What? No "Victoria's Secret" in Somalia?? Ya don't say! (Women being whipped for wearing bras under their burqas.)

Remember when Naomi Wolf wrote that inane article on how sexy and liberating it was to wear a burqa? And then Phyllis Chesler called her out on it?

Well, Wolf's version of "sexy and liberating" is apparently NOT toleratedin Somalia where women are being whipped for wearing bras that enhance the firmness of their breasts.

From the FOX report:

A Somalian Islamic group reportedly has started whipping women in public for wearing bras that violate Islam, the Daily Mail reports.

Residents claim insurgent group Al Shabaab sent gunmen into the streets to round up women who appeared to have a firm bust. The women are inspected to see if their suspected firmness is natural or from a bra. Officials reportedly make the women shake their breasts after removing their bras.

"Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of full veil and now they order us to shake our breasts," a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.

The new bra rule adds to the long list of religious restrictions in Somalia...

Followed the FOX link back to The Daily Mail. There it is reported that as of late...

"You just find yourself being whipped by a masked man as soon as leave your house."

H/T to PUMA PAC for calling my attention to the FOX report.

Women in Middle Eastern Music, Part Six: Morocco, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Beyond.

I will be traveling for the next several days. I am taking a pilgrimage to Boston, Seneca Falls, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, and the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester. To celebrate Independence Day, and bring my oldest son back from Harvard.

I have decided NOT to take a computer. As I really do need a break from the politics of the hour. So, this is my final blog entry for a while. Thus ends my series on the Women of Middle Eastern Music. When I return I will probably do a series on Unitarian Universalist Feminists, here in the U.S. During the "First Wave." (Cady-Stanton and Anthony would happen to be two of them.)

This series that I am completing now leaves me saddened. Alas, it appears that the influence of radical Islam is making life very difficult for woman musicians in a variety of countries. The crackdown seems to be deepening and spreading. Many professional female performers find themselves in exile ... in places like France or Norway. Either that or dead.

But what of the millions of women who just want to sing for their own sake? To teach their daughters lullabyes, or celebrate a wedding with a rousing Miserlou?

I was able to find this little bit of encouraging news from Morocco:

During an era of galloping globalization where cultural distinctions and nuances are flattened out, the Beyond Harmony project seeks to dispel the ubiquitous stereotype of oppressed, infantilized Muslim women who are constrained from contributing to society. Women like Rahuoum El-Bekkali have become international musical heroines, proving that musical and poetic expression can be a truly empowering female experience. Not only do these songs depict religious poems, invocations and popular songs, but they shed light onto important cultural traditions that have been passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter. With each successive generation these incredible women strengthen their identity as women, Moroccans, and Muslims.

But was immediately returned to some disappointing news out of Nigeria:

A lower Shari'ah Court in Shira Local Government Area of Bauchi State has sentenced a 34 year old female singer, Talatu Mai-Gurmi, to two months imprisonment or N5,000 fine for staging a traditional musical concert.

and

I should add that if the sharia enforcers are going to try to suppress music in Nigeria they have their work cut out for them: even the Wikipedia article is enough to indicate that the peoples of Nigeria, both the Islamised tribes and the non-Muslims, have an enormous, rich, deeply-rooted and endlessly mutating musical practice and tradition.

The situation in Afghanistan appears tenuous at best:

Music is opening a new world to 18 Afghan girls and young women enrolled in a cultural program in northern Afghanistan. The United Nations, which is helping to implement the program, says it is aimed at strengthening the voice of women in society. But conservative Islamic clerics in Mazar-e Sharif say the Koran forbids women from singing or learning to play musical instruments.

There are many other stories. And I am sure there will be more. For now, though, I want to end my journey into the world of middle eastern music by thanking all of the women who put their lives on the line, daily, so that we may all be enriched.

Peace,

SYD

Honorcide of Pakistani Singer, Ayman Udas: Part Five of My Dedication to the Women of Mid-East Music

I love the music of the middle east. The hypnotic drum rhythms. The sultry voices. They bring out the dreamer in me, provide a perfect escape, and allow me to avoid disturbing images and thoughts if things political.

I don't actually belly dance any more. I never did belly dance well. But the music has stayed with me, after my childbearing years are long over, when I learned how to dance for the sake of easier labors.

Middle eastern music ONCE did those things for me: It helped me dream. It made me dance. It eased my transition to motherhood. But, I guess I have to come clean and admit that, loving the music of Turkey, Greece, Pakistan, and Egypt had also lulled me into a kind of complacency.

How can something so beautiful be performed by women who are risking their lives to share it with me? It's incomprehensible. It's reprehensible. It's impossible!!

Isn't it?

When I decided to embark upon my current blogging journey, I simply wanted to escape from politics. I thought that by honoring the women who perform the music I love I could delve more deeply into something I enjoy, escape from all the Obotian illogistics, and maybe educate a few interested souls along the way.

I had no idea. Really. I just did not know. How bad things are.

As I've journeyed more deeply,though, I've been awakened to the reality that there is a reason we don't hear many women's voices celebrating this beautiful art form. That reason is not, as I had previously believed, simple discrimination. It goes beyond the kind of sexism that Meryl Streep complained about. (Not that I am downplaying Meryl's accusations about the nature of sexism in Hollywood.) The fact is, in many Islamic territories, women can be killed for singing. It's that simple. They are forbidden to do it.

Take, for example, Ayman Udas,

"shot dead by her own brothers in the conservative city of Peshawar in Pakistan after she had appeared on television.

The murder of Ayman Udas, who was in her early thirties and newly married, has shocked the city’s artistic community because it symbolises a backlash against women and cultural freedom in an area that is increasingly dominated by Islamic funda-mentalists.

She won considerable acclaim for her songs but had become a musician in the face of bitter opposition from her family, who believed it was sinful for a woman to perform on television.

Ashamed of her growing popularity her two brothers are reported to have entered her flat last week while her husband was out and fired three bullets into her chest. Neither has been caught."

This happened just a couple of months ago. Where was the media coverage? Did many of us even know about her murder? And why not??

"So far (we are told) there has been no outcry by Music Industry moguls, Hollywood Actors, or any other popular Entertainment industry figures in the UK or the United States, over her slaying. Similarly, Free Speech advocates and liberal Human Rights groups in the West have been silent on the murder."

As a feminist, I grow increasingly restless about this kind of casual disregard of a woman's life. And the subsequent cover ups.... that have something to do with our own fear of speaking out. We have been taught that, as good little Third Wavers we must stand up for the rights of all minorities. Including those in which men are allowed, nay encouraged, to murder their wives and sisters in the most brutal of fashions.

If I cannot speak out against this kind of barbarism, that makes me ashamed to be a "Feminist."

In fact, it makes me wonder what the fuck "Feminism" stands for??

SYD

Feminist Sticky Wickets: Women and Radical Islam

Recently found this excellent Feminist blog, by a well respected scholar who I am familiar with from my college days. It deals alot with Muslim-American issues. It's now linked in my blogroll, in case anyone else wants to track it from the Stray Dawg Blog.

Dr. Chesler is so well published that I cannot even begin to list her works here. Suffice to say that they are impressive. She is unabashedly pro-Israel, which may be a turn off to some. I, personally, do not see the fight against anti-semitism, to be all that different from the one against misogyny. Oppression is oppression. No form of it should ever be tolerated. So I am OK with Chesler's leanings. Plus, I appreciate *knowing* her "bias." (Most non-Feminist authors don't divulge biases. That is a fact.)

Women's issues in Radical Islam are truly one of the stickiest wickets in Feminism today.... and I give Chesler high marks for attempting to grapple with it! For my money... she is quite accurate in her assessment of the state of crisis that Feminist scholars find themselves in over the subject. I'll be ordering some of her newer books now, to read after I return my Spring Break journeys.

Speaking of books... I'd also like to recommend that everyone who is REALLY interested in this topic read "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen. If you take the time to do that... you will find his insider's view of Pakistani and Afghani politics invaluable. Mr. Mortensen insists that the education of women/ girls is the ONLY solution to Radical Islam in those parts of the world. Warring in the areas is, not only unhelpful, it produces more enrollees in militant madrassas. So it's counterproductive. Note: The author is NOT a pacifist. He is a former soldier, in fact. But.... he tries to share *what works.* And his "argument" (if you want to call it that) is impressive.

I am spending quite a bit of time on this subject right now. And will be posting a few blogs on it soon... I hope. But, in the meantime, here is an excellent essay by Artemis March about Feminism's desperate need to break with some of the taboos related to "multicultural relativism."

Peace,

SYD