"Female Muslim journalist faces trial for wearing pants"- will be beaten 40 times if convicted.

[Strong Atheist]

Cross posted from R&T.

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein will face trial Sept. 7 for wearing trousers in violation of government decency statutes derived from Sharia law. If convicted, she faces 40 lashes and a fine.

...


Hussein and 12 other women were arrested by the country's public order police in July for wearing pants at a Khartoum reception hall. Most of the women accepted the punishment of 10 lashes and a $100 fine.


...


"I want to change this law, because hitting is not human," Hussein told the BBC in July.

Brave woman! :patriot:

"Just by forcing Muslims to look in the mirror, and to see how absurd it is that their religion is being presented as a religion that requires something like this, is important." said An-Na'im. "She's doing the whole Muslim world a favor."

More women getting beaten because of sharia law. First for drinking beer (how dare they!), now for the audacity of wearing pants! Well, the beatings (notice the other 11 already got ten lashes, or a BEATING) should put them in their place, according to sharia law.

:sarcasm:

... and in case it was not crystal clear, I think this is completely barbaric bullshit, more savage suppression of women from the religion of peace...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-08-26-muslim...

[ZombieHorde]

1. Scary. Earth is a hick planet. K&R& nt

[Strong Atheist]

6. Agreed. nt.

[aquart]

2. "Decency laws"? BEATING A WOMAN IS DECENT?

We have such a different view of things. In my view, a man who beats a woman needs to die.

[Strong Atheist]

5. I don't think it is decent, but aparently the people who enforce sharia laws do... nt.

[provis99]

3. looks like Sudanese men hate Sudanese women

well, send them over here, then. Let the men marry their goats, instead.

[Strong Atheist]

4. "Let the men marry their goats, instead."

:rofl:

[musette_sf]

9. call me.... NOW...

[Strong Atheist]

10. !!!

:rofl:

[One_Life_To_Give]

7. Really Curious

"I want to change this law, because hitting is not human," Hussein told the BBC in July.

So being fined for wearing pants is OK? She is just objecting to the Lashes.
Says volumes about the oppression that even she is blind to.

[Strong Atheist]

8. I am sure she objected to that, too. It is impossible to get all of a persons thoughts

ever, much less in a short news article...

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Please don't take this the wrong way...

But is it possible to speak out against the treatment of women in some countries without making nasty comments about specific religions and its adherents? While I'm opposed to the mistreatment of women anywhere it happens, I'm also strongly opposed to people making broadbrush generalisations about any religion or its adherents. So can you keep the religious ire for yr posts in the religion forums?

btw, I notice yr rather single-minded in only speaking of mistreatment of women in Muslim countries. All religions have their share of fundamentalists who consider women to be inferior and do attack women for how they dress (eg the Haredi in Jerusalem)....

[lukasahero]

12. Could we just for once care more about the women who are being beaten and abused

than the fucking delicate feelings of those complicit in the abuse? Good god, women are being killed and we're supposed to ask nicely for it to stop? Seems to me everyone and everything matters more than women these days.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. You clearly have misread what I said because that's not what I think at all...

I'm just seeing a much higher focus by some on Muslims than on the mistreatment of women. I dunno, if you want to talk about religion go to one of the religion forums...

[lukasahero]

14. And I'm saying if YOU want to talk about religion,

take it to the religion forums. This is the women's rights forum - maybe we could stick to defending women here rather than worrying about defending any of the religions that keep abusing them.

It's your post that doesn't even mention the situation of the woman in the OP. Your post that only talks about how we shouldn't speak ill of religion. Please, take it to a religion forum. Here we'd like to focus on the women.

You know, I noticed in your first post that you are 'against the mistreatment of women' (this OP in particular speaks of a woman getting 40 lashes - that means she's going to be whipped - 40 times - for wearing pants) and yet you are 'strongly against' people speaking ill of religion. Feel free to place your priorities where you will but I think I'll stand stronger against physical beatings than harsh words.

[Violet_Crumble]

19. I haven't been here in a few months and missed this. The OP talked about religion...

So don't give me that shit about 'we'd like to focus on the woman'. Read the OP again and see the poster's comments about religion in it.

Y'know, it is possible to be opposed to mistreatment of women while being opposed to Islamophobic bigotry. You should try being opposed to both...

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. But not without being opposed to most forms of Islam.

It's entirely possible to be opposed to mistreatment of women while being opposed to "Islamophobic bigotry". But it's not possible to be consistently opposed to the mistreatment of women without being opposed to a) Islam as interpreted by the vast majority of its living believers and b) large chunks of the teachings of Mohammed as laid out in the Koran.

There most certainly *are* Muslims who don't support discrimination against women - there are quite a number who post here on DU. But, by Islamic standards, they aren't moderates, they're liberal extremists, and they are massively outnumbered by those who disagree with them.

Whether promoting Westernised liberal (or, more usually, "less illiberal") streams of Islam as an alternative is a good way of undercutting the various social evils promoted by mainstream Islam, or whether it does more harm than good by enabling the likes of Iqbal Sacranie to become accepted and supported by liberals while their views on things like gay rights, abortion rights and so on get swept under the carpet, is an interesting question, and one to which I am not certain of the answer.

[PanoramaIsland]

21. Agreed 100%. I'm just concerned that being against the belief system per se...

...which I am, in most of its predominant forms, is used as an excuse for racism. I mean, I'm no fan of the Catholic church, but I know plenty of Catholics, and I don't waste my time hating them for it. Anti-Catholicism is an excellent example, too, because it's been used as a proxy to hate on the Irish, both within the British Isles and here in the U.S.A. (I'm thinking of the Know-Nothings in particular).

Where religion, ethnicity and culture meet, things can get reeeaaally messy.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. It is, but I think it's counterproductive to do so.

I think that we ought to be actively trying to make the point that "the teachings of Mohammed as contained in the Koran"* are actively inimical to women's rights.

While I agree with you that all religions have their share of those who consider women to be inferior, that share, and the extent to which they hold and act on that view, differs widely from religion to religion - Islam has a far higher proportion of extreme mysogynists than any other major religion.

I appreciate that there is a current propaganda campaign being waged against Islam by the western right-wing, largely for extremely bad reasons, that we need to be wary of fuelling. However, I do not think that we should allow that to obscure the fact that there are also extremely good reasons for opposing the teachings of the majority of forms of Islam, and, moreover, for opposing them more strongly than those of the majority of forms of most other religions.

Your last line is one that - while I can't comment on your motivation - I think a lot of liberals use as a way of getting out of having to believe something unpleasant without actually having to believe anything false: most liberals regard any belief that savours of "non-Western culture is inferior to Western culture" (N.B. that is not a position I am here defending; I am, however, defending a position I think many find redolent of it, I am also not outright rejecting it) as deeply distasteful, and want it not to be true. "There are mad right-wing fanatics in all religions" is true, but not sufficient to avoid the smack of cultural supremacism; "mad fanatics are equally prevalent in all religions" is sufficient, but not true. But by believing the former, and allowing it to imply the latter, one can get around the problem.

So, in summary - yes, there are liberal Muslims and mysogynistic followers of other religions, but there is both a correlation and a causative link between Islam and mysogyny compared with other religions, and I think we ought to be drawing attention to that rather than trying to obscure it.



*Probably a clearer phrasing here than "Islam" - there are lots of different interpretations of those teachings, and while most of them are extremely mysogynist, some are not. While I think that there is no doubt that the teachings themselves are, I don't have a problem with those self-identified Muslims who creatively misinterpret them in order to get round the mysogyny.

[IDFbunny]

17. +1

[Eg-ptiangirl]

16. I watched her in an interview

And I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Every time my feelings become neutralized towards those groups they do something like that. one of them in Egypt said that women shouldn't have legal jobs cause they menstruate, last month one in Saudi Arabia said that any one who agrees that men and women could be together in work or Schools should be killed, Taliban prevented women from working and prevented them from showing their faces cause the face of the woman is the source of corruption, the funniest ever was the doctor that discovered that all microorganisms wear hijab well there are things that are funnier but I can't discuss it here. When I become so bored I go to their sites and read their topics and discussions to laugh so hard.

[BoneDaddy]

18. But we have this incredible cognitive dissonance in DU

Where we defend Islam and ignore the wealth of information, like this, that speaks otherwise.

Sad