Muslims are not required to cover up



BY FARZANA HASSAN and TAREK FATAH Originally a source of modesty, the hijab, or Muslim head scarf, has become a political tool. Its latest manifestation came this week with the sight of 10-year old Muslim girls refusing to give up...

Wife beaters set the tone as backward Imams threaten to overwhelm 21st Century Muslims

Judge Datz-Winter, The Qu’ran, Mona Eltahawy

Enter stage right: German judge Christa Datz-Winter, whose claim to infamy was her refusal to grant a fast-track divorce to a German Muslim woman who had complained that her husband beat her. The judge said both partners came from a “Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife,” and she cited passages in the Qu’ran that she said sanction physical abuse. How cruelly ironic for the unfortunate wife who tried to make the most of western laws that are always waved in the face of Muslims as the pinnacle of civilized behaviour if only we would learn from them. Here was a Muslim woman who really did need to be saved from an abusive husband – not the ‘Evil Muslim Man’ imagined as lurking in all our closets, but the real thing – a brutal man who beat his wife. Right at the moment when she pushed to take advantage of those laws, the Muslim woman who really did need to be saved was kicked back – by a woman no less – into the arms of the very misogyny that the West is always trying to save us from. So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Judge Datz-Winter might be the most maligned multiculturalist du jour, but in time we will celebrate her for so bluntly – if unintentionally – setting on fire the house of cards that so many of my fellow Muslims struggle to keep up around women’s rights. One need only type ‘Islam + wife + beating’ as a search item on YouTube to learn that Judge Datz-Winter’s idiocy finds plenty of ugly echo in the chorus of fools otherwise known as our zealous imams and scholars trying to decide exactly how much harm to a woman their God allows. These unfortunately all-too real and evil men point to the very same passages in the Qu’ran that the judge used to turn down the fast-track divorce. But here’s the difference – Judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and could face disciplinary action. By contrast, who is disciplining our imams and scholars? Unless we – Muslims – push and clamour for the removal of the men who advocate wife beating in the name of the Qu’ran then to remain a Muslim woman today would require nothing short of mental gymnastics.

KADDISH FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN

Fawzy Zablah, Habibi, Rape, Saddam Hussein, Muslim

Fat Habibi was a thorn in my side. He was an oversized bully who thought I was weak and would bow down to his imperialistic fatness spread out all over his now gone thighs resembling an egg. He tried to trip me once, by putting out his leg, and I regained myself and shoved him until he lost his balance. Very lucky for him that our shift manager was in the vicinity and I did not continue. That was some very good luck for him, let me tell you, for I would have defeated him like Iraq did America in the war for the Gulf.

Qaradawi damages Palestine’s cause by turning global issue into Islamist weapon



By Mona Eltahawy The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Muslim issue. It is a dispute over land, it is about an occupation that must end and it is about a people who deserve a state. But it is not a...