Hasna (left) and Marwa (right), nurses in their early twenties, were reluctant to be photographed on the street—primarily because of attention this drew from male Somalilanders—but were more comfortable in a quiet café. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
HARGEISA, Somaliland, Jun 10 2016 (IPS)

Amid the hustle and bustle of downtown Hargeisa, Somaliland’s sun-blasted capital, women in various traditional Islamic modes of dress barter, argue and joke with men—much of it particularly volubly. Somaliland women are far from submissive and docile.

Somaliland’s culture is strongly influenced by Islam—Sharia law is included in its constitution—while this religiousness appears to co-exist with many signs of a liberal free market society, a dynamic embodied by Somaliland women whose roles in society and the economy undercut certain stereotypes about women’s Muslim clothing equalling submission or coercion.

“The West needs to stop obsessing about what women are wearing—whether those in the West who are wearing less or those in the East who are wearing more,” says 29-year-old Zainab, relaxing in a new trendy café after her day job as a dentist in Hargeisa. “It should focus on what women are contributing to the community and country.”“It’s about what’s inside your head, not what’s over your head.” -- Zainab, dentist.

Somaliland has had to develop a strong entrepreneurial streak since 1991 and its declaration of independence from Somalia never being recognised by the international community, leaving it to rebuild its shattered economy and infrastructure alone following a civil war.

Today, many small businesses are run by women, who in addition to bringing up large numbers of children are often breadwinners for families whose husbands were physically or mentally scarred by the war.

“Here women are butchers—that doesn’t happen in many places. It shows you how tough Somaliland women are,” Zainab says. “It’s about what’s inside your head, not what’s over your head.”

The issue of how the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, instructs women to dress is a source of continuing debate around the world, although a traditional stance is taken in Somaliland with all women covering at least their hair in public.

“Everyone is free to follow their religion and this is what the Islamic religion says: that a woman should cover their body,” says Kaltun Hassan Abdi, a commissioner at the National Electoral Commission, responsible for female representation in elections.  “It’s an obligation, so women don’t see it as discrimination or violation of rights.”

But some Somalilanders express concern about a steady drift toward Islamic conservatism in Hargeisa: music no longer blares out from teashops; colourful Somali robes are increasingly replaced by black abayas; more women are wearing niqabs—face veils—than a year ago; and no woman goes about town bareheaded as happened in the 1970s.

“The last 15-18 years have witnessed a dramatic change in the extent to which religion influences how people live their daily lives,” says Rakiya Omaar, a lawyer and chair of Horizon Institute, a consultancy firm that works on strengthening the capacity and self-reliance of institutions in Somaliland. “There is pressure to live as a serious Muslim—it may be subtle or overt; it may come from family or it may be the wider society that you interact with.”

But it’s hard to find a woman in Hargeisa who says she feels pressurised by Islam or society’s adherence to it (women in smaller towns or rural areas are more likely to face increased religious conservatism, Omaar notes).

“I asked myself why I wear the hijab, and decided because that’s Allah’s will, and it’s part of my religion and my identity, and since then it’s been a choice,” Zainab says.

Zainab at work n Hargeisa, Somaliland. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

During Mohamed Siad Barre’s communist-inspired dictatorship throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Islam was suppressed in Somalia. Since Somaliland broke away, Islam has been able to reassert itself—including the flourishing of madrassas, Islamic religious schools—with positive effects, according to some.

“There are problems for women here but they’re not due to religion rather they are Somali cultural problems,” says Khadar Husein, operational director of the Hargeisa office of Transparency Solutions, a UK-based organization focused on capacity building in civil society.

“The man is mainly dominant in Somali society—things like domestic violence go back to that culture but has no root in Islam. Getting a more religious society means eliminating those cultural problems.”

But religion doesn’t appear to be easing restrictions on women in Somaliland’s political life.

“Without a women’s quota I don’t think there will be any more women in parliament,” Baar Saed Farah, the only female in the 82-member Lower Chamber of parliament, says about current lobbying to give 30 seats to women from forthcoming elections in 2017 (no women are permitted in the 82-member House of Elders in the Upper Chamber).

“In normal employment there is no differentiation between genders but when it comes to political participation it becomes very difficult for women because of a culture that favours men,” Farah says. “It has been there for a long time—even women may not accept a woman running for election as they’re so used to men always leading and making decisions.”

Somaliland remains a strongly male-dominated society. Polygyny, where a man can take several wives, is widely condoned and practised. Marriages are frequently arranged between the groom and the family of the bride—without the latter’s consent—and it’s easier for men to initiate a divorce. The prevalence of female genital mutilation in the Somalia region stands at about 95 percent, according to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund.

And while Somaliland women may be a force to be reckoned with among markets and street-side trading, they still face many limits to full economic opportunities.

“They only operate small businesses, you won’t find many rich business women here,” says Nafisa Yusuf Mohamed, director of Hargeisa-based female empowerment organisation Nagaad Network. “For now there aren’t many alternatives, but this could change as enrolment in higher education is improving.”

Expanding female education is also affecting Somaliland’s increasing religiousness, Mohamed explains, as today’s young women better understand than their mothers the Quran, becoming more avid adherents in the process.

She notes how many young Somalilanders such as her 17-year-old daughter, who recently started wearing the niqab of her own volition, use social media to discuss and learn more about Islam once they finish attending madrassas.

There are also other more prosaic reasons for wearing the likes of the niqab, observers note. Some women wear them because they are shy, or want to protect their skin from harsh sunlight, or want to fit in with friends wearing them.

Changing Muslim clothing trends may be most noticeable to the outsider, but other developments also illustrate Somaliland’s increasing religiousness: the extent mosque prayer times affect working hours, both in the public and private sector; the higher proportion of adults praying the full five times a day; and the increasing numbers of mosques built.

“These changes are also a response to wider regional and international developments which have affected the Muslim world, in particular the growing perception that life in the Western world is becoming more hostile to Muslims,” Omaar says.

Although for most Somalilanders, exasperation with the West appears to primarily stem from how countries such as the UK—Somaliland was a UK protectorate until 1960—continue to not recognise its sovereign status, resulting in enormous financial drawbacks for the country.

Hence, as Somaliland celebrates its 25th anniversary of unrecognized independence this year, its economy remains perilously fragile, with poverty and unemployment rampant among its roughly four million-plus population.

“If you look at the happiness of Somalilanders and the challenges they are facing it does not match,” Husein says. “They are happy because of their values and religion.”

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Oct 21 2014 (IPS)

When Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai adopted the name of Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Quraishi and revealed himself to the world as the Amir al-Mu’minin (the Commander of the Faithful) Caliph Ibrahim of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the whole world had to sit up and take notice of him. 

The choice of the long title that he has chosen for himself is most interesting and symbolic. The title Abu-Bakr clearly refers to the first caliph after Prophet Muhammad’s death, the first of the four “Orthodox Caliphs”.

Farhang Jahanpour

The term Husseini presumably refers to Imam Hussein, the Prophet’s grandson and Imam Ali’s son, who was martyred in Karbala on 13 October 680. His martyrdom is seen as a turning point in the history of Islam and is mourned in elaborate ceremonies by the Shi’ites.

Both Sunnis and Shi’ites regard Imam Hussein as a great martyr, and as someone who gave up his life in order to defend Islam and to stand up against tyranny.

Finally, al-Quraishi refers to Quraish, the tribe to which the Prophet of Islam belonged.

Therefore, his chosen title is full of Islamic symbolism.

According to an alleged biography posted on jihadi Internet forums, al-Baghdadi is a direct descendant of the Prophet, but curiously enough his ancestors come from the Shi’a line of the Imams who descended from the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah.

Despite his great hostility towards the Shi’ites, is this genealogy a way of portraying himself as the true son of the descendants of the Prophet, thus appealing to both Shi’ites and Sunnis?“The decision of some Western governments, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to topple the regime of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by training and funding Syrian insurgents provided al-Baghdadi with an opportunity to engage in jihad and to widen the circle of his followers, until he suddenly emerged at the head of thousands of jihadi fighters, again attacking Iraq from Syria”

According to the same biography, al-Baghdadi was born near Samarra, in Iraq, in 1971. It is alleged that he received BA, MA and PhD degrees in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad. It is also suggested that he was a cleric at the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque in Samarra at around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

According to a senior Afghan security official, al-Baghdadi went to Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where he received his early jihadi training. He lived with the Jordanian militant fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Kabul from 1996-2000.

It is likely that al-Baghdadi fled Afghanistan with leading Taliban fighters after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Zarqawi and other militants, perhaps including al-Baghdadi, formed al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In September 2005, Zarqawi declared an all-out war on the Shi’ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi and U.S. offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by U.S. forces on Jun. 7, 2006.

According to U.S. Department of Defense records, al-Baghdadi was held at Camp Bucca from February until December 2004, but some sources claim that he was interned from 2005 to 2009.

In any case, his history of militancy in both Afghanistan and Iraq and fighting against U.S. forces goes back a long way. He was battle-hardened in the jihad against U.S. forces, and being detained by U.S. forces further strengthened his ambitions and credentials as a militant jihadi fighter.

In the wake of the Arab Spring and anti-government protests in Syria, some Western governments, Saudi Arabia and Turkey decided to topple the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by training and funding Syrian insurgents.

The upheaval in Syria provided al-Baghdadi with an opportunity to engage in jihad and to widen the circle of his followers, until he suddenly emerged at the head of thousands of jihadi fighters, again attacking Iraq from Syria.

His forces conquered vast swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq, and he set up his so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (or greater Syria), ISIS.

On the first Friday in the Muslim month of fasting or Ramadan on Jul, 4, 2014 (American Independence Day), al-Baghdadi suddenly emerged out of the shadows and delivered the sermon at the Great Mosque in Mosul, which had been recently conquered by ISIS.

His sermon showed not only his command of Koranic verses, but also his ability to speak clearly and eloquently. He is certainly more steeped in radical Sunni theology than any of the al-Qaeda leaders, past and present, ever were.

His biographer says that Al-Baghdadi “purged vast areas in Iraq and Syria from the filth of the Safavids [a term referring to the 16^th century Iranian Shi’ite dynasty of the Safavids], the Nusayris [a derogatory term referring to the Syrian Alawite Shi’ites], and the apostate [Sunni] Awakening Councils. He established the rule of Islam.”

In his short sermon, al-Baghdadi denounced those who did not follow his strict interpretation of Islam as being guilty of bid’a or heresy. He quoted many verses from the Koran about the need to mobilise and to fight against non-believers, and to remain steadfast in God’s path.

He also stressed some key concepts, such as piety and performing religious rituals, obeying God’s commandments, and God’s promise to bring victory to the downtrodden and the oppressed. Finally, he talked about the need for establishing a caliphate.

In the Koranic context, these terms have broad meanings. However, in the hands of al-Baghdadi and other militant jihadis, these terms are given completely different and menacing meanings, calling for jihad and the subjugation of the non-believers.

The views and actions of al-Baghdadi and his followers are almost an exact copy of the Wahhabi revivalist movement instigated by an 18^th century theologian from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792).

Indeed, what we are seeing in Iraq now is almost the exact repetition of the violent Sunni uprising in Arabian deserts that led to the establishment of the Wahhabi state founded by the Al Saud clan almost exactly 200 years ago.

In 1802, after having seized control of most of Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi warlord Abdulaziz attacked Karbala in Iraq, killed the majority of its inhabitants, destroyed the shrine of Imam Hussein, where Prophet Muhammad’s grandson is buried, and his followers plundered everything that they could lay their hands on.

The establishment of that dynasty has resulted in the propagation of the most fundamentalist form of Islam in its long history, which eventually gave rise to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and now to ISIS and al-Baghdadi.

The jihadis reduce the entire rich and varied scope of Islamic civilisation, Islamic philosophy, Islamic literature, Islamic mysticism, jurisprudence, Kalam and tafsir (hermeneutics) to the Shari’a, and even at that, they present a very narrow and dogmatic view of the Shari’a that is rejected by the greatest minds in Islam, putting it above everything else, including their rationality.

Indeed, it is a travesty that such barbaric terrorist acts are attributed to Islam. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Libyan writer Aicha Almagrabi says women were part of Libya’s revolution but seen no political benefits from their participation. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

Unless immediate changes are enforced, Libya is heading towards an “Afghan” model regarding women´s rights, Aicha Almagrabi, a Libyan writer and senior women rights activist, told IPS from her residence in Tripoli.

Women who fight for their rights in Libya “are constantly insulted, harassed and threatened,” lamented the 57-year-old university professor, who also chairs the Organisation for the Defence of Freedom of Thought.

Almagrabi studied philosophy in Libya and France and is the author of four books of poetry, a novel and a play which has just been published in Arabic. She´s currently working on three other books, a task which she combines with her activism and lessons on “Philosophy of the Plastic Arts”.

Q: Last October marked two years since the overthrow and brutal killing of Muammar Gaddafi. What has changed for Libyan women since then?

A: Things have changed but not for the better, and we´ve lost the few rights we had. As an example, polygamy is still common currency in Libya but, at least, a man needed his wife´s approval to marry a second wife under Gaddafi (1969-2011). That is no longer required.

Actually, reviewing the law on polygamy was the first thing Mahmoud Jibril (head of the National Transitional Council) mentioned in his famous speech at the end of the (2011) war, even before talking about reconstruction or rebuilding civil society…

Changes? Libyan women were handed over as spoils of war.

At a street level, when women protest they face a lot of violence. Women advocating their rights are constantly insulted, threatened and harassed. We were part of the revolution, we had our own female martyrs, but we didn´t get any political benefits out of it.

Q: But some women do hold government positions today, don´t they?

A: They do, but they´re struggling to keep their seats. Their parties used them for mere electoral purposes. In the Committee of 60 (the group to be set up to write Libya´s constitution) there are only six seats for women.

One of the members of the General National Congress (the Libyan legislature) even suggested measures to prevent men and women from sharing the same space during meetings. Some figures are also eloquent: 90 percent of teachers are women but only two percent have reached the decision-making level.

Q: Nonetheless, politics seemingly play a lesser role compared to that of Libya´s mufti (religious high authority), Sadeq al Ghariani. Many say he is the country’s de facto leader.

A: The mufti holds religious power and is also backed by both the political and military bodies. They want Sharia (Islamic) law to be at the core of the penal code and the future constitution.

What they want to implement is actually based on their own interpretation of the Quran, so we could say that it´s more dangerous than the holy book. There´s always been a lot of talk about Sharia but few seem to notice that there are many versions of it: do we want the Iranian one? The Afghan? Maybe the Moroccan?

One of their main goals is to control women through their own vision of the Quran; that´s one of the reasons it is mandatory to keep religion separate from politics.

Girls at school are now forced to wear the hijab (a headscarf that covers women’s hair and necks but not their faces) and the mufti is also campaigning for all women to always cover their hair.

I´m a professor at Zaytuna University (in Tripoli), and I´m the only one who doesn´t cover her hair. The rest of my female colleagues wear either hijab or niqab (a headscarf and veil which reveals only the eyes). Their number is growing not because of the law – it´s more about group pressure.

Q: There are also rumours about a new fatwa (Islamic ruling) to be enforced from January 2014, according to which women won´t be able to travel across the country without a muharram (male companion).

A: It wouldn´t surprise me at all. I live outside the city, and on Feb. 13 I was stopped by a group of armed men on my way to work. They held me at gunpoint for an hour and a half because I had no muharram travelling with me. I took the issue to the media and it got the attention of the general public. On Mar. 14 we organised a protest called “the march for the dignity of women”. As usual, we were insulted, beaten and harassed.

Q: Is increasing violence in the country the most pressing problem for Libyan women today?

A: It´s just one among several. Women are limited by strong domestic ties. Besides, the streets are not safe for them. There are many street assaults and even kidnappings, but there´s still no visible will to grant women rights in the new constitution.

A low level of participation in civil society is also a big issue. We were very strong at the beginning (of the 2011 revolution) but growing pressure led to a decline in that strength since the end of the war.

Today we are very disappointed because we also took part in the revolution and now they want to change our ideals of freedom and justice through fatwas and religious speeches which have a very strong influence among the new generations.

Even Gaddafi switched to religion back in the 1980s when he realised that Islam could be an effective tool to gain greater influence over people. However, the lack of rights and freedom during his rule pushed many to more extreme positions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jihadists.

Q: What can help Libyan women in such a difficult scenario?

A: Even in the unlikely case that we finally get a constitution based on human rights, we would also need to conduct another revolution to change the mindset of Libyan women.

Nevertheless, a key question is to break the militia rule as well as that of all armed groups outside the umbrella of the national army and police before the constitution is written. If that doesn´t happen, we´ll be heading towards an “Afghan model” in women´s rights.

Sheikh Khattab heads an Islamic court in Syria. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS.

By Shelly Kittleson
IDLIB PROVINCE, Syria, Nov 21 2013 (IPS)

Concerns are rising that courts run by Islamic clerics in many of Syria’s rebel-held areas may serve as a prelude to Taliban-style justice in what was long a violently repressive but secular state.

Many on the ground counter that they are the sole viable option in the present circumstances and should not be confused with the more extreme form that the Al-Qaeda-affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, or ISIS, attempt to impose on the areas under their control.

Former judges trained by the regime are distrusted even if they now express support for the uprising, IPS was told by residents of several small towns in the Idlib province in northwestern Syria. A large portion of the Muslim clerics running the courts, on the other hand, have served time in jail under the Assad regime or have relatives that have, a view that confers a certain degree of ‘legitimacy’ on them in the public’s and fighters’ eyes."Islam is democracy. Under the regime, everything was about money. You could just pay to get a murder ruled to be ‘in self-defence’.”

Leaders of many of the major rebel factions, including the Suquor Ash-Sham, Al-Tawheed and Ahrar Ash-Sham Brigades, have spent time in the notorious Sednayah prison near Damascus, known for housing mainly political and Islamist prisoners. Former imprisonment under the regime is seen as evidence of a pro-revolutionary position.

The Muslim cleric Sheikh Hamdan Khattab, who heads a local court with jurisdiction for part of the Idlib province, told IPS that he hadn’t seen his brother in over 30 years due to his suspected links with the Muslim Brotherhood. Syrian law has prescribed the death penalty for membership of the group since 1980.

Sheikh Khattab told IPS that according to sharia law, “until we have a president no rulings can be enforced,” and sentences must be suspended during times of war. This does not seem to apply to certain ‘war crimes’ in the present circumstances committed by fighters, however.

A Palestinian detained for belonging to one of the regime-linked irregular militias, the shabiha, and charged with multiple rapes and murders, has since IPS spoke to him in September been executed following a trial at a court in Bab Al-Hawa near the Turkish border.

The local Suqour al-Sham leader, Maher, whose men captured and interrogated the man before handing him over to the larger court, said most of the arrests his men made were for stealing. This came especially after he was ordered by the local sharia court to crack down on growing lawlessness and looting by thieves from an area nearby over which tribal clans hold sway.

Sentences of between six months and one year in detention are commonly given for theft, he said.

On issues of fighting between tribal clans, however, sharia courts refuse to adjudicate, much as the Assads long have, Sheikh Aid Hussein, leader of the Al-Damaalkha clan, told IPS on a recent visit to one of his homes not far from Maarret An-Nu’man, a city in rebel hands but almost entirely destroyed by government shelling.

He said that the regime had always allowed them to settle their own disputes and feuds, with the amount of blood money to be paid for murders and specific conditions of settlements decided by tribal leaders and elders.

Many Muslim clerics say they make recourse to the Unified Arab Code, a sharia-inspired code agreed upon by Arab League justice ministers in 1996. They say those trained solely in sharia law are often flanked by lawyers acting as legal advisors in rebel-held areas.

Islamic fiqh is cited as the main source of legislation in both of the constitutions introduced by the Assad family, in 1973 and 2012. However, secular penal and commercial codes have long been used under the Baath regime, leaving only civil (personal status) law based on sharia.

Women have long suffered unequal status under Syrian law, and what remains of Islamic norms in regime law books typically weighs most heavily on them. If a rapist marries his victim then no crime has officially been committed, for example. Sentences are reduced for ‘honour killings’ of female family members.  Syrian law considers women legal dependents of their fathers and husbands.

In both the tribal and sharia systems and in most of the civil administration councils, women are entirely excluded from decision-making.

Though discriminated against under the regime, there were active women lawyers across the country prior to the uprising. Heba, a lawyer involved in documenting the torture of women and girls in regime detention and the reported chemical attack in Saraqeb, a city in the northwestern part of the country, told IPS that “women were just never promoted; they stayed in the same entry-level position for decades, while men moved up.”

But “we don’t need a new legal system,” she said.

Currently staying in southern Turkey’s Hatay region out of concerns for her safety, Heba – wearing a hijab and a threadbare coat she hugs around herself in the crisp autumn air – said that “the problem was never the legal system. It was the arbitrary arrests, the systematic torture used by the regime, the corruption.”

What the international community fails to recognise – she implied in discussing the case of a girl who reportedly had had both legs amputated and been raped repeatedly in detention – was that ‘sharia justice’ had not been behind the many atrocities etched in Syrians’ collective memory.

Islam is also viewed by many of the fighters as more egalitarian, as in theory all are supposed to be “equal before god” under it.

“I just want to be treated with dignity,” one rebel fighter told IPS.

“And Islam is democracy. Under the regime, everything was about money. You could just pay to get a murder ruled to be ‘in self-defence’,” he said.

Two Saudi Arabian women’s rights activists are filing an appeal on Friday after being sentenced to 10 months in prison for helping a woman who had allegedly been abused by her husband.

On Jun. 15, Wajeha Al-Huwaider and Fawzia Al-Oyouni were convicted by a district court in Al-Khobar of “takhbib”, an element of shari’a law that states they incited a woman to defy her husband and supported a wife without her husband’s knowledge. A two-year travel ban will follow their prison term.

Saudi Arabia follows conservative interpretations of Islam that often place tight restrictions on women’s rights. Credit: Retlaw Snellac/CC by 2.0

The women came to the assistance of a Canadian woman, Nathalie Morin, who called Al-Huwaider asking for help after being locked in a room by her husband without adequate food or water.

But as the women approached her house they were ambushed and arrested, Suad Abu-Dayyeh, programme consultant on Middle East and North Africa for Equality Now, told IPS. Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is calling on supporters to send letters in preparation for the appeal deadline on Friday, Jul. 12.

“They did not conspire to turn Nathalie against her husband or attempt to convince her to abandon him. In fact, they have never met her,” Abu-Dayyeh told IPS.

Abu-Dayyeh believes the allegations against the women are false and that Saudi Arabia is instead cracking down on the two women for their history of human rights activism.

“The Saudi government has clearly created a scenario whereby Fawzia and Wajeha, brave women who wanted to help another woman in need, were arrested for the activism they carry out,” Abu-Dayyeh said.

“These two women have been activists for a long time, and the Saudi government has been keen to silence them for a long time. They are now being made an example of to ensure that other activists don’t speak out either,” Abu-Dayyeh added.

Al-Huwaider and Al-Oyouni have been active in a number of human and women’s campaigns in Saudi Arabia, including Women2Drive, which encouraged women to defy Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving.

In a YouTube video filmed on Women’s Day in 2008, Al-Huwaider is seen driving around an empty countryside and talking to online supporters from the driver’s seat. Saudi Arabia follows very conservative interpretations of Islamic law that forbids women from driving.

Last year, Al-Huwaider was listed as number 82 on Arabian Business’ list of the 100 most powerful Arab women, but she was missing from the list this year. She is also the co-founder of Association for the Protection and Defence of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia."[Wajeha Al-Huwaider and Fawzia Al-Oyouni] are being made an example of to ensure that other activists don't speak out."
-- Suad Abu-Dayyeh

“These two women are being persecuted for their work on human rights and women’s rights,” Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “It’s not a criminal offence.”

The application of “takhbib”, where a man or woman interferes with a marriage or engagement, turning one spouse against another, is curious in this case, and it is possible that it is being used to mask what authorities see as the real crime: Al-Huwaider’s and Al-Oyouni’s activism.

“It seems a little unusual from the point of view of classical Islamic law, which may not line up with current Saudi practice… takhbib is more usually associated with seducing a woman to leave or divorce her husband, or marry somebody unauthorised,” Marion Katz, associate professor in the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies department at New York University, told IPS.

When Al-Huwaider was first questioned over a year ago about the incident, the questions authorities asked were mainly about her work as a human and women’s rights activist, Stork said.

The success of Friday’s appeal, based on Saudi Arabia’s track record, seems unlikely, Stork said.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Stork said. “[Saudi Arabia] has made a decision to really stamp out human rights activism.”

On the ground in Saudi Arabia, gaining support is difficult for Al-Huwaider and Al-Oyouni, as women cannot speak out freely in the country and the government controls the media.

“The rights of women and girls are often deeply compromised,” Abu-Dayyeh said. “In Saudi Arabia, there are no civil society organisations that can pick up such issues.”

Despite recent small glimmers of positive developments to improve and expand the rights of women in Saudi Arabia, including sending its first female athlete, Sarah Attar, to the Olympic Games in London last year and giving girls in private schools the right to play sports, as well as allowing women to ride bikes, the case of the two activists is a step backwards for the Kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia still needs to do a lot more to ensure that women and girls are protected and that their fundamental human rights are safeguarded,” Abu-Dayyeh stated, pointing out, “Allowing this to happen would benefit the entire society.”

Salafi groups are calling for Egypt to adopt Sharia. Some appear to have taken to the streets to punish perceived transgressions. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Dec 6 2012 (IPS)

As Egyptians debate how deeply Sharia should influence the new constitution, and in the face of clashes that left five dead on Wednesday, some extremists have taken to the streets to enforce their own interpretation of “God’s law”. In recent months, these self-appointed guardians of public probity have accosted Muslims and minority Christians they accuse of violating the provisions of Islamic law.

Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), says reports of incidents began after the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. Witnesses have reported seeing “bearded zealots” threaten women they deem dressed immodestly, break up parties playing “un-Islamic” music, vandalise shops selling alcohol, and in one case, chop off the ear of a man accused of abetting immorality.

Ibrahim says evidence is circumstantial, as only a few of the perpetrators have been caught, but the attacks appear to be the work of ultraconservative Salafi Muslims.

Salafis follow a puritanical school of Islam, aspiring to emulate the lifestyle of Prophet Muhammad and his companions, and putting conspicuous emphasis on beards and veils. Salafi political parties won nearly a quarter of the seats in the now dissolved lower house of parliament and have vigorously demanded Sharia as the sole source of legislation in Egypt.

While homegrown Salafi groups once carried out a bloody insurgency aimed at carving out an Islamic caliphate, their leaders have since renounced violence and pledged peaceful dialogue. Prominent Salafis, however, have threatened violence against “idols and blasphemers” – one recently vowing to “cut off the tongue” of anyone who insults Sharia or Islam.

Or cut off their hair perhaps?

Mirette Michail was standing with her sister in downtown Cairo when six women wearing niqab (the full Islamic veil) attacked her, beating her and attempting to set her hair on fire – presumably as punishment for not veiling. The women disappeared into the crowd when two male passersby intervened, she reported.

It was the third tonsorial assault in less than a month. Earlier, two women in niqab cut the hair of a Christian woman riding the subway and pushed her off the train, breaking her arm. A 13-year-old Christian girl also had her hair cut by a fully veiled woman while on the subway.

Such incidents are unusual in Cairo. The capital still retains its relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere, with young couples holding hands in public, tourists piling off buses in shorts and t-shirts, and many upscale establishments serving alcohol.

But in provincial cities and rural areas, long governed by a culture of conservative Islam, activists have reported an alarming increase in cases of moral vigilantism. Extremists appear to be organising small groups to patrol neighbourhoods and enforce their own interpretation of Sharia – by brute force if necessary.

Amal Abdel Hadi, head of the Cairo-based New Women Foundation, says the absence of an effective police force since last year’s uprising and the expectation that Egypt’s new constitution will mandate stronger application of Islamic law has given these groups a sense of legitimacy.

“When you have in your constitution that the state should ‘safeguard ethics and public morality’, it’s a green light for these groups to operate,” Abdel Hadi told IPS. “You’re constitutionalising the role of the community in defending traditions using vague and rhetorical phrasing that allows for extreme interpretations.”

Last January, a shadowy group claiming affiliation to the Salafi Calling announced on Facebook that it had established the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, an Islamic morality police modeled on Saudi Arabia’s mutaween.

In Saudi Arabia, mutaween agents and volunteers patrol the streets, enforcing strict separation of the sexes, conservative dress codes, observance of Muslim prayers, and other behaviour they consider mandated by Sharia. Until 2007, these government-sanctioned enforcers of Islamic law carried rattan canes to mete out corporal punishment.

While there is no proof that the Egyptian group ever transformed its online presence into a physical force, its unveiling coincided with a series of incidents in the northern delta provinces. The Arabic press reported that groups of bearded men armed with rattan canes raided shops, threatening to flog shop owners caught selling “indecent” clothing, barbers found shaving men’s beards, or any merchant displaying Christian religious books or icons.

The attacks culminated in the murder of Ahmed Hussein Eid, a university student stabbed to death during a run-in with some roving enforcers last June. According to police reports, three Salafi men approached Eid and his fiancee as they were out walking in Suez’s port district. The men castigated the couple for standing too close, and when Eid rebuked them, one of the men pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed him.

Al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, has issued statements condemning reports of individual efforts to enforce Sharia. As has the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

But Salafi leaders have been equivocal, denying any affiliation to moral vigilante groups while defending the concept – provided it is through “peaceful intervention”.

“The idea of having such a committee is legitimate and in accordance with the Quran,” Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayat told one local media outlet. “Such a committee should promote virtue with virtue, and prevent vice with virtue as well. And, of course, it would be better if (it were) run by the government and not by an independent group.”

Police, criticised for mothballing reports of vigilante incidents, responded to a public outcry following the fatal stabbing in Suez. The three Salafi assailants were apprehended and each sentenced to 15 years in prison.

EIPR’s Ibrahim says moral vigilantes have kept a low profile since the sentencing. But this may simply be the calm before the storm.

“Islamists (control the political agenda) so it’s not in their interest to create problems for the time being,” he says. “They want to focus on the constitution first, then comes the application of Sharia.” [END]

Many penal codes do not treat women and men equally and establish harsher sanctions for women. UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2012 (IPS)

When one of the Asian countries embraced Islamic Sharia law back in the 1990s, the rigidly conservative government threatened to enforce a provision that called for convicted adulterers to be stoned to death.

“If this law is enforced,” a weekly magazine cynically pronounced at that time, “the country will run out of stones.”

Cynicism apart, the controversial issue, mostly with religious overtones, surfaced last week when a group of U.N. human rights experts weighed in with its own perspectives on adultery.

The four-member Geneva-based group urged member states to repeal laws criminalising adultery which have resulted in punishments ranging from the imposition of fines to flogging, hanging and death by stoning.

“Adultery must not be classified as a criminal offence at all”, said Kamala Chandrakirana, who currently heads the U.N. expert body charged with identifying ways to eliminate laws that discriminate against women or are discriminatory to them in terms of implementation or impact.

Asked if this practice is common mostly in Muslim countries, Yasmeen Hassan, global director at the New York-based Equality Now, told IPS that adultery is an issue for all major religions, not just Islam, and there are laws against it still in certain U.S. states.

According to one published report, there are at least 18 states in the U.S., including Colorado, Florida, Arizona, Michigan and Illinois, where adultery is considered illegal.

“The issue here is not of criminalisation of adultery per se but the use of so-called Sharia laws on fornication and adultery to oppress and intimidate women and to uphold patriarchal and misogynistic social systems,” said Hassan.

“From my study of Islamic jurisprudence, I know that the punishments for fornication and adultery were historically to be applied very cautiously and only in cases of extremely wanton acts of near-public fornication (i.e., where Muslim men of good repute had actually witnessed the act) or when the person who committed the act admitted to it three times, with time to reflect on the admission, and change their story,” she told IPS.

In a statement released here, the group of experts warned that maintaining adultery as a criminal offence – even when it applies to both women and men – means in practice that women mainly will continue to face extreme vulnerabilities, and violation of their human rights to dignity, privacy and equality, given continuing discrimination and inequalities faced by women.

Chandrakirana was quoted as saying the criminalisation of sexual relations between consenting adults is a violation of their right to privacy and infringement of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as established almost two decades ago by international human rights jurisprudence.

The experts point out that in accordance with some traditions, customs and different legal systems, adultery may constitute a civil offence with legal consequences in divorce cases, in respect of the custody of children or the denial of alimony, amongst others.

However, it should not be a criminal offence and must not be punishable by fine, imprisonment, flogging, or death by stoning or hanging, such as in the many countries where adultery continues to carry severe penalties.

The experts also said that provisions in penal codes often do not treat women and men equally and establish harsher sanctions for women, and in some countries, rules of evidence value a woman’s testimony as half that of a man’s.

Hassan told IPS the way these laws have been applied by all Islamic countries that have them on the books (and not all do) is to punish and terrorise women who are suspected of transgressing social mores.

She said they have also been used to get rid of women who were inconvenient – for example, for purposes of inheritance, if the husband wanted to re-marry and did not have permission of the first wife – or to get revenge on a particular woman or her family.

“Strikingly, these laws have not, to my knowledge, ever been applied to the elite in these societies, which also makes their implementation discriminatory on the basis of class,” said Hassan.

Many women’s groups which are working within the Islamic framework, she said, would agree with getting rid of these laws, or at the very least, ensuring that they are not implemented in the manner in which they currently are being used.

“I feel strongly that religious and cultural arguments – that I think can be extremely fluid and flexible when they need – should not be used to justify adherence to principles of inequality and discrimination,” Hassan noted.

In their statement, the experts also cited several examples where some countries have remedied this violation of women’s rights.

A 1996 decision of the Guatemalan Constitutional Court struck down the penal code’s punishment of marital infidelity or adultery on the basis both of the constitution’s equality guarantees and human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Similarly, in 2007, the Ugandan Constitutional Court overturned the adultery law that penalised women for adultery while leaving their male partners unpunished.

The group of experts comprises four independent human rights experts: Kamala Chandrakirana, Chair-Rapporteur (Indonesia); Emna Aouij (Tunisia); Frances Raday (Israel/United Kingdom) and Eleonora Zielinska (Poland).