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Ottoman Women During the Advent of Western Feminism
Here is an interesting piece by Zara Huda
“As to women, as many, if not more than men, are to be seen in the streets [i.e. going about their daily activities, etc] […] I think I never saw a country where women may enjoy so much liberty, and free from all reproach, as in Turkey […] The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all other nations; […] and I repeat it, sir, I think no women have so much liberty, safe from apprehension, as the Turkish – and I think them in their manner of living, capable of being the happiest creatures breathing.”
– Lady Elizabeth Craven, A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople, 1789[i]
Lady Elizabeth Craven, 18th century travel writer, playwright and author, made these observations about the women of the Ottoman Caliphate (an Islamic state) in 1789, before the advent of feminism in Europe and three years before Mary Wollstonecraft would publish A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the 300-page appeal that would become the foundation stone and herald of modern feminism.
The observations of Lady Elizabeth Craven and others, along with records of court proceedings, financial dealings and political documents, reveal that women of the Ottoman Caliphate actually experienced greater liberty and protection than their post-enlightenment Western counterparts, and notably without the need for feminism. Yet, today, feminists strive to convince Muslim women of the exact opposite: that Muslim women have always suffered because of Islam and, in a strange twist of thought, advocate feminism as the solution to the problems of the Muslim world.
This article looks at the condition of women living under an Islamic Caliphate that continued to exist until as recently as 1924 – the Ottoman Caliphate – and compares their circumstances with the Western circumstances that gave rise to feminism in the West. As we will see, the very recent historical precedent of the Ottoman Caliphate demonstrates that women of the Muslim world historically never needed feminism in order to guarantee their rights – rather, they simply needed the full implementation of their own belief system – Islam.
Muslim country v. Islamic state
Before turning to the comparison, it is important to note the fundamental difference between a Muslim country and an Islamic state. The Ottoman Caliphate was an Islamic state – i.e. the shari’ah (the sacred law of Islam) ruled supreme as the only source of law – for over 600 years and until its cessation in the early 20th century. This shari’ah provided the Ottomans with their legal framework for governing public and private aspects of daily life, including personal, political, social and economic activities, both civil and criminal. This shari’ah also enabled the Ottoman Caliphate to include and protect women of Africa, Europe and Asia – which included Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Anatolian, Greek, North African, West Asian, and women of the Balkan Peninsula.
The Muslim countries of today, however, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Turkey and much of the Middle East, are secular and not Islamic – i.e. the constitutions of these countries posit that Islam may be just one of many post-colonialist sources of the law. Otherwise, these countries are secular, corrupt, and tyrannical and cannot be looked upon for an example of Islam in practice. In fact, the ordinary men and women of these Muslim countries would be liberated by the establishing of an Islamic state in their lands.
Legal Status
In the West, women lost their own legal identity (and their names) upon marriage, at which point they could neither sue nor be sued, and their husbands would have to sue or be sued on their behalf.
In England, and most English speaking colonies, the doctrine of coverture identified women according to their marital status. A married woman did not have her own legal identity separate from that of her husband – upon marriage, hers was subsumed by her husband’s identity, and she was known as a feme covert (i.e. a married woman or, literally, a “covered” woman). This legal concept prevailed in the West from around the 12th century until the mid to late 19th century (i.e. almost alongside the entire period of the Ottoman Empire).
“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing…”
– William Blackstone, 18th century English jurist and judge, explaining coverture[ii]
Coverture was a double edged sword, hindering the lives of all women and men together – denying the free will of wives also denied their accountability. For example, a married woman could not file lawsuits in her own name, and her husband would have to do so on her behalf, but this also meant that if someone wanted to take civil action against the wife, her husband would have to be sued in her stead. This devolving of accountability from the woman to her husband was even the subject of satire in English literature. In Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, a Mr Bumble was informed that “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction“, to which Mr Bumble replied “If the law supposes that […] the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.“[iii]
Coverture was only in relation to civil, not criminal, action; as we know, England and the American colonies were still reeling from burning women at the stake for criminal offences of treason and witchery – even as late as 1784![iv] Although coverture was only in relation to civil law, it is interesting to note that, as recently as 1972, two US states allowed a wife accused in criminal court to offer as a legal defence that she was obeying her husband’s orders![v]
Meanwhile, women of the Ottoman Caliphate had legal standing regardless of marital status, the like of which caused even non-Muslim Ottoman women to prefer Islamic courts to their own courts.
The Women of the Ottoman Caliphate, like men, upon reaching puberty, were considered individual subjects of the state, having their own separate legal identity, in accordance with Islamic law. They retained this legal status regardless of whether they married or remained single.[vi] Muslim women also retain their own surnames upon marriage, as a reminder of their own identity and their own accountability.
Along with men, women were granted extensive legal rights, including the right to register complaints and claim their rights before the local Islamic judge (in Arabic, the Qadi), and they could do so independently. They did not need an accompanying male relative, in fact they could take legal action against their own husbands or male relatives if need be. Ottoman women of all social levels, from the countryside and the cities, frequently used the Islamic court system to defend their interests and, in most cases, judges upheld women’s legal and property rights.[vii]
In fact, Islamic Qadi courts were perceived to be so favourable in treating issues of concern to women, that even non-Muslim Ottoman women frequently preferred to take recourse in these Islamic Qadi courts despite the fact that, under the protection of the Ottoman Caliphate, each religious community had access to its own religious or cultural proceedings, as each religious community enjoyed cultural and legal autonomy, managing its own internal affairs, under the leadership of its own religious hierarchy.[viii]
Economic Activity
In the West, women did not have control over their own property upon marriage; their husbands were responsible for their upkeep and were forced to pay off their debts.
The doctrine of coverture meant that, because the husband and wife were ‘one person’, the wife did not have control over her own property and her husband could use and dispose of her property without her permission (unless otherwise agreed before marriage).
As such, a wife could also not execute contracts. In the 19th century, in circumstances where a wife could dispose of her property (for example, if this was permitted by her husband), then a ‘privy examination’ would have to be conducted where she had to be separately examined by a judge (without her husband present), to determine whether her husband was pressuring her into signing the document. This was seen as a means of protecting married women’s property.
On the other hand, because they were seen to be the same person in the eyes of the law, the husband was also legally bound to provide for his wife, as much as himself. It also meant that if a woman entered the marriage already with debt, or she incurred debt for them, her husband was the debtor and obliged to pay off the debt – not the wife.
In Britain, this persisted at least until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, which altered the law so that a wife could own, buy and sell, sue and be sued, and be liable for her own debts.
Meanwhile, women of the Ottoman Caliphate had always been economically independent and active and, in some industries, so much so that guilds had to seek state intervention against women’s monopolies.
“The Turkish wife has been called a slave and a chattel. She is neither. Indeed, her legal status is preferable to that of the majority of wives in Europe, and until enactments of a comparatively recent date, the English was far more of a chattel than the Turkish wife, who has always had absolute control of her property. The law allows her the free use and disposal of anything she may possess at the time of her marriage, or that she may inherit afterwards. She may distribute it during her life or she may bequeath it to whom she chooses. In the eyes of the law she is a free agent. She may act independently of her husband, may sue in the courts or may be proceeded against, without regard to him. In these respects she enjoys greater freedom than her Chrisitan sisters.”
– Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911
Amongst the Islamic rights delivered to women under the Ottoman Caliphate was the Islamic right to inherit, acquire, control and dispose of property according to their own will, without requiring consent from fathers or husbands. In other words, Ottoman women were legally entitled to manage their own wealth, and they very much did so.
In fact, women played a fundamental role in the Ottoman economy, including being landholders, holders of military fiefs, borrowers, lenders, private tax collectors, and partners in business. Ottoman women from various backgrounds were commonly trading and dealing in marketplaces.[ix]
It is documented that ‘upper class’ Ottoman women (who were more likely to be ‘cloistered’ behind screens) did not commonly deal directly with men, and were perceived by foreign observers as being ‘forced’ to use male employees and agents to act on their behalf. This prompted some observers to comment on this with strange sympathy, as if these ‘upper class’ women were somehow being oppressed, despite the fact that they were powerful business owners who are documented to have owned many of the shops in the market in the first place.[x] How unfortunate these women must have been to have employees running their businesses for them! Also, these ‘upper class’ women wielded further influence through the patronage of fundamental architectural projects.
Women of the Ottoman Caliphate were also involved in crafts, silk and cotton spinning. In Mosul, cotton-thread making was an industry that was by and large carried out on a part time basis in the home. At one point, this industry was actually monopolized by women, to the extent that cotton-weaving guilds were forced to seek state intervention against this monopoly![xi]
Ottoman women also played a fundamental role in the distribution of wealth and, during the 18th century, Ottoman women of all classes established 20-30% of all charitable foundations/trusts (in Arabic waqf pl. awqaf). Schools, hospitals, caravansaries, baths, fountains, soup kitchens, hostels and mosques were financed throughout the empire by women from their own personal resources, for the benefit of the public.[xii]
Political Involvement
In Britain, universal suffrage for men and women was not achieved until 1928.
In Britain, only very wealthy men could vote, which excluded the vast majority of men, and excluded women altogether! It was not until 1918 that all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30 could vote, and it was not until 1928 that all men and women over the age of 21 could vote.
Meanwhile, men and women of the Ottoman Caliphate were required to be politically active.
Under the Ottoman Caliphate, women had the same right as men to directly petition the Divan – the council where viziers debated the politics of the state, and men and women both had a right to pledge allegiance (equivalent of the vote) to the Ottoman Caliph.
The social segregation of women from men was most common among the upper class families, whilst women of lower classes were generally more free to circulate, partly because of their heavy involvement in economic activities.[xiii] As such, it was commonly believed by European foreigners that such upper class women must have been oppressed and restricted. In reality, the late 16th century of the Ottoman Caliphate was actually known as the “sultanate of the women”, when the mothers of the sultans and other royal women became increasingly powerful and influential from behind the veils and screens of the harem. Although the harem was not, and is not, an Islamic concept, the sultanate of the women does demonstrate emphatically that just because women are behind screens or veils, this does not mean their role in society is restricted.
Social Life
In the West, neither men nor women had the right to divorce, and if they were wealthy enough to get a legal separation, remarrying meant the death penalty.
Divorce was not legal under English law until the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Prior to 1857, a form of legal separation could be achieved only through a complex annulment process or through the passing of a Private Act of Parliament (which entailed lengthy public debates about the couple’s intimate life in the House of Commons). Both of these measures were highly costly procedures, and so this legal separation was restricted to the very wealthy.
Not only this, but husbands and wives who had so separated were prohibited from remarrying – ‘bigamy’ was first prohibited and prosecutable by the church and then, in 1604, bigamy was made a legal felony and was punishable with the death penalty![xiv]
Meanwhile, in the Ottoman Caliphate, polygamy was rare and divorce, whilst a last resort, was initiated by both men and women.
“Turks rule countries and their wives rule them. Turkish women go around and enjoy themselves much more than any others. Polygamy is absent. They must have tried it but then given it up because it leads to much trouble and expense.”
– Saomon Schweigger, German Protestant minister who travelled to the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 16th century.
Marriages were mostly arranged by parents and families, emphasizing the importance of family in Ottoman society. Women of the Ottoman Caliphate had the right to refuse a match, and prenuptial contracts were not uncommon. Polygamy was permitted, in accordance with Islamic law, but in practise was actually quite rare, with over 95% of men having only one wife.[xv]
Ottoman jurists “viewed married couples as enjoying reciprocal, as opposed to symmetrical rights”.[xvi] For example, a married woman of the Ottoman Caliphate was duty bound to obey the husband she consented to marry – as long as he did not ask her to do something bad or haram – the legal status and political and economic activity of women clearly demonstrates, however, that Muslim men were not overbearing or oppressive to their wives. Furthermore, because men are, in the eyes of the law, financially responsible for women and children, divorce procedures are different for men than they are from women, although both are allowed to seek divorce. In practice, women of the Ottoman Caliphate had a great deal of flexibility in ending unwanted marriages. In 18th century Istanbul, for example, separations, annulments and divorces initiated by women were frequent enough to even create concern amongst social observers. Being a union of two families as opposed to just two people, divorce was distressing regardless of who initiated it, but divorce was nevertheless an option for either the husband or the wife.[xvii]
Legitimate causes for divorce from either party included incompatibility, financial problems that led to altercations between spouses, ill treatment including physical abuse, adultery, failure of either party to keep to the basic expectations of marriage, especially not doing the work the family needed from either husband or wife. In some cases, divorce was initiated by the wife if she was not satisfied with the house to which her husband had taken her, or by the husband if his wife did not produce sons.[xviii]
After divorce, both men and women were free to marry again. For non-Muslim Ottoman women whose religions or traditions did not normally permit divorce, conversion to Islam was a common path to liberation from unhappy marriages.
Do Muslim women need feminism?
As we can see, the women of the Ottoman Caliphate had no need for feminism in order to obtain the rights ordained for them by their Creator. Not only did the Ottoman Caliphate implement and protect the rights of Muslim men and women, but it also accommodated the vast and various groups of non-Muslim women living under its protection. It should be emphasized that this justice and prosperity amongst men and women long preceded the advent of feminism in the West, and continued until very recently (the early 20th century). Unlike women of the ‘post-enlightenment’ West, Muslim women never needed the patch-work and gender-biased solution of feminism in order to seek justice and obtain their rights, which were guaranteed under the Islamic Caliphate. It would seem that Western women invented feminism out of desperation, because they did not have Islam. So the question we must ask ourselves is, given that Muslim women had always found Islam sufficient for their rights, why would they ever need feminism?
[i] Elizabeth Craven (Baroness), A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople: In a Series of Letters from the Right Honourable Elizabeth Lady Craven to His Serene Highness The Margrave of Brandebourg, Anspach, and Bareith, London.
[ii] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Vol. 1, 1765, pages 442-445)
[iii] Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838, chapter 51
[iv] http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/burning.html
[v]The Law: Up from Coverture, Time Magazine, published Monday, March 20, 1972, accessed at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942533,00.html
[vi] Jenie R. Ebeling, Lynda Garland, Guity Nashat, Eric R. Dursteler “West Asia” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Ed Bonnie G. Smith. Oxford University Press, 2008. Brigham Young University (BYU). 1 November 2010
[vii] Ebeling, Garland, Nashat, and Dursteler
[viii] Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002
[ix] Mehrdad Kia, Daily Life in The Ottoman Empire, Greenwood, 2011
[x] Kia, M.
[xi] Ebeling, Garland, Nashat, and Dursteler
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Bernard Capp, Bigamous Marriage in Early Modern England, University of Warwick, 2009
[xv] Ebeling, Garland, Nashat, and Dursteler
[xvi] Kia, M.
[xvii] Ebeling, Garland, Nashat, and Dursteler
[xviii] Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London, New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997)
Here is the link to the original blog:
http://zarafaris.com/2013/08/03/ottoman-women-during-the-advent-of-european-feminism/
This isn’t ‘feminism’. It’s Islamophobia – I Agree!
Here is a very interesting comment by Laurie Penny:
I am infuriated by white men stirring up anti-Muslim prejudice to derail debate on western sexism
As a person who writes about women’s issues, I am constantly being told that Islam is the greatest threat to gender equality in this or any other country – mostly by white men, who always know best. This has been an extraordinary year for feminism, but from the Rochdale grooming case to interminable debates over whether traditional Islamic dress is “empowering” or otherwise, the rhetoric and language of feminism has been co-opted by Islamophobes, who could not care less about women of any creed or colour.
The recent blanket coverage of the “gender segregation on campus” story was a textbook case. This month Student Rights, a pressure group not run by students, released a report vastly exaggerating a suggestion by Universities UK that male and female students might be asked to sit separately in some lectures led by Islamic guest speakers. Many Asian women’s groups and individual Muslim feminists joined the subsequent protests, sometimes taking personal risks to do so. Unfortunately, rightwing commentators and tabloids seized upon the issue to imply that Islamic extremists are taking over the British academy.
Never mind that it wasn’t strictly true, the non-controversy spread to every level of government. Labour MP Chuka Umunna declared: “A future Labour government would not allow or tolerate segregation in our universities.” Even the prime minister stepped into the debate, saying the proposed guidelines, which have since been withdrawn, were “not the right approach”. The elite all-male Oxford club of which both he and the chancellor were members was presumably the perfect approach.
I have spent weary weeks being asked to condemn this “policy of gender segregation” by “Islamic extremists”, despite the fact that no such policy exists. Of course, I condemn all sexism within the academy. I condemn segregated drinking societies and the under-representation of women at the top levels of academia. I condemn rape culture on campus, traditions like “seal clubbing” and “slut dropping” where male students are encouraged to sexually humiliate their female classmates. If I’ve enough breath left, I’ll condemn the suggestion that guest lecturers be allowed a segregated audience for religious reasons.
Structural sexism does take place every day in our universities, as it does in our offices, shops and homes – and we should oppose it everywhere. But demanding that feminists of every race and faith drop all our campaigns and stand against “radical Islam” sounds more and more like white patriarchy trying to make excuses for itself: “If you think we’re bad, just look at these guys.”
It’s the dishonesty that angers me most. It’s the hypocrisy of men claiming to stand for women’s rights while appropriating our language of liberation to serve their own small-minded agenda. Far-right groups like the English Defence League and the British National party rush to condemn crimes against women committed by Muslim men, while fielding candidates who make claims like “women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly”.
Some of their members tell me that since they are standing against the sexism of Muslim barbarians, as a feminist I should be on their side. When I disagree, I am invariably informed I deserve be shipped to Afghanistan and stoned to death.
Horror stories about Muslim misogyny have long been used by western patriarchs to justify imperialism abroad and sexism at home. The Guardian’s Katharine Viner reminds us about Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Egypt from 1883. Cromer believed the Egyptians were morally and culturally inferior in their treatment of women and that they should be “persuaded or forced” to become “civilised” by disposing of the veil.
“And what did this forward-thinking, feminist-sounding veil-burner do when he got home to Britain?” asks Viner. “He founded and presided over the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage, which tried, by any means possible, to stop women getting the vote. Colonial patriarchs like Cromer … wanted merely to replace eastern misogyny with western misogyny.” More than a century later, the same logic is used to imply that misogyny only matters when it isn’t being done by white men.
I am not writing here on behalf of Muslim women, who can and do speak for themselves, and not all in one voice. I am writing this as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia to derail any discussion of structural sexism; as someone who has heard too many reactionaries tell me to shut up about rape culture and the pay gap and just be grateful I’m not in Saudi Arabia; as someone angered that so many Muslim feminists fighting for gender justice are forced to watch their truth, to paraphrase that fusty old racist Rudyard Kipling, “twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools”.
We are the fools, if we believe that accepting aggressive distinctions between nice, safe western sexism and scary, heathen Muslim sexism is going to serve the interests of women. The people making these arguments don’t care about women. They care about stoking controversy, attacking Muslims and shouting down feminists of all stripes.
For decades, western men have hijacked the language of women’s liberation to justify their Islamophobia. If we care about the future of feminism, we cannot let them set the agenda.
This article was amended to draw attention to the fact that many Muslim and Asian women were involved in the “gender segregation” protests
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/this-isnt-feminism-its-islamophobia
21st Century ‘Civilised’ Society Allows the Raping of Girls!
Carlene Firmin a researcher, has been shortlisted for the Women’s Warrior category The Cosmopolitan Ultimate Women of the Year Awards 2013 with Vauxhall Adam
Carlene Firmin is recalling the worst case she has ever come across. A 20-year-old woman, whom she met in a refuge, had had two relationships with gang members as a teenager. They broke both her legs and her collar bone. Slashed her with knives. Beat her. Her baby was stillborn at eight months and she can no longer have children due to internal injuries.
And then there was the sexual violence. Both exes had raped her in front of their friends. They had filmed the abuse. When she was 19, she was “sold” by one to clear a drugs debt. Yet somehow, this young woman believed she was complicit in her own plight.
“She hadn’t told anyone about her gang association because she thought they wouldn’t see her as a victim any more,” says Firmin. “She thought she’d brought it on herself because she gained something from the relationships: her ex was giving her coke … She couldn’t acknowledge she was a ‘worthy’ victim.”
It’s a common theme in the stories Firmin has heard in her eight years of working with the women attached to gangs. That work saw the 30-year-old awarded an MBE three years ago and now she is nominated at Cosmopolitan’s Ultimate Women of the Year Awards, held this Thursday night.
Firmin, who advised the Office of the Children’s Commissioner on last week’s highly publicised report into youth sexual violence, set up the organisation MsUnderstood in August to address gender inequality among the young. She is also completing a PhD at Bedfordshire University on peer-on-peer abuse; the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have given her access to their files on violent cases among the young.
And that means very young: victims tend to be between 11 and 13 when the abuse starts, perpetrators between 13 and 15. “Girls are often drawn in during the first term of secondary school,” Firmin explains. “Everyone’s trying to fit in and some are very vulnerable to bullying. This is a very extreme form of sexual bullying. The girls are told: ‘If you want to hang around with us, you have to do this.’”
Firmin cites a case where three girls had been repeatedly raped by a gang. One had been sexually abused since infancy, so that by secondary school “she required no grooming whatsoever”. The other two had no history of sexual abuse so weren’t initially compliant “but were physically assaulted until they gave in”. After being hit by a bottle, one said she decided “just to let the boys get on with it”. She was 11.
Firmin believes that while society now takes child abuse by adults very seriously, child-on-child abuse is not adequately addressed. “We have a child protection system that is designed to look at risk in the home and assess a child there,” she argues. “But in the files I’ve looked at, the primary risk — in terms of sexual abuse, physical assault and risk of offending — comes from their peer group. It’s in schools, the neighbourhood, the journey to school.”
She adds that though there are convictions, lessons are rarely learned about how to handle these cases. Serious case reviews are much rarer than if adults are the perpetrators: “When we look at adult-on-child abuse, we think we have let that child down. But with child-on-child, there’s a multitude of complications that mean people don’t want to see it. Sometimes, it’s about saying to professionals ‘you’re talking about a child being raped weekly. What are you doing about it?’ but because we couch it in language — ‘she’s chaotic, she’s been with lots of boys’ — we can forget what’s happening.”
So the victim is often treated as the issue. “We assess the home as safe and then we make the child the problem. We don’t work with peer groups, we just take one child out of a problematic situation.”
This means the girl who has been assaulted is usually moved. “But the school is still a school where a child has been raped. If another pupil is then assaulted, will they get help when they know they’ll be sent away? Why can’t we make the school a safer place to be?”
After one girl was gang-raped, six boys were convicted. But the girl and her family had to be moved permanently as they were threatened. So did her grandmother, two friends who had testified and a boy who had intervened. “We just shipped everyone out. Nothing changed in that neighbourhood.”
So how can we break this cycle? “We need to make young people realise they don’t have to do something, but also that they can tell someone who will keep them safe.” This begins, Firmin believes, by teaching children more in school about relationships: “Learning about consent and respect is critical. People get panicky about teaching five-year-olds [about sex] but they should learn about what a healthy friendship is, because a lot of the abuse is happening in friendship groups rather than formal boyfriend-girlfriend relationships.”
Firmin thinks gender stereotypes desperately need challenging too. “Some young people are growing up with the idea that being a man is about dominating women and being feared. Why is being masculine about violence? We need to offer alternatives.”
These boys’ idea of sex is frightening. “Their sexual experiences are in front of their friends and very brutal… Boys are willing to rape their friends. What is the motive beyond power, control and humiliation? That’s quite complicated, especially when boys are operating in a group.”
She believes some boys get dragged along by the crowd. “You have leaders setting up the assault, getting a kick out of watching what their friends are doing as well as abusing the girl they’re abusing. But there are other boys who want to be able to say ‘no’ and feel they can’t. When you read the judgments, a lot of the comments are ‘you would never have done this if you were alone’.”
Porn influences the abuse. “In the case files I’ve looked at, boys have shared images and videos, and said ‘shall we try this out on her tomorrow?’ There can be really horrific things — use of objects — and they’ll think it is really funny … But a lot of young people will have seen the same footage, and not go on to rape someone. You can’t prove causation: that a child watches this, so they’re going to go and do this. But in many of the cases I look at, that’s exactly what’s happened.”
Most attacks occur in a public space: in parks, stairwells, schools and loos of fast-food restaurants. “Other children watch and don’t tell a soul. I think we are missing a trick by not engaging bystanders in this work, because then friends of victims may come forward.”
She cites a case where 11-year-olds saw their friend being raped and didn’t tell anyone until they were approached by the police. “They said, ‘well, she does have sort of boyfriends’. That was their understanding of sexual assault and consent.”
Such victim-blaming is common in peer-on-peer cases. “There isn’t that stigma of ‘you’re an adult and you abused a child’. As everyone is the same age, young people take sides and they blame publicly. It’s ‘you’re a slag’ and ‘why did you go to the house where there were eight boys if you didn’t want to have sex with them?’”
Girls’ involvement in gangs isn’t just sexual, though: they are often made to stash drugs and carry weapons because they are less likely to be stopped and searched by police. If they do get caught, they can end up doing time.
Firmin believes this is another way young women are failed: “We have a youth justice system that has been designed to work with boys, not girls. It’s built on research into male-offending, so the needs of girls are not met.”
Firmin is now taking MsUnderstood into local areas to offer support in tackling peer-on-peer abuse. Initially, she had won funding to work with three local authorities but 38 have applied. So Firmin is going back to the Government and funders to argue for “a national intervention”. She is also hoping to take on more staff, admitting she is “completely overworked”.
I ask if she ever feels emotionally exhausted, sick from listening to such horror stories. “If I was doing this work, and nothing had changed, I’d feel more sick than I do. Eight years ago, people didn’t want to listen about girls and gangs. That is no longer the case. And these girls need our help.”
This was reported by Rosamund Urwin in the Evening Standards, London. 3rd December 2013
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “The example of the person abiding by Allah’s order and restrictions in comparison to those who violate them is like the example of those persons who drew lots for their seats in a boat. Some of them got seats in the upper part, and the others in the lower. When the latter needed water, they had to go up to bring water (and that troubled the others), so they said, ‘Let us make a hole in our share of the ship (and get water) saving those who are above us from troubling them. So, if the people in the upper part left the others do what they had suggested, all the people of the ship would be destroyed, but if they prevented them, both parties would be safe.”
Girls For Whom Rape is a Part of Daily Life – While Civilised Society Watches on in Silence
The following is a report from a London based daily called the Evening Standard:
Girls who associate with gangs are victims of sexual violence on a massive scale.
These are the chilling words of Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England Sue Berelowitz before a report published tomorrow after a two-year investigation into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs. “We are talking about rape, including gang rape, of girls as young as 11 but mostly in their mid-teens, rape that is part of the warp and weft of daily gang life,” she added.
“These girls don’t tell, they don’t complain, they don’t report to the police. It’s just what happens. If a girl is linked to a gang member and he is waiting for her outside the school gate and says, ‘Come with me’, you go. Saying ‘No’ is not an option. As one boy gang member put it, ‘Boys are predators, girls are prey’.
“Once a girl has had sex with a gang member, forced or otherwise, as far as the other boys are concerned, she has no right to refuse sex under any circumstances ever again. Girls are used, abused and discarded like a piece of meat.”
The seminal report “It’s wrong but you get used to it” was commissioned from Bedfordshire University. It is the most in-depth investigation into girls and gangs undertaken in this country. They interviewed 180 young people across England, split evenly between male and female gang members, to build the big picture.
Although the scale of the problem has not been quantified, Ms Berelowitz estimates that about 2,500 girls are at risk in London alone. “Gang-based peer-on-peer exploitation is hugely under-reported, but we know that in London there are around 3,500 gang nominals of which 2,500 are not in prison, so if every one of those has a girlfriend, we are talking about 2,500 girls at risk of rape.”
Colin James, whose group Gangs Unite runs a Girls in Gangs programme in Waltham Forest, believes the problem is more widespread. “A popular gang member could have up to 10 girls on the go. Some have five ‘baby-mothers’ by the time they hit 21, so we are talking about thousands of violated girls in London. For a girl associated with a gang, sex is their initiation. Then things get more dangerous because rape is a weapon of choice for some gangs — they rape the girlfriends, sisters and mothers of rival gang members to get back at them.”
Ms Berelowitz said the Standard’s Frontline London campaign has shown “real commitment to a really important issue that people need to wake up to”. Tomorrow she is expected to announce eight headline recommendations addressed to government, the police and Safeguarding Children’s Boards. They are expected to include a proposal that the police map every girl connected to gang members because each one is at risk of rape. They are also expected to call for proper relationship and sex education in schools, and for police and gang interventions to also focus on females and not just males.
Ms Berelowitz added: “From the Government down, people need to realise that sexual exploitation of girls in gangs is a very, very, very serious problem. It’s like lifting a stone and these terrible ugly worms are crawling out that nobody wants to acknowledge. So the first thing we have to do is raise awareness and put effective practice in place for the authorities to act on. It’s a huge piece of work, a game-changer.”
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner is publishing two other reports, “Sex without consent, I suppose that is rape”, and “If only someone had listened”, Inquiry into Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups, Final Report.
Muslimah Pride: We Reject Femens Islamophobic and Neo-Colonialist Crusade to Save Us
The following is an article by a student, Sofia Ahmed. It is a brilliant response to the very shallow and narrow minded organization called Femen.
Enjoy the read!
***
I have been following the exploits of Femen for a while now and have become increasingly frustrated with the way in which they carry out their campaigns. What Femen are doing is highly counterproductive and detrimental to Muslim women across the world. For me and hundreds of other women who have got in touch with me over the past few days, their tactics are a part of the ideological war that is going on between neo-colonial elements in the West and Islamic societies. Their aim is not to emancipate us from our presumed slavery, but instead reinforce Western imperialism and generate consent for the ongoing wars against Muslim countries.
Despite my personal views about the effectiveness of Amina Tyler’s actions, I hope that she is safe and well. However, I fail to see how declaring ‘Topless Jihad Day’ in ‘support of her’ will have any positive effect on her fate. A policy based on “Muslim women, let’s get naked” is counterproductive and bordering on insane. This is what prompted me to launch ‘Muslimah Pride Day’.
It seemed that many other Muslim women across the world agreed with my stance and what followed was a defiant and vocal rejection of Femen’s invitation. Instead of ‘getting naked’ Muslim women from across the world tweeted and uploaded pictures of themselves to Facebook in their hijabs, niqabs, and western attire. They held up signs telling the world why they were proud of their identities and did not need racist Islamophobic women to dictate to them on how they should dress. The sheer number of participants and support was indicative of the level of anger and frustration that Muslim women feel toward being perpetually infantilised and patronised by Femen and other such groups.
In our open letter to Femen we referred to them as ‘colonial feminists’ to describe Femen’s activities. I believe it is the most apt term to describe their particular brand of feminism. From Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, to the pretext of female liberation surrounding the invasion of Afghanistan, women have always been used as pawns by men as an excuse to wage war. Femen are just the latest chapter in the long history of gender imperialists that manufacture consent and provide ideological foregrounding to justify going to war. By dismissing the role of western countries in the oppression of Muslim women and focusing solely on Muslim men they are only working to demonise Islam, not liberate Muslim women.
In her latest piece in the Huffington Post UK, Inna Shevchenko suggests that we have “bearded men with knives” behind us that have pushed us to launch this campaign. In doing so she is dismissing our right to self-expression as impossible.
What she is implying is that Muslim women are incapable of speaking for themselves. It is a blatant attempt at denying that we have agency in our own lives. This kind of inferiorising is symbolic of why so many Muslim women are so angry with Femen.
The lead up to the Afghanistan war is a prime example of how feminism is used to construct and disseminate negative stereotypes about Muslim women to whip up support for warmongers. Former First Lady Laura Bush provided the speech act on the so-called plight of the women in Afghanistan, which turned a referent object like the Burkha into an obstacle to freedom. The reported plight of Afghan women was used to manipulate the public in to believing that this war was a well-intentioned feminist crusade to free them. The crude/sick reality that the chosen method of liberation for these women was by bombing, killing and raping them was cynically eclipsed by the fervour to save them from their own ‘evil’ Muslim men.
In a climate where we are constantly warned about a ‘clash of civilisations’ and the West’s state of perpetual war with Muslim countries, there is a fundamental need to dehumanise the ‘enemy’. The overemphasis on the Muslim man’s perceived misogyny overshadows the complete lack of scrutiny of the West’s oppression against Muslim women. Femen’s reliance on the overused media tropes of the modern western values versus traditional Muslim values is creating a dichotomous representation of the ‘self’ (West) and ‘other’ (Muslims).
Discourses based solely on the way women dress has historically been used to justify oppression against all dominated groups in history. The French colonialists would physically rip the veil of from women’s heads during the Algerian Revolution. In his essay Algeria Unveiled, in which he examines the role of women in colonised societies, Frantz Fanon quotes the French colonial authorities in saying: “If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the woman; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight”. Neo-cons and Islamophobes use the same approach to keep the Muslim woman subjugated.
The hyper-sexualisation of Femen’s campaign and the insistence on Muslim women to strip naked as a gesture of emancipation is a tell-tale symptom of Orientalist fantasies. When puritanical, prudish Christians from Europe first came across the Muslim world, Muslim women were off limits to the western man but that did not stop writers of harem literature fabricating their fantastical sexual encounters and present them as reality. Muslim women were depicted as the sex slaves lounging around in harems, there for the sexual pleasure of Muslim men. This has led to a construction of the ‘Muslim Woman’ as a submissive sexual object. Femen’s tactics suggest that this mentality has not changed. Now that the West has become supposedly sexually liberated, the Muslim woman (the ‘Other’) represents covered up sex slaves trying desperately to clamber out of their stifling burkhas and forced marriages.
I am not dismissing the fact that there are problems in the Muslim world. However history has shown that the West has directly (through slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism) and indirectly (through the propping up of misogynistic and oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia) done far more damage to Muslim women than Muslim men have. That is why I vehemently oppose Femen’s universal imposition of the neocolonial agenda. If Femen really want to help Muslim women they should address the fact that for far too long now, Muslim women have been marginalised, bombed, raped, killed, and enslaved by men from the western world. They should work within their own countries to try and subvert future wars against Muslim countries and help break down barriers. Or perhaps they should stick to trying to liberate women in the west.
We have been overwhelmed and are extremely appreciative of the messages of support and encouragement we have been getting from non-Muslims around the world. A woman from the US sent us a picture in which she had fashioned a hijaab out of a piece of cloth and headband in solidarity of our right to wear it. Western feminists such as Those Pesky Dames have also come out in support of our campaign. This is indicative of the ability to look past historically ingrained attitudes and the willingness of none Muslims to try and understand this misrepresented religion.
Despite the popularity of our campaign and the strong message that it sent out, Femen have continued to display a flagrant disregard for our agency and have consistently tried to downplay the legitimacy of our collective voices. Femen have tried to dismiss our campaign using conspiracy and conjecture, and there has been no sign of intellectual debate or a constructive argument against the points that we have raised. They have made no attempt to approach us directly, nor have they provided a response to our open letter. Instead Inna Shevchenko has said that’s she will see us on the “battle lines”, but we do not wish to engage on those terms.
For us this is not about a spat with Femen. Rather we are concerned with the bigger picture, of changing attitudes and perceptions and to foster a better understanding between Muslims and the West. This is our opportunity to tell our stories, let our voices be heard and take control of our own narratives. Femen should hope for a warm summer, they can get naked every day for all we care, the vast majority of Muslim women have shown that we won’t be joining them anytime soon.
Twitter @_MWAF
Facebook Muslim Women Against Femen
Follow the #Muslimahpride tag on Twitter
Follow Sofia Ahmed on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sofiaahmed1
So Who Bears the Primary Guilt for Fuelling Violence Against Women?
On February 14th, the movement ‘V-Day’ has sponsored an event entitled, “One Billion Rising” that is a call to one billion women worldwide to rise up and demand an end to violence against women. According to the movement, women in around 190 countries will be organising various activities in their communities on the day to bring greater awareness and attention to the problem, including in over thirty Muslim countries. “One Billion Rising” takes its name from the UN statistic that estimates that 1 in 3 women in the world will be raped or beaten in their lifetime which is equivalent to 1 billion women and girls.
It comes in the same week as the US Senate is scheduled to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which was first passed in 1994 but expired in September 2011. VAWA was enacted to address the high levels of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assaults and rape within American society by strengthening state law enforcement against perpetrators as well as providing services to victims. If passed, the act would authorize $659 million to be spent by the federal government over 5 years to provide grants to states and local government for projects to address violence against women.
It is the nature of “developed” liberal states to throw money at a problem or use knee-jerk legislation to address an issue rather than accepting acknowledgement of the harmful fall-out of their liberal (capitalist)values and system upon societies. After almost 20 years of the VAWA and numerous other laws prohibiting violence against women, these crimes continue to be at staggering levels under the capitalist, liberal American system.
In the US today, 3 women die every day at the hands of their husband, partner, or ex-partner; 1 in 5 women have been victims of rape or attempted rape; and 1 in 4 girls have been dishonoured before the age of 18. Other capitalist liberal societies are grappling with similar levels of these crimes. India for example has gained world notoriety for being one of the rape capitals of the world, while across Western Europe, 1 in 4 women have been subject to domestic violence. In the UK, its Home Office revealed shocking statistics this January that estimates that a woman is raped in the country every 6 minutes or so. And it is this capitalist, liberal ideology that unfortunately dominates states and societies in the world today.
Under capitalist liberal systems, there is a clear contradiction between legislation that seeks to establish a safe society for women, and the capitalist doctrine that promotes to men the belief that fulfilling their desires is the ultimate goal in life. There is a clear contradiction between calling for respect for women and the capitalist principle that securing profit is the determining factor for actions and policies – even if that means allowing the advertising, business, and entertainment industries to degrade women to the status of objects to satisfy the desires of men in order to increase sales.
And there is a clear contradiction between seeking the protection of women while simultaneously celebrating liberal freedoms that place individualistic whims and desires as the standard of right and wrong, nurturing a self-gratifying culture where the pursuit of selfish pleasures prevails. Alcohol and drug abuse for example are often cited as common factors that lead to violence against women. However, these problems stem from this liberal mindset of pursuing selfish desires, regardless of the consequence upon others.
All this has generated societies where women’s dignity and safety have become primary casualties. Unfortunately, while women continue to live under the shadow of capitalist liberal systems, awareness campaigns such as “One Billion Rising” will prove fruitless in stemming the tide of negative attitudes and violence against women fuelled by this detrimental system.
The belief that crimes against women can be solved by legislating a handful of laws, while simulateously implementing an ideology that systematically devalues them and undermines their safety is reckless, confused governance. Sincerely addressing violence against women requires a system that makes the protection of women’s dignity and security a key pillar at every level of state policy, rather than an empty election slogan.
So how does Islam and Muslims should view this issue?
Islam indeed appreciates the great value and heavy responsibility ascribed to safeguarding the dignity of women, obliging men to sacrifice their life to defend their honour.
It is the Islamic society (Caliphate) as opposed to the current backward Muslim states,that offers a clear strategy to protect their dignity within society through values and laws that complement each other in achieving this outcome. It is a state that rejects contradictory capitalist and liberal principles, promoting instead taqwa (the notion of God consciousness based upon certitude) and the Islamic view towards women through its education, media, and political system, shaped upon the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) saying:
“Women are the twin Halves of men. None but a noble man treats women in an honorable manner, and none but an ignorant treats women disgracefully.”
It prohibits any form of objectification or devaluing of women to ensure that their status is never cheapened, and implements harsh punishments against any form of abuse against women, even slander of their reputation for which the perpetrator is lashed. It is a state where women will feel safe in their homes and on the streets, allowing them to make an active contribution to the politics, education, and social life of their society, free from abuse.
Rape is widespread in the West and East alike, is Sharia the answer?
Whilst India is still gripped by the ghastly gang rape attack by six men on a bus in Delhi on the 16th of December 2012, leading to the death of the poor victim, we in Britain on the other hand were also faced with some home truths about rape within British society. The daily’s around here had headlines like this as their front page, Rape: figures that shame Britain! Just a few days a go it was reported that teachers in London have suffered more than 4,000 assaults from pupils over the past five years! Shocking or what!? It mentioned that data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that councils recorded 4,372 alleged assaults by students on teachers at primary and secondary schools. The figures include incidents where teachers have been bitten and scratched, as well as those injured when breaking up fights or restraining unruly pupils.
Here is what the METRO Front page reported on Friday 11th January 2013: Nearly 99 out of 100 sexual offences go unpunished, official figures reveal.
An average of just 5,620 sex offenders are convicted each year.
Barely one in every 100 sexual offences committed in Britain ends with anybody being punished, official figures reveal.
On average, nearly half-a-million people a year say they have been victims of sex crimes, ranging from indecent exposure to rape.
However, just one in ten of those are recorded by police.
In these cases, about 16,000 suspects are charged or receive a caution and a mere 5,620 are convicted, a rate of just 1.1per cent. Jo Wood, of Rape Crisis, said: ‘Unfortunately, the findings are not surprising to us.
‘Every rape victim gets a life sentence, but too few attackers are being caught and convicted.’
The figures reflect the findings of a joint review by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office for National Statistics.
One in five women has been the victim of a sexual offence in the past, while 69,000 say they have been raped in the past year. However, just 15 per cent reported the most serious crimes to the police.
Women said they were too embarrassed, the offence was ‘too trivial’ or they did not think officers ‘could do much to help’.
This was despite nine in ten of them knowing the perpetrator.
1 in 5 women has been a victim of a sexual offence.
Holly Dustin, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the conviction rate showed ‘there is clearly a long way to go in improving the criminal justice system’s response to these serious crimes’.
One particular incident was quite striking and indeed most shocking was the rape of a teacher by her pupil in the very classroom where she taught them. This was the most notorious of attacks in this report. This happened at Westminster City School in 2004 as she was marking books in a classroom!
So what is worst? Being gang raped by run of the mill street thugs who are strangers to the victim in downtown Delhi or being raped by a pupil who the victim is very well acquainted with and indeed a teacher to him, in London? Where is the respect and the honouring of the teacher gone? Or are these notions a bit too backwards for the 21st century?
Sadly societies across the world over it seems have become very tolerant to rape and similar types sex related criminal activities. People seem to have become very accustomed and apathetic to such type of misdemeanours instead of having zero tolerance to such heinousness.
According to Al-Jazeera, a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, and 24,000 rape cases were reported last year alone. The media outlet also reported that 80% of women in Delhi had been sexually harassed, while “The Times of India” has reported that rape in India has increased by a staggering 792% over the past 40 years.
So what is to be done, what can be done?
A former newspaper editor Praful Bidwai from Delhi blamed masculinity and commented thus:
Rape is an assertion of masculinity in a patriarchal society in which women are assigned a subordinate or inferior position. Masculinity is associated with traditionally ‘male’ traits such as boldness, manliness, bravery, muscularity, gallantry, machismo, stout-heartedness, robustness, being resolute, etc.
Unlike sex, masculinity is not a biological characteristic of men; nor is its opposite, femininity, genetically inherited by women. Both are social-cultural traits. As feminist theorist Ann Oakley puts it, “to be a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals.”
According to him this Delhi gang rape episode has produced three main reactions.
The first is to demand more stringent punishment for rape, such as hanging or chemical castration.
The second seeks to protect women paternalistically by forcing them to dress ‘soberly’, running special buses, installing more CCTV cameras, banning cell phone use, and bizarrely in Puducherry (Pondicherry), making them wear overcoats.
The third, and crassest, reaction comes from officials, politicians – especially of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, but also the Congress and Samajwadi Party – and so-called spiritual leaders like Asaram Bapu. This reaction blames the victim by accusing her of having crossed ‘red-lines’ such as not going out at night, or says the victim wouldn’t have been raped had she chanted sacred mantras or entreated the assailants to treat her like their sister (Bapu). RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat contends that rapes are alien to rural, traditional ‘Bharat’ and only occur in westernised, urban ‘India’, and that marriage is a ‘contract’ under which the wife is an obedient servant. This implicitly justifies domestic violence.
On the other hand the Muslims who propose a Sharia based society for the Muslim countries had a different take on this issue, as commented recently by one Sharia advocate, Dr. Nazreen Nawaz:
“The world’s largest democratic country has failed spectacularly to protect its women. The atrocious level of sexual crimes against women, the lax attitudes by police towards guarding their dignity, and the apathy of the Indian government in ensuring their security is the result of the routine, systematic devaluing of women by the liberal culture celebrated by the state and embodied in the Bollywood entertainment industry. This Bollywood culture, along with other entertainment, advertising, and pornography industries sanctioned by India’s secular liberal democratic system have presented the woman as an object to play to the desires of men, sexualized society, encouraged individuals to pursue their selfish carnal desires, and promoted extra-marital relationships, nurturing a culture of promiscuity and cheapening the relationships between men and women. All this has desensitized the disgust that should be felt towards the violation of women’s dignity in the minds of many men. It is therefore no surprise that the country is playing a close catch-up to other liberal states such as the US and the UK that are amongst global leaders of violence against women. The democratic secular liberal system under which half its population live in fear is no model for the Muslim world to embrace.”
She further argued that if Islam, implemented comprehensively i.e. as an integral part of society and state, then it offers what she termed “a robust, sound approach to safeguarding the dignity of women.”
She went on further to say: Islam rejects liberal freedoms and rather promotes taqwa (God-consciousness) within society that nurtures a mentality of accountability in the manner by which men view and treat women. It prohibits the sexualisation of society as well as all forms of objectification and exploitation of women’s bodies, such that the relationship between the sexes is never cheapened or the woman devalued. It celebrates a comprehensive social system that regulates the relationship between men and women, and includes a modest dress code, the segregation of the genders, and prohibition of extramarital relationships – all of which directs the fulfillment of the sexual desires to marriage alone, protecting women and society.
So it’s about getting our (both men and women) view about the woman right, i.e. she is not a sexual object or a slave to the husband regardless of her class or status in society.
It’s about having the correct perspective about the relations between men and women in society.
It’s about correcting certain negative cultural underpinnings (both in the west and east) about man’s view about women that facilitates rape.
It’s about zero tolerance to rape and applying the correct fitting punishments to the perpetrators.
What do you think?
What is your take on this?
Mali conflict is not so simple
I am re-blogging this letter I saw yesterday, it makes sense. See what you think. I Couldn’t find it online so I had to type it all up for posterity:
Nabila Ramdani’s endorsment of France’s intervention in Mali overlooks key factors which have made themselves manifest after yesterday’s hostage siezures. First, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was, according to experts, virtually manufactured by Algerian intelligence with clandestine US support, originally as an attempt to justify exterminating members of the peaceful Islamic Salvation Front after it won democratic elections. More recently, NATO has shored up militias with AQIM affiliations across the reigon.
Then there’s the issue of NATO’s strategic interests in North Africa, described in 2007 by a State Department advisor as “protecting acsess to hydrocarbons… a task which includes ensuring that no third parties obtain monopolies”. Mali is believed to have significant oil and gas reserves.
Ramdani warns airstrikes may be troublesome for France; with reports of extensive civilian casualties, it is far from clear that they are benificial for Mali. A better approach would be to cut of AQIM at source- by reining in Algerian military intelligence.
Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, author, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization
Letters section
The Evening Standard
17th January 2013.
Disregard Muslims they’re all Labour supporters on benefits, peer tells Tories
So the former Conservative peer Baroness Shreela Flather apparently claimed that all British Muslims live on benefits! Now that is outrageos right?
I mean is she stupid or what? Or is she seeking a little bit of publicity at the expense of the Muslim community since Muslims are easy prey for all and sundry these days?
What is her motive behind such pathetic remarks?
Who is she trying to please?
Read the article here by the Muslim News:
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=6065
The usual suspects have claimed that her statement is “ignorant”, “irresponsible” and “offensive”.
What do you think?
Are you hurt by her words?
Let me know, I am interested.
Muslim Conversations 