Chris, Well obviously I disagree with you on many points...but we all don't have to agree on everything I suppose. Though I will not respond in kind to the little caustic insults contained within your post, I would ask, however, that you expand your horizens a bit and at least look over some of the work offerred by Muslim feminists (which is extensive) on this topic - yours is not the only perspective, and after reading some of this work (which I have referred to in other e-mails) you might not so easily insult the perspectives provided by Nicole and I. Jessica At 01:48 AM 3/14/99 +1200, you wrote: >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 >
