Affinity

Austen asked me if I had read this article in the Guardian a couple of days ago. And, well, I hadn't. It's an interview by journalist John Sutherland of the author Phyllis Chesler and it's a very well written piece so I would urge you to read it.

"In 1961, Phyllis Chesler agreed to marry her college sweetheart, a young, westernised Muslim man who had come to study in the US. At his request, they married and lived in his home country, Afghanistan. "When we arrived in the country they took my American passport away - very typical with foreign wives," she says."

Sutherland then goes on to describe how Chesler's experiences as a western woman, plunged suddenly into an islamic society, led her to the conclusion that feminism has failed Muslim women.

I can't argue with anything Sutherland says in his article, nor with Chesler's conclusions, I quote again,
"The result, she argues, is that "instead of telling the truth about Islam and demanding that the Muslim world observes certain standards, you have westerners beating their breasts and saying, 'We can't judge you, we can't expose you, we can't challenge you.'"

I think she is right, we are so afraid of being labelled islamaphobic that we don't challenge loudly enough. The rights of women as human beings are disregarded as a matter of course in many of these countries, even ones we are friendly with such as Saudi Arabia, although as I have said before, the signs are that this is changing.

But I wonder whether it is really the religion of these countries that is to blame, or is it simply a common factor?

My experience in teaching has exposed me to quite a range of approaches to Islam. I have mentioned before the easy dialogue between Muslims and Christians at my previous school. We went to their Eid party, they sent us Christmas cards.

There was a girl who started with us who came from quite a traditional Muslim family and when she arrived, she wore the headscarf that has created so much of a stir in France. After a while, she went through the ritual where her hair is pulled out by female relatives, so again, something that was quite different from the experience of many of our other Muslim children. But even she, after a while, decided and was allowed to do so by her family, that she was no longer going to wear the headscarf.

A Muslim colleague in my own department told me that within her own family there was a range of observances. She did not believe that her head had to be covered, and she felt that much of the fundamentalism we see is not based on anything within the Q'uran.

There was the recent example in the British press, of a Muslim girl who had taken her school to the highest court in the Land because she wanted to be allowed to wear some kind of total body covering dress and trousers to school. The school, whose Headteacher was muslim, had agreed a suitable tunic and trousers unform with the local imams. The courts ruled in favour of the school, pointing out that she was agreeing to the rules, including the uniform rules of the school, by attending.

In Britain, and I am sure here in Canada too, the differences in behaviour between Muslims and Christians are not so huge, they do appear to me to be in the nature of how the religions are observed rather than a complete disregard for the egalitarian laws of either country - and look how Ms. Chesler was suckered in when her boyfriend was in America - he behaved as a westerner.

Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country, and it is one that has a long road to travel before it meets standards of treating all of its citizens that are acceptable to the EU. Nonetheless, as a nation, it has expressed a desire to join the EU and to meet the requirements. There are fundamentalists within the country who disagree, but they are in a minority and not in control at present. Turkey has a hell of a lot to gain from joining the EU and the EU has a lot to gain by letting it - ultimately.

And yet, and yet, it is difficult to ignore the fact that many of the countries where women are monstrously treated, denied human rights and suffer the ridiculously named female circumcision - circumcision does not after all remove a man's sexual sensitivity - are Muslim countries.

I am not offering an answer. I personally feel that Christianity grafted very well onto European Celtic practices. Maybe an affinity is what I am suggesting. And now that we have mostly stopped fighting within the religion, we get on well enough, there is something for everyone within the faith, although we're probably at our best when we identify the nutcases and don't listen to them.

So is there something about Islam that has an affinity with the more repressive societies? My opinion, based on what I know from Muslim friends rather than any personal knowledge of the Q'uran, is that there is nothing inherently repressive about the religion. It may be that as with anything else, it's how it has been used and represented that have created what are now entrenched problems.

But I return to that point Ms. Chesler makes about sensitivity. We cannot ignore abuse on the grounds of religion, we cannot close our eyes and let women be systematically mistreated and yes, our leaders should not be cosying up to countries that allow practices that are fundamentally inhumane. Religion must not be used as an excuse, because after all, what sort of god would allow that?

God as a deep-seated mysogynist, doesn't ring quite true somehow.