Bulletin #201
Subject : ON THE CREATION OF DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS & THE
AMERICAN
FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: FROM THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCED
STUDY
OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
7 October
2005
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Social
movements are growing in the
A brief history of democratic movements
and popular culture.
During the Puritan Revolution in England (1642-49) we saw the Parliamentarians
struggling against the Royalists for political
power, and in order to
mobilize the masses for their support against King Charles I, a
laissez-faire
attitude was adopted by the new power elite --new democratic forms of
expression were tolerated if they would help mobilize the masses in
support of
the Puritan faction in their war against traditional aristocratic rule.
From
these democratic movements sprang new traditions in Anglo-American
popular
culture --the "Diggers," the "Levelers," and the
"Ranters" (the latter representing the original free
speech movement
in Anglophone history)-- all made important contributions to British
popular
culture. These traditions have been handed down from
generation-to-generation
for centuries, long after King Charles I was executed (on 30 January
1649) and
long after Cromwell's repressive Puritan Commonwealth was displaced by
the
Restoration of the more tolerant King Charles II (in 1660).
In
In
But history
also shows that following revolutionary moments, such as the ones
mentioned above, new democratic elements in popular culture are often
created, and
once they are brought into existence these traditions can not be easily
destroyed.
Today, in the
A view on the
horizons.
Our research
center, CEIMSA, has received these past months several items of
interest suggesting that another historic moment might be approaching
when
democratic forces are mobilized to effect political change. A period of
rapid evolution
in popular counter cultures might be expected.
Placing in
their historical and global context these democratic forces and the
radical debates which they spark is the aim of this selection of
articles we
have recently received at CEIMSA.
Item A. is
an essay on feminism by Eric Hobsbawm, who has reviewed Göran
Therborn's book; Between
Sex and Power ,
which is a comparative survey of the world's family systems, and seeks to
correct some misconceptions about the condition of women in the 20th
century
who living outside the United States.
In item B. Yoginder Sikand interviews
Cassandra Balchin, a feminist activist working in
Item C. is Amee Chew's, article from the
magazine Left Hook discussing "What Place for Women in
the
'Anti-war Movement'?"
Item D. is an article by our research
associate, Judith Ezekiel (at Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail), on
the predictability of right-wing bigotry as a response to the "criminal
negligence" of government officials in New Orleans, at the time of
Hurricane Katrina.
And finally, item E. is an article from
MS Magazine forwarded to us by
our
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Université Stendhal
Grenoble-3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
__________________
A.
from Eric Hobsbawm :
London Review of Books
August 01, 2005
Retreat of the Male
by Eric Hobsbawm(*)
The family is a subject on which, for obvious reasons, there is no
shortage of
public or private views.
Google records
368
million items under the word family, as against a mere 170
million under
war.
All governments
have
tried to encourage or discourage procreation and passed laws about human
coupling and
decoupling.
All the global religions (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and
all the
20th-century
ideologies
have strong convictions on these matters. So have masses of otherwise
politically
inactive
citizens, as the rise of electoral support for religious fundamentalism
indicates. It
has been
plausibly argued
that moral issues (i.e. abortion and homosexual marriage) won
George
W. Bush his
second term
in office.
The passion with
which
these opinions are held is almost always inversely correlated to
knowledge of
the facts, even
in the
holder's own country: most of the public discourse on the relations
between
men, women and
their
offspring is both unhistorical and deeply provincial. G�� Therborn's
comparative
survey of
the world's family systems and the ways in which they have changed (or
failed
to change) in
the course
of the past century, the result of eight years of intensive thought and
research, is a
necessary
corrective in both respects. Thanks to its global perspective and unique
accumulation of
data, it
should from now on be the standard guide to the subject. In addition, it
makes available
the
sometimes surprising results of a generation of demographic,
ethnographic and
sociological
researches
recorded in a bibliography of more than forty pages. How many people
knew,
for example,
that up to
the middle of the 20th century by far the highest rate of divorce ever
recorded
-- up to 50 per
cent --
was to be found among nominally Muslim Malays, that there is less gender
bias in domestic
work in
Chinese cities today than in the USA, that the highest divorce rates in
the
second half of
the 20th
century were to be found among the main protagonists of the Cold War,
the
USA and Russia,
or that
the most sexually active Western people are the Finns? It is far from
common knowledge
that
the two or three decades of the mid-20th century "were the age of
marriage
and of
intra-marital
sexuality in modern Western history" -- in 1960, 70 per cent of
American
women
aged between 20
and 24
were married, as against 23 per cent in 2000.
Therborn, whose
previous
books include European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of
European
Societies
1945-2000 (1994), is here particularly concerned with three themes, all
of them
involving
changes both
in family values and in actual practice, although the text does not
always
make it easy to
follow
them. (Therborn's Scandinavian commitment to ending "humanity's long
patriarchal
night"
is not an analytical asset.) Two of these themes -- the decline of
patriarchy
and
growth of birth
control
-- are unproblematic, unlike the third, clumsily described as "the role
of
marriage, and
non-marriage, in regulating sexual behaviour, and sexual bonding in
particular".
Despite some
common
global developments, notably the spread of birth control, the world's
family
patterns have
not converged;
the process of "family change . . . has been neither evolutionary nor
unilinear". The
world in 1900 was divided broadly into five family systems -- the
European
(including
the
Asian/North
African --
belonging to the two major branches which the social anthropologist Jack
Goody has taught
us to
recognise, the African and the Eurasian. Therborn prefers a
"geocultural"
division to one
based on
religion, since, as he sees it, geoculture generally prevails. Hindu and
Muslim family
practices
in North India are similar but markedly distinct from Hindu practices
in
India
polygyny. The
South East
Asian and Creole American are "interstitial systems". In the former,
"the
rigid
patriarchies of
Confucianism, Islam and Catholicism were mellowed by Buddhist
insouciance in
family matters";
and in the latter, European conquest created the curious combination of
rigid
patriarchy among
rulers,
mass miscegenation, and an uprooted non-marital family pattern among the
conquered
indigenous and
the imported slave populations. The imperial conquest of the Western
hemisphere,
Therborn
suggests, produced the first sudden transformation of family structure
before
the 20th century.
Among Creole
Americans
male power was macho rather than institutional, but for the great
majority
of family
systems up
until the 20th century it was patriarchal, even in the minority of
matrilineal
systems. It
rested on
the power of older males over the young of both sexes and on the
institutionalised
superiority of men over women, though Europe, South-East Asia and
less
unfavourable to
women than elsewhere. The West European family, we are reminded, "was
by
far
the least
patriarchal in
a very patriarchal world".
Unexpectedly,
women also
benefited in the only region of systematic mass polygamy, south of the
Sahara, thanks
perhaps
to the fact that the African family was essentially non-nuclear ("kin
was
always more
important
than spouse") and to the early public recognition that sex is a
legitimate
human pleasure.
Patriarchy also rested on the overwhelming prevalence of marriage, not
necessarily
indissoluble,
even in South-East
Asia and
Therborn holds
plausibly
that, unlike social structures of power and production, "family systems
do
not seem to
possess an
intrinsic dynamic -- their changes are exogenous": i.e. in the absence
of
any
push from
outside, they
will reproduce themselves. Of course, the ways in which human groups
earn
their living --
both
limitations and opportunities -- have always led to adjustments in
marriage (by
abstention or
varying
the age of partners) and in child-bearing (by varying the birth-rate or
infanticide).
The very
earliest 18th-
century demographers regarded it as almost axiomatic that in any year
the
number of
marriages
varied inversely with the price of corn. More generally, the
long-established
"West
European marriage system" that prevailed west of the historic line from
Trieste to St
Petersburg, the
original
"Iron Curtain", assumed that marriages would lead to new households
("neo-
locality"),
which
required the new couple to have initial resources -- in agrarian
societies,
access to
land. But,
Therborn
argues, in settled regions like those of medieval and early modern
Europe
is what led to
the
characteristic "Western" marriage system (later exported to settler
societies
overseas): late
marriages at variable ages, a high proportion of the never- married,
and
"a combination
of . . .
non-hierarchical sexual informality . . . with a strongly normative
sexual
order". On the other
hand, in
was carried out
by
women, marriage was more than elsewhere a crucial form of labour supply.
What are the
outside
impulses that lead to changes within the family of unparalleled
historical
rapidity?
Somewhat
unexpectedly,
what Therborn feels obliged to explain is the long delay in the 18th
and 19th
centuries before
the
rapid decline and fall of Western patriarchy in the 20th. Would we not
have
expected
industrialisation to weaken it by severing the place of work from the
place of
residence,
proletarianisation to
deprive fathers of power both because they had no property to transmit
and
because they
were now
clearly themselves dependent on the owners of land or capital? Did
urbanisation not
weaken
authority as such? Indeed, had male dominance not appeared to retreat,
at
least among the
poor, in
the era of "proto-industrialisation"
(what used to be
known as
the putting-out system)?
In fact, the
rise of
industrial capitalist society protected and reproduced patriarchy, not
least
because
up until the
rise of
corporate business it was not, and could not yet be, a system operating
primarily,
let alone
uniquely, by
market rationality (in many countries this is still the case). The
patriarchal
family was not
only
"a heavy social anchor" but an essential mechanism of economic
enterprise.
Moreover, as
19th-century British industrialisation shows, a prosperous industrial
capitalism was to
turn its
proletarians
into a manufacturing working class, very probably class-conscious, but
also
increasingly
composed of
males functioning as the primary bread- winners of their family. This
became "the
normative aspiration of the European working classes".
Perhaps some of
Therborn's surprise is due to what he sees as the priority of
anti-patriarchal
argument over
changes in
actual behaviour, although he shows that ideas were not translated into
national state
action
before the 20th century. He dates the argument back to the emergence in
the
18th-century
Scottish
Enlightenment of the idea that the position of women in society was an
indicator of
social
progress, though this did not yet mean equal rights of the sexes.
Possibly, it
had
links to radical
Protestantism which, with (atheistic) socialism, Therborn sees as the
major
19th-century
challengers
to patriarchy. While the American and French Revolutions were not
concerned with
the
liberation of women, this was to be a central element in socialist and
Communist
ones. Hence, in
the 20th
century he sees the major "broad ideological currents behind determined
thrusts into the
fortress of patriarchy" as, in order of importance: the revolutionary
socialist/
Communist
movement
(notably via the vast effects and influence of the Russian Revolution);
the
non-Western
"nationalist developmentalists" (notably in Turkey); feminist women's
movements, which
he does not
think were
of major significance outside the Anglo-Saxon regions; and "a
secularised
liberalism
mainly of
Protestant Christian or Jewish -- seldom Catholic -- provenance".
From a global
point of
view it makes obvious sense to insist, with Therborn, that
"international
Communism played
a
crucial, if not overwhelming role" at all the major leaps forward in the
20th-century
retreat of
patriarchy -- World War One, the aftermath of World War Two and the
great
turn from the
mid-1960s
to the 1980s.
modernism or
Ataturk's
westernisation, the massive 20th-century changes between the Balkans and
the
power. Though
Therborn
antedates its death, the best expert in the field (Karl Kaser) holds
that it
was
the decades of
Communism
that put paid to the traditional Balkan zadruga, the ultra- patriarchal
extended family.
In the West the
decline
and fall of patriarchy, far greater than elsewhere until the last third
of the
century, was
based on
indigenous dynamics. The impact of organised ideology and state power
-- the
latter chiefly
concerned, until the unexpected post-1945 "baby boom", with
encouraging childbirth --
was therefore
less
significant and less necessary. Compulsory primary state education for
girls as
well as boys and
the
prohibition of child labour, both of which raised the costs of children
to
parents,
were the main
ways in
which state action directly affected the family. The modern model was
pioneered not in
the
core countries of capitalist development, but on its margins -- among
(non-Catholic)
white settler
societies, in Australasia and the North American Midwest and West, but
especially in
between economic
and
cultural transformation, apart from the patent economic correlation of
variations in
the age of
marriage and family planning.)
The general
Western
pattern appears to be that ideas favouring modernity spread within
societies
from secularised
and
educated (middle-class) elites and "progressive" political movements,
and
outwards by the
imitation of influential models of modernity abroad. The progress of
birth
control in
except for the
mass
decline in child-bearing from 1880 onwards, ideology and legal change
ran far
ahead of change
in
actual family and sexual behaviour until the 1960s. This did not become
dramatic
until the last
third of
the 20th century even in the West. In fact, the last third of the 20th
century
saw
the most rapid
and
radical global change in the history of human gender and generational
relations,
though it has
not so far
penetrated very deeply into the rest of the world. Therborn is better at
recording and
monitoring
this unprecedented revolution in human behaviour in the developed
capitalist
countries, and
the
corresponding upheavals in the post-Communist regions, than in
analysing its
causes and its
relation
to the extraordinary acceleration of socio-economic growth and
transformation
of which it is a
part.
Somewhat
unexpectedly,
his conclusions about the state of the family at the end of the last
quarter-century
of
behavioural revolution are undramatic, not to say trite. Humanity is
likely to
continue to
carry on
with varieties of the old family ("the modal pattern of long-term
institutionalised
heterosexual
coupling') only -- at least in the post-1968 West -- in a less
standardised bourgeois
form. Some
recent
developments are worrying, notably the "commodification" of sexual
and personal
relations, but
none is
"necessarily fatal or even threatening to the existing institutional
set-
up. They
only indicate
that the
future will have its problems too". Such statements are surprising,
because they
are at variance
both
with Therborn's own analysis and with some of the evidence to which he
draws
incidental
attention.
He has himself
formulated the problem lucidly: family systems are held in balance.
When they
are
disturbed by
internal
contradictions or -- in this case -- exogenously, a given set of social
arrangements is
destabilised. The disruption may or may not be managed by
re-equilibrating,
restabilising
mechanisms. If it isn't, "there arises the need for a second phase of
change . . . a phase
of setting a
direction
of change and of organising the institution anew". But if this does not
succeed
"there will be a
shorter or longer period of anarchy, after which the institution in
question
will either
change
(including
disappear) or relapse into its previous form". It can hardly be denied
that the
developments
surveyed by
Therborn amount to a historically sudden and spectacular disruption of
the
long-lasting
norms and
arrangements by which genders and generations were linked in societies,
at
least since the
invention of agriculture. When the number of extra-marital births in
developed
countries rises,
in 40
years, from 1.6 to 31.8 per cent (Ireland), 1.4 to almost 25 per cent
(Netherlands),
3.7 to 49
per cent (Norway), or when, as in Canada, the mean number of children
per
woman falls from
3.77 to
social and
personal
behaviour. One might have expected a less superficial enquiry into the
consequences of
this
extraordinary disruption. The only aspect Therborn considers seriously
is the
strictly
demographic,
which is likely to reduce
in 1900 to a
fifteenth
in 2050.
Here Therborn's
own
strong identification with the Scandinavian ideals of progressive
gender and
sexual
emancipation gets
in the way of his analysis, skewing his view of the family's historic
social
functions. It is
perhaps
no accident that the book's index contains more references to
"divorce" than to
"children", to
"sexuality" han to ‘inheritance', far more to "marriage"
than to all these put together and
none to any form
of
"adoption" or other constructed forms of kinship. His book considers
marriage
primarily as a
sexual
order, separate from though intertwined with the social order, which
incidentally
allows him to
open it to
same-sex partnerships. For him this comes before its other functions ("a
choice deriving
from
early 21st- century experience"): as an arrangement for procreation and
bringing
up children, as
a
mechanism for social exchange and integration into wider communities,
and as an
establisher of
social
status of age-groups and householding. Curiously, he seems to show
little
interest, at
least in
this context, in the parent-child or tri-generational unit as a medium
of
material
and cultural
transmission and as a system of social support within and between
generations,
or with
the married
couple as an
income-generating unit.
Is it still
adequate
since the 1970s, as economic inequality rises sharply within developed
capitalist
societies, to
see the
decline of "the housewife family" from its mid 20th-century zenith as
entirely
"driven
not
-- as later in many poor countries -- by poverty but by a new
life-course
priority, of
independent
income and
of a career"? Incidentally, Therborn's own findings suggest that
marriage
as a
sexual order is
historically a social norm or ideal rather than a description of
reality,
except insofar as
in some systems
it
forces all women into formal marriage as virgins and makes
(heterosexual) sex
virtually
impossible for
them outside it. Quite apart from the Creole zone, "the classical area
of
centuries of
massive
coupling outside the norms of the Church and of the law", he observes
the
historic
informality of
the sexual order in sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of which the frequency
of
marital
sex runs a clear
second
to non-marital sex, and in some regions of Europe, e.g. in the Austrian
Alps
and north-west
Iberia,
with their "historically accepted proletarian or minifundist deviants
from
the law
of the Church"
and,
he might have added, from the celibacy of the priesthood.
Therborn's own
data
suggest a less complacent view of the situation created at the start of
the
21st
century by the
earthquake shaking the traditional family. Probably the basic trend of
the 20th
century
-- essentially,
the
emancipation of women from their age- old position of social and
institutional
inferiority to
men --
still prevails, but he also observes that "where fathers and husbands
do
not rule,
phallocracy or
asymmetrical male sexual power may dominate the socio- sexual order, as
in
popular
Creole societies
or in
the swollen slum cities of Africa". Or, as he notes in the
post-Communist
context, "while
the
power of fathers and husbands does not seem to have increased, that of
pimps
certainly has".
In
the very period of the most dramatic collapse of traditional standards
of
sexual
morality and
behaviour,
the male-dominated family has been reinforced by strong religious
revivals,
"often
with
intense patriarchal preoccupations". Strongest though this is in Islam,
it
is far from clear
that the
victories of US
Christian fundamentalism are as "Pyrrhic" as Therborn suggests.
Indeed, at
present it looks
as
though under George W. Bush it is about to score further victories in
"the
first and
so far the only
country
to see a successful anti-feminist backlash in the area of the European
family
system".
Therborn also
acknowledges that the supremacy of the ideal which liberal emancipation
shares
with
consumer
capitalism --
namely, the satisfaction of individual desires, including the sexual --
has
some aberrant
consequences:
not merely
the fall of Western fertility far beyond replacement rates but the
birth of
fewer children
than women
actually want. He does not mention the consequences, especially in a
market society,
of the
novel and rapidly increasing human capacity to manipulate the genetics
of our
species (cloning
etc).
They will
inevitably be
substantial, unpredictable and almost certainly troubling. The problems
created
in
male-preferring
societies in the 1990s, by the combination of birth control and
parents'
ability to
discover the sex
of
embryos, are already obvious. In 1995, the Chinese sex ratio at birth
was 117
boys to 100
girls. I
refrain from commenting on Therborn's own prediction that the market
will solve
this in the long
run by
raising the scarcity value of girls.
This is a deeply
impressive
book by a major sociologist, original and mostly persuasive in its
historical
analysis and
remarkable in its survey of the global marital and sexual scene.
However, it
underestimates
the
actual and potential effect of the recent revolutionary changes in the
human
family,
unprecedented in
their scale and speed, both globally and in the Western societies in
which it
has gone
furthest. In my
view it also underestimates the relationship between effects on the
family of
the Western
cultural
revolution of the last third of the 20th century and its economic
equivalent,
the
belief in a
theoretically libertarian capitalism which thinks it can function
without the
heritage that
gave it much
strength in
the past, the rules of obligation and loyalty inside and outside the
traditional
family, and
other
proclivities which had no intrinsic connection with the pursuit of the
individual
advantage that
fuelled
its engine. As neo-liberalism triumphed in economics its inadequacy
could no
longer be
concealed. In
the light of the contents of this book, it may be suggested that we are
also
reaching this
point in
the ideology of cultural libertarianism.
----------------------------------------------------
(*)Eric Hobsbawm has taught history and written in Britain, the
__________________
B.
from ZNet |
Culture :
7 February 2005
Muslim Women
by Cassandra Balchin and Yoginder Sikand
Cassandra Balchin works with the London-based Women Living Under
Muslim Laws
(WLUML)
network. In
this
interview with Yoginder Sikand she talks about the work of her
organization.
Q: How did you
get
involved in research and activism related to Muslim women?
A: I was in
women's group
Shirkat
Gah, which is the Asia Regional Coordination Office of the WLUML
network,
and I helped
them with
their publishing programme. Then, in 2000 I left
to help the
network set
up its international coordination office.
Q: How would you
define
the Women Living Under Muslim Laws Network? What is its agenda?
A: The network
aims
basically at providing linkages and support to women whose lives may be
affected by
Muslim laws.
Mind you, here I use the word 'Muslim' laws, instead of 'Islamic laws',
to
stress that what
is
precisely 'Islamic' is often recognized as extremely debatable and
contestable
by
many Muslims
themselves,
This suggests the obvious human element in constructing several notions
related to
shari'ah and
fiqh or Islamic law, which many seek to impose as divinely mandated.
Laws
considered as
'Islamic'
sometimes vary radically across cultures and regions. Likewise, what is
considered as
'Islamic'
in a particular context is often heavily influenced by local culture
and
customs,
and the
distinction
between customary laws and practices and 'Islam' is generally blurred.
The network's
goal is to
strengthen women's struggles in Muslim countries and communities. We
seek to
highlight the
rich diversity within the larger corpus of what are considered as
Muslim laws,
because this can
help
contest legal notions that have seriously deleterious consequences for
women.
We also seek to
help
promote broad alliances between women's groups in Muslim countries and
communities, and
with
the wider global women's and progressive human rights movement.
Q: What sort of
activities is the network engaged in?
We carry out
research,
publications, provide individual women support and advice, conduct
urgent
international
alerts,
link women in different contexts and facilitate capacity-building. We
have
published
numerous books
on various aspects of Muslim laws and what they mean for women, some
of which are
also
available on our website http://www.wluml.org/
. Some of our books have been
translated into
Arabic,
French, Farsi, Tamil, Dari, Urdu and some other languages as well so
they
can be accessed
by women
who are not normally able to access international debates. Our main
themes are
fundamentalism, militarism, peace-building and sexuality.
Some networking
groups
also work with figures such as qazis, which enables our ideas to have a
broader reach.
Q: How would you
describe the network's approach to Islam as a belief-system?
A: The network
as such
does not privilege faith-based discourse. We are not a faith-based
organization. We
regard
religion as a private matter.
We, however,
bring
together both practicing Muslims as well as people who define
themselves in
other ways. The
dichotomy between faith-based and secular discourse is very distinct in
the
West,
where the two
are
generally seen as opposed to each other. The distinction is much less
sharp in
other contexts.
Thus,
for instance, Sisters-in-Islam, a leading Malaysian feminist group that
works
from a
faith-based
perspective, works closely with secular human rights groups. I think
this owes
in
some way to the
fact
that in non-Western contexts religion is so much part of people's daily
experiences that
people
are more aware of what harm can sometimes be done in the name of
religion. In
turn, this
means that they can also be more confident in challenging conservative
or
reactionary
interpretations of religion. This sort of thing does not happen much in
the
West, where
faith-based
groups and
secular groups rarely, if ever, interact. For instance, here in
from non-white
communities see racism as the principal source of their oppression and
so tend
to
cling to their
community
identities, which leaves little or no room for challenging patriarchal
forms of
religion.
This is
bolstered by
what is called multiculturalism, with the state privileging religious
discourse
and
male religious
leaders
in the name of community authenticity, and more often than not it
privileges
conservative,
patriarchal interpretations of religion over other competing
understandings. At
the same
time, secular
human
rights groups or white feminist groups, who could be allies of women in
non-white
communities,
are so terrified of being accused of being being racist that they often
fall
into
the trap of
cultural
relativism, allowing for patriarchy to remain largely uncontested.
Q: How do you
see the
fact that controlling women is so central to the agenda of conservative
religious
groups, Muslim
as well as others?
A: In
conservative
religious discourses women come to be seen as custodians of community
identity
and
authenticity, as
bearers of tradition. Possibly this is because of their role in bearing
and
rearing
children. Hence,
defining and controlling women comes to be seen as central to a
revivalist
religious
agenda. Along
with this
comes a host of burdens that are sought to be placed on women as bearers
of the normative
communitarian ideal. Let me cite an instance to substantiate this
argument. One
sight in
displaying the
sitting behind
them. No
one ever seemed to question the men's identity as Muslims, but I
presume if
the women
sitting behind
them refused to veil up they would be damned as bad Muslims or even
worse.
Q: What
possibilities do
you see for developing what could be called an Islamic feminist
theology? In
this regard do
you see
any significant difference in the attitudes and approaches of the
traditionalist
'ulama and
various
Islamist groups?
A:
Traditionally, in
almost every community, the interpretation of religion has always been
a male
monopoly. But
things are
changing now, with women in all traditions demanding the right to
interpret
their religion
for
themselves. That's also happening among Muslim women, and our network
is trying
to facilitate
this
process. That said, I would also add that not every interpretation of
religion
by a
woman is
necessarily
more gender-sensitive or women's friendly. Likewise, it is equally
important to
recognize that
not all
male religious scholars are necessarily upholders of patriarchy. I can
cite the
names of several
modern
male Islamic scholars have produced remarkably feminist exegesis
of
Muslim
scriptures.
I certainly
would not
lump the traditionalist 'ulama with the Islamists into one category. I
have
found in
the course of my
work
that although many traditionalist 'ulama might initially work with
standard
stereotypes of
feminism,
once one begins to engage and interact with them they can begin to
appreciate that
we are
not anti-Islam but that our work can, in fact, actually help the Muslim
community. In
contrast,
the Islamists have a political agenda, which we do not share, so I
presume
they would not
agree
with us, although this does not preclude our discussing with certain
individuals
who might be
associated
with certain Islamist groups. We in the network do not agree with the
standard
Islamist
perception of privileging religion as the only structure through which
society
should
be organized.
This is a
politically
far-right position which we are opposed to. Our position is that there
are
multiple
ways of being
and that
they should all be allowed to exist. Within each of our communities we
need
to allow for
proper
democratic dialogue and discussion of what is or is not beneficial,
within a
human
rights
framework, but
this is something that many Islamists are vehemently opposed to.
However,
Islamism is not
the only
way of imagining Islam, and I see very promising possibilities of
working with
progressive
Islamic
theologians who do not share the same basic premises as the Islamists.
One
good example is
Nasiruddin Nasaruddin 'Umar, the vice-rector of a leading Islamic
University in
books on women
and
Islam.
Q: Feminists are
often
accused by the Muslim religious right of 'conspiring' to divide the
community,
setting women
against
men and thus playing into the hands of what are routinely branded as the
'enemies of
Islam'. How
do you respond to this sort of accusation?
A: I could cite
the
names of several progressive male Muslim theologians who share the same
social
vision as us to
counter
this silly argument.
We also have a
number of
like-minded men on our decision-making bodies.
We aren't an
exclusively
women's group and nor do we champion women's exclusivity. We talk of
gender justice,
not
simply justice for women. We are not seeking to replace one form of
gender
injustice-rule
by men-by
another form. And as for the accusation of dividing the Muslim ummah, I
can
only say that
there has
always been a tradition of internal debate among Muslims. Such debate
and
dissent is, in
fact,
invaluable, because its absence would lead to stagnation. Every
community needs
debate in order
to
evolve or even simply to survive.
Now, as far as
the
charge of Islam being in danger because of feminist demands is
concerned, the
least said the
better.
This slogan is routinely deployed to silence debate and dissent within
the
community by
those who
seek to preserve and promote their own powers and privileges.
Precisely what
aspect of
Islam is supposedly under threat? Is it Islam as a religion of social
justice
or
is it simply the
patriarchal order that seeks legitimacy under an 'Islamic' label? Now,
it is
true that
today several
Muslim
countries have been targeted by imperialist forces, but this owes not
to any
inherent
anti-Islamic
'conspiracy' as such but mainly to the combination of deep-seated
racism and
the workings of
the
imperialist-capitalist system. It is important not to confuse the
issues of
racism
and imperialism
with
religion. So, for instance, in
neocolonialism
and
global capitalism, and has little or nothing to do with any supposed
anti-Islamic
'conspiracy'.
However,
both radical Islamists as well as right-wing Christian evangelists tend
to
frame
this in
religious terms,
and so religion comes to be used essentially as a mobilisational tool.
I, for one, do
not buy
the clash of civilizations argument. In fact, it is remarkable how
fundamentalists
in all religious
traditions speak the same language and often work together against
progressive
movements, or at
least feed
on each other.
___________________
Cassandra Balchin can be contacted on cassb@wluml.org
__________________
C.
from Left Hook :
3 August 2005
Framed Out : What
Place for Women in the
"Anti-war Movement"?
by Amee Chew
Three years ago, the Women of Color Resource Center released a
statement about
the War on Terror
that's still
relevant:
"Women, Raise Your Voices!" They listed ten reasons for opposing the
War on
Terror, chosen
to
illustrate the gendered effects of militarism and imperialism.
Today, deep into
the
quagmire of the unjust and brutal occupation of
movement
continue to
point out connections between war, and patriarchy or domestic
inequality. For
instance, these
marginalized parts of the anti-war movement draw attention to the
only a racist,
but also
a misogynist institution; or to social budget cuts which
disproportionately
impact women and
communities of color. But a gendered analysis – an understanding of the
connections
between
imperialism and
which only
recently
began taking the racist poverty draft seriously, and which is still
struggling
to
rebuild itself
after the
invasion.
As the anti-war
movement
grapples with how to grow from its diminished state, there is a trend
which
seeks to build
the
movement by focusing it on a "lowest common denominator": ending the
occupation of
some advocate
presenting
this LCD to the exclusion of other issues, as the unifying 'slogan' or
focus
of events,
rather than
building events around multiple, related issues. When I raised the
possibility
of
adding a
reference to
the military's misogyny or homophobia in an advertisement for a
counter-recruitment
protest, this was dismissed as too potentially divisive, a dilution of
focus –
even if
such information
is
perfectly relevant to potential women recruits.
At the same
time, these
activists' purported adherence to the LCD is somewhat disingenuous,
because the same
individuals are willing to pair it with other slogans exploring
militarism's
economic
impact – "Money
for
Jobs and Education, Not War and Occupation" – and more recently, the
"racist
poverty draft."
Even while arguing for the need to focus on an LCD, they convene
several
directions of
analysis.
Apparently
these activists have made a decision about which issues they think will
have
the
most (white
male)
mainstream appeal, to build the biggest movement as fast as possible.
But activists
play a
dual role in both building an inclusive and growing movement, as well
as
helping
raise the
political
consciousness of this movement. Some argue that allowing a variety of
speakers,
workshops, and
literature at events can cover the role of expanding people's
consciousness,
even as
the movement
strives to
preserve a limited, uniting focus. While I support having these spaces
for
exploring a
deeper
analysis of the war, slogans, advertisements, the very way a movement is
*framed*, are
also
important vehicles for introducing new ideas to people as well as
creating a
movement that is
truly
inclusive. An inclusive movement does not just use the footwork and
labor of
minorities, but
prioritizes their interests in a deep sense by trying to challenge the
complex
ways
they are
oppressed and
exploited.
At stake is the
position
of minorities and women in "the anti-war movement." Will concerns
which
affect them
remain at
the margins, or will the movement strive to make these more central?
Will the
average
non-activist who
lives in a neighborhood of color, who lacks healthcare, affordable
housing,
decent work, who
has
perhaps faced sexual violence, feel this movement is actually relevant
to her
immediate life –
will
she know the power of struggling in a movement closely connected to the
concerns
directly
affecting her, or will she have to choose *between* priorities due to
the
movement's
myopia? People's
lives
do not operate around a single, de-contextualized issue. The
unwillingness of
anti-war
activists I
have met to even be open to exploring ways of deepening this movement's
framework, only
appears
evidence of the kind of exclusion that feminists of color are up
against within
leftist
organizing.
Perhaps I can only say that my experiences left me enervated and
discouraged.
How this
movement is
built around an LCD will have important ramifications for minority
activists
and
communities of
color.
Some anti-war
activists
have blamed 'multiple issue' agendas as the reason for ANSWER and UFPJ's
decision to
cease
working together and host separate same-day protests in D.C. this
September. I
see this split
as more a
matter of the lack of joint input, mutually respectful collaboration,
and
involved
decision-making.
Ideally, democratic decision-making would help facilitate
collaborations,
and the
identification
of common ground, between different organizations.
Multiple issues
can
still revolve around a central focus or set of priorities! Rather than
condemning
every case of
'multiple
issues,' the task of anti-war activists should be to figure out how
various
analyses can be
introduced to audiences in ways that meet them at their level of
consciousness
–
both including
the
converted, *and* pushing people to make new political connections. For
example,
few in the
general
public may understand a reference to patriarchy, but most people are
against
rape.
We can speak out
against
misogyny in the military without resorting to obtuse terminology.
The organization
Global
Women's Strike coined the slogan, "Invest in Caring, Not Killing," to
draw
attention to
connections
between the undervaluing of women's unpaid labor – such as through
public
cutbacks in
welfare and
healthcare – and militarism. I have been told by certain activists that
this
term is too
"abstract" to actually use. Would it be so incomprehensible if paired
next to our favorite
old line about
public
versus military spending? (Or is "caring" just too touchy-feely for
masculinist
tastes?)
As soldiers
returning
from the front speak out against the war in growing numbers, and
inspiring
struggles
against military
recruitment increase, it will be a challenge for us to keep the full
spectrum
of who is
impacted by
imperialism – not simply our boys – in the movement's radar.
Third world
feminists,
anti-racist, and immigrant rights activists potentially have an
important
anti-imperialist
critique to offer this movement. We can position ourselves to
demonstrate the
links
between foreign
and
domestic policies in ways that implicate not only class exploitation,
but a
racialized and
gendered
economic system. Moreover, we can be vigilant about grounding this
movement in the
local
struggles of immigrants and people of color.
Yet it is only
by
actively organizing around issues that affect immigrant women and women
of
color,
in connection to
the
war, that we can raise them to prominence and ensure they are not
dropped from
a national
anti-imperialist agenda. We must ensure that a movement against the
occupation
of
seeks to link
the issue
of
affected by
gender
oppression and sexual exploitation. But furthermore, perhaps we should
go
beyond this to
create an
anti-imperialist movement that actually enriches rather than
marginalizes
these community
struggles.
The anti-war
movement is
in a period of soul-searching as it grapples with how to build and
grow. The
time to act is
now. We
must create our own radical feminist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist
organizations,
when
others neglect this agenda.
* * *
The Women of
Color
Resource Center's statement is online at
http://www.coloredgirls.org/content.cfm?cat=publication&file=antiwar
. Of use to future organizing is a
detailed
brochure,
"The 'War of Terror' Intensifies Violence Against Women of Color, Third
World
Women, and Our
Communities," produced by INCITE! Women of Color Against
Violence
"a national
activist
organization of
radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against
women of color
and their
communities."
____________
Huibin Amee Chew, 23, is a
recent
graduate of
__________________
D.
from Judith
Ezekiel :
2 September 2005
Hello, Francis
A note I wrote this morning
Best
Judith
----------------
The current catastrophe is such a remarkable pr飩s
of the state of
A Green Party friend here reacted saying,
"Maybe
now the US will sign the Kyoto Accords." Yet partisan politics
(New
Orleans being Democrat), shameless use of a catastrophe, and Christian
fundamentalism (God's cleansing Sin City, rife with gays [9], godless
music,
and abortion clinics [10]) will no doubt allow Bush to divert criticism
away
from the environment and social issues.
Judith Ezekiel
1. http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/printer_011905G.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083005EA.shtml
2. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7131
3. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/08/31/disaster_preparation/index_np.html
4. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105Q.shtml
5. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article309684.ece
6. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050901-3.html
7. http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006
http://tompaine.com/pass/
8 http://www.fema.gov/press/2005/katrinadonations.shtm
9. http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/articles/articles/business-banned-on-bourbon-st.htm
http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html
10. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/08/30/hurricane/index.html
_________________
E.
from Shirely Doulière
7 October 2005
Note this Miers is also a Christian
fundamentalist
from
SD
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