Viajero:
Does Megawati Sukarnoputri count? She was President of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004.
For this quote and others mentioned on this forum by our Muslim friends, yes, there are few Muslim women that succeeded in being recognized. However and for someone like me who come from the Middle East, studied Arab/Islamic history, read the Quran, and lived in the middle of the Muslim sea, I can tell you that these are nothing but few small pulses in the history of Islam – the huge and vast majority are different.
As for “Muslim women granted rights centuries b4 west…” and with all due respect, you are biased and you don’t know history, including Islam’s history. Christ, the most “feminist” of all, that existed and ever to come, taught the equality and right of all human beings, starting with females and males – the West progressed and grew from Christ’s tradition.
How Muslim women are treated? Well, let’s look at one of the many “women treatment” as quoted by the Quran: “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has given the one more strength than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in, the husband’s absence, what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, do not share their beds, beat them; but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means: for Allah is Most High, Great.
Someone will say, yes however, there are strict guidelines and strict qualifiers to interpret such verses. Well, having seen first hand the treatment of Muslim women in the Middle East, I say bull. In addition, have a look at this sample that came today in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and please don’t tell me this is an isolated incident: A Muslim Woman’s sharia ordeal
By MARINA JIMÉNEZ
Thursday, September 8, 2005 Updated at 4:53 AM EDT
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
For months, a Muslim woman living in Toronto tried to wring a divorce out of her local imam.
Under sharia law, her husband had to consent to the divorce-- even though he had abandoned the family four years earlier and married another woman in a South Asian country where polygamy is legal.
The imam told her that her spouse wanted $100,000 and all her gold jewellery, she said, asking that her identity not be disclosed because she fears retribution from her ex-husband, the imam and her community.
She managed to bargain him down to $5,000, money she had to borrow. She also agreed to give up all child-support payments and alimony, and not to take legal action against him in the future.
Without his consent, she could not remarry within her religion.
“The imam told me, ‘there are some sharia conditions you must follow, we must come to a settlement within sharia.’ I agreed because I was desperate,” said the woman, 29, who uses the pseudonym Shinaz.
“If the mullah, our religious leader, didn’t grant the divorce, then under sharia I would have lost custody of my son when he turned eight. Also, I could not remarry.”
Canadian legal safeguards and training for imams cannot change this, she says, pointing out that her imam doesn’t speak fluent English and has little knowledge of Canadian Charter rights.
“Women in Ontario should definitely not have to rely on sharia and mullahs and imams to resolve family disputes. People have to know what is going on,” she said.
When the imam finally signed the talaq, divorce, in their community mosque, she felt nothing but anger and betrayal.
“I was so angry at the way I was treated, that this happens in a country like Canada. We come here to get better treatment,” she said.
“A lot of women in the community are in my situation. My friend agreed to give up her boy to her ex-husband when he turns eight just so she could get a religious divorce.”
At stake is the right for women to be treated justly and equitably, says Homa Arjomand, an Iranian immigrant who is co-ordinating the International Campaign against Sharia Court in Ontario.
Ms. Arjomand works as a counsellor for a Toronto agency and says more than 120 Muslim women have come to her so far this year, many of whom are fleeing abusive marriages and physical assault.
“Canadians think, this is your culture, you deal with it. But it is the government’s duty to protect the vulnerable, including women and children,” she said.
“I did notice in his country that women were treated as second-class citizens. He went out a lot but didn’t say where he was going. But I thought, when we get to Canada, he will change,” she says. “This was the first man I had ever been with.”
](I had to cut the article to fit to size – good information lost)
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