By now, we have all heard about Nujood Ali, the incredibly heroic ten year girl in Yemen who fled her abusive husband and demanded a divorce. This act was the first of its kind in a country where girls as young as eight are given away in marriage.
Nujood Ali
We want her as an ally. We want her counterparts in the Muslim world as allies. We want Mukhtaran Bibi on our side. She is the young Pakistani woman who was gang-raped by her alleged social superiors in order to cover up their other crimes. She escaped. She was not silenced by shame. She did not kill herself. Unlike Phoolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen (a girl after my own heart), Bibi did not join a gang of outlaws and then exact personal revenge. Despite numerous death threats, Mukhtaran Bibi legally pursued the criminals–and won.
Mukhtaran Bibi
Personally, I wish we had more women like Nujood Ali, Mukhtaran Bibi (alright, like Phoolan Devi too) right here. Their bravery is astounding. Although they have much to lose (their lives for starters), they also have much to gain since they are debased from morning to night from the moment of their birth.
Now, Nujood Ali has written a memoir: I Am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced.
Go to Amazon. You will read this:
“I’m a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no.”
Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.
Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer, (Shada Nasser) heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention.
The upcoming National Women’s Studies Association should invite Ali and Bibi to keynote their convention in Denver later this year. Their program concerns “Difficult Dialogues” and features panels on “Indigenous Feminisms,” “The Politics of Nation,” “Outsider Feminisms,” and the “Critical and the Creative.” They wish to re-position “violence against women” by taking into consideration “nationalism, militarism, religious fundamentalism, land rights, war,” etc. They also wish to “effectively challenge nationalistic rescue narratives within and outside the U.S. (i.e. ‘saving’ Muslim women under the Taliban as a justification for US invasion)?”
Ahem. That is not why America invaded Afghanistan.
Still, I think that Nujood and Bibi would genuinely qualify for and would illuminate, even bless, this gathering of American Women’s Studies professors and students.
The National Women’s Studies Association is comprised of poorly educated individuals. These are the female versions of Ward Churchill. Their degrees are phonier than the proverbial three-dollar bill. There is no realistic possibility of them criticizing a dark skinned Third World culture. They are existentially convinced that only a racist would do so. The pseudo-educated women have not even severely rebuked white skinned David Letterman. Misogynist men of color should have little be concerned about. As I said previously, Phyllis Chesler is wasting a lot of time trying to convert those who will probably remain goofy until the very end of their life. Full-grown adults don’t normally change that much as they get older. The odds are similar to improving the behavior of the skid row bum who only lives for his next bottle of cheap booze.
Unfortunately, considering the current cultural and political climate, Nujood and Bibi would probably be hooted off the stage of this convention, accused of being agent provocateurs, traitors to their indigenous genders, tools of the US military industrial complex, etc., before they could get a word out. I can think of no greater tragedy – and no greater sign of the end times – than the fact that there isn’t a place on this earth (save, perhaps, Phyllis’ apartment, and it’s getting damned crowded in there) where these and others like them might find safe haven.
The courage of these young women is awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, we can’t expect too many people to be capable of taking such heroic risks.
I remember reading something in the press right after the Taliban had to get out of Kabul. Women were rejoicing that they could go to the zoo. Never before had I realized how wonderful it is to be allowed to visit a zoo. Let us all be thankful that we live in countries where trips to the zoo are not against the law. The Taliban could not permit freedoms as minor as that to women.
Dear Phyllis
If your livingroom is getting too crowded for all the brave Muslim women who need to escape from their domineering, abusive families and cultures, perhaps we need to set up a foundation and a fund to provide such support and protection. We would, however, need to ensure there were no infiltrators, no attackers ready to break in, and so-called human rights groups ready to take legal action against such racist acts.
Norman
I find all of my liberal friends resent receiving informative emails like this story. Not even a funny joke, if a democrat is the butt of it, can be tolerated by them. I quit trying to inform them long ago.
So if you wonder why the liberated women ignore the plight of women in the Middle East, it is a determination to remain ignorant so they can cling to their own victimhood. Homosexuals do the same thing, even knowing they would be killed in the M.E. They will go to their graves in fear of “Christian extremists” in order to remain offended and victimized.
A PhD acquired in a “studies” program is usually a joke. The intellectually second rates normally gravitate toward the departments devoted to racial and gender concerns. The greatest mistake of the woman’s movement may be its involvement in the affirmative action programs of the 1960s. Left-wing women essentially demanded inflated grades and unearned positions—and darn well got what they wanted. And these females were more than willing to pay the number one price: their complaints were to be severely limited to the alleged white male power establishment. White men were deemed to be the real enemy. Men of color were inherently considered to be victims. Disgusting white males were ultimately responsible for their possible misbehavior. Last but not least, all these troubles will disappear overnight once we institute utopian socialism. The misogynist black males of the third World will become fervent feminist advocates once they get nationalized health care. Once again, I am not joking. I am dead serious.
What to say? Of course these brave muslim women should be invited as Phyllis should too by the way.
When I read about the nationalist stuff I become suspicious since most of the time women’s rights are put in a corner and other issues are given the center stage. I may be wrong but I suspect this organisation if completely indocrinated by cultural relativists.
I will be happy to be proven wrong.
I noted by the way that they do not mention jewish and Israel studies in the list of studies that should incorporate women’s studies as well.
Has someone any clue for this absence?
By the way I have just finished to read the posts in some italian feminists websites and nearly all the comments were against the proposed law banning the burqa. I do not know if it’s better to cry or to laugh. This is a shocking outrage! Having so called feminists defending the burqa while even religious muslim authority have stated it’s unislamic.
I have to rely on our ciousins french feminists who are the ones who, for the most part, are definetly against the burqa and other oppressive islamic gender apartheid abuses.
And, I do what I can do in my indipendent feminist newsblog.
1. David Thomson:
[Full-grown adults don’t normally change that much as they get older.]
This is true.
[The odds are similar to improving the behavior of the skid row bum who only lives for his next bottle of cheap booze.]
Odds as bad as your example or worse.
However, change is not only possible, alas, without its possibility, then there is no hope. Not as a corollary, but change is possible, but it is often, and for the majority, a lifetime endeavor (one more argument for metempsychosis).
People think they have changed, but the problem, the defect, has only, upon scrutiny, found a new vein, a new source of manifestation, and lay in wait, often upsurging with redoubled energy.
At the end, the only possible real change is by an act of Grace. It is an advance bestowed by the grace of the Mother (Maheshwari).
“The upcoming National Women’s Studies Association should invite Ali and Bibi to keynote their convention in Denver later this year. Their program concerns “Difficult Dialogues” and features panels on “Indigenous Feminisms,” “The Politics of Nation,” “Outsider Feminisms,” and the “Critical and the Creative.” They wish to re-position “violence against women” by taking into consideration “nationalism, militarism, religious fundamentalism, land rights, war,” etc. They also wish to “effectively challenge nationalistic rescue narratives within and outside the U.S. (i.e. ’saving’ Muslim women under the Taliban as a justification for US invasion)?”
…………………………………..
You can’t expect that these women and girls will be invited to a convention who’s priority is to condemn America for going to war rather than the horrific treatment of women in muslim countries.
Candice E. Jackson’s book, Their Lives: The Women Targeted By The Clinton Machine highlights the values of the woman’s movement. Left-wing feminists threw them under the bus. They are presently doing the same thing regarding the previously mentioned David Letterman. If these female activists are not willing to irritate disgusting white men—what are the odds of their taking to task dark skinned men of the Third World?
Excellent Phyllis — the pictures — we need the pictures — they should be in the New York Times.
It is more important to get these brave women onto national cable tv shows such as Hannity, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Sustren, etc. than to get them to the National Women’s Studies Association (which is a total waste of time).
In fact, getting them on “The Factor” would be a good move. I would love to see Behar and Whoopie squirm in their seats as they learn what the real world is really like.
Then get them on the college speaking circuit. The Left and Feminazis and Jihadists will have a hard time attacking them, esp. the youngest of them. They’ve talked the talk and walked the walk.
More power, and peace, to them.
I could not help myself. I wrote the NWSA in a rage — I remember in law school when the defense attorneys wanted to belittle something they were afraid of they would use the word “saviors”. “Child saviors” they would derisively refer to those who were exposing the horrific amount of child abuse in the US. Now here they are co-opting using that word to belittle the efforts of actual feminists to support Muslim women who want freedom. How dare they call this feminism when it is just left women supporting fascism as they always do. They are not and never were feminists. Academic women are disgusting to me. That they should pick clean the bones of what once was a movement is disgusting. What is “women’s studies”? What are the credentials for being hired as a feminist? Shouldn’t you have done some actual organizing or at least published research? Now they have conferences to organize NOT supporting women. Because being against war under all circumstance is what the boys on the left demand or they will take away the mantle of “progressive” from the academic women and the academic women will be very cold without that cloak. Oh well, without the street these women studies Dept’s will soon lose their funding. Then academic women can come and work for the man with the rest of us. It will be very instructive for them.
1. David and 2. Lou: I agree – very good Points.
7. Gianni: please Check ADRIANA BOLCHINI – a sort of Phyllis Chesler made in Italy.
Otherwise, Western Feminists are just part of these Western People who almost know Nothing about Islamic Reality. They’re still thinking it is a Matter of “Religion of Peace” and they believe in the Bull Sh*** about “Freedom of Religion”.
Or: they’re Women enchanted by Tales about (Arabo-)Islamic (Middle) East – Phyllis Chesler fell in Love with an Afghan, and you can ask her how did she feel at that Time, what did she think at that Time, what kind of Enchantement did she experience at that Time toward her Husband’s Culture.
9. Laura: the Problem is actually that most of (Islamic) Feminists are against America and Israel and The West, too. It is a very complex Matter –
they need the Support of the Free World (otherwise they’ll be immediately killed within their own Communities), but they want to protect their Religion and its Causes (see: Islamic Supremacism over unmoral West; Islamo-palestine; …).
Therefore either (Western/Foreigner) Supporters of these Women fully agree with their global Views, or there is an Ideological Problem: if Supporters help them, they destroy themselves (Non-islamic World has to sumbit to Islam).
***
IN THE WEST WE LACK OF REALISTIC INFORMATION ABOUT ISLAM AND ITS POLICY. UP TO NOW ISLAMIC FEMINISTS ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS WITHIN ISLAM, WHICH DISCRIMINATE AGAINST NON-ISLAMIC PEOPLE (WOMEN).
It must be recognized that “Islam did NOT liberated Women” and that “Free Western Women are NOT Bitches”.
Offhand I’d say this young girl had better watch her back. Or hire a good bodyguard. Or both.
The feminist movement is an absolute disgrace these days. They are completely silent about the misogynist third world cultures that they for some reason insist move to the U.S. They are too busy not voting for Hillary for president (because they are jealous of her. Why does SHE get to be President? Whaaaa!) and ridiculing Sarah Palin. That’s all they care about. Oh, and their tiresome fertility treatments, that we hear about ad nauseam, because they didn’t have kids when they were young and healthy, being too busy squandering their reproductive years sleeping with losers. Yep. That’s what it’s come to. I guess feminism succeeded too well. Well, they’re in for a shock that’s all I can say.
Dear Julia, Excuse me for not hearing my feminist voice over the din of the right wingers owned media,but feminists don’t own the many media channels,like Fox, etc. We are never invited to bring up our narrative in defense of these poor women in islamic countries. I would also bring up the fact that here in the USA there is spike in violence against women, that women are killed and raped every day , rape culture has silenced us lest we are ‘man haters”.
There is a gender war against women globally. Women are not important enough for Fox to cover the violence against us. The feminist movement has become invisible, except for Ms magazine. Reports are out there, a woman in the military for example
has a better chance to be raped then to be shot. And what are you doing in defense of women Julia?
Feminist Voice:
The following are powerful and high profile women in the media. Perhaps they can help get your message out. If not, well that’s what I mean by feminism becoming a disgrace:
The View – Whoopie Goldberg, Joy Behar, Barbara Walters
Kate Couric,
Christiane Amanpour, reporter CNN
Oxygen Network
Oprah Winfrey, host and producer, Oprah Winfrey Show, editor in chief, O Magazine
Gayle King, reporter, O Magazine
Maria Shriver, influential freelance TV reporter and First Lady of California
Tina Brown, editor , The Daily Beast – dailybeast.com, popular website
Joni Evans, CEO , Wowowow.com, popular website re women’s issues
Joan Walsh , Salon.com – editor,
Terri Gross, on air host and producer , NPR Fresh Air; popular talk show,
Greta Van Susteren – Fox
Maureen Dowd, columnist The New York Times
Camille Paglia, columnist Salon.com, writer and professor
Tammy Bruce, feminist author, has a website – tammybruce.com
And yes, it does seem a lot more violent in the U.S. for women, this is I’m sure because of the glorified misogyny in rap music that is so pervasive in our culture. It is everywhere. The violence also no doubt correlates to the rise in third world cultures that are now in the U.S. The third world and the mideast are misogynist cultures, and that is why they have failed.
What do I do to help women? I vote for women. Perhaps the sisterhood could also.
17. Feminist – sic – Voice: please, don’t try to fool Others.
Re-starting again, we might differenciate between Political Wings – Left and Right and else – and Feminism, which is – my Opinion – meant to promote Women’s Rights and Equality of the Genders before the Law.
Now, politically speaking, the Left is supporting Islam and Islam-ism, and generousely – sic – applying politically Correctness toward it and their (wealthy and/or mass-immigrating) Community/-ies.
Therefore from the Left we usually hear the Apology of Islam, that it is “a/the Religion of Peace” that – even – “Islam liberated Women” and that “Extremists are Misunderstanders of Islam” (despite what Critics of Islam – of Islamic Origine – and Reformers of Islam say and try to teach).
Fox News produced a very important and interesting Documentary about Honor Murders and all what – one like you, who states to be a Feminist Voice – has to say is that Fox is a “Right Wingers owned Media”, meaning to blame it?
You are a Leftist Voice not a Feminist one. Please underline the (huge) Difference.
***
Do you know Anything about Shari’a Law? Anything about Women’s Rights’ Movements of the (Western) Past? Nothing about Mass Immigration from Islamic/-ist Countries which brought here their “Honor” Mentality and Sexual Apartheid? Which is absolutely Islamic, and Islamic is an involutive Ideology which is meant – among other Things – to destroy our Freedom(s) – see Hizb utTahrir and Dalia Mogahed, presidential Advisor on Islamic Matters, which praises Shari’a, and Others -, those of Women included.
***
Here None is denying that full Women’s Rights and Equality are far from being reached, but from the Left there is no harsh Critic against that Ideology which is very misogynist, called Shari’a Islamic Law, which is both legally/officially and secretly/privately practiced. Which is, anyway, pushed forward, even at international Level (see United Nations).
***
From these 2 Comments (17. and 18.) I see that Julia is doing far more than you do, for Women’s Rights. Eventually you’re very engaged in a political Battle against so called The Right; please, avoid to call you a Feminist, this is very offensive.
No 12 Max Friedman
What is a feminazi? Especially what is a feminazi when grouped with Jihadists and the Left?
The fact is that the worst enemy of a woman is a man. If I were a woman in the US, I would go around armed at all times. The best martial art for women is Israeli “Krav Maga”. Highly recommended ladies. It is also great to know Krav Maga if you travel to dangerous places. I once used it on 2 touts at Dehli’s New Train Station at 4:30 AM (one of the most dangerous train stations in the world around its outside). I did not send them to the hospital out of pity, just roughed them up a little.
You see, Krav Maga teaches you to use common things as deadly weapons, such as your keys, a small flash light, a pen to gouge out an eye, and simple things like that. It is the only martial art where sparring is really not recommended. I used to take classes in a synagogue in MiamA Beach with Master Blitstein, shown in this video. Really you don’t want to be in a fight with this Jew, believe me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfQXur764Q
21. MiamA (pls explain the Meaning of your Name), I actually feel we (Western People?) miss a Self-Defence Training. The World & our Societies are getting more and more dangerous, but we are still the “Potatoes” we were when almost peaceful People surrounded and visited us. When I was a Child there was Nothing such as locking up the Door; Today locked up Doors & Alarm Systems are not enough, & Elderlies get targeted & aggressed.
***
I would like to know what does an Israeli Woman know about Self-Defence (are all in the Army?).
22. HellenoChristian:
The English spoken in MiamA is practically accent-less. As you start going up Florida state the southern accent gets thicker (remember the accents of Florida’s governors Bob Graham and before Bob Martinez).
Miami was colonized by New Yorkers coming after Flagler (many from up state New York, not necessarily from New York city, some Jews too). Flagler was a multimillionaire that got rich in the oil business with Rockefeller. He probably had an anal fixation with the swamps and the mosquitoes down here, and decided to drain the whole thing.
Anyhow, this dying race of Gringos (like the Boers race now dying) pronounced Miami MiamA. You may still find a few around, very old, as these are people who came here in the 1920s and 1930s. I sympathized with them and liked them. They were usually rough, tough, racist, hard-drinking, with a strong individualistic streak, the type often described by Hemingway, for example in his novel “To Have and Have Not” (Henry Morgan), or in that tremendous short story set in Key West named “After the Storm”. Check it out.
22. HellenoChristian:
Order this Krav Maga set from Amazon and start training at home, you can also lose weight in the process:
http://www.amazon.com/Krav-Maga-Complete-5-DVD-Set/dp/B000246SY6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1266496134&sr=8-1
Eyal Yanilov is probably the best Krav Maga master alive. He trained directly with founder Imi Sde-Or (Hungarian Jew Imi Lichtenfeld, later from Netanya where he died at 88).
23. + 24. MiamaMan: thank you!
To #20 Green consciousness: “Feminazi” is a term Rush Limbaugh coined to describe extremist feminists (not moderate feminists) who use bullying tactics to intimidate those they oppose (their Nazi descendants were both the Brown Shirts and the Black Shirts of the early-mid 1930′s, i.e. Hitler’s street thugs [who, in 1933, killed the great uncle of a friend of mine and left his body in the streets - he was a Jewish soldier in the German Army in WW1 who had won the Iron Cross]).
THe leaders of NOW are and have been “feminazis” in their wholesale attacks on others, including women who have asked them to speak out on behalf of oppressed women in Moslem countries. Rosie O’Donnell is one, as is Jane Garofalo.
From Chesler’s latest post “feminist hawk”:
And, let me be clear. As I told David Swindle: There are real feminists out here.
They are not media icons nor are they Democratic Party operatives. It gives me no joy to attack faux feminists for being exactly what they are: faux feminists.
I do not recognize as feminists those Straw Women whom the media or whom politicians happily appointed because they looked “good” and were willing to follow and swallow Party Lines. I will continue to challenge real feminists who have become Stalinized or Palestinianized and who insist on romanticizing Islamic jihad and scapegoating Israel.
However, while fifth column leftism and feminism is a problem, the far greater problem is that of jihadic terrorism and barbarism