Dear Ecofem,
In reply to Nicole and Jessica:
You are copping out in pretense and speaking double-talk betraying your
sisters for the tradition. You are both belittling the plight of the women
of Afghanistan and what they are crying out for. Neither did I say I had
come to destroy the law and the prophets but to liberate those in bondage.
The bad clauses repressing women go, the great insights remain. The
tradition of Islam is renewed in peace - Sakina and in the liberation of
the 'umma' the mother-unit of Islam into freedom, reproductive and
otherwise, in trust. If you wish to wear the veil for modesty so be it, but
let it never be enforced upon you, lest your reproductive freedom be denied
you again.
Your arguments for Shariat are insubstantial. They do not defend either
the Quran or Shariat. Law and scripture is defensible only if it is just
and responsive to change. The doors of independent reason were closed in
the fifteenth century by the colleges. This is a dead end of evolution.
I'm afraid I know the Qur'an only too well. Women are half the value of a
man and are to be beaten. Adultresses are to be confined in their house
until death takes them or allah finds some other way (in particular?). The
hadith include atrocious statements denigrating and belittling women, that
women are to be likened to dogs and Aisha herself commented very wryly on
it. That women are not capable of rational thought and that they are
disqualified by the curse of the menses.
Circumcision is practised on women in the name of Islam and in the name of
the sunna. It is still an accepted and enforced cultural practice
associated with several cultures within Islam through its very partial
acceptance by Muhammad's quote "Reduce but do not destroy". Egyptian
Islamic clerics insisted on re-instituting it to the outrage of women
worldwide.
I say: "Do not compel, Do not reduce, Do not destroy" to protect the gorl child.
I say end enforced mutilation in any form.
You cannot defend the indefensible by cloaking it in the pseudo-authority
of Shariat. That is the corruption of absolute power. The severed hands on
my home page tell another story of atrocity. So does the death fatwa on
Taslima Nasrin and the women stoned in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The
confinement of women in Islam is not for their good, but to control
reproductive freedom. Until women are reproductively free the world will
never be free. The Afghani women made this plea and you rejected it.
Muhammad committed the genocide of 700 Jewish men in the Souk of Medina
needlessly when they had not finally taken sides for or against the Quraysh
and when he did not get to Mecca by jihad. He has too much blood on his
hands. He is a genocidal butcher in the manner of Radovan Karadich. He
was a genuine visionary prophet who loved his many women also, but it was
only through the Sakina of Hudaybiyah that he received the circumambulation
of the Ka'aba.
The rest of Islam is insignificant by comparison with this one peace.
This is the destiny of Islam in salaam - shalom.
love, Chris.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chaos is the Mother of Invention - Necessity the Offspring
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chris KING, Phone: 0064-9-3737599 # 8818
Senior Lecturer Mathematics Fax: 0064-9-3737457
University of Auckland E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND, New Zealand.
http://matu1.math.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/genesis.htm
"Genesis of Eden" - Alta Vista Search
