FYI: Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s April 21, 2009 Speech about Muslim Women’s Rights /Islamic Gender Apartheid

Certainly, we should not silently accept that women who move to [insert-repressive-country] voluntarily, are then later abused and prevented from leaving. For that matter, we should also not silently accept that these things happen to women who are BORN in [insert-repressive-country].

It’s a tricky subject-matter. I have a friend who married an Iranian man some years back, and at the time they considered moving there. I adviced against it, and was accused of being racist, having islamophobia and whatnot. Thing is, it could’ve worked perfectly fine. I still think the risk is very high though. Norway scores first on the UN equal-rights ranking, Iran scores tenth-last or something (with Yemen on the very bottom)

Where to draw the line though ? Should one advice against even visiting ? There’s been plenty of women who have “visited” similar countries with their husbands and children, only to discover that a return was never planned, and that the children are considered nationality-of-father by the laws there.

I don’t know.

I -do- know that I’d be very very nervous about it if any of my daugthers decided to move to [insert-repressive-regime] with a new husband.

Does that make me a racist and islamophobe, or is that just common sense ?

Eivind..

I’d call it common sense, myself. I think it should be everyone’s responsibility to research the place they are going to and inform themselves about the laws. However, I cannot support the Canadian government’s decision NOT to do anything about Morin’s situation. It is ridiculous. Yes, the woman made a terrible mistake but it’s her children that are suffering. I don’t think punishing her by abandoning her and the kids will solve anything. She doesn’t really deserve to be condemned for all eternity either. We all make mistakes. Sadly, I can’t help but think that this situation could have been avoided had she done her homework. It leaves something to be said about foreign women who are aware of the laws in countries with oppressive regimes, and still wish to settle there.

On another note, if I am not mistaken the Canadian government has taken steps to help others avoid those situations by enacting a law in February 2008 whereby Saudi men wishing to marry Canadian women would sign a document that gives the women and children the right to travel freely in and out of Saudi Arabia without restrictions. I am not sure about the details of the law, but this has to be better than nothing at all. Too bad that it’s not retroactive though. Nathalie Morin could have sure used it.

So far, all we’ve heard is the alleged victim’s mother’s story….thats it. I’m not saying that this story is false, but we’ve heard only a SINGLE account of the story and we’re jumping to the conclusions that this is all true? This article was despicable in that it jumped to conclusions without any other evidence aside from the story presented by the woman’s mother, which may or may not be true. However, your biased views have again, done the ‘right’ thing in blindly pointing your fingers and screaming, ‘THEY DID IT! I JUST KNOW IT!’

Isn’t it true, though, that all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence — honed over centuries of studying the Qu’ran — agree that the Muslim father automatically gets custody of the children over a certain age, in order that the mother not poison the children against Islam? Surely Moran knew this? Who forgot to tell her? Is she a Muslimah?

Further, “marital rape” is a Western concept (and a fairly recent one, as well), not at all an Islamic idea. Several hadith address this issue: they all concur that wives of Muslim men must accede without question to commands for sex from their husbands at any time, even “on a camel’s saddle” (Ibn Majah 1854) or while the bread is burning in the oven (Tirmzi), else angels will curse them until morning (Sahih Bukhari 4, 54, 460) and they will never enter Jannat.

The prophet himself advised that a tempted man return to his wife and immediately demand sex from her, as he did from his former daughter-in-law Zainab while she was working hard on a demanding household task. (Tirmzi, Vol. 1, p. 428).

Cat

Your knowledge of Tirmzi, Bukhari, et al is impressive but utterly irrelevant to what I’m trying to do. Many of those hadiths that you post at the end of my articles are either inauthentic and, even if they were authentic, unsuitable for the time we live in. Every religion hsa gone through this – Islam is no exception.

For every Tirmzi, Bukhari, etc you quote I can quote from the work of Muslim scholars such as Fatima Mernissi, Leila Ahmed, Abdullahi An-Nai’im, Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, Amina Wadaud, Asma Barlas, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, the Musawah movement for Justice and Equality in the Muslim Family, etc who are moving Islam closer to the justice and equality at the heart of Islam and away from the misogyny that you like to find and quote back to me.

But it is precisely those shouting “she should’ve known better”…

I actually do think she should have known better. There have been several high profile documentaries in recent years about American women and their American children who have been prevented from leaving KSA by their Saudi husbands. There was one case shortly after 9/11 where a woman and her children made it to the US embassy and demanded protection as American citizens and the US ambassador ordered the Marine guards to eject them from the embassy grounds. As a former US Marine, I find that shocking. And embarrassing. But saying I think she should have known better doesn’t mean i don’t think something should be done.

…who should answer my pirate question.

The “pirate” question is invalid. You may as well blame hijacking victims for getting on passenger jets when they were aware of the risks. The pirates are operating in international waters, in the middle of one of the most important trade routs on the planet. Not the same thing as willingly entering a country where you know that you are at risk of being victimized with the full sanction of that nation’s government.

Did they blame U.S. Capt. Richard Philips and his crew for sailing along a stretch of water where Somali pirates had taken dozens of hostages?

I’ll frame this in a way that makes more sense to me. During the 1980s, I *did* blame the westerners who continued to live and work in Lebanon, or even visit Lebanon, even though they knew they were prime targets for being taken hostage. Absolutely. And likewise, if anything happens to the peacekeepers currently in Lebanon, I will say that they too “should have known better” due to the barracks bombing in 1983 and the kidnap, torture and murder by Hezbollah of Colonel Higgins, who was serving as senior observer for the UN peacekeeping force there in 1988. And also, if the US opens another embassy in Iran and suffers another hostage crisis, I will say the US government should have known better.

It doesn’t make me feel better to say people should have known better. It’s just a statement of fact. Sometimes people behave foolishly, and nothing bad happens to them. But that doesn’t make it OK to behave foolishly.

Craig,

I tend to disagree about the “should have known better” argument. On one hand, I think people do assess risks, but are sometimes mistaken in their calculations. I am sure that Mrs Moran did consider the rules, and regulations of KSA, but was probably assured by her husband, whom she trusted that he would treat her right. You can’t possible think that all abused women (worldwide) “should have known better”… On the other hand, I feel that the whole point of the argument rests elsewhere, namely what are the rights of the lady in questions as a Canadian citizen? What can she demand of her government? What does her government owe her, if not her personal security when she pleads for it? Do you agree or not that there is a certain double standard in dealing with these issues?

Joujolie, I don’t really agree with you about people assessing risks before they take risky actions. Most people do, but some people don’t. Some people actually seem to enjoy putting themselves at risk. I’ve observed that first hand. But as you say, that’s not really the point. I would never argue that somebody deserved whatever they got just because they did made a bad decision.

I feel that the whole point of the argument rests elsewhere, namely what are the rights of the lady in questions as a Canadian citizen?

That’s a good question. I’m not a lawyer but I’m thinking Canada doesn’t have much legal resource in this case. And I’m not sure how much diplomatic leverage Canada has in Saudi Arabia. Even if the Canadian Government had substantial clout in KSA, I’m not convinced they’d be willing to use it to help one citizen. The Zahra Kazemi case in regards to Iran is not reassuring when it comes to the Canadian government’s resolve in this type of situation.

What can she demand of her government?

I believe she is subject to Saudi law while in Saudi Arabia, not Canadian law, so I’m not sure she can “demand” anything.

What does her government owe her, if not her personal security when she pleads for it?

Yes, well, we’d all like to believe that our government’s can protect us while we are in foreign countries, right?

Do you agree or not that there is a certain double standard in dealing with these issues?

Undoubtedly. But there’s also a double standard in the way people report on these stories. If Canada did manage to exert undue influence to help this woman, you can be sure there would be a lot of commentators complaining that KSA treats Canadians better than it treats Pakistanis, or Indians, or whatever and that it’s an example of cronyism and westerners being treated like they are special and so on and so forth. Right? At the end of the day, the problem is with Saudi Arabia and the way it treats people. Not with Canada.