From the Times-Dispatch (thanks to Twostellas), more on the continuing saga of Amina Wadud, a Muslim woman had the temerity to lead a prayer service in New York City, thereby angering male Muslims the world over, and raising murderous ire in some.
Virginia Commonwealth University officials met yesterday to discuss concerns about the safety and security of a female professor of Islamic studies who defied Islamic tradition by leading a prayer service that included men and women.The professor, Amina Wadud, has been threatened and sharply criticized in many parts of the Islamic world since the March 18 prayer service in New York that was attended by an estimated 80 to 100 people, about half of whom were men. Traditionally, Muslim women do not lead prayers in a mosque, and they pray separately from men.
Wadud called in sick yesterday, according to Pamela D. Lepley, director of university news services. Wadud's home telephone has a security system that permits only calls from approved numbers to go through, and she could not be reached for comment last night.
Lepley said the discussions at yesterday's "debriefing" focused on Wadud's security "and the security and safety of the whole institution." She added that such sessions are routine during high-profile matters.
VCU officials have been in touch with state and federal agencies to be certain "we're all doing what we need to do," Lepley said. She did not elaborate....
The events surrounding Wadud's prayer service come at an unsettling time for VCU.
Last Saturday, a day after Wadud's prayer service, a suicide car bomber struck a theater in Doha, Qatar, about 7 miles from where VCU's Qatar-based College of Design Arts is located.
About 10 faculty members and students from the college were at the Doha Players Theater watching a production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" when the bomber struck.
None of the faculty or students was injured "beyond a scrape on an ankle and a bruised shoulder," said Richard E. Toscan, dean of VCU's School of the Arts in Richmond, in a news conference this week.
Lepley said all information so far indicates no link between the car bombing and Wadud's prayer service.
However, VCU has stepped up security on its Qatar campus, as has the Qatar government.
The design college in Qatar, one of the richest nations on earth thanks to oil and natural-gas reserves, has been a godsend to VCU since it was opened in 1998.
Fees paid to VCU by the Qatar Foundation, which provides funding for the school, have provided the resources for a meteoric rise of the Richmond-based School of the Arts to the top tier of arts schools in the United States....
Wadud is now getting a lesson that one hopes is not lost on her, and on all those Bright Young Muslim Things who believe that they can do what all sorts of brilliant people born into Islam may have tried to do, over 1300 years. Think of ar-Razi, the greatest scientist of his day -- and what he faced.
Qatar has been getting a free ride from the American government, for it sponsors and shelters that propaganda outlet, Al-Jazeera. The ruler's wife is depicted in the Western press as a chic "fighter for women's rights" -- a reputation that will now be put to the test. Let's start by seeing what Qatar does to protect the VCU staff.
Messages from support to Wadud seem strangely lacking from her fellow resident of Virginia, Aziza al-Hibri (another self-described "feminist"), from Shirin Ebadi (the shameless promoter of the idea -- see the Homa Darabi Foundation website -- that the miserable condition of women in Iran has "nothing to do with Islam" of which she remains an ap[ologst), and from Azar Nafisi, who owes Dmitri Nabokov a cut of her take (for the all-important appearance of "Lolita" in her own title about Literature as Moral Uplift and Consolation in a Dark Time, a distinctly un-Nabokovian theme), and defender, in her turn, of Shirin Ebadi, has also failed to say a word on Wadud's behalf. And where are those other famous Muslim "feminists" the backtracking Fatimia Mernissi and Leila Ahmed? Where is Leile Abu-Lughod, who now likes to defend the hijb and the burqa as examples of "portable seclusion"?
You know where they are. Whenever they have a choice between Islam and the rights of women treated differently in Islam, they circle the wagons, and Defend the Faith. Some by silence, some by obfuscation, some by claiming mistreatment has "nothing to do with Islam."
It is not only the Darabis and Kamguians who are getting a bit tired of this pseudo-defense of women. So are Infidels, whose tolerance for the intolerance of Islam, and the taqiyya, and the silence, is wearing very thin.
Leila Ahmed got her tenure at Harvard Divinity School in the nick of time. Infidels cannot continue to be fooled by hollow self-descriptions of "Muslim feminists." It won't work for much longer.
Through all the obfuscation -- taqiyya and kitman -- the true face of Islam keeps peeking through! More and more Westerners are now understanding and recognizing the danger.
Hugh-
The lady wanted to be in the Koranic kitchen (Truman style) mixing things up, so now she's got to see if she can face the heretical heat.
I guess, being a busy little Muslim professor, she hasn't had much time to read about insignificant extracurricular things like the death fatwa against Salman Rushdie {merely for asking how Mohammad could rewrite the "Word of God" after the fact) or the hundreds of well-publicized murders of those in her faith who dared questioned Islam's adamantine tenets since.
Things we've had to stomach since the West got wind of this Muslo-madness, all thanks to the late, decayed ayatollah Khomeini thinking he could threaten us and get away with it, unnoticed.
Too many in the West are still dozing in multi-cultural/ecumenical fantasies, but the deadly echoes of 9/11 are reverberatng silently still.
Keep at them, Mr. F.
Congratulations to Amina Wadud and her enemies for exposing the real reason why the liberal West cannot win against Islamicist radicalism. Secular liberalism is not a viable philosophy, but a kind of wishful thinking that process rather than substance can tame the savageries of human nature.
The "Christian feminists" who, among others, clog the divinity schools and [rapidly aging] "Mainstream" pulpits of the USA face no danger greater than certain liturgical and Evangelical/fundamentalist denominations being unwilling to recognize their ordinations. "Jewish feminist" rabbis in the Reform and Reconstructionist wings of Judaism wistfully yearn for the ability to grow beards, and put up with the orthodox shunning them. "Muslim feminists" get highly plausible death threats.
When presented with polite and respectful challenges, the liberals sic the radical dogs on the challenger. This is why Evangelical Christians, political conservatives, and the like were relegated to the cultural fringes until they found themselves the only people who cared enough to reproduce themselves and elected Ronald Reagan. However, if the liberals face a challenger who threatens to burn down a college or kill someone, they hastily create a new department on campus or pull a few extra chairs to the table and start acting as slavish as the day is long to people whose behavior simply must not be tolerated.
As long as the liberals lead America, successive waves of Salafist, Wahabbi, and similar thugs will continue being admitted to the table, while responsible conservative dissent will continue to be pushed aside.
CAIR-Canada insists that Shariah-law for female Muslims in canada will be based on
respecting Canada's Charter and Constitution,yet we see Muslims in the west being rule by proxy
from the Middle east based on their version
of the Quran and Shariah.
The internet and Tv has exposed the true face of Islam and Muslims can no longer excuse away
the hate speech from pathetic old men in dresses
with beards and yellow teeth,American Muslims are only about 0.00084 percent of the worlds Muslims,so are the 99.99916 percent outside of America the ones that have it wrong.
Just wait until they come for Hooper and nobody believes him that Muslims are trying to kill him,that would be un-Islamic Doug so it must be
non-Muslims the Police profile.
Remember Yvonne Ridley saying that Islam was a magna carta of women's rights?
When there are women who are Jewish Rabbi's and christian ministers of religion, how come a woman still can't lead an Islamic prayer service?
Wouldn't have something to do with Islam's misogynistic and patriachal attitude towards women would it?
This is a message form BIG ALLAH.
"Women leading Islamic prayer is prohibited because they are treasured people to be respected and protected(I always feel a little vulnerable telling that one though...it doesn't make any sense after all. If in a difficult mind controlling power play for global domination always use blind faith. It works like a Nuremburg dream!!!). If they were treated equaly they might get hurt by others (by my orders actually. Thump, wack, kapow, garot, stomp!!! I am meant to be dictator for life damn it!!! Sharing power is for losers. Hiding in fox holes @#$!%). Only be giving them inequality can they have equality (snigger, snigger. They ain't getting my precious copy of 1984. It's taught me everything I know)."
P.S. the above entry is all satire incase any jihadi reads it and thinks his master droped in here for a chat. I don't want them to get all excited.
The smelliest bullshit to come out of the Muslim pseudo-feminists is the lie about women and men in Islam having equal, complementary but different roles. 'Equal but different' is a con. The same pseudo-feminists would be up in arms were anyone to suggest that blacks and whites should have different roles that are equal in the sight of God.
Isn't Amina Wadud the one to write a book on how great Islam is for women? I think it was geared as a woman's commentary. We discussed her in a class a few years ago about how far Islam has progressed, and just how great it is.
You are one screwed up person kepha, yeh it's always the Liberals, meanwhile your beloved "conservatives" are in bed (probably literally) with the Saudis and Islamists, the likes of Mueller head of the FBI for instance.
People like you are part of the problem, because of your myopic ideological tunnel vision.
I could lay out a laundry list of the "sins" and treason of "conservatives" (and liberals as well) and to some degree have on my postings, but You can read a sampling from Paul Sperry: Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have infiltrated (conservative) Washington.
Start here from the Sperry Files Key Revelations
Liberals may be head in the arse, blinded and daft fools, but "conservatives" are treacherous, greedy and power hungry felons who will sell out their culture and country for money and power.
No doubt Wadud received a talking-to about how her activities have jeopardized VCU's cash cow in Qatar - VCU has experienced a massive expansion on account of the Qatari school, and the bombing last week certainly highlighted the vulnerability of that institution to terrorist attack.
Living in Wadud's area, we are all waiting and watching to see what might happen next. Unfortunately, Ms. Wadud has made the foolish mistake of publicizing her residential address, which has further jeopardized her safety, although it may serve to prevent an attack on the VCU campus in Richmond.
What you don't see in this article is Wadud's lamentation regarding the publicity this event generated, which was rather disingenuous, I thought. It was her stated intention to draw publicity to the plight of women, and publicity is what she got. What I don't think she expect was the cries of "act of apostacy" emanating from Al-Azhar. I think she's beginning to realize what a huge mistake she made, and that the support she was hoping for, particularly from American Muslims, has not been forthcoming.
BTW, where are the "moderates" on this issue?? Unseen and unheard.
Azar Nafisi should but did not come to the defense of Amina Wadud, though she has defended the pseudo-"feminist" (and defender of Islam) Shirin Ebadi, whose Nobel Prize lecture was a disgrace. Nafisi is now in charge, at Johns Hopkins, of one more of those "on common ground" getting-to-know-and-understand-you projects designed to pick up grant money, and that, by avoiding any real discussion of Islam, will be another poiintless exercise, or still worse, more occasion for mild taqiyya-cum-tu-quoque. It must infuriate Kamguian, Darabi, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Irfan Khawaja, and a thousand others who have seen right through to the heart of the problem in the Muslim world -- Islam itself.
Being a member of Tehran's jeunesse doree, being devoid of any real animus oneself (and without a trce of antisemitism), does not justify protecting Ebadi from criticism, Ebadi who herself deflects criticism from Islam by absurdly claiming that the mistreatment of women in Iran has nothing to do with wonderful Islam, but is merely a matter of "culture" -- well, some things are indefensible.
Curious that Nafisi, the author of a book bought especially by women, attracted by the title (the juxtaposition of the word "Lolita" with the word "Tehran") and the cover, with those women, chadored but hardly adored, and then the students of Nafisi to whom she imparted the Consolation of Literature in a Dark Time -- a feelgood idea, in the end, and one that largely scanted the serious matter of what Islam teaches, and what its practice has been about. Perhaps Nafisi thinks the Ayatollah Khomeini was simply a sport, and the relative decency, vis-a-vis Infidels, of the Shah and his father were the Iranian norm. She should go back and read Arakel of Tabriz's Chronicle, or Lawreence Loeb's account of living among Iranian Jews in the 1970s, or Mary Boyce's history, including her own year of living dangerously in Iran, of the dwindling indigenous Zoroastrians.