In the age of #MeToo, Muslim women are final­ly break­ing the chains of si­lence: Sheema Khan

2018/03/08 Leave a comment

Another good column by Sheema Khan:

As the #MeToo move­ment rico­chets through many parts of the world, it has yet to achieve high visi­bil­ity in Muslim cul­tures.

None­the­less, there have been a few laud­able ef­forts to bring sex­ual abuse to the fore­front.

Re­cent­ly, Mona Eltahawy lent her in­flu­en­tial voice to the dis­turbing oc­cur­rence of sex­ual ha­rass­ment at the Kaa­ba, (in Mecca), Islam’s hol­i­est site, through the hashtag #MosqueMeToo. One of the rit­uals of pil­grim­age (both the hajj and umrah) re­quires circ­ling the Kaa­ba sev­en times, while in sol­emn re­mem­brance of God. At times, it can get very crowded. Many women have ex­peri­enced hu­mili­a­tion by men who use the situ­a­tion to grope, poke and fon­dle. Ms. Eltahawy shared her awful ex­peri­ence, when at the age of 15, a guard at the Kaa­ba grabbed her breast. She wrote in sup­port of Sabica Khan, who dis­closed her re­cent hu­mili­a­tion at the Kaa­ba — and en­dured back­lash on so­cial media. Since then, many women have shared their own har­rowing en­coun­ters – for­cing the issue out into the open.

In Pak­istan, fol­lowing the grue­some rape and mur­der of 7-year-old Zainab An­sari, many women came for­ward to tell of their own stor­ies of sex­ual abuse as chil­dren. 73-year-old fash­ion de­sign­er Maheen Khan – a Pak­istani icon – tweeted about sex­ual im­pro­pri­ety by her Koran teach­er her when she was six. A nas­cent #MeToo move­ment is be­gin­ning to make in­roads in con­serv­a­tive Pak­istan, as cour­age­ous women break the chains of shame and si­lence.

There are a num­ber of chal­len­ges fa­cing Muslim women who seek to speak out. These in­clude cul­tur­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al bar­riers (with­in com­mun­ities), and anti-Muslim senti­ment.

Cul­tur­al­ly, pub­lic dis­cus­sion of sex is ta­boo. Yet this is at odds with scrip­tur­al foun­da­tions of the faith. For ex­ample, the Proph­et Mohammed em­pha­sized the right of women to ex­peri­ence sex­ual pleas­ure. In these sources, one finds dis­cus­sion about wet dreams, cli­max and for­bid­dance of inter­course dur­ing men­stru­a­tion and anal sex (at all times). The dis­course is not sal­acious, but in­stead pro­vides guid­ance to the faith­ful. It also builds a frame­work in which sex­ual re­la­tions are seen as nat­ural and a means to cul­ti­vate mercy, love and tranquility be­tween spouses.

Family and clergy are two power­ful in­sti­tu­tions that si­lence women. Rath­er than put­ting shame and re­spon­sibil­ity on sex­ual abus­ers, the onus is placed on the vic­tims to keep quiet, so that the fam­ily’s honour re­mains in­tact. In com­mun­ities in which inter­action be­tween gen­ders is pri­mar­i­ly with­in ex­tended fam­ilies, there are ample op­por­tun­ities for abuse by male rela­tives. When I used to give lec­tures about “women in Islam,” it was de­press­ing­ly com­mon to have a young woman ap­proach me after­ward to con­fide her pain­ful abuse by a cous­in or an uncle dur­ing child­hood. I stopped giv­ing these lec­tures after one young woman broke down about her own fath­er’s in­ces­tu­ous behaviour.

Muslim clergy, schol­ars and Koran teachers gar­ner rev­er­ence for their com­mit­ment to the faith. There­fore, im­pugning sex­ual im­pro­pri­ety against this group is met with stiff re­sist­ance, de­nial and back­lash. Yet, with­out mean­ing­ful ac­count­abil­ity, abuse does hap­pen. Now, women are speak­ing out. In 2016, a prom­in­ent Chicago-based schol­ar, Moham­med Sa­leem, pleaded guilty to sex­ual­ly abus­ing a for­mer stu­dent and an em­ploy­ee at the school he founded. More civil suits are pend­ing. Last year, re­nowned Ko­ran­ic schol­ar Nouman Ali Khan was found to have com­mit­ted spirit­ual abuse and un­ethical behaviour to­ward a num­ber of young women. Last month, Ox­ford University Pro­fes­sor Ta­riq Rama­dan was placed under ar­rest in France, and is awaiting trial against rape char­ges by two women. He de­nies any wrong­doing.

In addi­tion to fa­cing com­mun­ity back­lash for speak­ing out, Muslim women must also con­tend with haters who use their pain to ma­lign an en­tire com­mun­ity.

These hur­dles are not in­sur­mount­able. The time has come to ad­dress sex­ual im­pro­pri­ety head-on.

In Canada, se­cond “se­cret” mar­riages are oc­cur­ring, in which a man takes on a se­cond wife, often un­be­knownst to either wife. This is noth­ing but san­i­ti­za­tion of an extra­mari­tal af­fair. It is a sham, and needs to be called out by the Can­ad­ian Council of Imams.

Last fall, the group Fa­cing Abuse in Community En­viron­ments was launched to hold ac­count­able imams, schol­ars and lead­ers for un­ethical and/or crim­in­al behaviour. A num­ber of in­ves­ti­ga­tions are under way, with ser­ious cases re­ferred to law en­force­ment for pros­ecu­tion.

In the end, we need to em­pow­er women to come forth with­out shame, and put the spot­light on men to take re­spon­sibil­ity for their behaviour.

via In the age of #MeToo, Muslim women are final­ly break­ing the chains of si­lence – The Globe and Mail

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Jonathan Kay: Why a murderer may have a better future than a #MeToo accused

2018/01/20 Leave a comment

Valid comments, applicable in many spheres, of the need for nuance and greater understanding:

An all-or-nothing process that can mete out exactly one kind of punishment — a lifetime of disgrace, or nothing at all — provides us with a thrilling kind of moral theatre, in which pure villains such as Harvey Weinstein get their due. But in cases where the facts are less damning, this black-and-white, permanent-ink approach doesn’t reflect the way most ordinary men and women judge — and eventually forgive — one another.

Things could be starting to change, however. In response to allegations that actor Aziz Ansari pressured a date to have an unpleasant sexual encounter, Bari Weiss of The New York Times wrote this week: “I am a proud feminist, (but if) you are hanging out naked with a man, it’s safe to assume he is going to try to have sex with you … Aziz Ansari sounds like he was aggressive and selfish and obnoxious that night … And isn’t it enraging that women are socialized to be docile and accommodating and to put men’s desires before their own? Yes. Yes. Yes. But the solution to these problems does not begin with women torching men for failing to understand their ‘nonverbal cues.’ It is for women to be more verbal.”

One advantage of this approach — of looking for shades of grey, and not casting every moment of sexual friction in the language of moral absolutism — is that it may ultimately induce men to take more responsibility for their actions, not less: When any admission of “selfish and obnoxious” behaviour is seen as tantamount to a rape confession, if punishment is seen as an all-or-nothing affair, there is little motivation for a man to publicly come to terms with his behaviour.

Megan Ganz, a sitcom writer who was mistreated last year by an older boss after she rebuffed his come-ons, took a novel approach on social media. Writing on Twitter two weeks ago, she used open-ended language to coax an admission from her former boss — Dan Harmon — that he’d treated her “like garbage,” and that “I was an awful boss and a selfish baby.”

I have no special insight into Harmon’s thinking. But the tone of their Twitter exchange, and a subsequent podcast by Harmon, suggests that he was responding to Ganz’s decision not to threaten her former tormentor with repercussions, or seek to rally antagonists with hash-tags.

“I think of Dan as a work in progress,” Ganz told The New York Times. “That’s how I think of myself, too. It’s dangerous to think of yourself as a hero and someone else as a villain. It gets in the way of empathy. We should be tearing down walls, not putting them up. Women are not different creatures from men. They don’t need to be extra careful around us. They just need to treat us with the same basic respect and dignity that they show to other men.”

Not all women can be expected to adopt this sort of generous attitude. When men are violent, or engage in full-blown criminal assault, no one should encourage them to turn the other cheek. Sometimes, scorched earth is the only way to go.

But for Ganz, the project of reforming male attitudes comes leavened with a sense of understanding and mercy — the same spirit that, I hope, will inform readers of my friend’s forthcoming book about prison life. As morally urgent as the #MeToo project may feel, it’s important to remember that most of us aren’t pure martyrs or pure monsters, but something in between.

Source: Jonathan Kay: Why a murderer may have a better future than a #MeToo accused

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,