Arab women and moderate Islamism

ARAB AND MUSLIM WOMEN AND MODERATE ISLAMISM

By Mon González

The West is turning a blind eye on something to do with the Mediterranean for the third time in the last twenty years. In 1991, we turned a blind eye when we didn’t want to acknowledge the political victory of the Algerian Islamist party, the FIS, in the free and fair elections held then, two years after Chadli Benyedid had brought multipartidism back to that country. In 2006 the West did acknowledge that Hamas had won free and fair elections in Palestine, but the Government that came out of those elections was headbutted from the start. Through both actions, tens of thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean in the last twenty years.

Now the Mediterranean is facing, through what is happening in Lybia, its third main challenge in the last twenty years. But this time it is very different. Why? Because we don’t live anymore –thank goodness!- in a partitioned world, but in an interrelated one, where information, and thus analysis, can flow freely. And because the present attack on Lybia has been preceded by the toppling of two Arab dictators, in whose countries inspiring experiments of Arab democracy are advancing unimpeded, and are proving many of our fears were inappropriate.

The present challenge is not so much about Libya [see previous article for that], but about the prevalence of male-dominated feudal systems in the Arab and Muslim worlds [and the sheer toppling of Gaddafi, goes in that direction], that is, does the West want to allow uxoricides and honour crimes to continue to remain unpunished by Penal Codes which just ignore the fact that those are real crimes and simply don’t punish them; or are we going to be brave enough; seize this historic opportunity; go to the root cause of the Arab and Muslim injustices against women; tackle them profoundly and with a true sense of responsibility; and help out in the process of liberating those women, and hence their daughters? And it is Saudi Sunni wahabism and Iranian ayatolahi Shi’ism we need to face if the process of liberating the Arab and Muslim women is to be a reality one day. But we need to tackle both, tackling only one of them is just playing into their thousand year long religious rivalry.

Let’s turn first to the Sunni world. What lies behind many of the injustices in the Sunni Arab world and what specifically lies behind the injustices against Arab women in Arab Sunni countries, is Saudi wahabism.

Wahabism was a very minor strand of Sunni Islam when Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (whose family, and nearly only his family, practised that type of Islam) started conquering by force the surroundings of Riyadh and Riyadh itself in 1902; conquered by force in 1924 the holy city of Islam, Mecca; threw out of Mecca the “Sharifs Mecca” (“sharif” meaning “noble” in Arabic), an institution which had ruled the most sacred place of Islam since the Fatimides (967 C.E.); and established wahabism as the State religion in Saudi Arabia. Ever since that happened wahabism has become the main driving force behind the whole of Sunni Islam, so what happens in Saudi Arabia not only affects the Arab world, but it affects the majority of the Muslim world, as the majority of Muslims in the world are Sunnis.

And if wahabism had been only a minority strand of Sunni Islam, but a balanced one in terms of the true message of the Prophet, which also implies gender equality, everything would have been fine. But it wasn’t. Wahabism was and is the most chauvinistic ideology in the whole Sunni ideological spectrum. And thus the country where it is applied most wholeheartedly, Saudi Arabia, is the Arab country where women have less human rights at their disposal. And exactly the same can be said of Afghanistan under the Taliban. The chauvinistic ideology of wahabism lies also behind the Afghan talibans, and lies thus also behind the injustices, not only against Arab women in Arab Sunni countries, but against Muslim women in the Muslim Sunni countries. But talking only about chauvinism won’t make any male decision maker in the West blink, so let’s continue until we reach a point that may hurt, and thus may trigger some sort of reaction in support of the true Arab and Muslim cause, and thus of the Arab and Muslim women, the cause of democracy and rule of law.

Secondly, wahabism originated in a country, Saudi Arabia, whose regime holds the most feudal ideology in the whole Arab world. A feudal ideology that many other Arab monarchs or dictators willingly imitate. Feudal in the sense of elitist, dictatorial and anti-democratic. This last trait lies behind one of the cheap accusations one hears often in the West: Arabs are unable to govern themselves under democracy. The people that say that, first, don’t truly know Arabs and how they have been able to govern themselves when panarabism has been allowed to exist, for example in Egypt from 1954 to 1970 under Jamal Abdel Nasser; and, secondly, they show that they have completely bitten into the Saudi dictatorial bait. Well done for them, but not for the millions of Arabs who live in very poor economic conditions and are forced to emigrate in search of a decent livelihood. In opposition to this poor Arab majority, there is a very small minority of Saudi oligarchs (who call themselves kings, princes, and thus wrap up themselves in the untouchable halo of monarchic elitism, forcing us thus to turn a blind eye and help keep them in power, lest someone wants to follow certain examples and starts toppling monarchies in Japan or Europe). These Saudi oligarchs enjoy very wealthy life conditions, and the excuse they have to keep that immoral standard of living [they are not the only immoral, many Western bankers do the same, by the way] is that they have hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil reserves [whose until present sustained enormous volume many sources start now finally to question], forcing us thus in turn to turn a second blind eye, lest we affect our strategic interests.

Thirdly, this chauvinistic elitistic undemocratic feudal dictatorship, the wahabist Saudi Arabia, instigates [or has openly allowed in the past its nationals to instigate] a double game against the West. Lest we are eternally trapped. Osama bin Laden, at the time financed by the Saudi regime, had been key to the recruitment of wahabi yihadists, also called salafists, to fight against the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afganistan in December 1979. Once the job of expelling the Soviets was done there, those same forces were behind the Lybian Islamist Front against Gaddafi in Lybia, the attacks on tourist interests in Egypt, the fanaticism and dismemberment of Somalia, and the attacks against the USA Embassies in Kenia and Tanzania in the 1990s. Only after this last episode, it started being worrying for the West, but what the West hadn’t wanted to see until then was that the unleashed irrational extremism of wahabism knew and knows no boundaries. And thus we had 9/11 in the USA in 2001, the 11 March 2004 attacks in Madrid (Spain) in 2004, or the 7/7 attacks in London (UK) in 2006, just to name a few. We put a brand name to it, as we usually like to do: Al Qaeda. And we knew and know far to well that wahabism was and is behind it: every day Western soldiers die to these days in Afganistan for that cause. And although here it hurts, we are unable to stop biting the bait. Why? The economic vested interests of the machineries of war have the upper-hand this time. How? They have been trying to make us believe that those wahabis yihadists are somehow linked to the moderate Islamist, and thus these Islamists also pose a threat to us, and all Islamists are bad and are a threat: Islam is dangerous. And through that the West is trapped in the trap of the ones it intends to trap.

The idea that moderate Islamists are dangerous has been intentionally sown into Western minds by their staunchest opponents: the wahabis. Why? When the wahabis threw moderate Islamism out of Mecca in 1924, moderate Islamism was forced to find an alternate safe haven, and they started developing in what is called in Arabic “Um al-Dunia”, “The Mother of the World”, Egypt. In 1928 Hassan al Banna created in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, a Muslim Sunni alternative to the also Sunni wahabism, but not elitist as wahabism, but caring for social well-being of the people, and following the true spirit of Islam. Those are the moderate Sunni Islamist, which the West has been afraid of, and the Saudis were very much interested in us believing they were our enemies. And this same moderate Islamist ideology was behind the FIS in Algiers in 1991 and Hamas in Palestine in 2006 [the two cases with which I started this article, and even in those cases the ideology can remain moderate as long as we respect for them the rules of the game (elections) we set both for us and for them].

An equivalent moderate ideology lies behind the AKP (or JDP, as you usually put it in English) in Turkey, which holds power since 2002 without any major upheaval. And I say equivalent, because there are some nuances. They are equivalent because they are both moderate and non-violent. But they are different inasmuch as the AKP is more elitist, and there they can relate well to the Saudi regime, and the Muslim Brotherhood connects more with the pre-Atatuk caliphal tradition, which contrary to what the name caliph may suggest, was more truly caring for the poor, more communist in that sense, in line with one of the five precepts or pillars of Islam: charity, both in the more compulsory way (“zakat”, 10% of your earnings) or voluntary (“sadaqa”).

And until present I have spoken only about Sunnis, let’s turn to the Shi’ia now. The threat of Shi’ism to the West has also long been played on by the Saudis to have the West on its side. That is why the West has been so aware of this threat since September 1979 when the ayatolahi revolution took hold of Iran. Both branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi’ia, have created their own historiography to the exclusion of the other’s[1]. And the West shouldn’t play into what are very complicated historical and religious feelings and traditions. What the West can do is judge everyone by the same standards, specially now in a global world, where information flows so swiftly. And the Iranian ayatolahi shi’ia regime is as chauvinistic, elitist, dictatorial and anti-democratic, as their Saudi wahabi Sunni counterparts.

Moderate Sunni or moderate Shi’ia Islamism [and as an example of moderate shi’ias we could take the shi’ias in Lebanon, which have formed part of the last Lebanese Government] is not dangerous neither for Europe, nor if, embedded in a proper democracy, for Arab countries or Arab women, or Muslim countries or Muslim Women. The only country in the world to which moderate Islamists pose a threat is Israel, and that only inasmuch as Israel will continue to show no willingness to strike an honest peace deal with the Palestinians. And through this it can be an indirect threat to the USA Jews, that is why here I have on purpose separated the West in two: Europe and USA.

The wave of Arab revolutions that ensued the topping of Ben Ali on 14 January 2011 has proven the accusation of moderate Islamism being a danger for the world false. Moderate Islamists are taking part in the democratic processes that have ensued and it is working. In Tunisia, they have even gone a step further: the moderate Sunni Islamists of an-Nahda have supported on 12 April 2011 that the lists for the elections to the constitution drafting Assembly be based on gender equality. We all know Tunisia has always been a step forward in terms of women’s rights: since Habib Bourguiba first published the Personal Statute of women in 1957, which was thereafter expanded, Tunisia has been the forerunner of women’s freedoms in the Arab world. Trough  something as simple to a Western reader as being able to divorce and not losing thereby the custody of the children. That is something unthinkable of in nearly all the other Arab countries, where, first, they can’t divorce, but in the few countries where they can divorce, they can’t see their children again. And being able to see her children is basic for a woman, she has borne them in her womb, and even if she is being abused, she’ll never want to break free from the abuser, lest she doesn’t see her children ever again. Why do we still allow this? Or why do we still turn a blind eye to public uxoricides by stoning triggered by wahabis and ayatolahis? Why? Until when?

By approaching the above mentioned two most chauvinistic regimes in the Muslim world (Iranian ayatolahi Shi’ia republic and Saudi wahabi Sunni monarchy) with the same standards and pushing both of them plus everyone else in the region (and that includes the other Gulf monarchies, Yemen, Siria, Marroco, Lybia, Algiers, etc) for democracy and rule of law [or at least by not hindering it, when their populations ask and fight for it, as it is being done in Bahrein with Saudi troops and, collusion from elsewhere?], the ultimate fate of Arab and Muslim women can be helped. Nothing will help Arab and Muslim women more than democracy and rule of law, but there is nothing the rulers in the region fear more than those two “curses”.

And if you don’t believe me because I am a Westerner, speak to them, to the Arab and Muslim women in the region, speak to the Western Saharaoui Amanaitou Haidar; or to the Moroccans Tifraz Idura or Fatema Mernissi; or to the Tunisians Sihem Bensedrine, Radia Nasraoui or Essia Belhassen; or the Egyptians Nawal al-Sadawi or Zeinab Magdi; or the Saudi Wajeha al-Huwaider; or the Lebanese Joumana Haddad; or to the Iranian Shirin Ebadi. Google them and read them. And finally open your eyes and start supporting them. It’s high time we all do it. We need to stop stoning women and we need to start using those stones to build a new world, in the Arab world and in the whole world, where democracy and gender equality will be the ruling principles and where domestic violence will be seriously prosecuted and severely punished. That is the honest example we need to give to future generations.

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[1] Interesting essay by Johan Winters of the origins of Shi’ism:  http://bahai-library.com/personal/jw/my.papers/origins.html