[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”“Fashion? Come on!”“Yes, fashion,” Ziad repeated, pointing to a pair of niqab-wearing women in a far corner of the café.“Look at those girls.They’re covered up, but they’re in this café which is mostly men.That already indicates that they aren’t constrained by Islam.If for some reason the café owner suddenly stopped permitting women inside, these girls would still find a way to be around guys.”“How?”“You’d be surprised.Maybe they’d drive really slowly down the road, and guys would pull up next to them so that they could exchange phone numbers through the window.We’ll drive up and down the main highway next Friday night.You’ll see the pick-up scene there.”“I find that hard to believe.”“Just look at the shoes they’re wearing,” he said.“Heels,” I said, taking note.“Strappy ones.Nice sexy heels.So what?”“I don’t know many brand names, but those are guaranteed to be Dior or Chanel or Jimmy Choo.And if you go to the mall you’ll find all these girls in the boutiques buying up a storm.Why would they buy stuff if there wasn’t anyone to appreciate them?”I nodded.“And look at how they’re watching the belly dancer on TV,” Ziad added.“Clearly they have no problem with sexuality.”“But they cover their face,” I noted.“That’s repressive.We have to liberate women like them.Veiled women raise fundamentalists: the veil is the ‘gateway drug’ to extremism.”Ziad laughed.He sipped his tea and thought for a moment before responding.“A veil is not a bomb,” he said.“Besides, free them from what? The veil is a cultural symbol that has a long history.If you live in Kuwait for an extended period, you’re going to run into a sandstorm.The sand particles are tiny, and they get into your eyes and nose and throat and clog everything up.I bet you that when one comes, you’ll be covering your nose and mouth as well.That’s probably how the people of this part of the world started wearing veils thousands of years ago.At the end of the day, though, if they want to wear the veil, that’s their choice.Why not put up your feet and just admire the diversity of the world? I like to think of the world as a science fiction film.There are a whole bunch of creatures that look messed up to one another, but even if we don’t like what someone looks like we should still talk to them.”“But there are people in this world—Muslims—who want to impose the veil on everyone.Those are the people Islamic reform is trying to stop.”“That’s not Islamic reform, though,” Ziad replied.“To ‘impose’ you gotta be in government.Any time a government imposes anything on you and you resist, that’s just standing up to a government.Why do you bring Islam into it?”“Because they say it’s all about Islam.”“Just because they say it doesn’t mean it’s true.It’s your job to see beyond that.Look, if the American government says that they need to incarcerate a segment of their population in the name of Pokémon, do you turn yourself into a Pokémon expert in order to try and prove that, no, Pokémon wouldn’t do such a thing?”Our waiter chose that moment to bring our food—felicitous timing, because I didn’t have a response to Ziad’s question.He persisted.“You have to ask yourself what you’re fighting for, Ali.Are you an enemy of Islamic fundamentalism simply because it pisses you off, or do you actually support liberty? If it’s the latter, why do you have to talk about Islam all day? If it’s the former, you have to ask yourself why you let your life be controlled by being pissed off.Or…never mind.”“Or what?”“Or maybe you’re just desperate to be relevant.”9After my illuminating—but discouraging—talk with Ziad, I started working even harder on Islamic reform to compensate for the doubts I felt about its usefulness.I started by setting up a legislation monitoring system for Muslim countries—a system that would track reformist laws in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt to start with but would eventually expand to all fifty-five Muslim-majority countries in the world.The initial focus of the project was to be in the area of criminal law.The goal would be to identify all the various activists who favored repealing the anachronistic Sharia—or Islamic law—punishments, such as stoning, amputation, and lashing.I would then put those activists in touch with reformist scholars of Islam, who would help provide them with a religious basis for changing the law.In other words, the system would facilitate an alliance of reformist theory and action.I printed out hundreds of documents in various languages, paged through history books by the score, and began translating articles by lawmakers and political leaders who supported progressive initiatives.I read the platforms of large political parties, compiled the names of major liberal clerics in every country, and trolled the Internet for reports by international human rights agencies.The model for this project was the collaborative activism that had led, a couple years earlier, to the Women’s Protection Bill in Pakistan.In 2006 a number of activists in Pakistan gained sufficient influence over legislators and leaders that they were able to get repealed certain Sharia-based punishments that had been imposed upon women by General Zia ul Haq decades earlier.The reform effort centered, particularly, around laws that imposed the punishment for adultery—stoning—upon a woman who was raped.The repeal effort had been nearly thirty years in the making but had stalled in the face of pressure from conservative clerics.Eventually, a number of reform-minded religious scholars allied themselves with the feminist cause, and that alliance gave the bill the new energy that got it passed.My view was that since many of the reforms in the Muslim world—such as the Women’s Protection Bill—required changing laws that had originated in some inappropriate interpretation of Islam, the most helpful thing for social activists would be to have a place where they could connect with religious scholars who could provide a religious imprimatur for achieving progressive aims.In other words, I wanted to make sure that Muslims’ lives were improved, but I also wanted the credit for those improvements to go to Islam.The project gave me a way to lose myself.I became consumed by press releases and news reports, by unjust laws and the search for religious justice.My agitation became a walking apparition that stalked the house.Eventually my tension started to wear on Ziad.Whereas he had come home from work as early as possible when I first arrived, now he came home later and later.When we finally sat down to eat, he rarely talked, and if he did say something it was trivial.If I talked about my work, he seemed to bristle and become even more distant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.”“Fashion? Come on!”“Yes, fashion,” Ziad repeated, pointing to a pair of niqab-wearing women in a far corner of the café.“Look at those girls.They’re covered up, but they’re in this café which is mostly men.That already indicates that they aren’t constrained by Islam.If for some reason the café owner suddenly stopped permitting women inside, these girls would still find a way to be around guys.”“How?”“You’d be surprised.Maybe they’d drive really slowly down the road, and guys would pull up next to them so that they could exchange phone numbers through the window.We’ll drive up and down the main highway next Friday night.You’ll see the pick-up scene there.”“I find that hard to believe.”“Just look at the shoes they’re wearing,” he said.“Heels,” I said, taking note.“Strappy ones.Nice sexy heels.So what?”“I don’t know many brand names, but those are guaranteed to be Dior or Chanel or Jimmy Choo.And if you go to the mall you’ll find all these girls in the boutiques buying up a storm.Why would they buy stuff if there wasn’t anyone to appreciate them?”I nodded.“And look at how they’re watching the belly dancer on TV,” Ziad added.“Clearly they have no problem with sexuality.”“But they cover their face,” I noted.“That’s repressive.We have to liberate women like them.Veiled women raise fundamentalists: the veil is the ‘gateway drug’ to extremism.”Ziad laughed.He sipped his tea and thought for a moment before responding.“A veil is not a bomb,” he said.“Besides, free them from what? The veil is a cultural symbol that has a long history.If you live in Kuwait for an extended period, you’re going to run into a sandstorm.The sand particles are tiny, and they get into your eyes and nose and throat and clog everything up.I bet you that when one comes, you’ll be covering your nose and mouth as well.That’s probably how the people of this part of the world started wearing veils thousands of years ago.At the end of the day, though, if they want to wear the veil, that’s their choice.Why not put up your feet and just admire the diversity of the world? I like to think of the world as a science fiction film.There are a whole bunch of creatures that look messed up to one another, but even if we don’t like what someone looks like we should still talk to them.”“But there are people in this world—Muslims—who want to impose the veil on everyone.Those are the people Islamic reform is trying to stop.”“That’s not Islamic reform, though,” Ziad replied.“To ‘impose’ you gotta be in government.Any time a government imposes anything on you and you resist, that’s just standing up to a government.Why do you bring Islam into it?”“Because they say it’s all about Islam.”“Just because they say it doesn’t mean it’s true.It’s your job to see beyond that.Look, if the American government says that they need to incarcerate a segment of their population in the name of Pokémon, do you turn yourself into a Pokémon expert in order to try and prove that, no, Pokémon wouldn’t do such a thing?”Our waiter chose that moment to bring our food—felicitous timing, because I didn’t have a response to Ziad’s question.He persisted.“You have to ask yourself what you’re fighting for, Ali.Are you an enemy of Islamic fundamentalism simply because it pisses you off, or do you actually support liberty? If it’s the latter, why do you have to talk about Islam all day? If it’s the former, you have to ask yourself why you let your life be controlled by being pissed off.Or…never mind.”“Or what?”“Or maybe you’re just desperate to be relevant.”9After my illuminating—but discouraging—talk with Ziad, I started working even harder on Islamic reform to compensate for the doubts I felt about its usefulness.I started by setting up a legislation monitoring system for Muslim countries—a system that would track reformist laws in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt to start with but would eventually expand to all fifty-five Muslim-majority countries in the world.The initial focus of the project was to be in the area of criminal law.The goal would be to identify all the various activists who favored repealing the anachronistic Sharia—or Islamic law—punishments, such as stoning, amputation, and lashing.I would then put those activists in touch with reformist scholars of Islam, who would help provide them with a religious basis for changing the law.In other words, the system would facilitate an alliance of reformist theory and action.I printed out hundreds of documents in various languages, paged through history books by the score, and began translating articles by lawmakers and political leaders who supported progressive initiatives.I read the platforms of large political parties, compiled the names of major liberal clerics in every country, and trolled the Internet for reports by international human rights agencies.The model for this project was the collaborative activism that had led, a couple years earlier, to the Women’s Protection Bill in Pakistan.In 2006 a number of activists in Pakistan gained sufficient influence over legislators and leaders that they were able to get repealed certain Sharia-based punishments that had been imposed upon women by General Zia ul Haq decades earlier.The reform effort centered, particularly, around laws that imposed the punishment for adultery—stoning—upon a woman who was raped.The repeal effort had been nearly thirty years in the making but had stalled in the face of pressure from conservative clerics.Eventually, a number of reform-minded religious scholars allied themselves with the feminist cause, and that alliance gave the bill the new energy that got it passed.My view was that since many of the reforms in the Muslim world—such as the Women’s Protection Bill—required changing laws that had originated in some inappropriate interpretation of Islam, the most helpful thing for social activists would be to have a place where they could connect with religious scholars who could provide a religious imprimatur for achieving progressive aims.In other words, I wanted to make sure that Muslims’ lives were improved, but I also wanted the credit for those improvements to go to Islam.The project gave me a way to lose myself.I became consumed by press releases and news reports, by unjust laws and the search for religious justice.My agitation became a walking apparition that stalked the house.Eventually my tension started to wear on Ziad.Whereas he had come home from work as early as possible when I first arrived, now he came home later and later.When we finally sat down to eat, he rarely talked, and if he did say something it was trivial.If I talked about my work, he seemed to bristle and become even more distant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]