Donna Hughes of the University of Rhode Island recommends in FrontPage fighting the Iran mullahocracy by defending women's rights. Read it all, but here are some highlights:
The misogyny of Islamic fundamentalism is not ancillary to the Iranian regime’s grip on power in Iran or their global sponsorship of terror. Misogyny is at the heart of their ideology and is the framework of their state structure and authority. Undermine their misogyny by empowering women and the Iranian regime will crumble from within.The following are recommendations to the U.S. government, the United Nations, other democratic countries, particularly those in Europe that regularly talk to Iranian officials, and international non-governmental organizations on how to defeat the Islamic fundamentalism by defeating misogyny.
Place the freedom of women and girls at the top of the agenda for dealing with Iran. Give the analysis and defeat of misogyny equal weight to efforts to contain terror and weapons of mass destruction. Equate the dismantling of misogyny to destroying the structure and power of the theocratic state.
Voice support for women and their freedom and equality in every policy statement on Iran. Speak directly to Iranian women about their plight under Islamic fundamentalism and their hopes for freedom, equality, and democracy. All governmental departments that deal with human rights, women’s issues, democracy, terrorism, and foreign policy should have a plan for advancing women’s freedom and equality as a strategy to defeat Islamic fundamentalism.
Fund communications technology and broadcasts that focus on women’s freedom. Provide funding for programming on women and women’s freedom and equality for public and privately owned radio and satellite broadcasts run by pro-democracy organization and news agencies. Support programs developed by Iranian women activists, such as Radio Voice of Women produced by Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran. Provide funding for Internet servers that can be accessed by women activists from inside Iran.
Hold hearings on Islamic fundamentalism and women in Iran. The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives should hold hearings on the situation of women and girls under Islamic fundamentalism in Iran. They should invite testimony from survivors of the Iranian regime’s prisons and engage strategists on how to undermine misogyny and advance women’s freedom and equality. Parliaments and U.N. bodies, particularly the Commission on the Status of Women, should hold meetings that specifically address Islamic fundamentalism and lend their support to freedom and equality to women in Iran.
Grant political asylum to women fleeing misogynist tyranny. Victims of Islamic laws which institutionalize violence against women should be recognized as political refugees and granted asylum. Women have been on the forefront of fighting fundamentalism. Thousands have already died resisting the clerics’ regime. Women who have risked their lives to oppose fundamentalism should be protected when they are forced to flee. In addition, voice opposition to other country’s deportation of women back to Iran where they face political persecution and possibly execution.
Put Iran on Tier 3 of the 2005 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report. Iran has a severe and escalating problem of prostitution, slavery, and trafficking of women and girls. Government officials frequently collaborate with traffickers. Worst of all, victims are not provided with assistance; instead they are persecuted and executed.
Engage and support opposition groups committed to women’s freedom and equality. The departments of State and Defense, intelligence services, and Executive branch should meet regularly with opposition groups to share information and cooperate on strategies specifically aimed at defeating misogyny and advancing women’s freedom and equality. They should morally, politically, and financially support pro-democracy opposition groups, which include many women members, inside and outside Iran.
Visiting delegations should challenge misogyny. Delegations from the United Nations, European countries, and international non-governmental organizations that visit Iran should challenge the Iranian regime on their treatment of women and insist on visiting women’s prisons and talking to the inmates.
Support pro-democracy activists’ calls for an internationally-monitored referendum in Iran. Support the non-violent strategy of holding a nation-wide referendum in which the Iranian people can vote on the system of government they want.
Take the women led resistance groups off the terrorist list. There are two Iranian opposition groups that are led by women dedicated to women’s freedom and equality: The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq or MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The PMOI is a political and formerly armed resistance group that is strongly opposed to Islamic fundamentalism. The Secretary General, Mojgan Parsaie, is a U.S. educated woman, the entire Leadership Council is composed of women, and many of the experienced military commanders are women. The National Council of Resistance (NCRI) is also led by a woman, Maryam Rajavi, with a long record of supporting women’s freedom and democracy. The NCRI’s parliament-in-exile is composed of more than 50 percent women. In 1996, Maryam Rajavi made this promise to the mullahs: “You have done your utmost to humiliate, torture, and slaughter Iranian women, but rest assured that you will receive the blow from the very force you discounted, the very force whom your reactionary mindset cannot allow you to take into consideration.”
The PMOI and NCRI are on the U.S. terrorist list as an act of appeasement to the Iranian regime by the Clinton administration who sought to normalize relations with supposed “reformers” in Iran. Later the PMOI was also added to the European Union’s terrorist list, also as an act of appeasement to the Iranian regime. A recent 16 month review of the PMOI by the U.S. found that none of their personnel was linked to acts of terrorism.
The Iranian regime holds the upper hand in the power struggle with the west as long as the U.S. and Europe constrain their opponents. Removing these pro-woman, pro-democracy resistance groups from the terrorist lists and supporting their efforts to overthrow the Iranian regime provides an alternative approach to appeasement and attempts to normalize relations with terrorists or military action.
Encourage allies to adopt the same anti-misogyny policies. Urge democratic allies to confront misogynous practices in all their dialogues with Iranian officials and businessmen.
This new policy approach offers a strategic psychological advantage: It will drive the clerics crazy! They are terrified of any interference with their “prison for women” as Iran was called by a U.N. representative in his report to the General Assembly. The clerics are so afraid of discussion of women’s issues that they have banned any publication of materials that defend women’s rights. Promoting women’s freedom and equality is the most powerful psychological weapon to use against the clerics because it goes to the root of their pathology, their ideology, and their social and political control of the population in Iran.
A policy of defeating misogyny and supporting freedom and equality for women in Iran will complement other policies aimed at defeating terror and stopping the development of nuclear weapons.
Supporting a policy of freedom for women in Iran will send a powerful message to pro-democracy activists in Iran. It will convey to those struggling to survive that we really understand the fundamentalists, their mindset, and tactics of control. It will empower activists in their efforts to overthrow the Iranian regime.
Women in Iran have been politically active for over a century. Those with access to universities have pursed their educations as an act of political resistance to Islamic fundamentalism. Women are active in the pro-freedom, pro-democracy movement inside Iran. While everyone in Europe and the U.S. is stumped by how to contain the clerics, the solution is right there in Iran just waiting for the opportunity.
Women, Freedom, Democracy and Foreign Policy
Equality for women is on every list of changes needed to modernize and democratize countries in the Middle East. Yet, it is always assumed to be a lagging issue that can or must wait until other more significant changes are made. In fact, there is tremendous transformative power in advancing women’s freedom and equality. It challenges all the backward ideologies, practices, and state and social structures that need to evolve in the Middle East.
The calls for more equality for women need to be operationalized into policies, strategies, and programs that address specific barriers to freedom and advancement in each country. Women’s freedom should be placed on the table at diplomatic meetings and linked to foreign policy. Engagement and support of advocates for equality for women should receive the highest priority. Assisting women gain freedom and equality can be the solution to major problems facing the world today.
Iran will fight to keep it's slaves....slaves being the entire female segment of the Iranian population .
I have postulated here before that one of the main problems for Islam's finacial weakness is their failure to utilize their females in any sort of positive manner.
The western world has women as a strong partner In most levels of thier societies.Altho It needs to be better equalized.
Women are not cattle, and should be veiwed by ALL countries as a vauable segment of the population.
Instead of empowering thier nations with rights for females they routinely do this stupid crap.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002936.php
Women's rights in Islam are important, but the main thing that must always be kept in mind is the Muslim attitude toward Unbelievers, Infidels. It is possible for the position of women to improve, and for the essential hostility toward non-Muslims to remain, and to be reinforced by the contributions of "liberated" Muslim women.
Consider Hoda Ammash, affectionately known as "Dr. Anthrax," and Riha Taba, "Dr. Germs," both "liberated" women who managed to become experts in germ-warfare. Was the fact that they could study biology, and be treated with respect so as to obtain important positions in the regime of Saddam Hussein, desirable for Infidels? Perhaps, in some cases, one would prefer that the women remained unliberted, so as not to contribute to the war effort of Muslim polities, however decked out or disguised as "secularist" regimes (this "secularism" business of Saddam Hussein is greatly exaggerated -- a few years ago, in a funny display, Fouad Ajami answered one of Dan Rather's questions about Saddam Hussein's "secularism" by standing up, and saying, in a deliberately-thickened Arabic accent: "I wear pants. You wear pants." What he meant was, of course, the thin veneer of Western dress was the extent of the vaunted "Western-style secularism" of Saddam Hussein. It was one of Fouad Ajami's best moments, though unremarked until now.
Under its "secularist" veneer, "Baathist" Iraq remained firmly Islamic. Saddam Hussein, who had commissioned a Qur'an written using his own blood (a nice touch, that) for the ink, and was building -- of course -- the "world's largest mosque," always employed the imagery, the history, of Islam in everything he did. The battles against Iran were given such names as Qadissiyah and others taken from the early defeats of Persians by Muslim Arabs; the mass murder of Kurds was given the title "Al-Anfal" after a Quran'ic sura.
Of course, if you are a Sunni Arab, and Sunni Arabs are only 20% of the population, it makes sense to prevent mosque-based political challenges -- and in Iraq, the mosques would have been Shi'a. Thus Ba'athism not only provided a way, originally, for the Arabic-speaking Christians in Syria and Iraq to find an "Arab nationalist" solution (Ba'athism), or so it may once have seemed, to their own marginalization in an Islamic world, and Saddam Hussein -- whose household staff consisted of Christians not because he liked Christians, but just as Hafez al-Assad had his own "Armenian" guard to supplement his Alawites, Saddam Hussein knew that Muslims, or rather, the "immoderate" or "Muslim" Muslims, could never be trusted, and -- just like the rest of us, he had no sure way of distinguishing the "immoderate" Muslims from the "moderates" -- the latter kind of Muslims, of course, if they did try to kill him, would have done so not from the promptings of their belief-system, but for other reasons.
The local version of "pan-Arabist" ideology -- Ba'athism -- could help disguise the Sunni Arab weakness in numbers, and enroll non-Sunni Arabs, including Kurds, Christians (Tariq Aziz) who made up a large part of the professional class, and those Shi'a of a less mosque-centered bent.
But Hoda Ammash and Taha Riba, "secularist" products of thinly "secularist" Ba'athism, are not examples one wishes to encourage. It would not, from the Infidel point of view, improve matters if Muslim women were, as the modish word goes, "empowered" the better to strengthen their own countries. The terrorist Leila Khaled was "liberated." The good-looking soft-spoken Pakistani women who so often give these "Ramadan" talks in American schools, as part of a systematic and clever effort to make young and impressionable students believe that Islam and other "abrahamic faiths" "share so much" and are all about family values, and good food, and I've brought the class, for afterwards, some the food I made for our own Iftar dinner, and yes, Caitlin, yes, Josh, of course you may bring home some so your parents can try it). Not a word about Jihad-conquest, the uncompromising hostility of dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, or -- above all -- the treatment of non-Muslims, for the past 1350 years, and still today, everywhere that Muslims rule, and non-Muslims have been subjugated).
But if the promotion of "women's issues" can both help women within Islam, rather than simply help them to become more useful agents of Islam's will to power, and also help to weaken the hold of Islam, can be used as a kind of purchase for a point of entry into Muslim minds, and in some places, as in Iran -- civilizationally, despite the last 25 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran a cut above the Arab states, precisely because the very idea of "Arabness" reinforces Islam in while perceived "Persianness" (cf. Firdowsi, Hafiz, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam) works against it, then by all means.
One should never lose sight of the main problem: the division, in Islam, of the world between Muslims and Unbelievers, and the hostilty inculated, by every means, within Islam, of the former toward the latter. While the rights of women, or of homosexuals, or of others, are important, the main division is that which Islam itself imposes: Muslims and Unbelievers. And we who are Unbelievers must do nothing to strengthen Islam, not through military aid, not through economic aid, not through collaborating with all the various transparent attempts to find a specious harmony and commonality between the "three abrahamic faiths" (that treacly full-page ad that appeared in The New York Tiimes a few days ago, signed by assorted non-Muslim American fools and tools of their co-signing "Muslim brothers," all about "the children of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar").
And at the same time, unceasing attempts are made, through threats of litigation, through attempts to pass laws banning any critical mention of Islam, even through acts of intimidation (the firing of Will Cummins by the British Council), or of murder (Pim Fortuyn, where a weak-minded "animal rights activist" was used as the instrument, Theo van Gogh, Rashida Khalifa in Arizona, and Hossam Armanious), to shield Islam from minimial critical scrutiny.
It is not Muslim women who need our attention. It is Islam itself, and the attitude not so much toward women, or homosexuals, or statues, or paintings, or music, or dogs, or pigs, that need our attention. It is one thing: the attitude toward all non-Muslims, the Unbelievers, the Infidels. That is the main problem. That, for Infidels, takes precedence over everything else.
once again a veritible cornucopia of clarification!
Thankyou Hugh!
Stay safe, keep up the good work.
I do tend to focus and micromanage my views. Keeping my eye on the ball,....
(Staying within the context of Islamic primary goals) within all thought is very valuable advice.
Yes Hugh, you are right, it is the evil belief system with its binary or dualistic logic and ethics, with its tribal customs and laws, with its totalitarian politics that is the root of this problem for it produces women who have become genetic victims, who seem to take satisfaction in their perceived inferiority (perhaps because it allows them to be lazy and not have to think or act for themselves but to be dependent on others for life) and, worst of all, mothers who teach their children to hate, to kill and to glorify death in the name of religion, surely the nadir of humanity's existence in this "civilized" time.
But I applaude Donna Hugh's effort and hope that it will engender positive change in the lives of
muslim women.
Islam is such a macho culture, where men have delusions of superiority, or even of adequacy, only because they keep women from challenging them.
If Muslim women were liberated they would no longer be Muslim. They could tell their men to shape up or ship out and the whole house of cards would collapse.
I don't know Hugh. If women constitute at least 50% of the Muslim population, focussing on women's rights within Islam may not be entirely foolish.
I can still remember my umbrage, sitting in Hebrew school classes while the boys repeated the prayer in which they give thanks for being born men and not women, and their snickers. I was all of seven at the time when I realized there were some serious flaws to Judiasm, just as Irshad Manji realized that there were serious flaws to Islam. (This is not to say I believe Islam can be reformed, as Irshad believes it can be -- the Koran is just too full of bile and spleen and the fundamentalists will win out because of that.)
Imagine then, that the demise of Islam as we know it could well be hastened when a significant demographic decides they have been used and abused long enough!
waterdragon52-
1300 years of abuse hasn't gotten Muslim women pissed off enough for a Night of The Long Knives against their sleeping sadistic patriarchal pimps, so it is unlikely much will change.
Brainwashing which is called 'religious dogma' is the hardest nut to crack.
Their's no meat inside, just more nut.
They'll have to join courageous women like Hirsi Ali in Holland and get the hell out of Dodge.
Which is a good name for the Koran. Dodge.
Since it dodges the truth, sense, rationality, humanity, compassion and hard reality.
Women of Islam, unite!
You have nothing to gain but your brains!
Or, if they like something happier-sounding:
"There was a young lady from Saudi
Whose husband would beat her quite bloody
Till one final night
She put up a fight
Now he's playing eunuch in mufti."
I have to agree with those who say that Islam and women's rights just don't go together.