Looking for a Cause: Iraqi Women Suicide Bombers

Rollcall please: Hanadi Jaradat, Wafa Idris, Andalib Sulaiman, Ayat al-Akhras, Khava Barayeva, Elza Gazuyeva, Maryam Sharipova, Zulikhan Elikzhiyeva…

I love how people are recently all up in arms over this supposedly new wave of violence perpetuated by women. The rash of suicide bombings in Iraq, as though this sort of thing is a new phenomena, the whole outcry from the “West” is universal: “Oh, women are killing people!” Of course they’re killing people, it’s not like women have all of a sudden decided to become warriors en masse in the 21st century.

Assia Djebar writes about “women with bombs strapped to their bellies.” in her novel Women of Algiers in their Apartments and how women after the Algerian war for independence were sidelined and left as opium addicts and prostitutes. The notion of women as actors in “independence” movements is so not old, nor obviously is it exclusively “Eastern” or “Islamic” and the cause and effect are not mutually exclusive by any means, just different perpetrators at the outset.

To be as candid as I will probably ever get, women are pissed-off, desperate, and well, what would you do if you had no options, your livelihood was gone, and you were quite literally shoveling your way out of a hole? The obvious answer is that you’d fight back. So women choose suicide missions, what else are they going to do?

I don’t condone it, I don’t want to pretend like I intimately understand it, but on some level, the most base level of common womanhood, I empathise wholly.

Cluecake News 8.8.08

So this is a new phenomena that I’m going to test-out. A sort of daily round-up of interesting stories from the Islamic World. And so we begin…

Rape, Sex Abuse of Afghan Girls Continues

You want a zina crime, do you? You want to punish someone, Taliban? Find the people who are committing these atrocities and kill them!

But oh, I forgot, sort of difficult to stone yourselves isn’t it? Yes… hmm… well, I guess we’ll just have to go think of some more ways to emulate a non-existent precedent in Islam when it comes to gender relations.

More on the Taliban…

Taliban Metes Out its Own Form of Justice in Afghanistan

I love this. The biggest export the Taliban had during its reign of terror was sex trafficking. Yes, that’s right SEX TRAFFICKING and they’re murdering women who they accuse of running a prostitution ring.

God they are such imbecilic hicks.

Nigerian Advises Against Having 86 Wives

I don’t think it needs to be noted that Mohammed Bello Abubakar is driving thru life at 20 times the legal limit. In the Shari’a it says that you may have 4 wives and ONLY if you can treat them equally. This is of course a way of deterring people from taking as many wives suit their fancy (read: Wife #1 gets old and sexually unappealing and possibly shrill.) Only the Prophet Muhammad was able to have more than one wife because he was, of course, a Prophet and thus capable of having more than one wife responsibly.

Iranians Suspend Death by Stoning

Oh how exciting! Iran suspends death by stoning! Now I fully appreciate the fact that the Shari’a says that adultery is punishable by stoning, and I’m not going to advocate for it in the interest of cultural relativism because to be candid, it’s so unbelievably draconian, it’s become irrelevant. God that sounds like I’m saying God’s law is irrelevant and draconian, but I digress…

You can be punished by stoning in all three of the Abrahamic faiths, yes, hello we really are a group of dysfunctional triplets, but let’s try and step away from the basic human impulse to murder each other and think about it for a few minutes and try and embrace justice and some of the attributes of Allah: most merciful, most compassionate…

Gaza ‘Fulbright Three’ Lose Visas

I know how we can create mutual understanding and foster peace in the world: revoke Fulbrights based on vague claims of “extra information” about the recipients of the visas and the Fulbrights.

Are people for fucking real? $10 says this is happening in part because of the fiasco with Aafia Saddiqui and her MIT-educated rampage earlier this week.

Aafia Siddiqui: The ‘Grey Lady’ of Bagram?

I never want to believe that women are capable of terrorism. It’s something in my brain that says that men are capable of violence, but women are driven to violence only in times of incredible desperation. I work in gender, but as a woman, I too cannot surmount the notion of violence committed by women for any other reason than that they are threatened.

The London Times is offering speculation that that Aafia Siddiqui may be the “Grey Lady” of Bagram Prison, the woman whose screams were heard by fellow prisoners in the notorious prison since 2004.

Aafia Siddiqui, the MIT-educated doctor and scientist was captured in Afghanistan this week carrying plans for explosives and maps of US landmarks. Suddenly she has resurfaced after disappearing in 2003 after a cab ride to visit family in Islamabad. Apparently Siddiqui has been as difficult to locate as Osama bin Laden, or has she? Five years after she disappeared in the Pakistani metropolis where she resided, she is captured in Afghanistan, seemingly in one of the most benign captures of the war.

According to US officials, whose information is notoriously vague in the interest of protecting US interests, she was captured with the above materials on her person and somehow managed to get ahold of an assault rifle during her interrogation and managed to get-off two shots before she was shot in the chest to be subdued. Does anyone else find that odd?

Only a hysterical woman, a woman who has been confined to the brink of madness would react in such a violent manner. She, not unlike the wave of suicide bombers in Iraq, is the product of a desperate situation, a radical hysteria, I hate that word for what it implies about women, but it has some truth in these circumstances, that has driven them to react with fight or flight. In this new age of war, the choice is clear: fight. She got off two shots at US officials and now she’s been shot in the chest. Not the leg or the arm to disable her, but the chest. Are these people for real? What really happened in that room? More of what happened to the infamous Prisoner 650: TORTURE.

This whole episode makes me so angry. I cannot and will not believe that Aafia Siddiqui is guilty of everything that she is accused of doing. A novel idea for this so-called “War on Terror” would be a transparent “War on Terror” where the real perpetrators of the bastardisation of Islam could be brought to justice, certainly not Aafia Siddiqui and, if she isn’t Prisoner 650, not the Grey Lady of Bagram Prison.

Response to Question about 8-Year-Old Nojoud’s Divorce

A lot of you have read about the case of 8-year old Nojoud and her divorce in the papers lately. She was granted a divorce yesterday.

I was asked to comment on it on AllExperts.com by an asker, in particular in regards to how Nojoud’s husband beat her and forced her to have sex with him.

I thought it might be helpful for those of you who have been reading about the case. )

Subject: Islam, On Chastising Spouse
Question: Assalamoalikum,

I would like to have your view on following article http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/838, Under light of follwing Hadith from Dawud:

Dawud :: Book 11 : Hadith 2142
The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.

Professopatra’s Response:

Answer:  Asalaam Alaikum,

First of all, you are not to beat your wife with any instrument wider than your thumb and certainly you are not to cause her extreme bodily harm. It is merely a reprimand and only as a last resort, and it is definitely not for coercion. I would discourage it altogether!

As for the article from Daniel Pipes, I find that his work is generally sensationalized. In reference to the case about Nojoud, the Yemeni girl who was married off to satisfy a debt, this is of course haram for a number of reasons:

1. She was under the legal age of 9 in the Shari’a and in Yemen.
2. She did not consent to the marriage and was given away in virtual slavery to her husband. You cannot, of course, enslave another Muslim.

So in the context of the hadith you are asking me of, the qadi is allowed and should ask the man who Nojoud was married to because the marriage is not legal and because he beat her not only outside of the prescribed methods for reprimanding a wife, but because the marriage was illegal! He beat her and raped her. Effectively, this girl was sold into slavery and raped, thus he can be asked.

Further, The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) married A’isha at the age of 9 and she was still allowed to play with her dolls and live as a child until the time came when she was considered to be a woman. Unfortunately, the Prophet’s sunnah apparently does not apply to this man that Nojoud was forced to marry!

In reference to the article about veiling, well, that is not even Islamic as a woman is permitted and SHOULD reveal her face to her husband as the Qur’an permits it. The fact that that woman has not revealed her face is an unfortunate side-effect of indigenous Islam.

Jazakallah khairan!