It’s been an eventful summer for Muslim women around the world. On August 14, 2009, Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed into law the Shia Personal Status Law making it legal for Afghan men to starve their wives if they refused to have sexual relations with them. On July 29th, 2009, Lubna Ahmed Hussein, a widowed Sudanese journalist was threatened with forty lashes by Sudanese authorities for having worn dress pants in a public place. Finally, there is the planned caning of Malaysian model Kartika Shukarno for drinking beer in a nightclub in the eastern Malaysian state of Pahang.

Consider first the Shia Personal Status Law enacted into law by President Hamid Karzai, assumedly to appease a hard line Shia cleric. The law not only grants exclusive rights to child custody to the father or grandfather but also requires women to ask for their husband or father’s permission before leaving the home. The only time a woman would be allowed to leave home without such permission is if she has “reasonable legal reasons” which are conveniently left unspecified.

Other provisions of the law are even more alarming. In the words of women’s rights activist Wazhma Frough, “the law allows men to even deny food or any support to their wives if they refuse to have sex with them.” Other provisions of the law allow also make it possible for men to legally marry children enabling the custom of child marriage pervasive in rural Afghanistan. According to Afghan female parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhail, the current law is still an improvement from the previous version which had made it impossible for women to leave the home without male permission under any circumstances and required them to have sexual relations with their husbands once every four days.

Moving on to Sudan, Lubna Hussein, a journalist, was arrested on July 3, 2009 along with eighteen other women because she was wearing dress trousers. There was nothing provocative about the tailored pants that fully covered her legs and yet Lubna Hussein stands threatened to be sentenced to forty lashes under the charge of “being dressed indecently”. Her name has been put on a travel blacklist by the ruling regime and she is now prohibited from leaving the country.

Ten of the women who were with Ms. Hussein at the time of the arrest chose to plead guilty to “indecency” and paid a fine and were lashed ten times. Ms. Hussein and another woman have chosen to fight the charges to bring attention to the plight of tens of thousands of women who have been lashed in the past decade under the country’s indecency laws. The Islamist Government in Sudan has routinely imposed draconian laws on Sudanese women to testify to their “Islamic” credential regardless of the law’s actual relationship with Islamic doctrine. In the words of Ms. Hussein, "These laws were made by this current regime which uses it to humiliate the people and especially women. These tyrants are here to distort the real image of Islam."

Finally, take the case of Malaysia, relatively speaking a functioning democracy where Islamic courts function alongside civil courts. The consumption of alcohol is forbidden to Muslims but permitted to the country’s Christian and Hindu minority. Ms. Shukarno has been fined the equivalent of $1,400 and six strokes with a rattan cane. Kartika, who is married and a mother of two was found guilty of drinking a beer in a hotel bar. In the northern Malaysian state of Kelyantan Muslim women have also been forbidden from wearing bright lipstick and high heeled shoes that may make noise in order to promote public morality. According to Mohamed Isa Ralip President of the Shariah Lawyers Association of Malaysia said “its not about causing pain, it is about educating others and about teaching the person a lesson.”

The three contexts under discussion are undoubtedly different in demography, culture, geography and historical context. But they are all post-colonial Muslim states fraught with a crisis of authenticity that consistently leads them to believe that public displays of religious piety are at the core of religious practice. What easier targets to center these expressions of piety and pristine public morality then the private and public behavior of women.

The Afghan law essentially gives the state the right to enter the private sphere of the family and control even what happens between a husbands and wives. It legislates essentially the nature of the relationship and creates a particular power dynamic that makes the woman an appendage to a man with her duties circumscribed entirely and completely by her gender. Political machinations aside, the law is an expression of an unapologetic patriarchal system where such subjugation enshrined in law is considered an expression of Afghan Islamic identity, legislated and signed into law through democratic process.

Similar tactics underlie the Sudanese and Malaysian cases. Ultimately, both represent the relegation of public morality as a task to be accomplished through legislation and enforced through instruments of the state such law courts. The underlying logic of all three cases is that if all temptations are forbidden by law then all need for individual conscience will conveniently be eviscerated. The assumption is that in a perfect Islamic society, there would be no need for an individual conscience at all. If women are covered from head to toe it is assumed, few would be tempted to engage in sexual promiscuity. If there is no bright lipstick, noisy high heeled shoes, women dressed it pants it seems all Muslim men will suddenly become better believers and more eligible for heaven. If wives submit easily, can never refuse sex and are forced by the state to obey their husbands then it is assumed they will be even less likely to covet other women.

The injustices in the scenario are numerous, from the public subjugation of Muslim women as an expression of a society’s piety to the fact that the system is designed entirely to facilitate the journey of men (not women) to heaven. But what is most notable in the framework is the desire on the part of Muslim publics in all three countries to have the State as a stand in for the conscience of the individual believer.

The lack of questioning not only of the blatant disregard for gender disparity so visible in all of these incidents is not the only cause for deep dejection. Equally disturbing is the desire to make being a good Muslim not an issue of individual effort but of robotic obedience. Few bother to ask whether giving zakah (charity), abstaining from alcohol, or sexual promiscuity is really an exercise of obeying Divine Guidance when it is enforced by the State and not a question of free will. Are robotic Muslims lulled into obedience by the threat of starvation, the fear of being caned or flogged at the same level of religious devotion as those who freely choose to abstain from forbidden acts?

Women and their subjugation have become the visible symbols of Islamic statehood and the piety of the Muslims that live in them. Instead of outrage such incidents are met with approbation and lauded as efforts to Islamize the society. If the worth of women and the tragedy of their subjugation is not enough for Muslims to be shocked out of their apathy, then perhaps the notion of a lulled ummah cornered into obedience out of fear rather than religious devotion should be.

>>> But they are all post-colonial Muslim states fraught with a crisis of authenticity that consistently leads them to believe that public displays of religious piety are at the core of religious practice.

Thank you. The most damning critique of Muslim conservatives and their intentions to "islamicize" society like it was "boxercise" at the the gym. I think what's critical in this discussion, isn't Muslim personal law i.e. the right for Muslims to make personal choices regarding their faith and its practice, but rather the individual liberty to exercise the practice of your personal faith as you see fit. You cannot enforce "correct" faith. You can only educate about correct practice, which is in itself a broad a diverse discussion. The only prevention of liberty should happen when it influences negatively the liberty of others.

>>> It legislates essentially the nature of the relationship and creates a particular power dynamic that makes the woman an appendage to a man with her duties circumscribed entirely and completely by her gender.

The wasiyat "Advice of a Mother to her Daughter on her Wedding Day", is an example of an Indian practice endorsed by educated/knowledgeable Ulema and has pervasive effects on male-female relationship in the community and in particular in marriage. I don't doubt that most people from the subcontinent depend on it as a mark of their morality. Its that moral self-righteous overtone, that goes quickly from a being an advice to being the practice of a law to being the law and its principles.

http://www.bt.com.bn/en/features/2007/07/30/muslim_wives_scripted_lives

>>> Other provisions of the law allow also make it possible for men to legally marry children enabling the custom of child marriage pervasive in rural Afghanistan.

Child marriage is a reality of all developing nations. Its not the permissibility that's the problem, but the protection and empowerment extended to children that is problematic.

And many Muslims why Europeans fear encroachment of their culture by Islamic migration and Britain's of demands for Shari'a and try to call it racism.

As hard as it is for Muslims to accept, there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to take a religion designed to correct problems in a 7th century tribal culture and apply it to the world today, unchanged and unchangeable.

Looking back at past Muslim "glories" and claims (now being highly disputed in many areas, Arabic numbers for example) and resisting the hard fact that for hundreds of years Islamic culture has contributed little to nothing to the world in the areas of medicine, science, technology or academic culture.

And yet this is the society whose religion DEMANDS worldwide dominance in order to have "peace" and the perfect society.

The only prevention of liberty should happen when it influences negatively the liberty of others.
- Posted by Ghulam

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Misguided article. I am all for caning of both men and woman who break the law. Enough retarded western political correctness. Remember when Singapore canned that graffiti spraying American back in the mid 90s? They should have caned him more as he made it a point to beat up his own father a few months later.

>And many Muslims why Europeans fear encroachment of their culture by Islamic migration and Britain's of demands for Shari'a and try to call it racism.<

And thats exactly what it is : racism. You're trying to subjugate Muslim minorities and lying about our faith to justify draconian domestic and international policies. You want Muslims to be second and third citizens with no rights whatsoever. Keep dreaming, Jethro.

>And yet this is the society whose religion DEMANDS worldwide dominance in order to have "peace" and the perfect society.<

I see the ND's other idiotic sock account is posting his projective nonsense about "domination" while turning a blind eye the most despicable record of criminality, supremacism and domination the world has ever known. The commander of the British forces in Baghdad 1917 said, " Our armies do not come into your cities & lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." Rumsfeld US S.O.D. 2003 (addressing not the Iraqis but his troops)said, "Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, & the Iraqi people know this." As R.Kaplan, the author of "Supremacy by stealth" wrote, "Speak Victorian, Think Pagan" - how illuminating? As one can gather this exposes the new militarism straight from the horse's mouth! Need I say more?

>As hard as it is for Muslims to accept, there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to take a religion designed to correct problems in a 7th century tribal culture and apply it to the world today, unchanged and unchangeable.<

Yet another retarded set of straw arguments put forth by a western racist supremacist who thinks the world revolves around a failed white European culture of denial, criminality and Godlessness.

>hundreds of years Islamic culture has contributed little to nothing to the world in the areas of medicine, science, technology or academic culture.<

Islam l;aInteresting how this decline correlates as the Islamic world was being colonized and attacked by the West. But its more important to remember the westerners really haven't done much in the last 500 years outside of military aggression, building WMDs etc.
Furthermore, consider the intellectual heroes of Western civilization. The Ancient Greeks? Their doctrines were ripped apart by the Muslims. The Church? We know the Muslims dismantled its beliefs. The later various materialistic/atheistic ideas of the modern philosophers/thinkers have carry no weight in comparison what the Muslim scholars have said.

>>> Looking back at past Muslim "glories" and claims (now being highly disputed in many areas, Arabic numbers for example) and resisting the hard fact that for hundreds of years Islamic culture has contributed little to nothing to the world in the areas of medicine, science, technology or academic culture.

You're just another ignorant and racist white supremacist who thinks that the western world has given the world all its glories, so its sins (past and present) are forgiven into perpetuity. Thank europe for child pornography, thank australia for the worst institutionalisation of social racism than any other country, thank the US for the global recession and trillions of dollars spent on war. Muslims are now guilty for doing nothing.

FYI ~ Look to where majority of the worlds crops, mineral resources and labour are coming from. Look to those scientists, engineers, doctors and business specialists and you would find many Muslims and more than few 21st century cultural rejects. Those same rejects beat the soviet union in the eighties and are resisting the last stronghold of modern colonialism in Israel. They form part of a plethora of developing nations living their "failed" ideas and failed culture. All of Asia, Africa and South America are just more of your cultural rejects paying in blood for the great western testimony to its "civilisation". Don't you realise that the world has progressed beyond your racist paradigms?

"And thats exactly what it is : racism. You're trying to subjugate Muslim minorities and lying about our faith to justify draconian domestic and international policies. You want Muslims to be second and third citizens with no rights whatsoever. Keep dreaming, Jethro."

You mean second class citizens akin to a non-Muslim in a Muslim country?

That would indeed be terrible but that's not what it is.

What is taking place is an effort to protect individual rights and equality under the law. The fear is letting a current minority try to overturn these principles in favor of a religion that openly espouses unequal treatment because it views itself as "perfect" and that the only true law, is "God's law", not the secular law of Europe and the US that doesn't recognize the primacy of Islam.

"Look to where majority of the worlds crops, mineral resources and labour are coming from." Answer: The US and Europe for the world's crops. The distribution of mineral resources has nothing to do with the primacy or superiority of any religion so what's your point? Labor is less of a need with the increasing mechanization of the world and poorly educated immigrants are not the answer.

Look to those scientists, engineers, doctors and business specialists and you would find many Muslims and more than few 21st century cultural rejects. Answer: Here's your chance to provide some statistics. How many Nobel Prize winners are Muslim? What is the most recent (or any) major scientific contribution from a Muslim country based Muslim?

Those same rejects beat the soviet union in the eighties and are resisting the last stronghold of modern colonialism in Israel.

Answer: The Afghan victory was only possible with US technology. Otherwise, they were being slaughtered.

All of Asia, Africa and South America are just more of your cultural rejects paying in blood for the great western testimony to its "civilisation". Answer: All are improving as a result of Western technology and culture. And what, may I ask, is the Islamic contribution?

Don't you realise that the world has progressed beyond your racist paradigms?

The question is: will the world progress in the face of Islamic terrorism and quest for world domination?

Bill >>> Answer: The Afghan victory was only possible with US technology. Otherwise, they were being slaughtered.

Don't you want to understand? They sacrficed their lives resisting the soviet occupation. They are not meaningless entities without any honour and nobility. They resisted with some western support (twenty years too late), and they did it well. So they are a nation of Human Beings entitled to their own vision of their lives.

Bill >>> The question is: will the world progress in the face of Islamic terrorism and quest for world domination?

That is not the question. You're obviously misinformed about the facts of global politics and the real grievances of the developing world. You need to do some research and some soul searching. Visit Oxfam, world socialist forum, indymedia and other sources of information.

You're obviously suffering from some crisis of meaning, so you've come to seek out resolution by making aggressive posts on random articles. Read the article and try and understand its intent. Its from a Muslim for a Muslim audience. You obviously don't respect Muslims and aren't interested in what Muslims have to say. I'd try an educate you about the world and global politics and the rest, but the article is about women and the law in post-colonial Muslim nations. Out of a basic respect for the forum, reserve arguments about World domination and all that other pinky and the brain stuff for articles that deal with them. Also, do us a favour and read the Quraan before you copy and paste arguments here.

You'd do well to read some of those nobel prize winners yourself!

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-96559-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0128-01.htm

>>> Labor is less of a need with the increasing mechanization of the world and poorly educated immigrants are not the answer.

Most of your production doesn't come from migrant labour. It comes from native labour .. IN OTHER COUNTRIES. You obviously view the rest of the world the way you view your country. Not a very open-minded person by the looks of it.

DrM >>> Misguided article. I am all for caning of both men and woman who break the law. Enough retarded western political correctness.

I don't see a basis in Shariah for punishing peoples immorality. The very notion itself must seem strange. Piety is not an enforced civil law and humiliating a woman in public is not exactly positive. In fact the shariah holds such high regard for individual rights, that is even impermissible to raid a home even if immoral activities are taking place there. Immoral property personal can't even be discarded.

All three examples are examples of the application of piety and moralism into civic law. This is just plagued with problems and injustices, and indicates a failure of understanding of what is Islamic.

Ghulam: Where does one find a description of Sharia law? I've certainly heard about its application, but never its source.

Don't you want to understand? They sacrficed their lives resisting the soviet occupation. They are not meaningless entities without any honour and nobility. They resisted with some western support (twenty years too late), and they did it well. So they are a nation of Human Beings entitled to their own vision of their lives.
- Posted by Ghulam

They were fighting the Soviets, now us. The people we've 'liberated' from their control don't seem to like them, yet they still seem to find willing recruits. It sounds like a civil war to me. Vietnam would suggest we should stay out.

I think the reason we're there is because of the domino theory of radical Islam. We used to have the same thing going with communism. That turned out OK for us, but not because of the wars we fought.

"Bill >>> Answer: The Afghan victory was only possible with US technology. Otherwise, they were being slaughtered.

Don't you want to understand? They sacrficed their lives resisting the soviet occupation. They are not meaningless entities without any honour and nobility. They resisted with some western support (twenty years too late), and they did it well. So they are a nation of Human Beings entitled to their own vision of their lives."

No question that the Afghans sacrificed in the war against the USSR and they wouldn't have been the first resistors to have been decimated through the lack of effective weapons and resources. These were provided to them by the Americans.

As for their own vision of their lives, you make note of the US presence in Afghanistan.

Does the word "911" mean nothing to you? All the Taliban had to do to remain in power was to extradite OBL to the US and to shut down all Al Qaida activities.

What they did was play the "Islamic" card saying that he had to be tried by under Sharia and in Afghanistan under Taliban rules.

In essence, they invited the US to come in and the rest is history.

"You're obviously suffering from some crisis of meaning, so you've come to seek out resolution by making aggressive posts on random articles."

Hardly, I call em as I see em.

">>> Labor is less of a need with the increasing mechanization of the world and poorly educated immigrants are not the answer.

Most of your production doesn't come from migrant labour. It comes from native labour .. IN OTHER COUNTRIES. You obviously view the rest of the world the way you view your country. Not a very open-minded person by the looks of it."

I have no dispute with native labor in their own countries, and am in complete favor of world wide trade and industrialization.

What I question is the hypocrisy of Muslims who demand the right to free immigration to Europe and the US, fleeing their native countries that provide little hope for advancement, and then who decry Jews migrating to Israel.

And once again, why is all of the immigration FROM Muslim countries if they are in possession of the "perfect" religion and social system?

You'd do well to read some of those nobel prize winners yourself!

I think that you should reread what they said. They were, as I was, against a war with Iraq because of lack of immediate cause and lack of International support. GWB will never be considered one of the great American presidents.

But lets get back to the real issue. There was nothing in that declaration that was against justifiable war, though some were against all war, an indefensible position.

The war that radical Islam is conducting against the world is an entirely different issue.

@Rafia: this reinforces my theory that much of modern Islamic practice is little more than promoting identity markers and then moving on to enforcing them wherever possible. The underlying spirituality is actively disregarded because that is not what's important. Reinforcing group identity and deliniating the group's boundaries and membership is the vital and obsessive issue. We live in a time when people talk more about who is or is not wearing hijab or talks anti-this or anti-that "like a real Muslim Bruzzer" than we do about that thought-provoking Quranic verse about giving to beggars (whom we pass on the way to the masjed) that was recited the night before, for example.

This explains, I think, my astonishment at many contemporary Muslim behavoirs and choices. I had been operating on the naive Islamist assumption that Muslims sincerely want to obey the Quran and Sunnah. I was wrong for the most part; people simply are being people and displaying the symbols and speech of the post-colonial Muslim identity. Perhaps this is why I find it more and more difficult to identify and befreind such persons. I get no spiritual injections, but only explicit and implicit demands made on me to conform to the identity markers.

And yet, I do like to be identified as a Muslim, to be part of that group who has all the fundamentals revealed to us to fulfill our potential to be a player for good, but is letting it collectively slip out of our hands.

@bigbill: this article really is not about Iraq, wars or GW, really its not.

"I had been operating on the naive Islamist assumption that Muslims sincerely want to obey the Quran and Sunnah...people simply are being people and displaying the symbols and speech of the post-colonial Muslim identity."

The college-age Iranian revolutionaries I met in the late 70s hardly ever mentioned religion, but instead mouthed about the "decadence" of the West, the opportunities to power opened up by post-colonialism, and their intent to follow the fascist models of Stalin and Hitler. When I objected that the peoples of their home country would object, they shook their heads with a smile; they had read Machiavelli and took to heart his admonition about following religious appearances strictly as a means to limit social disorder: the faithful will be appeased and could be counted on to suppress the urges of the remainder.

Are robotic Muslims lulled into obedience by the threat of starvation, the fear of being caned or flogged at the same level of religious devotion as those who freely choose to abstain from forbidden acts?

Exactly. Judaism and Christianity went through similar periods when militants enforced such obedience. In Judaism, the rabbis say we lost Jerusalem to the Romans due to the "baseless hatred" of such people; Christians know that the millions they donated over centuries to finance "crusades" usually served to finance despotism. It took centuries of experience and education for the Christian world to surmount such difficulties.

So most of today's Jews or Christians do not suffer from the common disability of today's Muslims: existing in a police state that uses all the tools of modern technology, psychology, and medicine to enforce the power of totalitarian rule over the people, while waving Islam as a banner to prevent change that could bring freedom.

Is there any way Muslims can get out of this jam? Is it ungodly to wish to do so?

@solomon: Most Christians and Jews seem not to live in police states because of the Enlightenment, not because of the Reformation or such. Religions did not change, they simply got pushed aside. And do recall that the Phillipines, East Timor and numerous African states with absolute Christian majorities are also police states or shaky semi-democracies.