Eight Years of War: 9/11/2009

My friend Afifa asked me to change my Facebook profile picture to a graphic of a woman with the words “STOP BOMBING AFGHANISTAN” under it. I obliged of course because like everyone else, I am tired of war. I am tired of hearing the battlecry be the “liberation of Afghan women” when I’ve seen more women slaughtered in the aftermath of bombings and Taliban retaliation than in the course of forty years of war in Afghanistan. I’m tired of war. I’m tired of hearing about my friends and former students not knowing if they will be the next contingent to go to Afghanistan. I’m tired of my Afghan friends suffering, never knowing if they will ever see Afghanistan again. Not knowing if Afghanistan will even continue to exist. Fragments of Afghanistan exist, smuggled out as cultural artifacts, human artifacts, literary artifacts, and we crave them as we help to piece together an Afghanistan shattered by forty years of war and terror.

Today is 11 September. It has been eight years since the horror unfolded in front of us. I was in Granada, the capital of Islamic Spain when the first plane hit. I shattered. That day my innocence ended. I was an innocent abroad and suddenly I had to grow-up in a matter of hours, make phone calls, make change, find friends, get off the street, obey the curfew for Americans…  I was vomiting and as the token Islamicist-in-training in my study abroad programme, I was forced to go to bat for the 1 billion Muslims who were not responsible for the murders of thousands of people that morning. I don’t regret it and I know that it makes some of my friends and colleagues uncomfortable, but I always remind people that the rules of jihad do not include the arbitrary slaughter of non-combatants, women, and children and that the hijackers who murdered so many that day are not in jannah, they are in hell.

I will never excuse the actions of those murderers of that day, which is what many expect me to do. They were not Muslims. I have been told repeatedly by moderates, liberals, Wahhabis, everyone, that the men who committed those acts that September morning were murderers, deranged and driven by lives that were so pathetic and deranged that their only way to validate their existence was through the bastardisation of religion and the aspirations of making their lives worthwhile. Clearly they failed. Victory is never theirs.

Victory will be ours when Afghanistan is free. When Afghanistan has peace. When the Afghanistan of the Silk Road returns and true Islam illuminates the roads from Kandahar to Kabul.

The ‘Stiletto Revolution’?

Every day I get a round-up of stories on Muslim women from Google. It makes my researching existence much easier to handle when Google does it for me. Today my daily digest delivered an article from Britain’s Telegraph entitled: “What will become of Iran’s ’stiletto revolution’?”

<insert my mouth making a gaping hole of despair>

Clearly I missed something in the last few days as true to form, US media abandoned real news for the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Actually, as I think about it, this is probably a good thing for Iranians because the Iranian government can ease their censorship and well, right now they would look fairly ridiculous blaming the United States unless protesters start moon walking through Tehran. But I digress…

Over the last two weeks, the media have been producing articles daily on the participation of women in the protests over the Presidential election results and friends have been re-posting these articles to share. What started as a novel observation of the participants in the protests exploded with the death of the now iconic Neda, murdered in the streets on her way to a music lesson. The media has repeatedly ignored the precedent for women’s participation not only in Islamic history, but also in the 1979 revolution where women took to the streets and employed chador to protest the Shah’s ban on veiling and in support of an Islamic state. No one seems to remember the Sisters of Zahra who act as the morality police in Iran nor do they mention the work of Shirin Ebadi. Instead, they insist on the novely of women’s participation by writing about the wonder of women taking to the streets, illustrating articles on the protests with pictures of glamorous women in headscarves holding rocks, hair showing, and fighting besides men.

Yes, women are citizens of Iran.

Ooooo…

Women are citizens, too. Why is this such a difficult concept to wrap our heads around? The West is fixated on the idea that women in the Islamic World, whether they be Iranian, Afghan, Egyptian, Algerian, or Saudi are controlled by men. (Um, aren’t we all?) The control is illustrated no longer by the 19th century image of the harem, but by implying that there is a sort of social harem, created by men through a social framework that controls and subverts women’s agency. This is certainly true to a certain extent, but this occurs in this country as well, why is it so fascinating to the West? Is it the veil? Is it the idea of a sexual rebellion in the harem culture? What is it that makes it so fascinating? It is fascinating because the image of Muslim women that is endemic in the West is that of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the abused: the odalisque with the rounded belly and doting eunuch. The West cannot wrap its mind around the notion of women’s citizenship and the agency of citizenship in the Muslim world.

The Telegraph calls women’s participation in the protests the “Stiletto Revolution.” What does that even mean? In 1979 women wore chadors to protest the Shah and now, thirty years later in 2009 women are wearing stilettos to protest the Islamic regime? Basically we need to make sure that Iranian women are contextualized according to Western agency: wearing crippling, yet stylish, heels to claw their way to their rights as citizens and agents of change. Charming. Is the wardrobe of the revolution really that important? I suppose. The chador in 1979 was a great mobilizer, however I fail to see how stilettos are going to do the same in 2009 unless, as I assume, there is an effort to invoke the youthful protesters and the desire to open dialogue with the West. Stilettos are not going to get us there. I promise.

It is degrading to compartmentalize Iranian women participating in the protests as members of the ‘Stiletto Revolution.’ Instead of allowing them to be citizens of the nation and agents for sweeping change, and yes, that includes gender reform, the West separated them and re-defined their citizenship. Instead of allowing them the citizenship rights guaranteed to them by Islam, the Western media is guaranteeing them the citizenship given to them by the Velayat-e-Feqh: citizens, but certainly not equal. What Iranian women are doing on the streets is demonstrating their citizenship and manifesting their political agency as citizens. This is not about Iranian women’s rights. These women are fighting with their male peers for the soul of a nation. To call it the ‘Stiletto Revolution’ is utterly ridiculous. It undermines and devalues women’s citizenship.

The revolution on the streets of Tehran is not a feminist movement. It is a push by the citizens of Iran, regardless of gender, for the democracy that the Iranian constitution promises them and that the government failed to deliver. To separate women from this process is to trivialize their role, or as a friend of mine always says, it truly is “orientalizing” women. This is not a revolt in the harem: it is men and women as a collective citizenry fighting for what they believe is right, not women with bleached blonde hair and lipgloss throwing rocks.

Woman is the Radiance of God… and now her Blood Runs Through the Streets of Tehran.

The great Persian poet Rumi wrote, “Woman is the radiance of God, she is not created, she is your creator…” In the streets of Tehran for the last week, women are the radiance of the street. A’isha led her troops into battle over an election that was unjust in the eyes of those who looked to her for guidance after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

There is war in the streets of Tehran. A war between youth and the establishment. Democracy and Theocracy. Islam is compatible with democracy, but it is not compatible with despotism and the slaughter of the innocents. A hadith narrated on the authority of ‘Abdullah and Sahih Bukhari says:

It is narrated on the authority of ‘Abdullah that a woman was found killed in one of the battles fought by the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him). He disapproved of the killing of women and children.

Neda was observing her country changing when she was slaughtered by the government that was supposed to protect her. She was killed in the war during the streets. Someone murdered her. Someone representing the government and their Shari’a gutted her in the streets of Tehran. Neda, the observer, the face of the protesters, the beauty of youth, gone forever. Neda is now the face of Iran. If Iran was a shahida, her name would be Neda.

“O Allah! Make right for me my faith, which is the foundation of my life.

Make right for me the world in which I live.

Make right for me the eternal home to which I will return.

Make life for me an increase in all that is good and make death a comfort for me from all that is evil.”

(The Holy Qur’an)

If the world needed any further proof of the total bastardization of Islam by the Islamic Republic’s leaders and the slaughter of its citizens and the total disregard for human life, it can be found in Neda’s eyes. Neda’s eyes as she lay dying in the streets, an innocent victim of a regime awash in blood. Allahuakbar, God is great! Let the Iranian people reclaim Islam.

Reclaim it as seen through Neda’s eyes awash with blood… in the streets of Tehran.

The Rainbow Crescent: A Series

Over the past year, the plight of LGBT Muslims in the Islamic World and especially the Middle East has become a larger part of my working and personal lives. I reviewed Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East by Brian Whitaker (the link is not to my review, but to one on Al-Bab), my friends and colleagues continue to send me articles about the plague of violence of gay men in Iraq, Parvez Sharma, one of my heroes and the producer of A Jihad for Love, is now a friend on Facebook (yes!), and Meem, the LGBT organisation in Lebanon published a collection of stories of Lesbian, Transsexual, and Questioning women entitled Bareed Mista3jil (my copy is in the mail).

As a result of this inundation of questioning my colleagues and friends about homosexuality in Islam and why the violence is happening in Iraq, I am starting a series on LGBTQI issues in Islam and the Islamic World. In the interim, please visit the links above, including The Rainbow Crescent.

Muslim Women and the Western Gaze

Obviously being an Islamicist who studies gender, my battleground is Islam v. Women. I hate to act as though the two are mutally exclusive because of course they’re not (cue chorus of neo-cons declaring me an apologist, thanks!), but I have to express my utter exhaustion reiterating that Islam is not “anti-woman.” The superficial commentary on the status of women in the Muslim world to me is like the dragging of nails down a freshy washed chalkboard. Excruciating. I just stumbled across a blog about Muslim women, that had I not been so vacuous as to have had my hair styled yesterday, I would pull it out and put it all in a bag and light it on fire.

Yes, it was that bad.

The majority of commentaries on “the status of Muslim women” is loosely based on the Western gaze upon popular images that accompany articles and publicity from the Muslim world. Rarely do you read an article about Islam where there is not an image of a Muslim woman. Further, I routinely see images of Muslim women drawn from the most conservative Muslim countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia to accompany any article remotely related to Islam. The most recent example of this phenomenon is on the blog The Muslim Woman where the author uses an image of an Afghan man and young girl to illustrate commentary on the state of child marriages in Saudi Arabia. Right.

Orientalist art, once thought to be solely the product of the 19th century, is alive and well. Artificial constructions of harem life, reassigning and concocting ethnicities and features of race continue to permeate the media. Globalization and internet media make the neo-Orientalist renderings of Islam even more perverse because they permeate every corner of the globe and every stream of feminist consciousness. Suddenly Afghan women/Saudi women/Iranian women/American women are all conflated into the modern Muslim monolith.