arab women fail to take the initiative and to lead the way forward.

(The writer is a columnist at Dar Al Hayat, where this article was first published on Dec 9, 2011.)

Hardline Indonesian local Mohawks are detained in concert-the Washington Post shave off a punk rocker.

2011-12-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

Their "disgusting" and replace it with the clothes and toothbrush after he handed each barked "it."

Crackdown on Aceh, to impose Islamic laws secular but mainly Muslim country of 240 million dollars, the only province to promote the strict moral values, the latest effort by the authorities.

Here, adultery is punishable by stoning to death. Homosexuality has been thrown in jail, rattan cane lashed together in public areas and forced to wear headscarves and the woman said, please, no tight-fitting pants.

It's not clear why the police decided to hone in.

Sexual harassment for months complained piercings and tattoos teens even though Saturday's roundup of more than 100 people attended the concert was still far from the largest and most dramatic torso.

Baton-wielding police dispersed the fans attending the show, many of whom have vast archipelagic was traveling in other parts of the country.

Hassan 59 loaded in 5 young men and women, van and the provincial capital Banda Aceh in a police detention center 30 miles (60 km).

They are the areas of rehabilitation, military-style religious classes, such as the Quran Recitation and being trained would spend 10, he said. After that, they'll be sent home.

20-year-old was a punker, Fauzan, humiliated.

"Why not? Why is my head?! "Pointing to his head neatly shaved, he said."We did not hurt anyone. This is how we have chosen to express themselves. Why are they treating us like criminals "?

Tears, some women were given a blunt, short term, the bobs.

Hassan insisted he had done nothing wrong.

"We're not consulting anyone," the police chief said. "We're not a violation of human rights. We just put it back on the right to moral path. "

However, the Police Commissioner, State human Nur Kholis deplored any kind of criminal law have been broken at the end of the detention must be described.

"Otherwise, they are in violation of the right of people to gather and expression," said, promising to investigate Kholis.

In Indonesia, the Islamic Aceh — where the first arrived in Saudi Arabia enjoy semiautonomy in over a century ago-Central Government.

It is in the province of 170,000 people were killed in the 2004 tsunami, both the rebels and the army convinced the separatist to lay down their arms after the negotiations were part of a peace deal. Either way, I wanted to add to the suffering of the people.

In other parts of the country — some of the local government are tremendous changes in the economic growth and modernization since long the speed light, impeachment, and Suharto's alcohol drinking also saw 10 years ago — in a public place, gambling and "immoral" behavior, such as kiss.

However, they have met with success, thanks to the majority of the country's 200 million Muslims, belief in the right form of practice.

Canada bans women from wearing Muslim veils during citizenship oath - Daily Caller

2011-12-26T01:37:00.000-08:00

America’s northern neighbor has banned women from wearing the burka and niqab while taking their oath of citizenship.

Canada, known for its welcoming immigration policies, is now prohibiting any face coverings during citizenship ceremonies in order to ensure that those taking the citizenship oath are actually reciting it.

In the announcement, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney explained that the decision came as a result of complaints from lawmakers, judges and citizens who said they could not tell whether those with covered faces were saying the oath.

“All we ask of people is to fulfill the requirements of citizenship and to swear an oath before one’s fellow citizens that one will be loyal to our traditions that go back centuries. This common pledge is the bedrock on which Canadian society rests,” he said Monday. “That is why starting today, my department will require that all those taking the oath do so openly. From today, all persons will be required to show their face when swearing the oath.”

Kenney added that the act of taking the citizenship oath “is a quintessentially public act” to show that one is joining the “Canadian family.”

“To segregate one group of Canadians or allow them to hide their faces, to hide their identity from us precisely when they are joining our community is contrary to Canada’s proud commitment to openness and to social cohesion,” Kenney said. “It’s important to note that this is an expectation. If Canada is to be true to our history and to our highest ideals, we cannot tolerate two classes of citizens. We cannot have two classes of citizenship ceremonies.”

The question of Muslim veils has plagued many Western democracies that walk a fine line between the practical need for identification and allowing for religious expression. In April, France became the first European country to ban the burka in pubic places.

Canada’s decision, which took effect immediately, has been met with mixed emotions.

Abdullah Khan, a member of the North Shore Islamic Information Centre, told Canada’s The Province that a majority of Muslims would not push back against it.

“Islam is also flexible to accommodate these needs,” he said.

The acting executive director of The Canadian Council of American-Islamic Relations, Ihsaan Gardee, however, took issue with the decision, saying that it called into question the good faith of Muslims taking the oath. Further, it would force Muslim women to chose between their religion and their desire to become a citizen, Gardee said.

“If implemented, this decision will have a damaging effect on our democracy because it forces those who wear the niqab to choose between their religious convictions and adopting Canadian citizenship,” Gardee said.

The B.C. Muslim Association expects Muslim women will follow the new regulation, but takes issue with how the government characterized the ban.

“We feel that the government should have consulted experts on Islamic law before enforcing the regulation in order to understand the correct position of niqab in Islam. The minister’s remarks about niqab being a completely cultural practice are inaccurate and Islamic legal texts can be referred to in this matter,” said BCMA president Musa Ismail and BCMA religious affairs spokesman Mufti Aasim Rashid in a statement.

“Likewise the presentation of the regulations as a ‘ban’ or ‘imposition’ and the minister’s public comments about Muslim women’s previous practice as being ‘ridiculous’ or ‘frankly bizarre’ do not exude finesse and inclusiveness,” said the BCMA leaders.

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Can Turkey Make Its Mosques Feminist? - The Atlantic

2011-12-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

Istanbul Islamic leaders are requiring houses of worship to treat men and women equally, challenging some traditional norms and raising a few tempers

Women sit at Eyup Sultan mosque while waiting for Eid al-Fitr prayers, in Istanbul / Reuters

A campaign to make Istanbul's roughly 3,100 mosques more welcoming for women could set off a gender revolution in Turkey's places of Islamic worship - and one that may not be uniformly welcomed.

"This is about mosques being a space for women," declared Kadriye Avci Erdemli, Istanbul's deputy mufti, the city's second most powerful administrator of the Islamic faith. "When a woman enters a mosque, she is entering the house of God and she should experience the same sacred treatment. In front of God, men and women are equal; they have the same rights to practice their religion."

As part of the "Beautification of Mosques for Women" project, Erdemli sent 30 teams to visit all of Istanbul's mosques and report back on the facilities for women. What the teams found was shocking, she claimed. "Many of the mosques have no toilets for women, no place for women to wash before praying," Erdemli recounted. "Most of the places allocated for women were used as storage places, and those that weren't were usually filthy and freezing cold in winter."

Istanbul's mosques are now under strict instructions to clean up and provide equal facilities for both men and women by February 2012. But it's not only a push for cleanliness and improved sanitation that is underway. The way mosques are arranged is also being changed, according to Erdemli. "In most mosques, the women's area was divided by a curtain or a wall, and this is not fair," she elaborated. "They are sacred places and women have the right to take advantage of their spiritual feeling as well."

"In front of God, men and women are equal; they have the same rights to practice their religion"

Unlike men, women are not required under Islam to attend a mosque; their presence is allowed, but, traditionally, female Muslim believers have prayed more frequently at home. Practices, however, can vary from country to country, and from mosque to mosque. In Istanbul's mosques, to reflect the beautification project's goal of equal worship space, "all the curtains and walls are coming down," Erdemli said. "But segregation will remain; men and children will pray in front of women."

Starting in late December, inspections will start to check if mosques are complying with instructions. Since the program began in March, Erdemli has addressed over 5,000 of the city's imams and religious staff to explain the theological reason for why mosques are for women as much as they are for men. On the streets of Istanbul, there appears to be broad support for the program among religious women. "Sure, it would be beautiful. It would be much better," said one 30-year-old woman, who gave her name as Münevver. "In some places, the spaces for women are clean, but in others they are filthy."

The Diyanet, the state-run administrative body for Turkey's mosques, has not only given its complete support to the project, but also provided a theological justification. In November, the head of the Diyanet, Mehmet Gomez, gave an uncompromising speech, in which he acknowledged the problem of misogyny in Islam. "There are some wrong, incomplete, biased interpretations that do not reflect the general principles of our noble religion," Hürriyet Daily News on December 7 reported Gomez as saying.

All are not happy with this gender revolution. "I hope all these increasing efforts are not aimed at removing the obstacles for a woman to come out of her home, and first go out to the mosque, and then to find a job; all by finding legitimacy within [the Islamic] religion," grumbled leading Islamic columnist Ali Bulac on December 3 in the Zaman newspaper.

The column provoked a storm of reaction. The outcry, interestingly, was louder coming from practicing Islamic women than from secular feminists. In her December 6 column for the daily Yeni Safak, Islamic columnist Ozlem Albayrak termed Bulac's attitude a form of "persecution against women."

The heated polemic is just the latest example of an important change in Turkish society. Istar Gozaydin, a law professor at Istanbul's Dogus University and an expert on the Diyanet, argues that the rise of a new conservative Islamic middle class on the coattails of the decade-long rule of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party has eased both formal and informal restrictions on Islamic women in education and state workplaces. "We see more and more women getting educated in the universities, more women in the workplace," Gozaydin said. "They've been able to become more visible in society. And they want to be a part of the mosque system as opposed to praying at home."

Although the percentage of women in Turkey's workplaces and university student bodies may appear relatively low, the figures are trending upward. A 2010 World Bank report on gender equality reported that 30 percent of Turkish women work. According to official data for the same year, women accounted for 44 percent of Turkish university students.

Erdemli has her sights on the Beautification of Mosques for Women project becoming an inspiration for the rest of Turkey. She maintains, though, that its goal is not revolution, but simply bringing the Muslim faith back to its roots. "All we are doing is taking Islam to back before it was corrupted and misinterpreted, when women and men were treated equally," she said.

This article originally appeared at EurasiaNet.org, an Atlantic partner site.

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Polygamy is not an option, says Morocco Islamist premier's wife - Al-Arabiya

2011-12-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

As Moroccans begin to become more curious about their new Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, it seems only appropriate to learn more about his family and meet the Moroccan premier’s wife, Nabila Benkirane, finding out how the two met.

“We are cousins and we fell in love with each other back in the 1970s when Abdelilah was a leftist activist and I was a university student,” she told Al Arabiya.

Nabila said that in the beginning, her family did not approve of their marriage due to ideological differences.

“He was leftist and I was a religious veiled girl who belonged to a conservative family. This difference was not a problem for me personally, but my father was worried that Abdelilah would change my beliefs and make me liberal like him.”

When asked about her relationship with him, Nabila explained that she lived with him moments of joy but they also both went through many hard times.

“Problems started when he joined the Islamist youth movement. He was arrested when I was pregnant with our first child.”

When asked about the funding her husband gets, Nabila said that he has always been self-funded and was struggling to make ends meet to support his family.

“The only good thing was that we lived in my father’s house which he gave to us right after we got married.”

When asked if she would accept Abdelilah ever marrying another wife, as permissible in Islam, she replied that she wouldn’t.

“No matter how nice he is to women, he will never love anyone except his wife, sons, and grandsons and he knows love cannot be distributed across four individuals [Islam allows Muslim men to marry up to four women] so I trust him on that.”

As for Abdelilah at home, Nabila described him as a cheery, upbeat person.

“But sometimes he gets worried but this is normal because his concerns are not trivial ones. He is preoccupied with the future of an entire nation.”

Nabila stressed that she is sure that her husband’s new job will never change him.

“He will always stay modest and kind,” she concluded.

(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid)

Afghan women have room Dungeon-sweet success for the Care2.com (blog)

2011-12-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

This post is Karen day, journalist and founder of the Afghan women's justice project, written by.

This helped to change the main Afghan history almost 93000 people in the world. Petition signatures The Afghan women's justice project , and c a r e 2 by proffered, you came along and Afghan President Hamid Karzai Gulnaz sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for women, she refused to marry the rapist of a pardon for. However, women's rights, and this win is tainted by two facts: more than 600 women and their children are similar to the "moral crime" remains behind bars in Afghanistan and decided to marry her rapist Gulnaz.

In Afghanistan this year, my sixth trip and imprisoned with in Gulnaz women and children, hundreds of met. Most people never see as humanitarian journalists prefer to spend my life — in place, the refugee camps and warzones. third world disaster areas The bad news is that in the world after years of reporting in a worse place, it immediately won the female prisoners in Afghanistan of the planet's most anywhere on the sad honor of disenfranchised women.

United States Army and aid the Afghan women, which has brought progress on investment guarantee, full of cell phones and hotel in the city of Kabul, especially — but still all the way to flow burkas. Only in the 15th century, you need to travel outside the city, 5 kilometers to go back to one. Korean society of Islam and Sharia law is built on centuries-old belief — the ancient chiefs Hall of the cultural code that instructs the women less than men, the status and the legal value of the holding. "due process" for women is non-existent. It is simply accusing the woman of the crime and the two men she accused automatically guilty. In addition to the common moral crimes (or heights) to the prison every day, like having shot women and children continue to send abusive husband and murder-by-proxy, where a male family member accused of killing someone, run away from the woman.

Basic education, health and safety without the Afghan women face unimaginable daily hardships. They also have the world's highest maternal mortality: childbirth-related causes in the six women die from one. By comparison, the basic meals and isolated from the men, women and children, in these terrible Afghan prison almost met us and Afghanistan can be considered lucky — many are still in prison consultant deduce "honor-killing" since the Taliban Kandahar and Helmand in the same area of less than 25 women in governance.

Gulnaz toddles around the prison yard, who is facing a young woman with her daughter 20 rounds. She is a cousin of her husband she was raped, her conception by refusing to marry the rapist, sentenced to jail for the 18. Clementine Malpas, English film producer, the story of Gulaz "-define" produced by the European Union in the six months to document in the film called. The story also two other women prisoners, "received moral crimes."Regarding the fate of the film was complete, the release of the EU, decided to block would endanger their lives, these victims of exposure.

Defining the legal and human rights, which the filmmakers Joey Leffler about the rule of the European Union attach received e-mail description. It is mentioned that the European Union was determined to "women in film when was ' give their full consent, '" subjects of the documentary "EU and rehabilitate can threaten the life of a responsible for the event would not be willing to take."

Clementine was not, however. We hope the recognition earlier this year when her film would increase the gain entry to the jail and these disadvantaged women and helped improve the lives of children she met in Kabul. As the founder of the Afghan women's justice project literacy education in prison and as a benefit to raise funds for preschool to Sun Valley, Idaho "ban" movie premiere at the situation and may, in writing. For me, the European Union seemed to double by the film censor injustice. Www.awjp.orgkeep In-justice Trailer posted.

Afghan women face today two attractive reality movie releases, including whether or not the argument. Earlier this year, the Government has Afghan Taliban conservative time magazine by punishment was cut off her nose, woman's shelter after one child bride show almost shut down. They have been made to promote women's rights failed to show the progress. They talk to the media on the safe houses in Afghanistan these women so that they can be damaging to honor.

Who am I to talk anonymously and shot the woman puts it more concisely. Women and children in prison to provide literacy training to Afghan women's Education Center, her identity to the public could endanger herself and her family by her. "Articles or the Afghan women's plight in the film, I can tell you the truth, but they also could aggravate the situation more difficult — and my work."

It means you will never change — so what is the situation not yet exposed to, and the answer to the puzzle for Christmas?

Clem, you must believe that the truth be told. She continued to lobby for the release of the film, and grassroots organizing efforts and petition Gulnaz free. Kimberly Motley, petition, signed by a pro bono basis, media attention and thousands of young prisoners, with the help of a lawyer who defended the United States and we finally pardoned President Hamid Karzai of Gulnaz and has taken historic steps forward. It's all of us married her rapist Gulnaz is going to be released until it seemed a clear victory.

Again, the cultural norms continue to Trump. Clemente told her, "said Gulnaz deems my rapist has destroyed my future. No one has done what he married the day after. So I married my rapist for my children should be. "

Several organizations still behind thousands of Afghan women and children as a gift and she will make a different choice remains unclear whether Gulnaz alternative "moral crime."To provide for the bar

What difference www.awjp.org can be made, for more information, go to the friends Care2 petition on our forwards!

—

The Mission of the women and children requiring Tan AWJP gender-based inequalities and injustice for the imprisonment for human therapy and provides legal defense. They are defense lawyers, literacy teachers and imprisoned women and children in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan for medical services by the funds to do so.

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Ultraconservative party to push for Islamic Egypt - Atlanta Journal Constitution

2011-12-10T06:52:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press

CAIRO — Anticipating a strong presence in the new Egyptian parliament, ultraconservative Islamists outlined plans Friday for a strict brand of religious law, a move that could limit personal freedoms and steer a key U.S. ally toward an Islamic state.

An Egyptian waves a national flag while wearing a clown mask during a rally in support of the ruling supreme council of the armed forces, SCAF, at Abbasiya Square, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. Islamists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt's first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak's ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Thousands of supporters of the ruling supreme council of the armed forces, SCAF, shout national pro council slogans during a rally at Abbasiya Square, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. Islamists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt's first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak's ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
A banner supporting Egyptian parliamentary candidate Ahmed Abd El Hameed Mohammed is pasted on a wall in the al-Azhar quarter in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011. The fundamentalist Brotherhood is emerging as the biggest winner in partial results from the first voting this week in Egypt's landmark election, in which voters turned out in unexpected droves. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Egyptian supporters of the ruling supreme council of the armed forces, SCAF, wave by a national flag in Abbasiya Square, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. Islamists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt's first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak's ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Egypt's election commission announced only a trickle of results from the first round of parliamentary elections and said 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the highest turnout in modern history.

However, leaked counts point to a clear majority for Islamist parties at the expense of liberal activist groups that led the uprising against Hosni Mubarak, toppling a regime long seen as a secular bulwark in the Middle East.

The more pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood is poised to take the largest share of votes, as much as 45 percent. But the Nour Party, which espouses a strict interpretation of Islam in which democracy is subordinate to the Quran, could win a quarter of the house, giving it much power to affect debate.

A spokesman, Yousseri Hamad, said his party considers God's law the only law.

"In the land of Islam, I can't let people decide what is permissible or what is prohibited," Hamad told The Associated Press. "It is God who gives the answers as to what is right and what is wrong."

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafist Muslim movement, which espouses a strict form of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. Salafis, who often wear long beards and seek to imitate the life of the Prophet Muhammad, speak openly about their aim of turning Egypt into a state where personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, women's dress and art, are constrained by Islamic law — goals that make many Egyptians nervous.

Salafis object to women in leadership roles, citing Muhammad as saying that "no people succeed if led by women." However, when election regulations forced all parties to include women, Salafi cleric Yasser el-Bourhami relented, saying that "committing small sins" is better than "committing bigger ones" — by which he meant letting secular people run the government.

In the end, the party put women at the bottom of its lists, represented by flowers since women's photos were deemed inappropriate.

This week, Salafi cleric and parliamentary candidate Abdel-Monem Shahat caused a stir by saying the novels of Egypt's Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, read widely in Egyptian schools, are "all prostitution."

Salafis are newcomers on Egypt's political scene. They long shunned the concept of democracy, saying it allows man's law to override God's. But they formed parties and entered politics after Mubarak's ouster, seeking to enshrine Islamic law in Egypt's new constitution.

By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized political group, was officially banned under Mubarak but established a nationwide network of activists who built a reputation for offering services to the poor. After Mubarak's fall, the group's Freedom and Justice Party campaigned fiercely, their organization and name-recognition giving them a big advantage over newly formed liberal parties.

Stakes are particularly high since the new parliament is supposed to oversee writing Egypt's new constitution. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control of the country when Mubarak fell, has tried to impose restrictions on membership in the 100-member drafting committee. The Muslim Brotherhood has said it will challenge the move, and a strong showing by Islamists in the elections could boost its popular mandate to do so.

Hamed, the Nour Party spokesman, said democracy can't pass laws that contradict religion.

"We endorse Egyptian democracy," he said. "However, I don't give absolute freedom to people to legislate to themselves and decide on what is right or wrong.

"We have God's laws that tell us that."

He suggested, for example, that alcohol should be banned and that a state agency could penalize Muslims for eating during the day during the holy month of Ramadan, when the devout fast from dawn to dusk.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis have both cooperated and disagreed in the past.

They tried to form an electoral alliance, which broke down over disagreements about including Christians and women in their electoral lists. However, the two parties campaigned together in some areas and declined to contest certain seats so as not to split the Islamist vote and allow liberal candidates to win.

The strong Islamist showing worries liberal parties who fear the two groups will work to push a religious agenda. It has also caused many youth activists who launched the anti-Mubarak uprising to feel that their revolution has been hijacked. Still, the liberal Egyptian Bloc coalition, which is competing with the Salafis to be the second-largest parliamentary bloc, could counterbalance hard-line elements.

Cooperation between the Brotherhood and Salafis in parliament isn't guaranteed, said Shadi Hamid, Middle East expert with the Brookings Doha Center. The Brotherhood is a pragmatic organization that will work with other parties to achieve its goals, while the Salafis shun compromise.

Once the parliament is seated, Hamid expects the Brotherhood to focus on establishing a strong parliamentary system, reforming state institutions and boosting the economy — goals they share with liberal groups.

"Banning alcohol or passing laws on women's dress are not on their priority list, and they see these issues as a distraction from the issues at hand," he said.

Still, a strong Salafist bloc in parliament will have a "massive effect," he said, by giving the group a larger platform for its views.

"The Salafis are going to insert religion into the public debate in a way that would not have happened otherwise," he said.

Many in Egypt's Coptic Christian population, which makes up 10 percent of the country, fear the Salafis will push for laws that will make them second-class citizens.

Even some religious Egyptians see the Salafi as too extreme.

"I am religious and don't want laws that go against my beliefs, but there shouldn't be religious law," said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a geography teacher. "I don't want anyone imposing his religious views on me."

The election commission said Friday that more than 8 million eligible voters — 62 percent — participated in the first round. But it announced final results in only a few races. It remains unclear when complete final results will be released.

This week's vote, held in nine provinces, will determine about 30 percent of the 498 seats in the People's Assembly, parliament's lower house. Two more rounds, ending in January, will cover Egypt's other 18 provinces.

___

Federal Agency To Hold Hearing On Air Shows, Races - Salon

2011-12-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

A federal hearing will examine the safety of air races and air shows after a horrific crash killed 11 people and injured more than 70 at an event in Reno.

The hearing announced Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board is not solely related to the Sept. 16 disaster at the National Air Race Championships, but the 47-year-old competition will be included in the review, agency spokesman Terry Williams told The Associated Press.

Chairman Deborah Hersman and all five agency board members plan to participate in the Jan. 10 hearing at NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C., indicating the issue is considered especially important.

It is aimed at gathering information on safety regulations and oversight in the planning and execution of air races and shows, Williams said.

Testimony at the hearing will come from regulators, aviation organizations, industry groups and airport authorities. They will be questioned about safety practices, procedures and protocols.

Williams said there is not yet a witness list, and he could not say whether any Reno officials would be invited to testify.

The hearing is separate from one that will be held to determine what caused a modified World War II-era aircraft dubbed “The Galloping Ghost” to crash into the apron of the grandstand filled with thousands of people at Stead Airport.

The victims included the pilot, Jimmy Leeward, 74, of Ocala, Fla., a veteran movie stunt pilot and air racer who competed at the Reno air races since 1975.

Photos showed a tail part known as an elevator trim tab missing as the P-51D Mustang climbed sharply then rolled and plunged nose-first at more than 400 mph into box seats.

It was the first time spectators had been killed at a national competition since the races began 47 years ago in Reno. But 20 pilots, including Leeward, have died in that time, race officials said.

Reno Air Races spokesman Mike Draper said the organization has not had any direct contact with the NTSB about the hearing on races and shows and did not know if CEO Mike Houghton would be invited to testify. Houghton was not immediately available for comment.

Officials for the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, which leases the property to the group for the competition, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

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Ultraconservative Party To Push For Islamic Egypt

CAIRO (AP) — Anticipating a strong presence in the new Egyptian parliament, ultraconservative Islamists outlined plans Friday for a strict brand of religious law, a move that could limit personal freedoms and steer a key U.S. ally toward an Islamic state.

Egypt’s election commission announced only a trickle of results from the first round of parliamentary elections and said 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the highest turnout in modern history.

A spokesman, Yousseri Hamad, said his party considers God’s law the only law.

“In the land of Islam, I can’t let people decide what is permissible or what is prohibited,” Hamad told The Associated Press. “It is God who gives the answers as to what is right and what is wrong.”

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafist Muslim movement, which espouses a strict form of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. Salafis, who often wear long beards and seek to imitate the life of the Prophet Muhammad, speak openly about their aim of turning Egypt into a state where personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, women’s dress and art, are constrained by Islamic law — goals that make many Egyptians nervous.

Salafis object to women in leadership roles, citing Muhammad as saying that “no people succeed if led by women.” However, when election regulations forced all parties to include women, Salafi cleric Yasser el-Bourhami relented, saying that “committing small sins” is better than “committing bigger ones” — by which he meant letting secular people run the government.

In the end, the party put women at the bottom of its lists, represented by flowers since women’s photos were deemed inappropriate.

This week, Salafi cleric and parliamentary candidate Abdel-Monem Shahat caused a stir by saying the novels of Egypt’s Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, read widely in Egyptian schools, are “all prostitution.”

Salafis are newcomers on Egypt’s political scene. They long shunned the concept of democracy, saying it allows man’s law to override God’s. But they formed parties and entered politics after Mubarak’s ouster, seeking to enshrine Islamic law in Egypt’s new constitution.

By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest and best organized political group, was officially banned under Mubarak but established a nationwide network of activists who built a reputation for offering services to the poor. After Mubarak’s fall, the group’s Freedom and Justice Party campaigned fiercely, their organization and name-recognition giving them a big advantage over newly formed liberal parties.

Stakes are particularly high since the new parliament is supposed to oversee writing Egypt’s new constitution. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control of the country when Mubarak fell, has tried to impose restrictions on membership in the 100-member drafting committee. The Muslim Brotherhood has said it will challenge the move, and a strong showing by Islamists in the elections could boost its popular mandate to do so.

Hamed, the Nour Party spokesman, said democracy can’t pass laws that contradict religion.

“We endorse Egyptian democracy,” he said. “However, I don’t give absolute freedom to people to legislate to themselves and decide on what is right or wrong.

“We have God’s laws that tell us that.”

The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis have both cooperated and disagreed in the past.

Cooperation between the Brotherhood and Salafis in parliament isn’t guaranteed, said Shadi Hamid, Middle East expert with the Brookings Doha Center. The Brotherhood is a pragmatic organization that will work with other parties to achieve its goals, while the Salafis shun compromise.

“Banning alcohol or passing laws on women’s dress are not on their priority list, and they see these issues as a distraction from the issues at hand,” he said.

Still, a strong Salafist bloc in parliament will have a “massive effect,” he said, by giving the group a larger platform for its views.

“The Salafis are going to insert religion into the public debate in a way that would not have happened otherwise,” he said.

Many in Egypt’s Coptic Christian population, which makes up 10 percent of the country, fear the Salafis will push for laws that will make them second-class citizens.

Even some religious Egyptians see the Salafi as too extreme.

“I am religious and don’t want laws that go against my beliefs, but there shouldn’t be religious law,” said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a geography teacher. “I don’t want anyone imposing his religious views on me.”

This week’s vote, held in nine provinces, will determine about 30 percent of the 498 seats in the People’s Assembly, parliament’s lower house. Two more rounds, ending in January, will cover Egypt’s other 18 provinces.

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Elderly Woman Pleads Guilty In Suicide Kit Case

EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) — A 91-year-old woman has admitted failing to file tax returns for her company that made and sold suicide kits.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego says Sharlotte Hydorn pleaded guilty Friday to the charge that dated back to 2007 and was tied to the sale of helium hood kits people can use to kill themselves.

Hydorn has acknowledged making more than $150,000 in income.

During a May raid on her home in El Cajon, east of San Diego, federal agents seized kits that sold for $40 each and essentially consisted of a plastic bag and clear tubing.

As part of her plea deal, Hydorn agreed to pay $26,000 in outstanding taxes.

A judge ordered her released on the condition she not assist suicides. She will be sentenced Feb. 16.

Lee Enterprises Moves To Complete Refinancing Plan

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — The publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and more than 40 other newspapers is close to completing a complex debt refinancing plan that includes a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Lee Enterprises Inc. disclosed details of the plan on Friday. The prepackaged Chapter 11 filing, which Lee expects to initiate in about 10 days, is designed to force uncooperative lenders to go along with a refinancing arrangement that Lee reached with a majority of its lenders in September.

CEO Mary Junck described the refinancing plan as welcome news because it will give the company more time to repay its debt while protecting the interests of shareholders. Junck is on The Associated Press’ board of directors.

Lee’s stock rose 10 cents to 63 cents after the company disclosed its plan.

Iranian Diplomats Arrive In Tehran After Expulsion

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s official IRNA news agency says Iranian diplomats expelled from London in retaliation for attacks on British compounds in Tehran have arrived home.

About 150 hard-liners gathered at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport to give the diplomats a hero’s welcome but the Iranian government has reportedly opposed any high-profile welcome.

IRNA says the plane landed at early Saturday morning.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran prepared a high-profile welcome for its diplomats expelled Friday from London in retaliation for attacks on British compounds in Tehran that Western leaders claim were sanctioned by Tehran’s ruling elite.

The official reception planned for the roughly two dozen diplomats and their families — including a rare invitation to foreign media to cover the airport event — apparently was designed to send a message that Iran will not seek quick measures to heal the most serious diplomatic fallout with the West since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy after the Islamic Revolution.

Germany, France and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors, and Italy and Spain summoned Iranian envoys to condemn Tuesday’s storming of the British Embassy and residential complex.

Britain withdrew its diplomatic staff and their families, shuttered its ransacked embassy and ordered the Iranian diplomats expelled by Friday afternoon.

The larger blow may be to Iran’s relations with the West and others. The diplomatic freeze from Europe, including key trading partner Germany, further isolates Iran just weeks after a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency that alleged Iran was making strides toward mastering critical elements for atomic weapons.

Iran claims its nuclear program only seeks reactors for power and research. But the current breakdown in relations with the West could embolden hard-liners who want a tougher stance against the International Atomic Energy Agency, which they accuse of being manipulated by the U.S. and allies.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran will certainly “retaliate” for the British expulsions.

The British Foreign Office said “all diplomatic staff of the Iranian Embassy in London took off from Heathrow airport” on Friday afternoon. They were to be welcomed back by a group of Iranians early Saturday at the Tehran airport, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

The offer for foreign media to cover their arrival stands in sharp counterpoint to an order Thursday banning non-Iranian outlets from reporting on rallies in front of the now-vacant British diplomatic sites in the capital without specific permission.

Britain’s ambassador to Iran, Dominick Chilcott — now back in Britain — offered new details about the attacks, saying the experience had been “frightening.”

“We had no idea how it was going to end,” he said, describing how the mob trashed rooms, damaged furniture, scrawled graffiti and tore up a portrait of Queen Victoria, as staff took shelter in a secure area of the embassy.

“It felt like very spiteful, mindless vandalism, but it wasn’t quite mindless,” Chilcott said. “They removed anything that was electronic — mobile telephones, personal computers — anything that might give information about who you were talking to or what you were doing.”

He said seven staff at a separate residential compound that was also attacked were seized and “quite roughly handled” by the invaders.

Hard-liners in Iran have said the attack was an outpouring of the wrath of the Iranian people who believe Britain is a hostile country seeking to damage and weaken the Islamic Republic. Mohammad Mohammadian, a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised the attackers, saying they had targeted the “epicenter of sedition.”

Iranian government officials, meanwhile, said the storming of the embassy by angry protesters was unexpected and Iranian police intervened to protect the British diplomats and get the attackers out of the buildings.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has led the accusations that the rioters had a green light from Iranian authorities, including the powerful Revolutionary Guard. On Thursday, he said the attacks were “clearly premeditated” by high-ranking officials.

The demonstrations had been organized by hard-line groups on university campuses and Islamic seminaries and included denunciations of the latest sanctions on Iran over its nuclear efforts. Such major anti-Western rallies are rarely allowed to occur without official approval and often include state-backed forces including a paramilitary group known as the Basij, which is part of the vast security network controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.

Images broadcast around the world showed demonstrators tearing down Union Jack flags, brandishing a looted picture of Queen Elizabeth II and tossing out looted documents.

The deepening tensions with Britain and others may also trigger further rifts within Iran.

For months, Iran’s ruling system has ordered arrests and intimidation against political allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has sharply fallen from favor after challenging decisions by the head of the theocracy, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad has remained silent since the attacks, but his supporters have raised questions about whether Iran’s interests are served by a diplomatic battle with the West.

___

Associated Press writers David Stringer, Jill Lawless and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report. Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd.

Continue ReadingArt-theft Suspect Pleads Not Guilty In NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — A wine steward suspected in a bicoastal art-theft spree lifted pricey art from New York hotels simply by walking out with the works in a canvas tote bag and then used them to line his own walls, prosecutors said Friday.

Mark Lugo, who just spent more than four months in jail for grabbing a $275,000 Picasso off a San Francisco art gallery wall, was being held without bail after pleading not guilty Friday to grand larceny and other charges in a Manhattan court.

“In an effort to display stolen art in his apartment, this repeat art thief boldly walked out of two Manhattan hotels in broad daylight” with valuable works, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement.

Lugo’s New York lawyer, James Montgomery, said the 31-year-old was a “pleasant, engaging” man “who’s been struggling with particular difficulties,” which he wouldn’t detail.

“When the dust settles, and the DA’s office calms down a little bit, we’ll find that Mr. Lugo is a man who had no commercial motive at all” in the alleged thefts, Montgomery said.

The charges relate to two thefts of a total of six artworks, including what prosecutors called a $350,000 sketch by the French Cubist painter Fernand Leger. But prosecutors said a search of Lugo’s former apartment in Hoboken, N.J., turned up four other pieces — including a Picasso work — that may have been stolen from Manhattan venues, and they said the investigation was continuing.

Lugo was publicly identified as a suspect in several New York heists since shortly after his July arrest in San Francisco, where police identified him as the man who walked into the Weinstein Gallery, lifted the 1965 Picasso drawing “Tete de Femme” (“Head of a Woman”) off the wall, strolled down the street with the sketch under his arm and hopped into a taxi. Police tracked Lugo to a friend’s Napa County apartment, where the Picasso was found unframed and prepared for shipping.

At his Hoboken apartment, investigators then found a $430,000 trove of stolen art, carefully and prominently displayed, as well as high-priced wine, authorities said.

Among some 19 artworks at the apartment was Leger’s 1917 “Composition with Mechanical Elements,” Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast told a judge. The drawing disappeared June 28 from an employee entrance area at a gallery in the Carlyle Hotel; prosecutors pegged its value at $350,000, though Montgomery said that figure warranted investigating.

Lugo also is charged with stealing a group of five works by the South Korea-born artist Mie Yim, known for her disconcerting images of toy bears and other toy-like creatures, from the Chambers Hotel on June 14. The hotel had bought the Yim works, together called “Pastel on Board,” for $1,800 apiece, prosecutors said.

Representatives for the hotels didn’t immediately return calls Friday.

The San Francisco district attorney’s office has said Lugo also was suspected of several other New York art heists, including the theft of a $30,000 Picasso etching from the William Bennett Gallery on June 27.

While artworks can be equipped with electronic tags that sound alerts when they’re moved, some galleries don’t use the technology because they sell works and change their exhibits frequently, said Robert K. Wittman, a former investigator for the FBI’s national art crime team.

Most art thieves sell or try to sell what they snatch, but a few have stolen to enhance their own collections — sometimes “for bragging rights,” said Wittman, now an art-security consultant based in Chester Heights, Pa.

Lugo, a sometime sommelier and kitchen server at upscale Manhattan restaurants, also is charged in New Jersey with taking $6,000 worth of wine – in the form of three bottles of Chateau Petrus Pomerol – in April from Gary’s Wine and Marketplace in Wayne. He hasn’t appeared in a New Jersey court yet to answer those charges.

Lugo pleaded guilty in October to grand theft for the San Francisco heist. He finished his 138-day sentence Nov. 21 but was being held until he could be transferred to New York.

Lugo’s San Francisco attorney, Douglas Horngrad, has called him “more like someone who was in the midst of a psychiatric episode” than a calculating art thief.

Inside a Syrian Quran School for Women: The Spiritual Roots of a Revolution - Huffington Post

2011-12-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Women have been the heart and backbone of Islam from its beginnings. From the courage of Khadija, Prophet Muhammad's first wife and first convert, to the scholarship and fiery independence of his later wife Aisha; from the political genius of Muslim queens such as Egypt's Shajarat al-Dur and India's Nur Jahan to the spiritual wisdom of female saints such as Rabia of Basra, Islam has been shaped and guided by the feminine hand since its earliest days. And today, as the Arab world goes through a long-overdue confrontation between dictatorship and democracy, women have been at its forefront.

Many Muslim women who are serving as political leaders at this pivotal time are receiving a great deal of attention in the news. Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni first brought worldwide attention to the injustices in her country leading to a popular uprising that soon spread throughout the Arab world. In Egypt, 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz is credited with using Facebook to inspire her fellow citizens to rise up against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. And among the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize was Tawakel Karman, a Yemeni journalist whose arrest by the government sparked a wave of protest that finally led to the resignation of Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

These young women, and many others whose names are perhaps known only to their families and loved ones, have been catalysts for change in their countries. But the question arises as to why now? Part of it is demographics, with 60 percent of the population of the Arab world under age 30, and more than half being female. Part of it is growing access to information and social media. These factors have been discussed heavily in the press.

But what has received less attention is the role that spiritual awakening is playing in Muslim women standing tall against oppression. Back in June, I wrote about how Muslim women are taking a lead role in Islamic scholarship to empower themselves and strip their faith of misogynist accretions promoted by men over the centuries. That rediscovery of the feminist elements of Islam has been pivotal in helping Muslim women worldwide reclaim their innate dignity and power, and has helped them to fight back against the staid and outdated traditions that have held back many Muslim countries in the past century.

I recently came across a remarkable documentary that focuses on exactly how that is happening, how Muslim women are taking charge of their religious upbringing, even in the face of oppression. The independent feature documentary, "The Light In Her Eyes," had its world premiere Nov. 19 at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. A world rarely seen by outsiders, it is the first feature film to be made inside the women's side of a mosque in Syria. The film reveals why modern women are choosing to practice Islam in a rapidly changing society.

Directed and produced by Julia Meltzer and Laura Nix, "The Light In Her Eyes" is a story about Muslim leader Houda al-Habash, and one summer at her Quran school for girls in Damascus. Al-Habash and her students are bravely challenging cultural traditions, while staying true to their dedication to Islam. In a surprising shift for many viewers, Al-Habash teaches them that pursuing their ambition is a way of worshipping God. "The Light In Her Eyes" provides an inside look into the Islamic revival from the women's perspective, shedding light on the impact it could have on Syria if the current regime is displaced.

The undercurrents of the contemporary Syrian uprising can be seen in the women's insistence to be educated and to think for themselves. The filmmakers were granted unprecedented access to the world of conservative Muslim women in Syria, shooting over three and a half years as the political climate grew more repressive. They completed principal photography in November 2010, four months before the beginning of the Syrian uprising. Audiences are able to pierce the veil of Muslim women's inner lives and spiritual longings, and see the role that faith plays in their sense of identity and their hopes for the future.

The idea of a Quran school run by women, for women, might seem surprising to many. But Houda al-Habash is simply following in the tradition of Muslim women who have served as religious scholars and teachers back to the days of Prophet Muhammad himself. In my novel, "Mother of the Believers," I discuss how the Prophet's wife Aisha was a scholar who was fluent in the Quran, as well as a jurist, who served as one of the principle sources of Islamic law and teachings. As the woman who was closest to Prophet Muhammad (he died in her arms), Aisha was in a unique position to relate intimate conversations she had with her husband, from marital sexual practices to how to cleanse oneself properly for ritual ablutions. She recounted more than 10,000 hadith, or oral traditions, relating to every aspect of her life with the Prophet, and Aisha's accounts serve as a bedrock for Islamic jurisprudence even today. And she was no wilting wallflower. Aisha was a confident, strong-willed woman who openly challenged men, even arguing spiritual matters with the Prophet himself without trepidation. And she became a political leader after his death, playing a critical role in the disputes over the Caliphate, and eventually taking arms to fight for her beliefs when she led an army in Iraq during the first Islamic civil war. I have no doubt that Aisha would look at Houda al-Habash and her Quran school with esteem, a continuation of her own legacy as a feminist leader of Islam.

The phrase "feminist leader of Islam" may strike some as an oxymoron. And this wonderful documentary will be surprising for many who assume that as freedom comes to the Middle East, Muslim women will seek to model their lives according the secular feminism of the West. As the Muslim women and girls interviewed in the documentary reveal, feminist empowerment will likely be presented in Islamic terms, and a knee-jerk hostility toward the religious aspects of the Arab Spring will only create a new divide of understanding between East and West. The only way such misunderstandings can be prevented is if we learn to see the world through the eyes of others. Despite the rage of anti-Muslim bigots, Islam is not going to go away, and the changes in the Middle East will only bring it even further onto the world stage. The question will be what kind of Islam takes the spotlight when the dust settles on revolution and transformation. Will it be an Islam that pushes its people backward or forward?

Watching this documentary, it is clear that this question will in large part be answered by Muslim women themselves. As the Muslim women featured in "The Light In Her Eyes" say: "A woman is a school. You teach her, you teach a generation."

Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of Shadow of the Swords, a novel on Crusades (Simon & Schuster; June 2010). For more information please visit: http://www.kamranpasha.com. To contact the filmmakers of "The Light In Her Eyes," please email pr@rajae.net.

Elderly woman pleads guilty in the case of suicide kits-Salon

2011-12-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

A 91-year-old woman has admitted failing to file tax returns for her company that made and sold suicide kits.

Hydorn has acknowledged making more than $150,000 in income.

During a May raid on her home in El Cajon, east of San Diego, federal agents seized kits that sold for $40 each and essentially consisted of a plastic bag and clear tubing.

As part of her plea deal, Hydorn agreed to pay $26,000 in outstanding taxes.

A judge ordered her released on the condition she not assist suicides. She will be sentenced Feb. 16.

Ultraconservative Party To Push For Islamic Egypt

A spokesman, Yousseri Hamad, said his party considers God’s law the only law.

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafist Muslim movement, which espouses a strict form of Islam similar to that practiced in Saudi Arabia. Salafis, who often wear long beards and seek to imitate the life of the Prophet Muhammad, speak openly about their aim of turning Egypt into a state where personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, women’s dress and art, are constrained by Islamic law — goals that make many Egyptians nervous.

In the end, the party put women at the bottom of its lists, represented by flowers since women’s photos were deemed inappropriate.

Hamed, the Nour Party spokesman, said democracy can’t pass laws that contradict religion.

“We endorse Egyptian democracy,” he said. “However, I don’t give absolute freedom to people to legislate to themselves and decide on what is right or wrong.

“We have God’s laws that tell us that.”

The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis have both cooperated and disagreed in the past.

“Banning alcohol or passing laws on women’s dress are not on their priority list, and they see these issues as a distraction from the issues at hand,” he said.

Still, a strong Salafist bloc in parliament will have a “massive effect,” he said, by giving the group a larger platform for its views.

“The Salafis are going to insert religion into the public debate in a way that would not have happened otherwise,” he said.

Many in Egypt’s Coptic Christian population, which makes up 10 percent of the country, fear the Salafis will push for laws that will make them second-class citizens.

Even some religious Egyptians see the Salafi as too extreme.

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Federal Agency To Hold Hearing On Air Shows, Races

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal hearing will examine the safety of air races and air shows after a horrific crash killed 11 people and injured more than 70 at an event in Reno.