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Do Mullahs Represent Islam? Farooq Ahmad Khan

June 3rd, 2012
Unfortunately, several miscreants among the Muslims are found among the Mullahs of Pakistan and perhaps the Islamic world at large. The problem at hand is that these Mullahs have swerved from the actual teachings of Islam and have blemished its image all over the world. And they are also found in various other countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia etc. Many a time, they are quoted in news related to extremism, sex scandals and militancy.
The sayings of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) make prophecies regarding the Mullahs (many of them are also so-called Ulema) of today. For example, in one saying we find:
"There will come a time when there will be nothing left of knowledge. People will make the ignorant their leaders and will seek guidance from them in matters of religion. These leaders will issue fatwa's without any knowledge. They will themselves be misguided and will lead others astray." (Mishkat, Kitab ul-Ilm, Chapter 3, P. 38)
Another Hadith adds to this:
"Their mosques will apparently be full of people, but they will have no soul in them. Their Ulema will be the worst miscreants and they will be a safe haven for discord." (Kanzal Ummal, Chapter […]

War with Iran is Inevitable: Dr. Avi Perry

Either the U.S. or Israel will have to undertake military action to stop Iran before the mullahs reach a nuclear status because sanctions and negotiations will not come up to scratch.
In my latest talk show on the Paltalk News Network, I discussed Iran's quest for becoming a nuclear power.
I predicted that the Islamic fundamentalist regime will not yield to the world's demands, that Iran will keep its macho talk loud and condescending. I claimed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will not cave in to pressure no matter what sanctions the Americans or the EU impose on the Islamic republic.
I asserted that although macho talk in the Islamic Middle East was a standard adopted by all militant Islamic leaders, the Iranian government would be flexing its muscles, flaunting its sharp teeth. It believes that economic sanctions will hurt but not as much as caving in to American demands.
I explained that in a culture where false honor precedes anything that moves under the sun, where life without "honor" is far worse than death, where honor killing is a religious diktat, caving in to economic sanctions is equivalent to an unconditional surrender. And surrendering to the "Great Satan" merely because life is […]

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti – A Model For Sufi Islam

By Asghar Ali Engineer
(Secular Perspective June 1-15, 2012)
Sufi Islam, as pointed out by us repeatedly is most tolerant Islam which is highly compatible with multi-culturalism and pluralism. It flourished in India precisely for this reason. Not only that it produced many great Sufis of indigenous origin but many great Sufis were attracted to India from Persia, Arabia and other countries, especially Central Asia. India has been pluralistic for centuries. It never witnessed any period which had only one religion, or one language or one culture. It was always multi-cultural and multi-religious.
Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti, who was from Seistan, Iran also migrated to India via Central Asia after seeing Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in dream who asked him to go to India and spread the message of Islam. Hadith literature also tells us that the Prophet (PBUH) had great attraction for India and in one of the hadith he is reported to have said that I am getting cold breeze from India.
This year is the 800th year of visal (death) of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti as he died in 1212 AD. There was unprecedented gathering at Ajmer where he is buried. More than 30,000 people came on this occasion to pay their respects to […]

Fight Terrorism, Not Terrorists

Fight Terrorism, Not Terrorists
Saturday, 02 June 2012 03:57 Amil Imani
To my thinking, Islam is the problem because there are Muslims who take its holy book, the Quran, as gospel and carry out its divisive and deadly provisions. Without Muslims, Muhammad's Quran would be just another historic relic sitting on library shelves, next to Hitler's Mein Kampf, gathering dust and criminals of the world have to find other instruction manuals to guide their activities.
What good is it to burn the Quran or desecrate it? The fire from burning the Quran only energizes the already zany fanatical believers of Allah to further engage in their world-dismembering acts.
People who keep proclaiming that they have nothing against Islam, but their battle is with Muslim terrorists are an enigma. Perhaps these people are the politically correct; the delusional who rearrange reality to their fancy; or the naïve who are incapable of dealing with facts. These people are either incapable or do not want to see that it is the Muslims, the active jihadists as well as their masses of supporters who are and remain culprits committing much of what is repugnant and harmful to civilized humanity.
If the fight is with Islam and not with Muslims, […]

Arab Intellectuals and the West

Arab-Muslim intellectuals have a responsibility to seriously reevaluate our relationship with the West now that the Arab Spring has provided a rare opportunity for such a worthwhile undertaking, insists Fathi El-Shihibi.
Middle East Online
Even though many Arab intellectuals have expressed hope that the Arab Spring would significantly change the dynamics permeating the relationship between the Arab and the Western worlds, however based on the outcomes of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, popular attitudes remain similar if not identical to those that were prevalent following the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in July of 1798 which brought Egypt and with it the Arab Muslim world face to face with the scientific and technologically superior Europe. As I elaborated in details in my book, Arab, Muslim Travelers and the West, Arab/Muslim, attitudes towards the West since then took four different yet interwoven directions that continue to dominate intellectual discourses on the subject in and outside of academia.
The first direction which is still popular among both Arab secularists and Islamists is a selective process by means of which the Arab/Muslim culture adopts from European culture particularly those elements that complement and conform to the Arab/Islamic values and traditions. This trend was initially adopted […]

All-American 45 American Men on Being Muslim

Islam , Keith Ellison , American Muslim Men , Congressman Ellison , I Speak For Myself , Islam In America , Religious Books , White Cloud Publishing , Religion News
"It's not what you call me, but what I answer to."
–African proverb
Although a decade has passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and the world has been abuzz about Islam and what it means since then, it is clear Muslim-Americans must tell their own stories.
Many have attempted to define Islam and the people who adhere to the faith. Islam in America is not something new. Islam has been practiced in America for 14 generations, but our beliefs, our practices and even our daily lives remain woefully misunderstood.
As a Member of the United States Congress I can assure you that I have been well treated, well received and well respected by my colleagues. But because I get to discuss policy matters and be part of the public conversation every day, I can admit that misconceptions still exist.
What is regrettable is that in the past decade American Muslims have been associated with individuals who claim to practice the faith but actually use it as a means to establish their identity. These individuals have been willing […]

Chicago Islamic leader uses education as weapon against terrorism and discrimination

by Nolan Peterson
May 30, 2012
Gain Peace websiteTribune blog post about billboard controversy
Education is the weapon of choice for an area Islamic leader in his fight against the radicalization of Islamic youth and the discrimination of American Muslims.
Dr. Sabeel Ahmed, 36, is the director of the Gain Peace project, an Islamic outreach program based in Chicago. Ahmed blames misinterpretations of the Quran and Islam for the dual extremes of Islamophobia and violent Islamist radicalism. He sees education as the way forward to both break down stereotypes and counter terrorist groups looking to recruit Muslim-Americans to commit acts of violence.
Ahmed's organization sparked controversy five years ago after erecting a billboard near O'Hare Airport that asked "Why Islam?" But the Indian-born medical doctor insists education and peace are his goals, not conversion.
Q: What was the inspiration for creating Gain Peace? What are your goals?
A: Gain Peace is a part of the Islamic Circle of North America, a national organization with 26 chapters created in 1971. Gain Peace is an outreach to make sure we educate fellow Americans about the faith of Islam to do away with misconceptions about the religion. We do many projects, including inviting fellow Americans into mosques, to fight the […]

It Is Allowed to Marry a Girl at the Age of One: Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub'i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant

Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub'i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant: It Is Allowed to Marry a Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is Postponed. The Prophet Muhammad, Whose Model We Follow, Married 'Aisha When She Was Six and Had Sex with Her When She Was Nine
Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu'bi, a Saudi marriage officiant, which aired on LBC TV on June 19, 2008:
Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu'bi: Marriage is actually two things: First we are talking about the marriage contract itself. This is one thing, while consummating the marriage – having sex with the wife for the first time – is another thing. There is no minimal age for entering marriage. You can have a marriage contract even with a one-year-old girl, not to mention a girl of nine, seven, or eight. This is merely a contract [indicating] consent. The guardian in such a case must be the father, because the father's opinion is obligatory. Thus, the girl becomes a wife… But is the girl ready for sex or not? What is the appropriate age for having sex for the first time? This varies according to environment and traditions. In Yemen, girls are married off at nine, […]

Islam Is a Religion, and Therefore Protected by the Constitution

By Wendy Kaminer
May 30 2012
Plaintiffs in a Tennessee lawsuit want to deny local Muslims the right to build a mosque. Why? They claim it's not a legitimate faith and shouldn't be allowed First Amendment rights.
mosque-body.jpgThe Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, under construction (Reuters)
It's unclear whether a procedural victory for opponents of a controversial Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, will delay or permanently enjoin completion of a mosque, under construction since last September. Equally unclear, without detailed knowledge of the facts, are the merits of Chancellor Robert Corlew's ruling that the planning commission had not provided proper public notice of the construction before granting a permit. But if this ruling is not a victory for bigotry (Corlew explicitly acknowledged the Islamic congregation's rights under the First Amendment and a federal statute), it is a victory for the bigots who opposed the mosque out of antipathy toward Islam and the idiotic claim that it is not a religion.
Mosque opponents effectively "put Islam on trial," KATV reports. At 2010 hearings, "a string of witnesses questioned whether Islam is a legitimate religion and promoted a theory that American Muslims want to replace the Constitution with extremist Islamic law and the mosque was a part […]

Deoband / Barelwi Unity: Destroying the Wahabis

The same thing i posted on deoband.org & waiting for a reply.
As Salaam alaikum
In the Name of Allah The Most Gracious , The Most Mericiful
May Peace & Blessings be upon the leader of Mankind , The Best of Allah creation , Muhammad Sallalahu Alahi wa sallam and on his family & companions
I have come here with good intentions not to disturb the peace of people of this forum. I am a Hanafi from the sub continent and i am fed up with this Deobandi & barelwi bashing.
I expect good conversations with elders like Amir Ibrahim on this forum who i have talked before on Orkut.
1) whats up with this deobandi & barelwi bashing ?
2) Do you realise that between the war of deobandi & barelwi has given a 3rd Deviant group known as Najdi / ahle-khabees great advantage .
3) while you were still bashing each other the deviant group planted its seeds with in the sub continent in front of your eyes.
Note : For the sake of ALLAH swt and the love of Imam Abu Hanfia (ra) the madhab which you both follow , why can't you keep your differences aside .
Don't you see how much damage this Najdi has […]

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Asadullah Syed

Is Islam Compatible with Capitalism?

GUY SORMAN

Is Islam Compatible with Capitalism?

The Middle East's future depends on the answer.

BEBA/IBERFOTO/THE IMAGE WORKS

A sixteenth-century Turkish bazaar. Muslim tradition has long accepted the marketplace, though sharia constrained its efficiency.

The moment you arrive at the airport in Cairo, you discover how little Egypt—the heart of Arab civilization—is governed by the rule of law. You line up to show your passport to the customs officer; you wait and wait and wait. Eventually, you reach the officer . . . who sends you to the opposite end of the airport to buy an entry visa. The visa costs 15 U.S. dollars; if you hand the clerk $20, though, don't expect any change, let alone a receipt. Then you make the long hike back to the customs line, where you notice that some Egyptians—important ones, apparently—have helpers who hustle them through. Others cut to the front. It's an annoying and disturbing welcome to a chaotic land, one that has grown only more chaotic since the January revolution. It's also instructive, effectively demonstrating why it's hard to do business in this country or in other Arab Muslim lands, where personal status so often trumps fair, universally applied rules. Such personalization of the law is incompatible with a truly free-market or modern society and helps explain why the Arab world's per-capita income is one-tenth America's or Europe's.

The airport experience, had he been able to undergo it, would have been drearily familiar to Rifaa al-Tahtawi, a brilliant young imam sent to France in 1829 by the pasha of Egypt. His mission: figure out how Napoleon's military had so easily crushed Egypt three decades earlier, a defeat that revealed to a shocked Arab world that it was now an economic, military, and scientific laggard. At the outset of the book that he wrote about his journey, The Gold of Paris, Rifaa describes a Marseille café: "How astonished I was that in Marseille, a waiter came to me and asked for my order without my looking for him." Then the coffee arrives without delay. Finally—most amazing of all—Rifaa gets the bill for it, and the price is the same as the one listed on the menu: "No haggling," he enthuses. Rifaa concludes: "I look for the day when the Cairo cafés will follow the same predictable rules as the Marseille cafés." But nearly two centuries later, the only Egyptian cafés that live up to Rifaa's hopes are the imported Starbucks.

Egypt is, of course, a Muslim nation. Should Islam be indicted for what was in Rifaa's time, and remains today, a dysfunctional economy? The question becomes all the more important if you extend it to the rest of the Arab Middle East as it is swept by popular revolts against authoritarian rule. Will the nations that emerge from the Arab Spring embrace the rule of law and other crucial institutions that have allowed capitalism to flourish in the West? Or are Islam and economic progress fundamentally at odds?

Muslim economies haven't always been low achievers. In his seminal work The World Economy, economist Angus Maddison showed that until the twelfth century, per-capita income was much higher in the Muslim Middle East than in Europe. Beginning in the twelfth century, though, what Duke University economist Timur Kuran calls the Long Divergence began, upending this economic hierarchy, so that by Rifaa's time, Europe had grown far more powerful and prosperous than the Arab Muslim world.

A key factor in the divergence was Italian city-states' invention of capitalism—a development that rested on certain cultural prerequisites, Stanford University's Avner Greif observes. In the early twelfth century, two groups of merchants dominated Mediterranean sea trade: the European Genoans and the Cairo-based Maghrebis, who were Jewish but, coming originally from Baghdad, shared the cultural norms of the Arab Middle East. The Genoans outpaced the Maghrebis and eventually won the competition, Greif argues, because they invented various corporate institutions that formed the core of capitalism, including banks, bills of exchange, and joint-stock companies, which allowed them to accumulate enough capital to launch riskier but more profitable ventures. These institutions, in Greif's account, were an outgrowth of the Genoans' Western culture, in which people were bound not just by blood but also by contracts, including the fundamental contract of marriage. The Maghrebis' Arab values, by contrast, meant undertaking nothing outside the family and tribe, which limited commercial expeditions' resources and hence their reach. The bonds of blood couldn't compete with fair, reliable institutions (see "Economics Does Not Lie," Summer 2008).

Greif's theory suggests that cultural differences explain economic development better than religious beliefs do. Indeed, from a strictly religious perspective, one could view Muslims as having an advantage at creating wealth. After all, Islam is the only religion founded by a trader—one who also, by the way, married a wealthy merchant. The Koran has only good words for successful businessmen. Entrepreneurs must pay a 2.5 percent tax, the zakat, to the community to support the general welfare, but otherwise can make money guilt-free. Private property is sacred, according to the Koran. All this, needless to say, contrasts with the traditional Christian attitude toward wealth, which puts the poor on the fast track to heaven and looks down in particular on merchants (recall Jesus's driving them from the Temple).

But Duke's Kuran believes that Islam did play a role in the Long Divergence. It wasn't the Koran, which the Muslim faithful see as written by God and unalterable, that impeded Muslims economically, he argues, but instead sharia, the religious law developed by scholars after Mohammed's time. Not that sharia was overtly hostile to economic progress; it established commerce-friendly legal rules that, for instance, allowed for bazaars and for the arbitration of economic disputes. Rather, Kuran maintains, sharia became economically counterproductive because it was less efficient than the Western legal framework.

The most significant of the sharia-rooted economic liabilities was the Islamic partnership, which proved no match for the Western world's joint-stock company. Partnerships were short-lived, dissolving with the death of any of the partners, and they tended to be small, often formed among family members. Joint-stock companies, which sharia prohibited, had much greater reach and risk-hedging power. Sharia inheritance rules were a second drag on economic development, Kuran explains. Since the Koran sanctions polygamy, sharia required a husband's wealth, upon his death, to go in equal portions to his widows and children, which worked against capital accumulation. In the Roman law that held sway in Europe until the nineteenth century, by contrast, the eldest son inherited his deceased father's wealth, creating vast fortunes that could be put to economic work. Some economists point to sharia's prohibition of interest as another hamper on development, but this is much less significant than it appears. From at least the twelfth century on, sharia lawyers authorized "fees" that could accompany money-lending, getting around the ban.

Muslim welfare foundations to aid the poor, called waqf, also undermined economic competitiveness over time, says Kuran. According to sharia, all money given to these charities was exempt from taxation. But Muslim merchants began to establish waqf as fronts for commercial enterprises, depriving the government of sufficient funds to function properly. This tax evasion contributed to the failure of the Arab kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire to build a competent minimal state, which is essential to the effective rule of law.

For evidence that sharia had negative economic effects, consider the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Beginning in the fifteenth century, non-Muslim merchants in the city could opt out of sharia's business rules. Those who did and embraced Western capitalist norms quickly grew richer than those who continued to follow sharia, historians have shown.

Over time, however, sharia adapted to capitalism. In the nineteenth century, it finally allowed Muslims to form joint-stock companies and to borrow other key capitalist institutions from the West. Today, Islamic banks follow the same practices that non-Islamic banks do (including the use of derivatives) but describe them differently, so that they conform with sharia. Yet despite this transformation in Islamic law, Muslim economies still lag behind Western ones. Greif and Kuran may help explain the Long Divergence, but what accounts for the fact that there is no "Arab Tiger" comparable with Asia's remarkable success stories?

Part of the answer may, in fact, be religious: Islam's apostasy law. Sharia holds that a Muslim who breaks with Islam becomes an apostate, an offense punishable by death. And since, at least for Sunni Muslims, there is no central theological authority—the theocratic regime in Iran establishes such authority for Shiite Muslims—any Sunni imam can define what constitutes breaking with Islam. This power may deter potential innovators, including the entrepreneurial kind, from doing anything that could conceivably get them into trouble.

But a bigger reason for the Arab world's stagnation is political. In nearly every Arab Muslim country, the prime enemy of entrepreneurship and the free market is an abusive government—and the strong, unaccountable, and usually despotic regimes that have dominated Arab Muslim populations for decades owe neither their origins nor their legitimacy, such as it is, to Islam. All emerged from the decolonization struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, which, since the primary colonizers were Europeans, provoked angry anti-Western and anticapitalist attitudes in Muslim societies. The decolonization of the Arabs did not go well. Violent confrontations were the norm, even when full-blown war didn't break out, as happened in Algeria. The upheavals brought military regimes to power in most of the decolonized Arab states; even when the military wasn't officially in charge, it controlled puppet governments, as in Morocco. All these regimes espoused nationalism and resisted any rule of law that might limit state power—or give entrepreneurs a freer hand.

Worse, independence took place at a time when the Soviet Union was influential and many believed that centrally planned socialism was a shortcut to power and prosperity. Arab governments thus found it tempting to confiscate private property, eradicate the existing bourgeoisie, and create massive state monopolies in resources like copper, oil, and phosphate. In the name of national independence and economic modernization, all the wealth could be concentrated in the hands of the ruling militaries and bureaucracies.

After the fall of the Soviet Union showed socialism to be far less efficient than the free market, Arab Muslim governments began to free up markets somewhat, but without surrendering their tyrannical authority. This resulted in an Arab crony capitalism, which is now the dominant economic arrangement in the Muslim Middle East. In today's pseudo-market Arab economies, it makes little sense to be an independent entrepreneur. If you want to open a business, you'll need a license, and the only surefire way to obtain it is to belong to (or be close to) someone in the ruling elite; even then, you'll share your profits with the bureaucrats. It's far easier to seek a rent—a benefit based on your position in society. Rent-seeking is particularly prevalent in countries overflowing with natural resources like oil and gas, which bring in massive revenues that reduce the incentive to diversify the economy.

Egypt exemplifies the crony-capitalist model. During the 1990s, corrupt privatizations transferred state monopolies in energy, steel, cement, and other industries to private "entrepreneurs," most of whom were members of President Hosni Mubarak's family, top military officers, and other well-connected people. Meanwhile, economist Hernando de Soto has calculated, opening a modest bakery in Cairo required two years of slogging through the bureaucracy, at each stage of which the would-be owner would need to grease official palms—and if his bakery finally opened, he would then have to pay ongoing protection money to the local police. Small wonder Egypt suffers from slow growth, massive unemployment, and a large black market.

The authoritarian nature of today's Muslim governments also generates social norms that harm entrepreneurship. For example, a survey conducted by the Casablanca-based business magazineL'Economiste compared the organizational structures of Moroccan firms with those of Western companies operating in Morocco. It found that the boss of a Moroccan firm tends to have a larger office and more assistants, secretaries, and chauffeurs than his Western counterpart does and that his behavior is more autocratic. The likely reason is that the Moroccan boss, mimicking the king and his entourage, finds power—and the exhibition of power—more compelling than profits.

The prosperity-crushing influence of government on Muslim entrepreneurship has nowhere been more evident than in Turkey. In the early nineteenth century, the Turkish sultan, like the Egyptian pasha, tried to import Western science and military methods without introducing Western rule of law. "The Ottoman Empire fell into poverty because the dominant concern of the sultans was always to avoid the emergence of a competing power," explains Turkish economist Evket Pamuk. And the possibility that they feared the most was the birth of a Westernized Turkish bourgeoisie, its power based on private ownership.

When the empire became the Turkish Republic in 1921, little changed. The republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal (later called Atatürk, a name he chose that means "Father of the Turks"), was fascinated by the fashionable Italian fascist ideal. The Turks lacked entrepreneurial spirit, he believed, so it was up to the government to act as a collective entrepreneur and pick those who deserved to start new businesses. Under his regime, which became a military dictatorship after his 1938 death, the Turkish economy made little progress, though a small group of well-connected businessmen grew extremely wealthy.

Islam wasn't to blame for Turkey's poor economy. Indeed, the new republic was fiercely secular; for decades, no openly devout Muslim could hold any significant position in public service, in the military, or even in business. Modern Turkey started to grow economically only after it began to free up the market under former World Bank economist Turgut Özal, a devout Muslim whom the military had installed as prime minister in 1987 to bring inflation under control. Özal's reforms opened the way for the openly Islamic, pro-market Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has ruled Turkey since 2002. Whatever criticisms one might make of the AKP—it has on occasion sought to impose religious norms on a secular society, among other troubling signs—it has brought about an astounding transformation of Turkey's economy. The state's budget is balanced, prices are stable, free trade is enthusiastically embraced, and crony capitalism has been constrained. As a consequence, the Turkish growth rate has been one of the world's highest: 8 percent annually for several years now. Turkey's per-capita income is now higher than Saudi Arabia's—and Turkey has no oil.

Fueling this economic expansion is a new generation of entrepreneurs from Anatolia, in eastern Turkey. These businesspeople are conservative Muslims, but they aren't extremists. The Anatolians are astonishing; no one can say for sure how they arrived on the scene as the dynamic engine of Turkish modernity. Ask an Anatolian entrepreneur about this success and he may credit a strong work ethic, combined with family values ingrained in the Muslim faith. Or he may mention the business traditions of Anatolia, a crossroads between Asia and Europe under the Ottoman Empire. Pamuk, a secular Turk, points to mundane factors like the Anatolians' low labor costs and Turkey's proximity to the vast European market: Turkey now exports 25 percent of its national production, up from 3 percent in 1980. Whatever the reason for the Anatolian breakthrough, Islam has not impeded it.

Will the Turkish model spread to nearby Arab countries? This year's revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may answer that question. Remember the man who inspired the revolutions: Mohammed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian who earned a university degree but could find no decent formal employment, a situation all too common for educated young Arabs. Bouazizi sought to make a living from a tiny fruit-and-vegetable stand, but last December, because he hadn't registered it with the authorities, police confiscated it. Bouazizi then set himself on fire.

Bouazizi's suicide brought millions of Arabs to the streets because they could identify with him. Human rights leaders didn't start the revolutions; neither did long-banned Islamic movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. The upheavals weren't characterized by Islamic banners or by Israeli flags going up in flames (though there were disturbing reports of Muslims attacking Christian churches in Egypt after the police had vanished from the streets). No, the dominant message of the Arab Spring was that the Arabs didn't want to remain separated from the rest of the world. The Egyptian students in Tahrir Square couldn't have put it more clearly: they wanted democracy, globalization, and market prosperity, not Islamicization. "We want a normal country, which means free enterprise and democracy," said one of their leaders, Amr Salah of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, in Paris this April. Even the notorious Muslim Brotherhood is on board with capitalism: "Our economic program is a free-market society in order to pursue social justice," says Sameh al-Barqui, an American-educated economics expert with the Brotherhood.

The transition from the Arab world's authoritarian regimes to democracy, markets, and the rule of law is far from guaranteed, of course. For a reminder of the difficulty of installing successful Western-style capitalism, consider Rifaa, who returned to Egypt after seven years in France and became the pasha's main advisor—overseeing the translation of French scientific books into Arabic, founding the first Arabic newspapers, and opening schools for girls. Though Rifaa faced the hostility of Muslim conservatives, his reforms, accompanying the era's shifts in sharia, inaugurated an era of modernization in Egypt. By the late nineteenth century, Cairo was starting to look like a European city, with electricity, sanitation, universities, and an independent press. But the renaissance didn't last long, because Rifaa repeatedly failed to persuade the pasha to accept a Western-style constitution, which would have limited the ruler's arbitrary power. What kept Egypt back was its failure to establish the rule-governed institutions familiar in the West.

It should be sobering, therefore, that the military isn't likely to surrender its political privileges easily in any Arab country. Still, most of the political parties emerging in the ferment are supporters of free markets. (Some socialist parties remain in Morocco and Tunisia, where the French influence left its mark, but they are socialist in name only.) The young men and women behind the Arab Spring will continue to push for more open markets where millions of Bouazizis will be able to become entrepreneurs—where it won't take two years and countless bribes to open a bakery. And there appears to be no cultural or religious reason that someday, in the not-so-distant future, we won't find cafés in Cairo that run as efficiently and reasonably as those in Marseille.

Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor, is the author ofChildren of Rifaa: In Search of a Moderate Islam and many other books.

URL of this Page: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_3_muslim-economy.html

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Asadullah Syed

Humaira Ameer Rasuli, Head of Medica Afghanistan

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01.07.2011''It's Not Easy Being an Afghan Woman''

She may laugh a lot, but Humaira Ameer Rasuli lives dangerously. The Afghan human rights activist speaks out in a country where women are still excluded from the development process. By Sandra Petersmann

Humaira Ameer Rasuli doesn't mince her words. "Women play no part in Afghan society. Their rights as citizens of this country are neither acknowledged nor respected." This fundamental criticism is directed against both the Afghan government and the international community. "At the moment all they are concerned with is trying to keep the peace. But what is peace worth if half the population has no share in it?"

Ameer Rasuli is the director of 'Medica Afghanistan', an aid organization that has been independent since December 2010. Like its German parent organization 'medica mondiale', it acts on behalf of women who have been the victims of violence. Rasuli laments "the persistent silence" that still surrounds Afghanistan's female population almost a decade after the fall of the radical Islamic Taliban regime.

Ameer Rasuli believes the root cause of this is the brutalization of the population through three decades of war. She says that the ongoing violence has reinforced the traditional, patriarchal tribal structures and made them even more difficult for women to break out of. "But it is also because of mistaken interpretation of the Sharia. It was always men who interpreted Islamic law, to their own advantage."

Lagging behind

"What is peace worth if half the population has no share in it?" - Humaira Ameer RasuliRasuli, the mother of a young son, knows that in making statements like these she also makes powerful enemies in the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, but it's something she is prepared to do. "After almost ten years of democracy, there are in reality only small democratic refuges. Women do not feel any real freedom. We're not allowed say what we think." She tries to do so nonetheless, as often as she can.

Ameer Rasuli is one of very few privileged women in Afghanistan. She studied for a degree in business management, followed by a couple of terms studying medicine.

"It's not easy being an Afghan woman," she says, smiling. She recalls an international workshop she took part in Germany. Other participants included women's rights activists from Bosnia, Liberia, Kosovo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. "In these countries the violence against women is certainly comparable, but at least these countries do already have laws to protect them, and do sometimes apply them. It made me so depressed, because we're still so far behind in our development."

Article 23 of the new Afghan Constitution of 2004 declares that men and women have "the same rights and duties before the law", and that all forms of discrimination are forbidden. But Ameer Rasuli stresses that, for Afghan women, this is not their daily reality. "If the political will to apply the laws is not there, they mean nothing at all." The reality is that confident women in Afghanistan live in fear for their lives. Zakia Zaki, a brave radio journalist, was shot dead in 2007. One year later the courageous policewoman Malalai Kakar was assassinated.

Constitution and constitutional reality

The young women's rights activist acknowledges that, particularly in the big urban centres such as Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat, there has been visible progress. Women are seen on the street again; girls are going to school; some are also attending colleges of further education and universities. There are currently four more female ministers sitting in the lower house of the Afghan parliament than prescribed by the quota.

Devastating statistics: According to UN data, at least 1,600 mothers die for every 100,000 births, and 280 children in every thousand die before the age of fiveBut if you look at the country as a whole, for the vast majority almost nothing has changed as a result of the Western intervention in the autumn of 2001. The mortality rate for mothers and children is still one of the highest in the world.

The statistics are devastating. According to UN data, at least 1,600 mothers die for every 100,000 births. 280 children in every thousand die before the age of five.

Around 80% of all marriages are forced marriages. Around half of all brides are under 16. On average, every Afghan woman gives birth to six children. For almost 90% of Afghan women domestic violence is part of daily life, and in the majority of rape cases it is the woman who is deemed to have been at fault.

An un-Islamic organization

Only about 12% of all women over the age of 15 can read and write. The 31-year-old Ameer Rasuli can list endless cases of abused women who didn't know that using violence against them was forbidden. She tells of members of the Afghan parliament who pressurize her to abandon her work, saying that Islam envisages justice, not equal rights.

"I don't know what justice means to these members of parliament. In their eyes we are an un-Islamic organization, because as far as they are concerned violence against women doesn't exist."

Rasuli appeals to the international community not to abandon Afghanistan after the planned withdrawal of Western combat troops. "Our great hope is that if foreign powers continue to intervene, the government will have to enforce internationally applicable rights. We need the international community to care about and help us."

Membership without influence: The National Peace Council includes nine women, but they have "no clear role", Rasuli admonishesNonetheless, the director of Medica Afghanistan knows that there will not be a military solution for the problems of the Hindu Kush. She too thinks that the only way to achieve a solution is through difficult negotiations. She believes that negotiating with representatives of the Taliban movement is the right thing to do, but she also says that "the rights of women should not be sacrificed for peace".

However, Ameer Rasuli has little hope for the work of the High Peace Council under the leadership of ex-president Rabbani, who is to conduct talks with the Taliban movement on behalf of the Afghan government. Alongside powerful regional leaders, religious scholars and tribal elders, the 70-strong council also includes nine women, but they have "no clear role", and are again shrouded in silence.

Rasuli criticizes the fact that the West is financing the work of the Peace Council without first developing a joint strategy and establishing common aims. "This has been the fundamental problem of Afghan development for almost ten years," she says: the lack of a joint strategy and the lack of clear objectives. Nonetheless, she believes that without the support of the international community the women of Afghanistan will not benefit from any development at all.

Sandra Petersmann

© Deutsche Welle/Qantara.de 2011

Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins

Editors: Diana Hodali/Deutsche Welle, Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

URL of this Page: http://en.qantara.de/wcsite.php?wc_c=16484&wc_id=16707

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Asadullah Syed

Women's Rights in the Arab World

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29.06.2011Are Saudi Women Next?

Nowhere in the world are women's lives more regulated than they are in Saudi Arabia. But, writes Mai Yamani, Saudi women activists are beginning to eloquently demand the removal of restrictions and an end to women's dependency

The unexpected visibility and assertiveness of women in the revolutions unfolding across the Arab world – in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere – has helped propel what has become variously known as the "Arab awakening" or "Arab Spring." Major changes have occurred in the minds and lives of women, helping them to break through the shackles of the past, and to demand their freedom and dignity.

Since January 2011, images of millions of women demonstrating alongside men have been beamed around the world by television journalists, posted on YouTube, and splashed on the front pages of newspapers. One saw women from all walks of life marching in hope of a better future, for themselves and for their countries.

They appeared prominently – eloquent and outspoken, marching daily, holding caricatures of dictators and chanting calls for democratic change. They walked, bussed, travelled in carts, telephoned and tweeted with compatriots, motivated in part by social demands – above all for their own empowerment.

A petrified system

"The rule of law in Saudi Arabia is the rule of misogyny": Saudi women during the pilgrimage to MeccaThe contrast between this dynamic space for open protest and Saudi Arabia could hardly be starker. Saudi women find themselves living in a petrified system. Faces of the royal family are seen everywhere; the faces of women are shrouded, forcibly hidden.

Nowhere else in the world do we see modernity experienced as such a problem. Skyscrapers rise out of the desert, yet women are not permitted to ride with men in their lifts. Nor are they allowed to walk in the streets, drive a car, or leave the country without the permission of a male guardian.

Fatima, a young woman from Mecca, sent me an email at the height of the Egyptian revolution: "Forget about the cries for freedom; I can't even give birth without being accompanied to hospital by a mihrim (male guardian)."

She went on, "And the mataw'a (the religious police, known officially as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, and whose leader has ministerial rank) have been given the right to humiliate us in public." Indeed, the mutaw'a saw their wide powers enhanced even more by decrees issued by King Abdullah in March, after helping to suppress protests in the kingdom earlier in the month.

Breaking the silence and apathy

Breaking the law: Wahhabi clerics issued a fatwa that forbids women to access to the Internet without the supervision of a male guardianYet globalization knows no limits, not even those set by the guardians of Islamic probity. Nine-year-old Saudi girls chat online, disregarding fatwasissued by Wahhabi clerics that forbid them access to the Internet without the supervision of a male guardian. Many women remain secretly glued to satellite television channels, watching their peers in the public squares of Egypt or Yemen, beyond their reach but not beyond their imagination.

On May 21, a brave woman named Manal al Sharif broke the silence and apathy, daring to defy the ban on women driving. For the next week, she sat in a Saudi prison. But, within two days of her detention, 500,000 viewers had watched the YouTube video of her excursion. Thousands of Saudi women, frustrated and humiliated by the ban, staged a "driving day" on June 17.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that forbids women to drive cars. The system of confinement that the ban represents is justified neither by Islamic texts, nor by the nature of the diverse society that the Al Saud and their Wahhabi partners' rule. Indeed, it is far removed even from the rest of the Arab world – which has become glaringly obvious in the context of massive social upheaval almost everywhere else in the region.

The Wahhabi curriculum

Saudi business women on their way to work. "The system of confinement is justified neither by Islamic texts, nor by the nature of the diverse society that the Al Saud and their Wahhabi partners' rule," writes Mai YamaniEnforced segregation is mirrored in every aspect of Saudi life. Religious education constitutes up to 50% of students' curriculum. As a result, Wahhabi dogma penetrates every home in the country. Textbooks – pink for girls, blue for boys, each with different contents – emphasize the rules prescribed by Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, an eighteenth-century cleric and the founder of Wahhabism.

The Saudi judicial system is one of the most formidable obstacles to women's aspirations, relying on Islamic interpretations that protect a defensive patriarchal system. Indeed, not only do judges' decisions support the system, but the reverse is also true: patriarchy has become the driving force of the law.

Thus, Saudi women are barred from the legal profession on the basis of a Wahhabi stricture that "a woman is lacking in mind and religion." In other words, the rule of law in Saudi Arabia is the rule of misogyny – the comprehensive legal exclusion of women from the public sphere.

Demands to end women's dependency

Saudi rulers have announced that demonstrations are haram – a sin punishable by jail and flogging. Now some clerics have pronounced driving by women to be foreign-inspired haram, punishable in the same way. Yet, despite such threats, thousands of Saudi women joined "We are all Manal al Sharif" on Facebook, and countless other videos of women driving have appeared on YouTube since her arrest.

Like Mamal, they, too, have been detained, and the government appears determined to prosecute them. But Wajeha al Huwaider, Bahia al Mansour, Rasha al Maliki, and many other activists are nonetheless insisting that driving a car is their legitimate right, and are eloquently demanding the removal of restrictions and an end to women's dependency.

Rosa Parks' revolutionary bravery in refusing to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama municipal bus in 1955 helped spark the American civil rights movement. We shall soon find out whether Manal al Sharif's defiance of the Saudi regime's systemic confinement of women produces a similar effect.

Mai Yamani

© Project Syndicate 2011

Mai Yamani's most recent book is Cradle of Islam.

Qantara.de editor: Lewis Gropp

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URL of this Page:  http://en.qantara.de/wcsite.php?wc_c=16473&wc_id=16694

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Asadullah Syed