The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

Here http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/12/468/ is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th.

Here are two quotes from her speech.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to
list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and
is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its
friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation
of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our
wounded land.

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The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The only protests in Afghanistan the mainstream media reports on are the ones involving the abuse of the Quran or those Muhammed cartoons. Much of the mainstream media does not care to portray Muslims as human beings, who have the same concerns as everyone else. How much attention has Malalai Joya gotten in the mainstream media or from Western feminists? It is because she criticizes both U.S. military actions and the Taliban that she is not well known.

Women in Iran: Repression and resistance

While Westerners often pretend to be concerned for human rights in Muslim countries, they hardly if ever give recognition to the struggles of the women who are fighting for their rights. Here is an article about Iranian women’s struggles.

"Iranians are the first to know how easy it is for a whole nation to be reduced to the rants of a senseless politician, or for images of a handful of shroud-wearing crazies burning the American flag in Tehran to reach the western media's front-pages. But how easy is it for thousands of Iranian teachers protesting outside the Iranian majlis (parliament) - as they did on Saturday 3 March 2007 - to merit any attention?"

See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=12278

Somalia: Victim of the "War on Terror"

This is a Somali politician (Asha Hagi Elmi) giving her views on the U.S. and Ethiopian invasion of Somalia

Australian Muftis, Usama Ben Laden, and the FBI

Last year there was uproar over an Australian Mufti’s comments. Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilali compared women to uncovered meat, being temptation to a cat. It was portrayed as a clash of civilizations, as if though blaming a rape victim for the way she dressed was unheard of in Western countries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6086374.stm

Ironically, while this indignant uproar was going on, a group of 12 young Australian men attacked a girl. They urinated on her, set her hair on fire and sexually assaulted her. The attack was filmed and put on the YouTube website. DVDs of the incident were sold for $5 in secondary schools. “...two parents of the two boys that made this laughed it off and said it was just a bit of fun.” http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/boys-sell-film-of-girls-humiliation/2006/10/24/1161455723952.html

After this incident “Victorian Education Minister Lynne Kosky ... cancelled a planned visit to a Werribee school at the centre of a community backlash over a DVD of a girl being sexually abused.”

What happened to speaking up when something goes wrong? That’s what the West preaches to the Muslim world. This visit was important for the sake of the girl that had been assaulted. It would have also helped the rest of the students as well as the staff because “...students in uniform had been spat on and abused and staff were dealing with harassing phone calls in the wake of the scandal” http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Vic-school-suffering-after-DVD-scandal/2006/10/27/1161749297998.html


Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilali has been replaced by Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam. Controversy is surrounding him because he says he does not know if Osama Ben Laden is responsible for 9/11. See http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21891258-5006009,00.html

Well, the FBI also is not sure if Osama Ben Laden is responsible for 9/11.
Look at the FBI’s webpage on Osama Ben Laden http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
Under the word “Caution” it says
“Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.”

Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
On Ed Haas’ website, he investigates this

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” See complete article at

http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

Laila Lalami on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji

Here is an article writtten by a Muslim women that gives constructive criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji . I was suprised this appeared in the Nation magazine because in general, the political right and left have similar attitudes about Muslim women.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060619/lalami

Here are just a few excerpts from the article

This lumping together of various Islams--the geographical region, the Abrahamic religion, the historical civilization and the many individual cultures--is symptomatic of the entire book, and makes it particularly difficult to engage with Hirsi Ali in a useful way. Her discussion of female genital mutilation (FGM) is a case in point. In at least six of the seventeen essays, she cites the horrendous practice of FGM, which involves excising, in whole or in part, young girls' inner or outer labia, and in severe cases even their clitorises. Hirsi Ali is aware that the practice predates Islam, but, she maintains, "these existing local practices were spread by Islam." According to the United Nations Population Fund, FGM is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa by Animists, Christians and Muslims alike, as well as by Ethiopian Jews, sometimes in collusion with individual representatives of the faiths. For instance, the US State Department report on FGM reveals that some Coptic Christian priests "refuse to baptize girls who have not undergone one of the procedures." And yet Hirsi Ali does not blame Animism, Christianity or Judaism for FGM, or accuse these belief systems of spreading it. With Islam, however, such accusations are acceptable. A few years ago, Hirsi Ali proposed a bill in the Dutch Parliament that would require young girls from immigrant communities to undergo a vaginal exam once a year as a way to insure that the parents do not practice FGM. The suggestion is all the more interesting when one considers that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands are from Turkey and Morocco, where FGM is unheard of. But there is a personal reason for this passionate stance: When Hirsi Ali was 5 years old, her grandmother had the procedure performed on her, without her father's knowledge or approval. The experience marked Hirsi Ali profoundly, and the fervor and determination she brings to the fight against this horrifying practice are utterly laudable. By making inaccurate statements like the one quoted above, however, she muddies the issues and alienates the very people who would have the religious standing in the community to make this practice disappear.

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So now what? Where does this leave feminists of all stripes who genuinely care about the civil rights of their Muslim sisters? A good first step would be to stop treating Muslim women as a silent, helpless mass of undifferentiated beings who think alike and face identical problems, and instead to recognize that each country and each society has its own unique issues. A second would be to question and critically assess the well-intentioned but factually inaccurate books that often serve as the very basis for discussion. We need more dialogue and less polemic. A third would be to acknowledge that women--and men--in Muslim societies face problems of underdevelopment (chief among them illiteracy and poverty) and that tackling them would go a long way toward reducing inequities. As the colonial experience of the past century has proved, aligning with an agenda of war and domination will not result in the advancement of women's rights. On the contrary, such a top-down approach is bound to create a nationalist counterreaction that, as we have witnessed with Islamist parties, can be downright catastrophic. Rather, a bottom-up approach, where the many local, homegrown women's organizations are fully empowered stands a better chance in the long run. After all, isn't this how Western feminists made their own gains toward equality?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs Waris Dirie

I wonder which name is more well known around the world? My guess is Ayaan Hirsi Ali is more well known. They are both Somali and have experienced FGM and both ran away from home when their fathers tried to arrange marriages for them to older men. They both are activists who want to stop the practice of FGM and improve women's rights.

How they differ is that Ali became a Dutch member of parliament, while Dirie became a fashion model. Dirie is a Muslim, while Ali is no longer a Muslim. They also differ in that while Dirie only talks about FGM and women's rights, Ali talks politics and often voices biased and misinformed arguments concerning the West and the Muslim world. In other words, when discussing politics, Ali says what Westerners want to hear, not an honest and balanced criticisms of boths sides of the issues.

Since Waris Dirie is not as popular, in the media as Ali, here is something about her life http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/Phil110/waris-dirie.html

She was a UN goodwill ambassador in the fight against FGM. I don't know if she is still working with the UN, since I have not seen her in any media reports recently. She has a foundation that campaigns against FGM. see here http://www.waris-dirie-foundation.com/web/e_index.htm