by R. John Matthies*

Is a Muslim within his rights to insist a female physician examine his wife, or refuse male assistance in the birth of his child? And, are hospitals obliged to accommodate the Muslim’s wish when this unfairly burdens staff, entails a delay that jeopardizes patient care, or if accommodations like these contravene the Hippocratic oath? Europe grapples with questions like these with increasing frequency; and Great Britain and the Netherlands appear well on their way to translating the discriminating tastes of their hospital guests into hospital policy.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The “story” is now also about the mainstream national media’s utter failure to cover the Dallas-based honor murders of two teenager sisters, Sarah and Amina Said—and it is also about their father Abdul, an Egyptian-born taxi driver, who has somewhat miraculously managed to avoid capture for five full days. As of this writing, he has still not been found.

Is there connection between these two stories? I fear there might be, at least in this sense: If Abdul Said’s photo had been plastered all across our television screens and on the pages of our morning newspapers maybe—just maybe—someone might have recognized him or maybe—just maybe—someone at a mosque might have been shamed by this dishonorable act and encouraged to mount a Muslim religious campaign to find and turn him over to the police.

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By Phyllis Chesler

They have dishonored our shores for quite some time and more keep coming our way.

I am talking about honor killings in North America. In The Death of Feminism, I write about honor murders in Missouri, Ohio, and in parts of New Jersey, New York, and Canada which took place during the last quarter-century.

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By Phyllis Chesler

It was snowing in Teheran when they hung the twenty seven year-old mother of two children earlier today in the notorious Evin Prison. From the moment she was arrested, she had not been allowed to ever see her children again. Her name was Raheleh Zamani and she had been married off when she was only 15 years old. The political campaign to halt or commute her execution failed.

This tragic story could easily be one of the tales in Marjane Satrapi’s film, Persepolis.

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By Phyllis Chesler

In a sense, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a political and cultural version of an honor killing. Bhutto was the first woman Prime Minister of a Muslim nation and she symbolized an unacceptably Western form of female ambition and achievement. She had attended Harvard/Radcliffe and Oxford. She spoke English—perhaps more fluently than she spoke her native Sindi or Urdu. She once dressed as Western women do. Indeed, many Muslim women from wealthy families, including educators and feminists, have done so for a long time. They cannot do so now.

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By Phyllis Chesler

In an attempt to protect high-profile Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents who have had fatwas issued against them: Taslima Nasreen or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, the “good” people have been forced to jail them, not their attackers. Today, Nasreen says she is a “virtual prisoner” in Delhi where, for her own safety, the Indian government has stashed her after a mob of fanatic Islamists tried to kill her. When Hirsi Ali was similarly threatened, the Dutch government was forced to essentially “jail” Hirsi Ali for her own good.

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By Andrew Whitehead

The Council on American-Islamic Relations - Canada (CAIR-CAN) recently issued a press release calling for “zero tolerance” regarding domestic abuse in Canada.

http://www.caircan.ca/itn_more.php?id=2957_0_2_0_C

The press release involved a 16 year-old teenager, Aqsa Parvez, who was apparently strangled to death by her father for refusing to wear the traditional hijab outside her home. Her father has reportedly confessed to the murder.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Aqsa Parvez, the tragic sixteen year old slain by her father in an honor killing in Canada, was buried secretly and privately. Her teenage friends arrived hours too late at the Islamic Center where they had been told her funeral would take place. The kind of family and culture capable of honor murder (she and her family are all Pakistani immigrants) is also quite capable of denying her Canadian friends the opportunity of paying their last respects.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The sixteen year old was “too modern” for her fundamentalist Muslim family. She craved forbidden North American freedoms which, if practiced, would shame her immigrant family. The struggle over this issue was hot and abusive. The girl was continually attacked and closely monitored. Her own sisters envied and hated her not only because she was allowed to attend school but because her choice of modern dress could harm their own young daughters’ future marriage chances.

I am not talking about Toronto’s Aqsa Parvez who was just slaughtered by her father (may she rest in peace), but about another sixteen year old: Palestina Isa, who was honored-murdered by her father and her mother in St. Louis Missouri on November 5, 1989. Palestina (“Tina”) was murdered with primal ferocity. The forensic pathologist reported “thirteen wounds, six of them mortal. The worst one plunged into her chest wall, breaking her sternum and ribs and piercing her heart. A second gash ripped her left lung. Her liver had been slashed five times fatally.” Her breasts had been punctured seven times.

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By Phyllis Chesler

People often romanticize outlaws. Ballads galore have been written about Billy the Kid and Jesse James; both a book and a movie portrayed India’s Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi. She was a lower-caste Hindu who had been publicly gang-raped by higher-caste goons and she ran away and literally became their worst nightmare. I must admit, I have always been fond of this true story.

Now, Samina Malik, Britain’s “lyrical terrorist,” has been sentenced to a nine month suspended sentence and 100 hours of volunteer work. She is the British based poet who valorizes be-heading and jihad. The argument she presented is very au courant among western civil libertarians, leftists, and feminists. (Please understand: I am a feminist too but I hold the minority opinion on diverse issues ranging from prostitution to motherhood).

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By Phyllis Chesler

I have a “secret” life. I study Jewish religious texts and observe the holy days. ‘Twas not always thus. There was a time when I fled from a Judaism that had no place for women in terms of religious learning and ritual. I returned to religion as a feminist and helped create many feminist Jewish, life-cycle and inter-faith rituals.

On December 1st, 1988, in Jerusalem, I was privileged to be among the Jewish women who prayed for the first time in the women’s section at the Western Wall (or Kotel). While there are no exact parallels, this was analogous to Catholic women officiating at an all-female Mass in the Vatican. On that day, I was asked to open the Torah for the women to read from and it wedded me faithfully to the ensuing struggle for Jewish women’s religious rights which involved grassroots activism, consciousness raising, fundraising, and a lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court. You may read about some of this in a book I co-authored with Rivka Haut, Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

A girl from the Shiite minority was gang-raped 14 times — and what does the Saudi justice system do? It punishes the victim, sentencing the girl to 90 lashes. When the girl dared appeal the sentence, a court increased her sentence to 200 lashes. One may ask, “How could this misogynistic insanity get worse!?” Well, it has:

… On November 27, Okaz newspaper published an interview with Judge Dr. Ibrahim bin Salih al-Khudairi of the Appeals Court in Riyadh, in which he said that he would have sentenced her to death. …

Of course, this is all being done in the name of G#d:

… The Justice Ministry maintained, however, that the ruling was legal and followed the “the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad,” noting that she had “confessed to doing what God has forbidden.” …

Or, as Bob Dylan put it, “With God on Our Side.” Same song, different players…

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By Phyllis Chesler

At the recent Annapolis meeting, behind closed doors, up close and personal, the assembled Arab foreign ministers refused to shake hands with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s Foreign Minister. She asked her Arab counterparts, especially her Saudi counterpart, why they did not want to shake hands with her. “I am not plague-ridden” Livni said. According to the Dutch minister, all the Arab ministers backed away from her as if “she were Dracula’s sister”. (These details are contained in both today’s Washington Post and in Guysen International News).

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By Phyllis Chesler

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) a prostitute or a victim of trafficking is entitled to justice but only if she has been “forced, tricked, or coerced” into doing what the DOJ calls “sex work”—and if she can prove it. Today, according to U.S. governmental Trafficking Prosecutors, a rescue-worthy prostitute is someone who has been forcibly “trafficked” or “tricked” into sexual slavery. If she is from a Third World country, she commands more DOJ sympathy that does an American child who has escaped from an incestuous and dangerously abusive family in Iowa or Minnesota and who has ended up in the arms of a violent pimp or brothel-owner in another American state. In addition, the DOJ does not seem to count minor children who are used in “commercial sex acts” as trafficking victims because, by definition, they have not necessarily been “coerced” or “duped.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Our “friends,” the Saudis… This is their version of “justice” for women:

… the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in Qatif in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago. …

The rape victim was punished for violating Saudi Arabia’s laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.

On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence. …

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