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Stay tuned! November 6, 2009

Posted by Fatemeh in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Salam waleykum, readers!

We’ve had a reduced posting schedule this week because I’ve been swamped with traveling and other things. But don’t worry: next week, we’ll be back to our regular schedule: same MMW time, same MMW channel!

Saudi Female Journalist Becomes LBC’s Scapegoat November 4, 2009

Posted by Guest Contributor in : News, Television , 3comments

This post was written by Sabria Jawhar, and originally appeared at the Saudi Gazette and at her personal blog.

Something got lost in all the outrage last week over the conviction and lashing sentence of the 22-year-old Saudi woman journalist, Rozanna Yami. Something got lost in all the outrage last week over the conviction and lashing sentence of the 22-year-old Saudi woman journalist who worked for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp (LBC). What exactly is the LBC doing to support their journalist?

Rozanna Yami. Image via Saeed Shamaa/EPA.

Rozanna Yami. Image via Saeed Shamaa/EPA.

The answer is absolutely nothing.

According to a Reuters report this week, the young woman had nothing to do with the Bold Red Line broadcast segment in which a Saudi man bragged about his sexual conquests. The man was sentenced to five years in jail and lashings, but the woman journalist only worked as a “fixer,” someone who arranges interviews for foreign media. She apparently had nothing to do with the segment involving the braggart. Her crime apparently is that she worked for the LBC, which was not licensed to operate in Saudi Arabia.

Let’s set aside the idiocy that the Saudi government did not know that the LBC was not licensed. Let’s focus on the conduct of the LBC. The Lebanese were kicked out of the country, so they suffered a bit for their actions. But they also couldn’t get out of Saudi Arabia fast enough, leaving behind a vulnerable employee who proved to be the LBC’s scapegoat for their poor behavior. King Abdullah this week pardoned the woman, but she still must face a tribunal before the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information.

A year ago the LBC approached me and offered a job that eventually went to this young Saudi journalist. I spoke over the phone with their producers and a presenter. It quickly became clear that the LBC was not interested in Saudi news, but creating tabloid headlines.

Among the topics the LBC was eager to cover were strange sexual practices, voodoo and black magic, especially black magic practiced on wayward husbands. Runaway girls, marriages of convenience and spinsterhood were other topics the LBC wanted to present. The LBC was clearly interested in the sensational aspects of Saudi culture, taboo subjects that are not topics of conversation. Yet the LBC seemed unmoved that these stories would perpetuate Saudi stereotypes in a period in which Saudis are under attack for their cultural and religious differences.

Part of my responsibility as a Saudi journalist is that if wrongdoing is exposed or taboo subjects are addressed, solutions must be provided in these stories. Perhaps more important is the safety and well-being of the people we interview. It’s likely that Saudis who participate in media interviews on sensitive subjects will face consequences for their actions.

It’s one thing to interview a Saudi woman who chooses to remain unmarried to pursue a career. It’s another for a young woman forced into spinsterhood by her father who wants her income. If such a woman gave an interview, she would have to answer to her family. What kind of support would the LBC provide for the girl if she was thrown out of the house? I think none. No two better examples of abandonment can be found than the sex braggart and the Saudi journalist.

During our discussion about my role in their Bold Red Line series, the LBC producers were cavalier, if not dismissive, about my concerns over the consequences of these kinds of interviews. When the discussion turned to me being hired as a producer, I thought that I could control editorial content. But the answer was no. Editorial control came from Beirut.

It became apparent that if I were to arrange the interviews, it would become my responsibility to see that the interviewees did not suffer any consequences for their frank talk. But that is an extremely risky task without the support of the employer.

I recognized the LBC was not prepared to offer any support after a broadcast to its Saudi employees or the interview subjects. Their desire to present sensitive Saudi issues as tabloid fodder was not much different than Western media parachuting into Riyadh for two days to do a story on how the abaya and niqab are oppressive to women. It makes for interesting television and boosts ratings, but it leaves a lot of pain and humiliation in its wake.

I rejected the LBC’s offer. Their attitude toward Saudi Arabia was insincere and cynical. I could not see how the Bold Red Line series would benefit or shed any light on Saudi culture, other than presenting Saudis as parodies of themselves.

It didn’t occur to me until this young Saudi female journalist stood trial for the LBC’s negligence that the LBC’s producers would prey on someone who is young, perhaps naïve, and eager to advance her journalism career.

Now this young woman is suffering for the sins of the LBC, which has stood by mute. They offered no lawyer and no statement of condemnation for her treatment by the Saudi courts. LBC should be an embarrassment to Middle East journalists. At a time when Arab journalists are seeking to be taken seriously as professionals and attempt to adhere to an ethical standard, the LBC’s cowardice illustrates just how little progress we have made.

Sexiness for Everyone (even Muslims) November 2, 2009

Posted by Krista in : Advertisements , 4comments

Liaison Dangereuse, a German online lingerie store, recently released a new video advertisement.  With Arabic-sounding music in the background, a woman is shown getting out of the shower (we can see, from the back, that she has no clothes on), putting on her make-up, then walking (wearing nothing but high heels–to each her own, I suppose) to her dresser, where she puts on her underwear, bra and socks, all the while looking at herself in the mirror.  Last (anyone see where this is going yet?), she puts on a burqa.  The final scene is of her face at a window, with this phrase showing up: “Sexiness for everyone.  Everywhere.”

Warning: This video contains explicit images.

Some have suggested the add may be empowering (and, according to this one, especially empowering for “women in certain desert nations.”  I’m not even going to go there.)  As Dodai of Jezebel writes, with some reservations, “You could view the woman in the commercial as confident and self-assured.”  True.  Furthermore, unlike the major impression given in a different discussion about Muslim women’s lingerie, the confidence and “sexiness” that this woman displays are seemingly for her alone; she is not wearing this clothing simply to be attractive to a man.  We can perhaps even take from this an empowering message for everyone, the idea that we can all feel sexy, if we so choose, without anyone else having to see us or to think of us as sexy.

But.

All of that said, the empowerment message doesn’t really hold up.  There is a whole lot of irony that these images are made so explicit in a public advertisement, given that they are supposedly valuing a sexuality that isn’t overtly expressed on the outside.  The public spectacle of an apparent private moment of expressing confidence in one’s own body obviously negates the privacy of that moment.

All the other arguments aside, it seems therefore pretty hard to argue that this ad is something positive or empowering, if it would probably be rather offensive and disrespectful to most of those who would presumably be the ones it attempts to empower.

And, although the message seems to be about personal sexuality, there’s definitely still a strong male gaze and sense of objectification (and exoticization) at play, and it’s pretty unlikely that this was irrelevant in the construction of the video.  One online response to the advertisement referred to its protagonist as an “exotic hottie” that the audience (and I’m guessing this is referring specifically to the heterosexual male component of the audience) is “treated to.”  Another says:

Welcome to Friday, gentlemen, a day when your mind drifts to thinking about risking surfing porn from your work desk. Well, here’s a video appetizer, via Berlin ad agency glow GmbH, for German online lingerie store Liaison Dangereuse. Tagline: Sexiness for everyone. Everywhere.” It’s got brief bare butt, and an ending twist that’ll make you Catholics feel a little guilty.

So yeah, sexiness is “everywhere” and “for everyone,” ready to be served up as your pre-weekend porn appetizer.  Great.

More important is the bigger context in which this ad appears – the fascination about Muslim women’s bodies, and the curiosity about what’s “behind the veil.”  In fact, this isn’t even the first time that Muslim women’s lingerie has been discussed on MMW; apparently, it’s a hot topic.  Why?  As I’ve said previously,

What could be a more titillating image than that of a Muslim women (presumably veiled, of course) picking out something sexy to wear when in her private harem home?  It might as well be proof of the Orientalist fantasy of the seductive, exotic temptress that exists within every Muslim woman, if only we could unveil her. (*shudder*)

Sadly, this isn’t even remotely new; see, for example, the kind of work that’s been done on the behind-the-veil/into-the-harem writing of colonial times.  Meyda Yegenoglu’s Colonial Fantasies or Malek Alloula’s work (summarised fairly well here) are interesting places to start.  The obsession with the veil (and with what’s under it) has a long history, and one that is intricately connected to colonization, racism, and sexism.  This advertisement does nothing to disrupt that history, leaving us with a character who is still being objectified, as a Muslim and as a woman, even when this is under the guise of female empowerment.

Friday Links — October 30, 2009 October 30, 2009

Posted by Fatemeh in : Links , 2comments

I don’t know about you, but this week’s links have me left feeling like I’m taking crazy pills…

Don’t Ask Why: the BNP on Question Time October 29, 2009

Posted by Ayaan Hassan in : Culture/Society, Politics, Television , 2comments

If you live in the U.K., you’ve no doubt been following (or have at least heard about) the controversy surrounding the far right British National Party’s appearance on Question Time. If you don’t, or you haven’t, allow me to explain: following the election of two British National Party (BNP) MEPs in the 2009 European elections this summer, a representative of the BNP was invited onto one of the BBC’s flagship political debate television programs last Thursday. The panel included Chris Huhne (Liberal Democrats Home Affairs spokesperson), Jack Straw (Secretary of State for Justice), Sayeeda Warsi, Baroness Warsi (Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion), Nick Griffin (Leader of the British National Party), and writer/playwright Bonnie Greer. The topics of discussion ranged from Churchill and the second world war to Holocaust denial and immigration. The matter has received a lot of coverage in the press, a surprising amount of it dedicated to saying that the BBC is giving too much publicity to the BNP.

Sayeeda Warsi, introduced as “the most powerful Muslim woman in Britain”, has often been referred to as the most successful panelist in dealing with Griffin, or the one least afraid of overstepping the bounds of political correctness to counter the BNP rhetoric with her own ideas about immigration, or–more rarely–a sign that the Conservative party is partaking in affirmative action in press coverage.

Warsi attempted to turn the debate away from race and multiculturalism and towards class and resources, against Griffin’s attempts to evoke the “clash of civilizations” (specifically when he alludes towards reaching a ‘truce’ with Islam, which is evidently as monolithic and homogeneous as he wishes Britain and the British to be). She also mentions that in times of economic hardship, it is easy to blame “the other”: while historically the British Nationalist movement has focused on the British Jewish community and later focused on the West Indian and South Asian immigrants from Britain’s former colonies as threatening British ethnic purity, currently the danger to this purity includes all non-whites and all Muslims. Warsi addressed fears that the white, working class Brits are being overlooked in favor of immigrants and ethnic minority Brits in the allocation of housing, benefits, education and employment, rather than cultural fears of the other. She talked about the need that Britain has for the “brightest and best” of those immigrating here, but at the same time speaks of the need to limit and control immigration.

The entire immigration debate was rendered ridiculous by the fact that, despite all of the talk of everyone being afraid to discuss immigration as anything but wonderful, the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat representatives discussed immigration in almost nothing but negative terms, with talk of caps and limitations–which, taken to their logical conclusion, not only risk violating the U.N. convention relating to the status of refugees (in fact, refugees were curiously absent from the discussion, aside from a mention of “bogus asylum seekers”), but set the template for a frighteningly totalitarian regime, where the government has (greater) involvement in who marries whom and how many children people are allowed to have. Even the Liberal Democrat representative, Huhne, talked about “getting control back over our borders” rather than arguing for free movement across borders.

Interestingly, when called on his description of Islam as a “wicked and vicious faith”, Griffin portrays Islam as a negative image of his Britishness, which is being fundamentally Christian and all about “free speech, democracy and equal rights for women”. Here, Islam and the multicultural Britain it is part of represent the political correctness to his free speech, the rule of the minority to his democracy, the “second class citizen[ship]” for women to his equal rights. This tendency towards defining one against the other is a part of any nationalism. Nationalism stems from the idea of an “imagined community”: shared history, shared language and shared culture. So the BNP are attempting to validate the idea of an indigenous, white nationalism by creating this history. Nationalism depends on the imagining and maintenance of “finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations”. There can be no one sovereign nation without other nations for it to define itself against.

Much as Griffin sets up Islam as his other, the other panelists set him up as their own opposite: while theirs is reasoned non-reactionary political debate, his is a racist, Islamophobic and unreasoned ideology. While there is no doubt that this is true, the mainstream political voices seem to provide no real alternative either to each other or the BNP, as they present themselves. Jack Straw’s (who, three years ago began a debate about Muslim women wearing the niqab) defense of the Britishness of British Muslims rang hollow against his divisive arguments against the right of British women to wear the niqab, and attacks against Griffin’s description of the inherent anti-British nature of Islam rang hollow coming from the representatives of a government and opposition that have backed British involvement in two wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, where at least one of the proffered reasons for taking said military action was the poor, unequal, treatment of women.

The unequal treatment of women elsewhere acts both to deflect questions regarding the rights of women here, wherever here may be, and in order to justify claims of moral superiority. Ultimately,  despite the use of women and their rights as political capital or for scoring points, there seems to be no real concern for the rights of women, particularly Muslim women, so much as a desire to reduce them to objects, and create a (falsely) desirable image of the self.

The Pink Ladies: Islamic Activism meets Breast Cancer Awareness with Pink Hijab Day October 28, 2009

Posted by Raaz in : Culture/Society, Events , 5comments

Today is Pink Hijab Day, a day to encourage awareness of breast cancer in conjunction with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.  Pink Hijab Day was founded in 2007 by a group of Muslim women from Missouri who wanted to promote Islam and breast cancer awareness at their high school.  In the couple of years since its inception, Pink Hijab Day has expanded both across the United States and across the world.  From the Day’s website:

Pink Hijab Day is intended to shatter stereotypes of Muslim women, as well as raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research.  All over the world, Muslims participated by wearing pink hijabs, pink ribbons, and donating to breast cancer foundations.

The stigma associated with breast cancer in Middle Eastern countries has been well-documented by the media recently with former First Lady Laura Bush’s 2007 trip to the Middle East to promote awareness of the illness in the region.  In June of 2006, the State Department established the US-Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research to help promote awareness of the disease collaboratively.  In an interview with Good Morning America in 2007, Bush says:

I feel it’s very important for people in the Middle East to know that people in the United States care about health and especially women’s health, because it’s still embarrassing and they’re fearful and shamed like we were over 25 years ago.

In the United States, Muslim women still do not perform breast self-examinations or seek mammograms at the same rate as the population at large, according to a 2005 study that looked at screening practices of Muslim women in California.  Efforts like Pink Hijab Day that aim to raise awareness of the disease in women, both here and internationally, and reduce the stigma associated with it are a laudatory cause.

And with that, I’d like to conclude my post with a quote from Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, a collection of articles that looks at the author’s own personal experience with breast cancer between the seventies and eighties in the United States:

Every woman has a militant responsibility to involve herself with her own health.  We owe ourselves the protection of all the information we can acquire about the treatment of cancer and its causes as well as about the recent findings concerning immunology, nutrition, environment, and stress.  And we owe ourselves his information before we may have a reason to use it.

What Fatima Didn’t Do: British Play Discusses Identity and Hijab October 27, 2009

Posted by Sara in : Art/Theater, Culture/Society , 5comments

A thin square of shiny polyester is the main player in Atiha Sen Gupta’s play, What Fatima Did. The plot focuses upon the sudden decision of a non-religious young woman to wear hijab. An insightful and funny look into the reaction of those around her, the play asked some very good questions about identity, religion, and culture. Despite not being a Londoner myself, I could relate to some of the struggles depicted. However, what was noticeably absent from the play was Fatima herself, and this left me confused about Gupta’s overall message.

The story is centered around a group of teenagers living in London. Their group consists of a set of twins named Fatima and Mo, and three other friends. Upon their return from summer vacation, the group discovers that Fatima has inexplicably decided to begin wearing hijab, and their reactions, in particular, that of her boyfriend George, present some interesting questions and challenges. The largest question, by far, was that of identity. What was refreshing was that the idea of religion was not in the forefront, rather the hijab was dissected in relation to the type of identity crisis that one would have at seventeen.

One of the strongest points is made by Ayesha, a self-proclaimed feminist in the group, who insists that the hijab is “stained with blood”, and is vehemently against what she believes it symbolizes. Ayesha also believes that Fatima is wearing hijab for culturally Muslim reasons rather than religious reasons. In her insinuation that it is a political statement rather than a religious one, Ayesha made an interesting point about the way in which some young Muslim women today decide to wear hijab.  Especially in a Western nation, it becomes significant, at times, especially for an adolescent to find a balance between identities.

The reaction of Fatima’s mother was also interesting. She speaks of the struggle of women in her family against the hijab, and she is wildly against Fatima’s decision. She speaks of her grandmother’s struggle to protect her mother’s right not to wear hijab. I thought that her reaction was incredibly powerful. Once the hijab migrated to the west, I began to think about how its symbolism has changed. If it represented a lack of autonomy in the case of Fatima’s great-grandmother, could the hijab eventually become the symbol of a different type of Muslim woman?

The most obvious omission from the play was Fatima herself. She was not heard from or seen. Her absence helped the audience see the powerful impact of her decision. However, in the focus on the thoughts of others, I think Gupta reinforced a part of the hijab debate, which has bothered me for a long time. The voice of the “veiled” woman has been noticeably absent from the discussion, and I had hoped that the play would provide a look from a young Muslim woman’s perspective. While the reactions of those around her were significant and powerful, ultimately, the play left me with more questions about where Fatima was, rather than what she did.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Women’s Rights in Kuwait October 26, 2009

Posted by Malika in : News, Politics , 9comments

It’s been a busy month for the constitutional court in the tiny Gulf Arab nation of Kuwait. Earlier this week, Kuwait’s highest court ruled that women now have the right to obtain a passport without the consent of their husbands and guardians. The ruling abrogated an article of a 1962 law that required women to gain their husband’s signature on any passport application.

The court, following complaints from thousands of women who have petitioned to change the law, finally ruled that the article violated a number of constitutional provisions that guarantee personal freedom and gender equality.

The Kuwait Times, billed as the first daily in the Gulf, hailed the decision as “historic” and “landmark” in its piece on the ruling, and cited an interview with a Kuwaiti man who noted that the ruling was long overdue.

“The court should have ruled on this issue a long time ago as women have already obtained the right to vote and run for office in parliament,” Khalid Ahmed, a 32-year-old Kuwaiti told the Kuwait Times.

But, even as some Kuwaitis were lauding the new advances, others were criticizing a “controversial” decision by one of Kuwait’s four female members of parliament to fight another constitutional law.

Rola Dashti, who was elected to parliament in May, submitted a proposal to the court last week to remove a 2005 electoral law requirement that women must comply with Islamic Shariah law. The law doesn’t specify what that entails or which women it applies to.

Rola Dashti. Image via womenwithoutborders.org.

Rola Dashti. Image via womenwithoutborders.org.

Last week, the government’s Fatwa Department complicated the matter when it ruled that under Shariah law, Muslim women are required to wear hijab. Conservative lawmakers say that fatwa must apply to parliament’s four female members (two of whom wear hijab, two of whom two do not), the U.A.E. newspaper The National reports. But Dashti has dismissed the fatwa as non-binding and has said that including Shariah regulations in the electoral law is a breach of the constitution.

“The regulations clearly violate articles in the constitution which call for gender equality and make no reference to Sharia regulations,” she told the AFP news agency.

The timing of the two constitutional court cases couldn’t be more ironic and could indicate a significant shift in the cultural underpinnings of Kuwaiti society. Within the same month, Kuwaitis on seemingly polar opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are attempting to make their voices heard, for what they believe to be the good of the nation. It’s a delicate dance between those who are fighting to allow women more rights and those who would prefer she stay within the status quo.

But also of note are the mostly positive reactions to change in the country from major media outlets in the Gulf and the wider Middle East. A Voice of America news report quotes Hala Mustafa, of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper, as saying the passport ruling is a “positive” sign of progress.

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Kuwait Times warns that the parliamentary hijab situation could spell “a recipe for disaster” for the country. The Times’ Badrya Darwish, heavy on the sarcasm, asks:

“How come the issue of hijab and niqab and the dress code among women is a major issue in the Arab world today? As I already wrote earlier this week, Egypt has a dispute over hijab or niqab. It looks like everything is peaceful in the Middle East. Business is booming. Economy is flourishing. Democracy prevails everywhere. There is stability and security at its best.”

The court is due to rule on the hijab issue next week, but in the meantime, one can’t help but wonder if Kuwait is in the midst of a paradigm shift in popular opinion of women’s rights.

Friday Links — October 23, 2009 October 23, 2009

Posted by Fatemeh in : Links , 2comments

The Revolution Will not be Sexualized: More on Seyran Ates October 22, 2009

Posted by Yusra in : Culture/Society, Politics, Web , 14comments

German-Turkish writer Seyran Ates thinks Islam needs a sexual revolution. This might seem a little tongue-in-cheek, given the countless political revolutions post-due in predominantly Muslim countries, yet Ates’ book couldn’t be timelier.

Muslims, like everyone else, are exposed to sex at an earlier age, despite marrying later than past generations. It isn’t hard to prove that the Muslim world needs more open discourse on sex. However, it is challenging to lay out some concrete reasoning and exact plans for how this can be achieved.

Ates doesn’t live up to that challenge in this Spiegel Online interview about her book, Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution. In it, she describes the double standards and sexually-based challenges Muslim women face, yet doesn’t offer any background information or provide a method for overcoming them. The interview is simply a series of her impressions and experiences as a Muslim—the classic case of the individual used as collective fact.

She says Muslim women bear the brunt of outdated sexual laws. In case you can’t guess why, she says it’s because we have vaginas, as if that’s reason enough. When asked why the hymen is so important, Ates responds: “Because it was capital. Capital between my legs.”  She goes on to describe how sex was never discussed in her family, and how there’s this unspoken system that Muslim women can’t date but Muslim men can.

Ates never once mentions Islamic law, which you’d think would at least get a shout-out in any serious conversation about sexual mores in Islam. Instead, she continues to use hot-button words like “suppressed passion”, “anal sex”, and “hymens”, and even uses the phrase, “A hidden and extreme sexualizing of Islam.” Sound familiar?  So should this western go-to nugget of choice about polygamy:

“When an Arab man needs a justification for having several wives, he says: It was the same with Muhammad.”

This justification is not used by millions of Muslim men who, for whatever reason, don’t have more than one wife. It also implies a very basic generalization about Arab men, with no outline of what can be done to change this supposedly wide-spread mindset.

Ates is of Turkish-Kurdish descent. She moved with her family from Turkey to Germany at the age of six. Before her eighteenth birthday, she ran away from home and moved in with a German man. Clearly her impressions of Islam are based on her own experience growing up Muslim.

This background wouldn’t discredit her argument had she actually made one. Instead she sticks to blanket statements that are difficult to qualify: “Many Muslims don’t even allow themselves to think about what exactly sexuality means in their marriages. It’s simply accepted that the men have their fun in brothels.”

When the reporter challenges her by saying German husbands also frequent brothels, she responds almost ridiculously by saying, “But they certainly don’t make such a point of letting their wives know about it,” only to backtrack and say Turkish men don’t necessarily discuss it directly with their wives.

Ates’s broad generalizations do nothing to advance the cause of sexual reform in Islam, primarily because they elicit an expected response from non-Muslims and westerners: “Bravo to the little Muslim female standing up against oppressive Islamic patriarchy!” If you are saying Islam needs a sexual revolution, you need to address Muslims and suggest alternative interpretations, not offend them with statements bent on stirring controversy.

Ates sounds more like a neo-con pundit than a Muslim reformist when she says Muslim children are more likely to characterize female German teachers as sluts because they cannot challenge the authority of their parents. Seriously? Just imagine a teenage Muslim boy telling his teacher, “Mrs. Schneider, I can’t argue with my parents for forbidding me from going to prom, so now I think you’re a slut.” What kind of logic is that? But that’s just it: Ates has no concrete argument based on logic for why Islam needs a sexual revolution; she’s simply content to use her own experiences as a complete guide to Muslims. Again:

“There is so much condescension and so little recognition, love, affection and encouragement of children. They have to vent their anger at some point.”

Ates does not make a single lucid point not based on stereotypes.  How absurd that, in a major interview about Islamic sexual reform, Ates would rather talk about her assumptions (which are influenced by her own experience growing up Muslim, in a home she acknowledges was less than ideal), rather than outline actual reasons as to why sexual reform is imminent or necessary? It’s disappointing when a Muslim aids the media in its baseless tendency to attribute single events or statements about Muslims as facts for understanding Islam.

When approaching the issue of sexual reform in Islam, it’s important to remember Islam is dynamic, yet deeply rooted in tradition. While it’s important to keep in mind that Islamic tradition frowns on non-scholarly opinion on issues of Islamic jurisprudence, it is also equally important to value individual thought for what it is: in this case, a Muslim woman’s opinion on the need for sexual reform. Ates has been threatened for being so outspoken; perhaps this is where her underlying anger toward conservative factions comes from.

Yet as a Muslim woman reading this interview, I have to question what value stereotypes bring toward advancing liberation within Islam. Perhaps Ates’ book provides some answers. Sexual reform is complicated, which is why I am willing to read her book despite this interview. It’s probably also why Ates contradicts herself throughout it.  She praises Western sexuality, all the while admitting there are consequences like child pornography, prostitution as a flat-rate service, and premature sexuality devoid of emotion.  At the end of the interview, Ates is asked what her God thinks about sex.  She says, “My God is very open about sex, having created me as a person for whom it’s important.”

If we are going to advance the idea of sexual liberation, we can never get anywhere as a community by pointing fingers at this sect or that movement, or making assumptions about an entire group’s gender or sexuality. If Ates is truly intent on creating change for Muslims, she has to work with Muslims, not against them.

Editor’s Note: For Alicia’s take on this, see her post from yesterday.