The Misogyny of Salafist Doctrine

There is a rising misogynist Salafist discourse within the political changes going on in the Arab countries experiencing tumult. This discourse derives its exclusionary energy from the male-biased doctrine established by some Muslim imams.

The Salafist movement seeks to isolate women from public life and limit their role in the family. It considers women to be a source of discord and grants them no political rights beyond the right to vote, and only in a way that seems like a “pledge of allegiance.” Regarding women’s right to hold public office, the Salafists consider it unacceptable because they favor the concept of “stewardship” over the concept of the state. Contemporary Salafists hold basic premises that limit full citizenship for women.

The 14th century jurist Ibn Taymiyyah is a good example of how Salafists seek to marginalize women. He was very influential on the Salafists of his time. He held views about various women-related issues, such as alimony, menstruation, prayer and dowry. He was concerned about the growing influence of women, so he decreed that whoever obeys women destroys his country.

In his book "Al-Tawhid," Sheik Ibn Uthaymeen explicates the hadith reported by Sheik Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab (1703–1791) as follows: “Some use the term sayyida [feminine of sayyid which means mister] when referring to a woman. For example, they say that some things are specific to men and other things to sayyidas. But this is a distortion of reality because only a man is deemed asayyid. The Prophet said, 'The women are your helpers,’ which means that they are captives, and he said that a man is the ‘shepherd of his family and responsible for his flock.’ So the singular form should be imra’a [woman] and the plural form should be nisa’ because only a man is a sayyid and women are men’s captives. So calling a woman sayyida is a distortion of reality.”

The Arab Spring Salafists went beyond the early Salafists’ teachings. They not only sought to isolate women socially and politically, but some Salafists — particularly the Egyptian Salafist Abu Islam — issued peculiar fatwas justifying the rape of the women in Tahrir Square under the pretext that it was punishment for them unveiling themselves. Salafist Sheikh Abu Ishak al-Hawini likened a woman’s face to her genitals, thus indicating that women are required to wear the niqab [full face veil]. The Salafists consider women to be sex objects that are a permanent threat to society.

But is this Salafist discourse a reflection of the growing female public presence? And why can’t the Salafists accept women’s changing role in society?

It goes without saying that the Salafist movement is not prevalent in the Arab world, although it controls many satellite channels that influence its followers. We also cannot overlook the Islamic interpretive battles that were fought by Islamic reformers such as Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, Imam Muhammad Abdu, Tahar al-Haddad and other Muslim revivalists.

Throughout Islamic history, Muslim women played a role and never lived in complete isolation. If we go back to the overlooked history of Islamic translations, we find that women played important roles in various fields, including religious knowledge. Muslim jurist Fatima al-Samarqandi, who lived in Aleppo in the 2nd century AH, studied the Islamic Hanafi doctrine from her father and memorized the hadiths that her father had collected. They issued religious edicts together.

There are many more women in Islamic history. Some women who lived in the 16th century knew Islamic law, one of them reaching the rank of Islamic jurist. Also, the Damascene Sufi Sheika Aisha al-Ba’oniyyah bint Youssef (d. 1516) went to Cairo, where she was allowed to issue doctrinal opinions and teach. Hajima bint Hayyi al-Awsabiyyah (d. 701) was described as one of the most important female jurists in Damascus. She taught many men and enjoyed the trust of Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan, whom she regularly met in the Damascus mosque.

So while historical evidence confirms the role of women as Islamic jurists, it seems that the Salafists wish to ignore the fact that women’s conditions have changed. Perhaps because it threatens their masculinity. So they are turning more and more toward male-biased jurisprudence to control women. It is difficult for the Salafist discourse to change. They are haunted by the supposed sedition present within the female body and seek to reduce and control it by means of religious edicts.

In the Egyptian Salafist scene that followed the January 2011 revolution, there was a controversy regarding the running of veiled women for parliament. Several Salafist parties nominated women on their electoral lists based on a fatwa issued by Yasser Burhami, the head Salafist in Alexandria. He said that while “nominating women is negative, it is less negative than allowing into parliament those who wish to change Article 2 of the constitution. Moreover, the election law requires every electoral list to include at least one woman ... In principle, this is not allowed. But fatwas in modern times are not absolute. We have said that Islamist parties, including the Al-Nour party, are not forbidden from nominating women in order to ward off the evil of leaving parliament for liberals and secularists, who would write a constitution that would fight Islam, restrict the Islamic call, and even prevent and punish it.”

The Salafists are obsessed with women and are trying to exclude them from public space because women have been increasingly active in the Arab revolts, especially in Egypt and Tunisia. The “phobia” against active women are making Salafists tighten their control over them by using the Islamic concepts of halal and haram. Most fatwas issued in Arab countries are directly related to women’s bodies, which constitute fertile ground for Salafist imagination.

The Salafists have broken with the notion of equality promulgated in the Quran. They have misinterpreted Islamic texts and are going against the enlightened reformist jurisprudence regarding women. This “Bedouin Islam,” as described by Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, cannot deal with historical changes because it is bound by an exclusionary vision.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2013/04/salafist-misogyny-doctrine.html#ixzz2RBw7CQmt

Politically motivated sexual assault: the Egypt story none want to hear

What happened to the Egyptian women who were gang raped and sexually tortured in Tahrir Square on 25 January 2013? Not much, other than power holders incriminating the victims as being responsible for bringing the assault upon themselves. Consequently, four leading rights organisations – El Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture and Violence, the Center for New Woman Studies, Nazra for Feminist Studies and the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Aid – have filed an official complaint on behalf of seven female clients.

They have provided evidence, in videos and testimonies, of women who were violently sexually assaulted, which they believe was undertaken in a systematic manner, and have demanded an investigation to reveal the identity of the perpetrators and call them to justice. The organisations believe that such violence is politically motivated, intended to intimidate women against engaging in activism against the government.

Farah Shash, a psychologist with El Nadeem Center argues that although politically motivated sexual assault was practised during the rule of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), such incidents have increased in frequency and severity since the Muslim Brotherhood took over. The targets are both women and men who are either activists or bystanders in protest spaces. The political nature of many of these assaults is clear.

Yet many prefer to talk about the problem of sexual harassment more generally. To do so entails a public condemnation of society and government alike for failing women, but to talk of politically motivated sexual assault is to primarily hold the Muslim Brotherhood accountable for using it as a political strategy for eliminating opposition. Critics would argue that the opposition has also been engaged in violence against the government. However, this disregards the asymmetry of power between a ruling party that can resort to its national security apparatus and its militias, compared with the resources available to citizens.

Irrespective of whether the sexual assault is politically or socially motivated, a culture of fear threatens to obscure the iconic 2011 image of protesting women in Tahrir Square. In conversations with women living in Mo'assasset el Zakat, an impoverished shanty town in close proximity to El Marg, north of Cairo, the views are divided. Some argue that women should not go into Tahrir Square anymore, they should leave this kind of political activism to men and concentrate on their work and families. Others see it differently. They argue that this is a ploy to terrorise and intimidate women so that they do not go out to the streets, and the only thing to do is push back and not be deterred.

However, women do not always have the choice. Across many parts of Egypt, families have been withdrawing their daughters from schools and universities because of the lax security situation. Culture is not to blame: it is not that men do not want to see their daughters educated, on the contrary, but they fear that the women and girls will be vulnerable to harassment and assault. Yet no one is talking about the immense human cost of a generation of women missing out on education because of government failure to ensure a safe and assault-free environment. Why?

There is a reason why the everyday realities of women and girls and their families are not featuring as prominently in the international policy arenas and the media: there seems to be an implicit policy of silence – almost to the point of censorship – of not criticising the Muslim Brotherhood too much for fear of appearing Islamophobic and orientalist.

No one, for example, is listening to the stories of Egyptian women in Qena, Fayoum, Cairo and elsewhere about their anger and despair at some of the religious leaders at the local mosques who are actively encouraging married men to take on Syrian women as wives. Sharing their husbands is not the kind of solidarity with the Syrian people women had in mind. Polygamy in Egypt has rarely been practised and when it has, it has been done in secret. Yet there has been very little talk about how religious leaders affiliated to particular Islamist movements are wreaking havoc in the homes of Egyptian families. All the while, many Egyptian women are suffering in silence, anguishing over the idea or the experience of having to share their husbands.

The irony is that while the international community is keen to show its political correctness by ignoring the voices of Egyptian women critical of the regime, many of the country's citizens are fighting against the Muslim Brotherhood's and Salafis' claim to be the sole guardians and representatives of Islam, and are resisting attempts to vilify them as traitors to religion.

The failure of the government to send strong signals to perpetrators of politically motivated assault and to those promoting practices and behaviour that undermine women's wellbeing can only be interpreted as complicity in these very acts. And saying those who critique the government are critiquing Islam is a way of using religion for political ends that many Egyptian Muslim women and men are not going to buy into anymore.

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A killing in Gaza that also carries a warning to Israel

Comment: IslamAwareness strongly condemns the cowardly murder of this brave and wonderful human being by evil terrrorists who are utterly misguided. May Allah give punish them and give brother Vittorio justice, InshaAllah.


The kidnapping and killing of Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza is exactly what the Italian foreign ministry statement said it was: "An act of vile and senseless violence."

Arrigoni was no novice; he had lived in Gaza for several years, working for the International Solidarity Movement, a group committed to non-violent resistance against Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. There was no reason for Palestinians to treat him as anything other than the sincerest of friends.

This is not the only inexplicable element in his fate. His captors appear to have been members of the Salafist movement, a group that regards Hamas as unduly moderate. Their declared purpose was to secure the release of their leader, who was detained by the Hamas authorities last month. But Arrigoni died several hours before the expiry of the deadline they had imposed, suggesting either that something went wrong from the start or that they quickly abandoned hope of attaining their objective.

The killing prompted grief in Gaza, but also despair. Not only was Arrigoni well known and well liked there, but it escaped no one that this kidnapping was the first since that of the BBC journalist Alan Johnson in 2007. The intervening four years – crudely interrupted by Operation Cast Lead, Israel's 2008 reinvasion of the territory – had seen Hamas gradually more able to impose order. Missile attacks on Israel had declined and kidnappings of foreigners had ceased. It must be feared that the death of Arrigoni signals a change. With missile attacks on Israel from Gaza also increasing in recent weeks, the relative calm is at risk of breaking down. Lawlessness, never far from the surface in Gaza, could be on its way back, with implications for the territory, for the Palestinian cause, for Israel, and for the, currently moribund, prospects of peace in the Middle East.

Two factors can be identified as fostering current tensions – one that can be addressed; the other harder to tame. The first is the continuing Israeli blockade, which has helped to create and now exacerbates tensions in Gaza. Loosening the blockade is the only way that the pressure inside the densely populated territory can be relieved. Allowing in more goods, including especially medical supplies and building materials, would bring a rapid improvement of conditions inside Gaza, with hospitals better able to function, more productive work, and an acceleration of reconstruction. It is unfortunate that Israel's automatic response to renewed violence in Gaza is to tighten the blockade, without apparently understanding that this invariably serves only to reinforce the malign trends.

The other factor is the spread of unrest across the wider region. With Egypt still in ferment, protests in Syria showing no sign of abating and a new Jordanian government only just holding the line, Gaza inhabits a deeply troubled neighbourhood. What is more, it shares many of those countries' most problematical features: a very young population, an acute lack of employment, and serious obstacles to political engagement. With so much turmoil gathering around, the very last thing Israel needs is chaos in Gaza. But it needs to recognise that it holds the keys to making that less likely in its own hands. Self-interest, as well as the benefit to Gaza, dictates that it should relax the blockade.

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Facebook Jihad: The Radical Islamist Roots of the Frankfurt Attack

Arid U., who has confessed to the Wednesday shooting of two US airmen at the Frankfurt airport, was an unfriendly loner, say his neighbors. But his list of Facebook friends indicate that the 21-year-old had several contacts with radical Islamists.

Indications are mounting that the assault on a bus carrying US soldiers at the Frankfurt Airport on Wednesday afternoon was an Islamist terror attack.

The alleged perpetrator, Arid U., who admitted on Thursday to having carried out the attack, appears to have had extensive contact with radical Islamists via his Facebook page. SPIEGEL ONLINE has also learned that the shooting, which killed two American airmen and injured two others, possibly came after the gunman, identified as Arid U., was unable to leave Germany and travel to Afghanistan. Instead, the 21-year-old airport employee opted to attack US troops in Germany, according to a jihadist website. No proof for the assertion is offered, but the jihadists claim to have been in contact with acquaintances of Arid U.

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Arid U., told police that he acted alone. He says that one day before the attack, he watched a video on YouTube which he says showed the rape of Muslim women. He says the film upset him so much that he decided to take action. Investigators consider his testimony to be credible, but are continuing to look into possible accomplices. Such films as that described by U., often propaganda videos, have circulated among jihadists for some time.

The attack is thought to be the first deadly, Islamist-motivated attack in Germany. And investigators doubt that it was as spontaneous as Arid U. makes it sound. On the one hand, he appeared to know when and where to find US soldiers at the airport. On the other, SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that he told interrogators that he bought the weapon used in the attack months ago.

Arid U., who is originally from predominantly Muslim Kosovo, has left plenty of digital clues pointing to his adherence to radical Islamism. Two weeks prior to the shooting, he posted a link on his Facebook wall to a jihadist battle hymn. "I can no longer stand this life of humiliation among you," read the lyrics. "My weapon is ready at all times."

A fair number of his 125 Facebook friends would also seem to be sympathetic to radical Islamism. Anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Shiite comments are plentiful on both Arid U.'s Facebook page and those of his friends.

Some of the connections, however, are of particular interest to investigators, especially those with well-known figures in the Islamist scene. "He seems to have belonged to an unstructured militant-Salafist environment," said a source familiar with the investigation.

'Veritable Who's Who of German Salafism'

Salafists are pious Muslims who place particular emphasis in emulating as far as possible the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the first generation of his followers. It is a movement that has been growing for years. While most Salafists are more political than they are militant, there is a segment with significant crossover with the jihadist-terror scene. Several of Arid U.'s contacts appear to come from this gray area. In referring to U.'s contacts, one high-ranking security official spoke on Thursday morning of a "veritable who's who of German salafism."

Among others, U. appears to have a Facebook connection with Sheikh Abdellatif, a preacher originally from Morocco who now lives in Frankfurt. German security officials searched his home just last week on suspicion that he has encouraged his followers to take up arms. Sheikh Abdellatif was not arrested pending the completion of an analysis of his computer and other materials confiscated during the search.

"They will find nothing but animated films," Sheikh Abdellatif said in a recently released video, in which he also claims that he has never called on his followers to join the jihad. "In Europe, they hate us because we are Muslim," he says. He also claims that those who accuse preachers of speaking of the jihad receive "thousands of euros" from officials.

Sheikh Abdellatif, 39, is part of the Dawaffm network, a group which offers presentations on how to live a life which conforms to Islam on its website. Though there are no explicit calls for violence, the material on the website is clearly marked by Salafism. In one video, for example, Sheikh Abdellatif warns that prayers from women who do not obey their husbands are not heard by God.

Rapid Radicalization

For German investigators, the links are a clear indication that the Wednesday attack in Frankfurt could have an Islamist background. They also found that a large number of people, many of them well-known Islamists, became Facebook friends of Arid U. just in the two weeks immediately preceding Wednesday's attack. Investigators suspect that the wave of new contacts could have something to do with the airport assault. One theory holds that Arid U. radicalized extremely quickly and became part of a scene that urged him to act. Technicians are attempting to secure and evaluate all of Arid U.'s communications from recent weeks. His Facebook page was no longer accessible on Thursday morning.

In real life, such connections were not nearly as apparent. Arid U. lived with his parents and two brothers in a three-room apartment in a 1970s-era housing project in the Frankfurt quarter of Sossenheim. There are many immigrants who live in the buildings, most of them from Turkey but many from the former Yugoslavia as well.

Neighbors describe the family, which has lived in the first floor of one of the concrete blocs since the late 1990s but which has been in Germany for decades, as being unobtrusive. The father, a former roofer, periodically complained about loud children playing outside their apartment. And the family, one neighbor said, lived austerely. Whenever he visited, he said, the children and wife were forced to leave the living room. Arid U. lived in a single room with his older and younger brother.

Everyone in the complex was surprised when, on Wednesday evening, just hours after the attack, a large number of German police showed up and spent hours searching the family's apartment. Arid U.'s parents have stayed indoors since then and did not answer the doorbell.

'Seemed Like a Loner'

One neighbor said that her daughter went to school with Arid U. nearby. She never considered him to be a radical. She said that Arid U. never seemed to place great stock in symbols of Islam -- he didn't wear a beard or traditional clothes the woman, who wears a headscarf herself, said.

Another neighbor described Arid U. as "withdrawn." He almost never greeted neighbors and often just walked past wearing a large backpack, his eyes on the ground. In contrast to his brothers, who were always "very friendly," Arid U. "seemed like a loner," the neighbor said.

Investigators are unsure whether Arid U. may have been abetted or otherwise encouraged to carry out the shooting. Officials are also trying to determine whether anyone had prior knowledge of the attack and whether, as the jihadist website claims, he was indeed interested in traveling to Afghanistan. The FBI has also become involved in the investigation.

According to SPIEGEL ONLINE information, Arid U.'s parents have so far had little to contribute to the investigation. On Wednesday, they told police that they couldn't explain why their son did such a thing. They say that Arid was a believer but that he didn't have contacts to a radical milieu.

The parents first learned of the attack from the police. Up until that point, they had merely wondered why he hadn't returned as usual from his job at the Frankfurt Airport. The airport is Germany's main international hub and is used by a large number of US military personnel traveling between the United States and Europe.

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Scapegoating Middle Eastern women

The other day, my wife related how one of the office "boys" at the NGO where she worked in Cairo had been alone in the building with a female cleaner. In itself, it shouldn't been an issue, but when the office's accountant confronted the office boy (who is actually a middle-aged Egyptian), he stated that this was unacceptable. The reason: the woman could have tried to seduce him.

In the Saudi city of Asir, women were recently banned from jogging and taking physical exercise in certain areas. The excuse was that the local government had to "guarantee their safety from criminals who frequently harass them as they walk in lonely places".

There are many examples of women being "protected" from men in the Middle East.

One would think that the rise of ultra-conservatism, namely the Salafi project emanating from Saudi Arabia, would be more tolerant of Islam's historical support for women's rights and their mobility in public – think of the era of the prophet and the openness of that society. The prophet was adamant that all people were welcome in Medina and that women were to be treated with the utmost respect. At the time, unlike today, there was no sexual apartheid in the mosque, with men and women praying together in a show of unity. Now, what we are witnessing is the rise of a movement that is as vehemently anti-women as it is anti-progress.

"Whenever the conservatives enter a society they don't talk politics or economics, they talk of the honour of women", said Hibaaq Osman, the founder and chair of the women's organisation El Karama. She argues, rightly, that what is important to these conservatives – and she is quick to point out this is not a problem limited to Islam – is that women are the key to society. She added that in all societies, women are the building blocks of forward thinking. She believes that once women have shaken off the need for a male guardian and have entered the workforce, then freedoms and laws against sexual violence can be implemented for the betterment and progress of society.

But, she added: "If the woman is being portrayed as the devil in Friday sermons in the mosque, then in public people are looking for confirmation of what they are hearing."

At the same time many Salafis and conservatives put the blame on society going awry; men are unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Osman says that evidence shows conservative religious folk the world over, including the Middle East, are the most sex-crazed.

This is shown by the large number of "temporary", urfi and mutah marriages. Urfi marriages have no formal contract, while mutah marriages have a defined period of "marriage". Often, this amounts to a form of prostitution where women are "purchased" for a period of time, from their families or pimps, to provide sex for wealthy gulf Arabs, who at the same time push an agenda that attempts to move women away from the public sphere and back into the home. All in the name of honour and moral uprightness.

Men are not the problem, they argue. It is the inherent inability of men to "control" themselves in the face of so much "temptation". It is OK for men to wear cut-off T-shirts and shorts, but for a woman to do so would be tantamount to "asking for it". If conservatives believe men are inherently "weak" in terms of sex, then why do the men remain in public if they can't handle it? It doesn't add up.

Women are objects in many conservatives' views. Things that can be owned and used for a man's pleasure when he desires and when he wants. This is why we have seen the growth of polygamy, the shoving aside of a woman's ability to choose her life's goals, and the unending "debate" over the causes of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Two years ago, one woman in Egypt attempted to challenge the belief that men would not be held responsible for their actions against women. When Noha Rushdi went to the police to press charges against a man who had groped her on the street, the police and bystanders, including women, attempted to talk her out of it. They asked what she was wearing, if she had been doing anything suggestive to "entice the man".

Rushdi, after numerous attempts to silence her, took her case to court and eventually won, seeing the perpetrator receive a $900 fine and three years in prison. Optimism abounded that times were changing, but in the two years since her case, little has improved. The Salafi grip on Egyptian society seems to be growing ever stronger, and with it the continued backlash against women who attempt to promote freedom and justice.

Cairo-based Sheikh Ramadan Mahmoud told me that if women were to get the "freedoms" of the west, "they would resort to promiscuity and this would damage the family and society. This cannot happen because men would not be able to control their behaviour and harassment and sexual abuse would continue."

Highlighting how deep the conservatism of Egyptian society has become, a recent United Nations study showed that the vast majority of men and women in Egypt believe that it is OK for a man to beat his wife if she refuses to have sex with him, if she does not do as he says or if she talks to a man on the street. They are simply objects that can be controlled and dominated. All in the name of faith and religion.

What should be happening is that women should not be blamed for what they wear, whether it is a full niqab or a bikini. There is no justification for harassment of any kind. By sexualising faith, the Salafis are trying to exonerate men. The fault lies with the women, who are presumed to be asking to be harassed, groped or worse.

But men are the ones perpetrating these crimes and making the streets unsafe, so it is about time men started taking action to end this reprehensible current continuing to foment in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia and across the globe.
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