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musa pembo
United Kingdom
154 Posts |
 Posted - 03 Oct 2008 : 16:56:29
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Who speaks for Islam: Part IV
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/09/25/10247723.html
09/25/2008 11:35 PM | By John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
In this five-part series, Gulf News excerpts the fascinating conclusions of the largest ever opinion survey of the world's Muslims, carried out by Gallup. Who speaks for Islam? by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed was published by Gallup Press.
Sexism committed by men, not religion
Because anti-women views are often believed to result from religious sentiment, important questions that must be asked are: Does religiosity among Muslim men correlate with less egalitarian views toward women? Is there merit to the arguments of those who say that women's lagging status in much of the Muslim world is attributable to Islamic principles?
Our data analysis would say no to both questions. When we compared the men who say that women and men should have the same legal rights with men who espouse the opposite view, for the most part, we found little difference in their degree of religiosity. In fact, in Lebanon, Morocco and Iran, men who support women's rights are found to be more religious than those who do not support women's rights. The only exception among the eight countries included in this analysis is Turkey, where the opposite is true. In Turkey, in contrast to other parts of the Muslim world, religiosity correlates heavily with lack of education, which could explain this result.
A similar trend is evident among men convicted of honour killings, long believed to be the result of religious zeal. For example, research indicates that 69.4 per cent of men who committed honour killings in Jordan did not perform their daily prayers, and 55.5 per cent did not fast. That these men fail to observe the most obligatory rituals of Islam suggests that their act of murder is not motivated by religious zeal or devotion. Rather, other factors normally associated with criminal behaviour are more likely to play a role. For example, most of these men had a record of violent behaviour: 35.1 per cent had already served sentences for crimes. Furthermore, 32.4 per cent were illiterate, only 3.7 per cent had attended college, and 24.1 per cent were brought up in broken homes.
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Women see worse problems than gender issues in Muslim societies
Although Muslim women value the role Islam plays in their personal lives and favour a role for Sharia as at least an aspect of their public lives, they are not uncritical of the Muslim world. What women say they admire least about Arab/Muslim societies is similar to what their male counterparts complain about: lack of unity, economic and political corruption, and extremism.
As Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace points out, Muslim women are operating in a larger context of limited political freedom, economic deterioration, and global injustice - problems that confront all citizens of the Muslim world.
Considering the political stagnation and democracy deficit in many of these countries, it is not surprising that gender inequality did not generate the frequency of spontaneous responses one might expect to this open-ended question. In Gallup's surveys, gender inequality is not mentioned at all in Jordan and mentioned by only 1 per cent of women in Egypt and 2 per cent in Morocco. It is mentioned by 5 per cent of women in Saudi Arabia, but it is outranked by "lack of unity" and "high unemployment."
Overall, women favour Islam's role in their lives, but they see a gap between the ideal and reality. Haja Samira summarises this sentiment well in her critique of modern Muslim society: "We are Muslim in name, but our acts are not those of Muslims."
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Equal rights don't always bring equality
While Egyptian women agree that women should vote for whomever they wish without interference (95 per cent) and work at any job they are qualified to fill (88 per cent), their enthusiasm for "the same legal rights" is more muted (69 per cent). A similar pattern is found among women in Jordan, where a significant percentage (30 per cent), though still a minority, disagree that women and men should have the same legal rights, although they agree that women should have rights to the ballot and the workplace.
Interestingly, the women who disagree with giving women the "same" legal rights as men are not less educated than their counterparts. They are, however, more likely to favour Sharia as the only source for legislation. So do women who support Sharia oppose gender equality? Not necessarily. Rather, some Muslim women believe that having the same legal rights does not always mean fair and just treatment of women, because men and women have different roles in a family. In the words of one Egyptian woman: "Giving a farmer and a carpenter both a hammer as a tool to help their work is certainly treating them the same, but not fairly."
One example from Islamic jurisprudence may help to explain what she means: Men and women have the same legal rights in matters of crime and punishment, financial interactions, and other matters of civic law. However, in Muslim family law, the area of Sharia most strongly criticised in the West for gender discrimination, men and women share different, "complementary" rights - ones that do not necessarily favour men. For example, according to a unanimous opinion of Muslim jurists, a woman carries no financial obligation for the family. She maintains the right to keep her earned wages and property under her name alone, instead of as "communal property." However, she and her children have legal rights to her husband's property and earnings. Men are also financially responsible for wedding expenses, housing, and the mahr.
Even if she is very wealthy, a woman is never financially responsible for supporting anyone, not even herself. The "complement" to this financial advantage is that her inheritance is a 1:2 ratio to that of her brother's. The rationale for this law is that while a woman may work, she should never be obligated to work.
And therefore, her closest male relative is responsible for her financial support. Because her financial responsibility is zero, in theory, and her brother is responsible for his own family and potentially for his mother and other female siblings if they are not married, giving his sister a third of the inheritance may seem unfairly generous to some. Giving women the "same" legal rights as men would obviously do away with this advantage that Muslim women have historically enjoyed.
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Muslim women want equal rights
In the West, Muslim women have frequently been portrayed as victims of a repressive social order so severe that it renders most women in Muslim societies unaware that they even deserve rights. In 1906, a group of women missionaries held a conference on Muslim women in Cairo and published the conference proceedings in a collection called Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from the Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It. The introduction reads: "They will never cry for themselves, for they are down under the yoke of centuries of oppression."
One can still hear echoes of these sentiments. In a scene in Baby Boom, a Hollywood movie about a high-powered career woman turned single mother, the heroine is interviewing nannies for the infant she just inherited. One of the interviewees is a woman dressed in a long black veil who speaks in a thick Arabic accent as she says, "I will teach your daughter to properly respect a man. I speak only when spoken to. I do not need a bed; I prefer to sleep on the floor."
This image is reinforced by the Western press, which portrays Muslim women as silent, submissive and relegated to the domestic sphere, while men monopolise the active roles. In a survey of all photographs of Muslims in the American press, three-quarters (73 per cent) of the women were depicted in passive capacities, compared with less than one-sixth (15 per cent) of the men. In photographs of the Middle East, women were six times (42 per cent) more likely to be portrayed as victims than were men (7 per cent).
In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61 per cent), vote without influence (69 per cent), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76 per cent).
Egyptian women, who face far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favour of women's rights, with 88 per cent saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory: a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.
If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at Al Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women's rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works.
A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."
Celebrity preachers aren't the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 5os who earned her bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her PhD in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 196os. "Now, it's hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo's elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.
These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52 per cent), Egypt (34 per cent), Saudi Arabia (32 per cent), and Lebanon (37 per cent) with postsecondary educations. In the UAE and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries - as well as in non-Muslim countries - Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8 per cent and 13 per cent in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4 per cent in Brazil or 11 per cent in the Czech Republic.
Jonathan Hayden, a young American who went to Malaysia and Indonesia as part of a research project, met some of these female Muslim college students, who challenged a few of his own assumptions:
Some college girls approached me after a session at a university in Kuala Lumpur. After the meeting with about 1oo students and teachers, I stayed behind to get a few more questionnaires. I was cornered by a group of young girls who wanted to know all about America, why we came all that way to meet them, and what our research was about. They told me about them-selves and wanted to explain Islam to me. They were slightly aggressive and wanted to understand what Americans thought about them and the reasons behind some of our foreign policy decisions. But they were also very polite and we took pictures at the end. I remember thinking at the end that this is not the picture of Muslim women that we are usually presented with in the West. They were smart, curious and well-spoken. These were not submissive women who are forced to live a life of serving their husband. They were getting a college education and had a future that would allow them to pursue any dream that they wanted.
According to the Unesco 2oo5 Gender and Development report, the ratio of women to men in secondary education in 2oo1-o2 was 1oo per cent or higher in Jordan, Algeria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. This compares with only 77 per cent in Turkey, a staunchly secular nation often assumed in the West to be ahead of its neighbours in gender development, or 74 per cent in India. The gender gap in these nations is higher than in Saudi Arabia, which has an 89 per cent ratio of women to men enrolled in secondary education.
Despite these hopeful statistics, women's basic education still lags in some countries. In Yemen, women's literacy is only 28 per cent vs 7o per cent among men; in Pakistan, it is 28 per cent vs 53 per cent for men.
These sad findings, however, are not unique to Islamic nations nor do they represent the entire Muslim world; women's literacy rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia are 70% and as high as 85% in Jordan and Malaysia.
Who speaks for Islam: Part V
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/10/03/10249335.html
10/03/2008 12:14 AM | By John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
This is the last of five excerpts published by Gulf News of the largest ever opinion survey of the world's Muslims. Who speaks for Islam? by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed was published by Gallup Press.
While Gallup data indicate that faith is not the distinguishing factor primarily responsible for extremism, Islam does remain a significant source of religious, historical, national, and cultural identity. Thus, Islam remains in the spotlight. As noted previously, secular and religious rulers and reform and opposition movements (mainstream and extremist) have used religion to legitimate, recruit, mobilise, and motivate. Just as religion remains part of the fabric of Muslim societies, so too it remains a potent force in political and social change.
As we have seen, both our data and Muslim politics demonstrate a broad-based desire for greater political participation, democratisation, government accountability, and the rule of law. However, a major concern in the region is that the West is not really interested in Muslim self-determination, but instead desires to bolster authoritarian regimes and promote its own brand of democratic governance. In the short run, real self determination will require engaging religious political parties and leaders who would be democratically elected if free and fair elections were held in many countries today. Many will be more independent and disagree with some US policies.
However, allowing people to make change peacefully and air their grievances freely will diminish the allure of those who advocate violence as the only means available. Moreover, opening up the political system in countries where strong political parties have not been permitted will also provide non-Islamist alternatives.
Diagnosing terrorism as a symptom and Islam as the problem, though popular in some circles, is flawed and has serious risks with dangerous repercussions. It confirms radical beliefs and fears, alienates the moderate Muslim majority, and reinforces a belief that the war against global terrorism is really a war against Islam.
Whether one is radical or moderate, this negative attitude is a widespread perception.
Muslims say that they admire Western technology and liberty most of all, and then go on to say that they associate these qualities most not with France, Japan, or Germany, but with the United States.
It is precisely because the West in general, and the United States in particular, is seen as having "a fair judicial system," as giving its "own citizens many liberties," and portraying itself as a champion of human rights that US actions toward Muslims, such as those at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses are seen as so hypocritical.
One US diplomat who was in Egypt when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke out said she was told by the locals: "We would expect this from our own government, but not from you."
Ironically, it may be because of America's idealised image as a beacon for democracy in the Muslim world that its actions elicit such passionate anger. The perception is: for you, America, to go against your own values and how you would treat your own people and to abuse Muslims in this way means you must really despise us and our faith.
Avoiding or ending acute conflicts in the Muslim world is more effective than projecting a strong military presence to safeguard American interests and limit the growth of global terrorism.
The argument that a strong military presence in the region will win the war against terrorism is not borne out by Gallup data from across the Muslim world. The long war against terror will not be won on the battlefield, but by winning the loyalty of the people in the region.
While terrorists must be fought aggressively, military occupation of Muslim lands increases anti-American sentiment, diminishes American moral authority with allies, and silences the voices of moderates who want better relations.
In the end, ongoing conflict between the West and the Muslim world is not inevitable. It is about policy, not a clash of principles.
Polls found that Lebanese hold Christians and Muslims in high regard (more than 90 per cent have favourable opinions of each) despite a decades-long civil war in Lebanon fought roughly along confessional lines.
Today, less than a generation after the civil rights struggle, a majority of blacks and whites in America say that relations between their groups are good. These hopeful examples underscore the possibility of improving relations between groups - even those whose conflicts lasted centuries - and the relative speed by which this is possible when there is a greater understanding of the conflict's root cause.
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The real war is one of perceptions
As our data have demonstrated, the primary cause of broadbased anger and anti-Americanism is not a clash of civilisations but the perceived effect of United States foreign policy in the Muslim world. Nor is there a blind hatred of the West.
- Muslim opinion distinguishes between Western nations and between their leaders: America/Bush and Britain/Blair vs France/Chirac and Germany (Blair and Chirac were still in office when Gallup conducted this poll).
- Unfavourable opinions of Britain and the United States contrast sharply with more positive opinions of France and Germany. Across all predominantly Muslim countries polled, an average of 75 per cent of respondents associate "ruthless" with the United States (in contrast to only 13 per cent for France and 13 per cent for Germany).
- Western European nations share Muslim opinions about the United States.
Thus, we need to disaggregate "the West" and the "Muslim world" into individual, distinct countries whose confrontations and conflicts are attributable to specific policies of specific nations and their leaders, especially the United States.
While knowing more about Muslims makes Americans more likely to hold positive views about them, the exact opposite trend exists among Muslims with regard to their opinion of the United States government. The closer that respondents follow news about issues related to US foreign policy, the more likely they are to hold negative opinions of the United States government.
Some in the West counsel that Islam is the problem and that the West needs to fight it or create a "moderate Islam" to defeat anti-Americanism, overcome resistance to modernisation, and promote democracy and human rights.
This rhetoric alienates the very Muslim majorities that are Western allies in the fight against religious extremism and global terrorism. This approach can result in unwise foreign policies: support for secular authoritarian leaders and regimes that suppress all opposition, including mainstream secular leaders and "Muslim democrats"; the marginalisation of mainstream Islamic parties that function within society; and a "shock and awe" military policy to promote democracy.
It also results in domestic policies that compromise civil liberties: indiscriminate profiling and arrest of Muslims, monitoring of mosques and closure of religious institutions. The net result is to convince many Muslims that the West is waging a war against Islam and Muslims. The problem is not Islam any more than Christianity or Judaism is the cause of its extremists and terrorists; it's the political radicalisation of religion that creates militant theologies.
Islam may be a powerful weapon for discrediting terrorists and limiting the growth of terrorism. For example, in Indonesia, those who say that the 9/11 attacks were unjustified support this response by citing religious principles ("It is against God's law," "God hates murder," or "It is against Islam") as well as humanitarian ones (the loss of human life was tragic, and so forth), while those who say that 9/11 was justified cite political grievances to support their response, not religious justifications.
Identity
For overwhelming majorities of Muslims (who are also the moderates), Islam is a fundamental source of identity, guidance and spiritual and psychological security. Mainstream Muslims, who have been the primary victims of terrorism, are as concerned about extremism, violence, and terror as are Westerners.
They, even more than Westerners, believe that they are responsible for fighting extremism and for modernising their societies. Respecting Islam will encourage the moderate majority to use their authentic interpretation and engagement of religion to disarm the extremists by using the Quran's principles against terrorism.
Regarding religion as the primary problem weakens the positive power of religion and culture and obscures our common values and shared concerns. This fear of Islam leads to the belief in a monolithic Islamic threat that requires massive Western political and military power. Our over-reliance on military solutions is then seen by many Muslims not as an effort to liberate and democratise, but to occupy and dominate - in essence, to "redraw the map of the Middle East and Muslim world."
The perception of United States policy as a form of American neocolonialism - what a prominent group of neoconservatives has called the creation of a New American Century - fuels anti-Americanism globally in the Muslim world and beyond and is used by terrorists as they appeal to new recruits. It also diminishes American moral authority in the Muslim world, Europe and other parts of the world.
Lastly, it silences the voices of moderate Muslims who advocate better relations with the United States.
The Gallup World Poll consistently confirms that the crucial issues in improving relations are the beliefs and perceptions of "the other," which affect and need to inform foreign policies. The war against global terrorism has been fought on three major fronts: military, economic and diplomatic. As military experts have noted, while the military can capture and kill terrorists, it is not equipped to win the struggle for minds and hearts.
This, many today would argue, requires a public diplomacy that addresses the ideological dimensions of war: the war of ideas and the foreign policies created.
Government agencies, think tanks, and the military - all of which in the past had ignored the relationship of religion to politics and international affairs - now have special units of experts, conferences, workshops, and curricula focusing on Islam and Muslim politics and culture.
Government leaders and politicians use and abuse religion in domestic and international politics, too often talking about and for Muslims who have not been heard.
Few are able to base their conclusions on datadriven analysis that reflects the voices of majorities of Muslims across the world - data that are vital in a campaign of programmes and policies to win hearts and minds.
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Mistrust matches lack of knowledge
Unfortunately, Americans' feelings or beliefs about Muslims show little understanding of the diversity in Islam.
- 44 per cent of Americans say Muslims are too extreme in their religious beliefs. Less than half believe that US Muslims are loyal to the United States.
- Nearly one-quarter of Americans, 22 per cent, say they would not want a Muslim as a neighbour. As we have seen, 32 per cent of Americans say they admire nothing about the Muslim world, and 25 per cent admit they simply "don't know."
Even more surprising is Americans' self-reported knowledge of Muslim views did not change from 2002 to 2007 despite (or perhaps because of) the dramatic spike in media coverage of the Muslim world during this time. A majority (57 per cen) say they know either nothing or not much about "the opinions and beliefs of people who live in Muslim countries."
Interestingly, the more Americans report knowing about Muslim countries, the more likely they are to hold positive views of those countries. This same trend is found as it relates to knowing a Muslim: those Americans who know at least one Muslim are more likely to hold positive views of Muslims and Islam. Americans say what they admire least about the Muslim world is extremism, radicalism, lack of openness to others' ideas, and gender inequality.
Muslims show substantial agreement with two of the above concerns - condemning the "radical fringe" and citing lack of openness to others' ideas as what they admire least about their own societies. However, Muslim and American perceptions diverge sharply on the issue of gender inequality among Muslims.
For Muslim women, half of the population polled, this concern is almost absent in criticism of their societies. Blaming Islam for women's mistreatment is a losing strategy that alienates those who would otherwise support an end to violence and women's oppression and empowers those who oppose women's rights in the name of defending Islam against a West who hates and wants to destroy the faith.
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Muslims and West not monoliths
At the heart of the problem is the tendency to believe that a monolithic West - a coherent unit defined by democracy, human rights, gender equality, and the division of church and state (secularism) - is pitted against a monolithic Muslim world that has sharply different values and aspirations that are incompatible with "Western" values.Western countries exhibit great diversity. The robust presence and role of religion in the US differs significantly from the decline of religion in Europe in countries such as Britain, France, and Germany or the Scandinavian countries.
US separation of church and state contrasts with Britain, Germany, and Norway, which still have state religions and/or state support for religious institutions. Ironically, American publics are much more religious than European publics (68 per cent of Americans vs 28 per cent of Britons, for example, say that religion is an important part of their lives). At the same time, in the United States, where church and state are separated by law, a majority says it favours the Bible as "a source" of legislation (55 per cent) - of that, 9 per cent say it should be "the only source."
Other significant differences are evident in the broad disagreement among European nations about going to war in Iraq. US and British military engagement sharply contrasts with major allies such as France and Germany, who were not supportive, and Spain and Italy, who were initially supportive but then bent to pressure from their majorities and pulled out of Iraq. Finally, Western European nations share most of the Muslim world's negative opinion of US leadership: 68 per cent of Germans, 67 per cent of French, and even 52 per cent of Britons disapprove of US leadership, as do 62 per cent of Jordanians and 53 per cent of Turks.
There is also wide diversity among Muslim nations - politically, economically, culturally, and religiously. As discussed earlier, oil-rich and rapidly developing Gulf states such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hardly resemble poor, struggling, underdeveloped countries such as Mali and Yemen.
Islamic republics such as Iran contrast sharply with the more secular-oriented governments of Egypt and Syria. Arab and Muslim nations have a history of rivalry and conflict: Saddam's Iraq versus Iran, Iraq versus Kuwait, and Egypt versus Sudan. We also forget the vast cultural differences among Muslims: less than a quarter are Arab; the majority of Muslims are Asian or African. Finally, significant religious differences exist between Sunnis and Shias who, despite their common Islamic faith, have critical theological and political differences and religious orientations that range from ultra-orthodox to liberal reformers.
The surprising conclusion? Muslims globally, like people of many other faiths, are geographically, racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse. To the further surprise of many, even in terms of some values, Muslims show substantial diversity. For example, only 27 per cent of Jordanians and 33 percent of Saudis say divorce "cannot be morally justified," while 46 per cent of Egyptians and 92 per cent of Bangladeshis assign divorce this label. This difference among Muslims not only illustrates how diverse Muslims are as people with varying cultures and norms, but it also exemplifies the rich diversity within Islam's schools of thought, which hold differing opinions on the issue of divorce.
In contrast to expected differences, the number of commonalities we find between the Muslim world and the West shatters many myths. A significant number of Americans and Muslims believe that religion is or ought to be a pillar of their society, informed and guided by the Bible or Sharia. Majorities of both groups cite the importance of religion in public life and the preservation of family values.
Each group is concerned about its economic future, employment and jobs, and the ability to support its families. Each gives high priority to technology, democracy, the importance of broad political participation, and freedoms of speech and social justice.
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mbay
Germany
1007 Posts |
Posted - 03 Oct 2008 : 19:25:22
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Thanks Musa.
(Slowly) Much falsehood lastly coming to the light, that's why i am for “Islam study at the educations institution”, there; everyone will have it in black and white. And not just through those twisty politicians and some of their powerful right hands (the medians)
Yes i agree that the views between the west are wider as much as that is knowing to us, because every one of them have their own interest or egoism, and win of the change is also on the move, which is the mother of all this irritation.
Although. Clear information should solve all this confusion and will remain only to everyone to take a decision or not.
But today if you ask anyone about Islam or about others topics, the 80% of the answer will come from the maidens or the foretellers, so if there is no favour or interest they will simply manipulated, by all means! (A Subliminal specialist)
Are they consoling enough? There is no need of panic or influence of hindrance, let everyone get it in black and white and judge the thing by himself.
True is always the winner in battlefield!
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