Greens Demand Invitation of Afghan Women to Bonn Talks
on the Future of Afghanistan.
Outraged at the exclusion of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,
Greens call democracy impossible without representation of women. U.S. Green Party
officers travel to Europe for meetings with Green members of European parliaments
and other Green officials and the European Federation of Green Parties.
Revoluntionary Association of Women of Afghanistan http://rawa.false.net/na-appeal.htm
web site
November 16, 2001
By Fawzia Afszal-Khan
Salman Rushdie tells us in his Op-Ed essay in the New York Times (Friday, Nov 2,
2001), that "highly motivated organizations of Muslim men"-whom he labels
"Islamists"-have been "engaged over the last 30 years or so in growing
radical political movements" all over the Islamic world, movements that have
produced the terrorists who not only destroyed the symbols of the freedom-loving
West and killed 6000 innocent people in the process on 9/11, but who have been systematically
destroying the very societies of which they are a part, with much of their savage
venom focused on the female citizenry. In a parenthetical aside, Mr. Rushdie sighs,
"(oh, for the voices of Muslim women to be heard!)"
Well, I have news for Mr. Rushdie. Muslim women have been speaking out against the
obscurantist Islam he decries in his essay, for years and years and years, although
clearly Mr. Rushdie, and many others, have not paid them much heed. There are Muslim
women who are feminists, theologians, writers, lawyers, activists, scholars both
in the "Islamist" societies he paints with a broad brush, as well as in
the "west," who have been engaged in a two-pronged struggle against both
Islamic extremism as well as-and this is where their difference from Mr. Rushdie
arises-the unjust foreign policies of the United States that have contributed, and
continue to contribute, to the "hijacking" of Islam for terrorist ends.
Shall I name a few? Dr. Nawal El Saadawi is one, a dear friend and my colleague these
days at Montclair State University, who has written over 20 novels exposing the hypocrisy
of Egypt's rulers in their cynical use and abuse of Islam to whip up public support
for their repressive policies against free-thinking writers and intellectuals like
herself. For her criticism of Egyptian state repression (aided and abetted by the
foreign intervention of the United States), she got thrown into jail by Anwar Sadat,
a so-called anti-Islamist! She is currently in self-imposed exile here after having
suffered an attempt by the Egyptian authorities last summer to have her declared
a heretic, a blasphemer against Islam and the holy Prophet.
But she--like her many counterparts all over the Muslim world, such as Asma Jahangir
of Pakistan, Fatema Mernissi of Morocco, or the women of RAWA, the Revolutionary
Association of Women in Afghanistan, to name but a few--is not willing, unlike Mr.
Rushdie, to comprehend what happened on 9/11 merely in terms of Islam and its regressive
politics of blame directed at the West, and particularly at the United States. In
a conversation I had with her shortly after the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon,
she expressed the hope that the attacks, devastating as they undoubtedly were, might,
in the long run, prompt the U.S. to rethink its foreign policy, particularly in the
Middle East.
While I think Rushdie is correct in asking Muslim societies to look inward, to take
"responsibility for many of our own problems" so that we can then begin
to "solve them for ourselves," he is disingenuous in implying that such
"problems" can be "fixed" in isolation from global politics and
economics.
In an essay entitled, "At Critical Crossroads," published in Dawn, the
largest circulating English-language daily of Pakistan , Asma Jahangir, leading advocate
of Human and Women's Rights and President of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan,
(who has herself had to face innumerable death threats from "Islamists"
for her courageous defense of women victims of the most hideous "crimes of honor"),
writes from a "both/and" perspective regarding the 9/11 catastrophe, in
contradistinction to Rushdie's univocal analysis. She observes that while the people
of Pakistan, familiar with acts of terrorism and their consequences, have almost
unanimously condemned the killing of innocent people in New York and Washington,
and that while "there can be no justification for, nor rationale behind such
acts," nevertheless, such a terrible deed does call for reflection by the entire
world leadership.
Like Rushdie, she exhorts the "Muslim world to correct its rhetoric against
'infidels' and promote a culture of democracy and tolerance within their own countries,"
yet, she simultaneously-and in contradistinction to Rushdie-insists that "The
North needs to change its policies toward the South." She goes on to tell us
that while the majority of Pakistanis do NOT support the Taliban regime, their lack
of support for them "is not because they respect the U.S.-whom they closely
associate with the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians-but because there
is growing resentment against domestic jihadi groups and disrespect for the Taliban
style of government." Should her reporting of Pakistani sentiment against unjust
Israeli policies toward the Palestinians be read as evidence of Pakistani "anti-Semitism"
and "Islamic slander against Jews" as Rushdie seems to suggest? That would
hardly seem justified here.
What about the statements we have seen in recent weeks from RAWA, posted on the internet?
In these, we are hearing the voices of revolutionary Afghani women who have been
speaking out against the atrocities of the Taliban regime for the past twenty years
at grave risk to their own lives, yet, who has been listening? In a statement that
began circulating on September 14th, these women express their "deep sorrow
and condemnation for this barbaric act of violence and terror" that was committed
against the innocent people of the United States, yet they also wish to remind the
world that, unfortunately, it was "the government of the United States who supported
Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq in creating thousands of religious schools
from which the germs of the Taliban emerged." They also point out that Osama
Bin Laden had, at one time, been the "blue-eyed boy of the CIA." What is
scariest of all, perhaps is the following observation, that "American politicians
have not drawn [sic] a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country
and are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader."
They are, of course, referring to the U.S support of the so-called Northern Alliance,
which, according to a spokeswoman of RAW I heard just a few days ago at Judson Memorial
church in Greenwich Village, has committed worse atrocities than even the Taliban,
including the rape of 70 year old women. Do all of these observations of the Revolutionary
Women of Afghanistan amount to an unfair and crippling "politics of blame"
against the U.S. as Rushdie would have it? And if so, what does it mean that such
a misguided view of world politics is held and being propagated here NOT by fundamentalist
"Islamists," but by their victims and staunchest critics, the ordinary
Muslim (not Islamist) women of Afghanistan?
Perhaps we should consider carefully the bone-chilling consequences foreshadowed
by RAWA in the following statement: "The U.S. government should consider the
root cause of this terrible event, which has not been the first, and will not be
the last one too." Perhaps we should read this statement juxtaposed next to
a statement issued by the Joint Action Committee for Citizens Rights and Peace, a
committee comprised of the Institute of Women's Studies , Lahore (IWSL), as well
as several other women's groups and NGOs in Pakistan, and issued on October 3rd,
2001.
"Civilization," note the JAC members, "is not synonymous with capitalism
or global political and economic power." Hence, the members of this coalition
committee strongly believe that forms other than the use of violence can, and must,
be worked out for conflict resolution, and they are therefore, unequivocally (like
RAWA), against the U.S waging war on the innocent people of Afghanistan.
They are quick to point out that in the current crisis in which the world finds itself,
America has played no small role, to say the least; such an analysis leads them to
the inevitable conclusion that echoes RAWA's warning:
In this context the international community must note the resentment generated by
insensitive and unjust policies of the United States, particularly in their unconditional
support to the aggressive policies of Israel towards the people of Palestine and
in their sustained campaign against the people of Iraq. It should be remembered that
much of the terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan stems from international interventions
in the region including by the United States for its own political ends in which
Osama Bin Laden himself was originally an ally of the U.S.
Lest we be led into agreeing with Rushdie's thesis that such an analysis smacks of
a "paranoic" Islamism that wishes to "blame all its troubles on the
West and, in particular, the United States," we would do well to remind ourselves
that the statement was issued by largely secular, certainly anti-Islamist women's
groups and NGOs of Pakistan, who make explicitly clear that they have, in keeping
with the "both/and" imperative I referred to earlier, "persistently
called upon the authorities in Pakistan to take a firm stand against those groups
that have promoted violence, sectarianism, and extremism in our country."
Thus, it is indeed possible, I would say crucially important, to comprehend the current
world crisis not in a simplistic way as "this is about Islam" or "no
it is not about Islam," but in the complex ways that the women of the Muslim
world have been seeing and describing it even before T-Day 9/11. The world should
listen to these voices, the female voices allied with the "secularist-humanist
principles" Rushdie seems to think don't exist in the Islamic world.
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a professor in the Department of English at Montclair State
University.
|