Some other noteworthy heroes of the Arab Spring

    An impassioned post for the Common Ground News Service, the latter an online initiative aimed at exploring "Muslim-Western relations," contributes to an effort I hold very dear - celebrating the women of the Arab Spring, whose names are largely absent from public discourse.
     In addition to Tawakul Karman, one of the most critical figures in the Yemeni uprising, whom I've committed myself to following, the article celebrates two other women: Aasma Mahfouz of Egypt, who in the early stages of her country's revolution posted a hugely influential video calling for young people to demonstrate en masse, and Munira Fakhro, an organizer and spokesperson for the Pearl Square demonstrations in Bahrain, who stressed that the movement was "not Sunni, not Shia, but Bahraini." I confess that I was not aware of either of the two prior to reading this. You can expect more from me soon!
     The post also reiterated the critical point that the women of the Arab Spring risk being shut out of whatever changes they help to implement.
     Per Dr. Natana J. DeLong-Bas, author of the post:

     "As we look at the Arab spring today, we must remember the lessons of Algeria and Kuwait. Although many courageous women risked their safety and gave their lives in the struggles for  independence, once the conflict was over and independence declared, women were thanked for their contributions – and sent back home to leave the 'real' work to the men. The ruling entities may have changed, but the patriarchal order remained intact."

      It's an observation that can just as readily be applied to the feminist movement here in the U.S., and one that in fact has an interesting resonance for me personally.

      On Saturday, I have the honor of speaking at a panel in Tampa for the NOW National Conference. Our conversation will address men's involvement in feminism, and will include among its topics of discussion the danger women face of having control of the movement wrestled away from them, by men who, often with good intentions, say "thanks for your work, ladies, but we'll take it from here." 

      Just as the experiences of Arab's female revolutionaries are the precise opposite of a vacuum, so is the abuse of power universal: power, its consequence, and the cost it exacts. 

      

An infuriating end to the Wal-Mart sexual harassment suit

     If any of the recent Supreme Court decisions offered up a cause for mourning, it would be yesterday's dismissal of the Wal-Mart sexual harassment suit, the largest employment class action in American history, and a critical development in the depressingly volatile field of women's rights.
     There is nothing short of tragic irony in the Court's rationale for the decision - that the prosecution needed to prove a nationwide policy or practice on the part of Wal-Mart to discriminate against its female employees - when in fact discrimination against women either through hiring, promotion, or inappropriate conduct is not only national but near-universal, and not just by Wal-Mart. The critical factor is the Court's naive assumption (or not so naive) that said discrimination would be blatant and codified, and that the existence of an anti-discrimination policy was enough to preclude it, when of course the abuse of women is overwhelmingly under the radar.
     Needless to say, the decision is not only a blow to women, but also to to ethnic and racial minorities, the LGBT community, persecuted religious groups, and any other routine target of abuse, in that it sends a message to all of the above that even a colossal articulation of resistance won't be enough to sway the tide of big-business.
     That said, I know I'm joined by many in claiming with defiance that this won't be the end of it, though it's most certainly the end of my ever setting foot in a Wal-Mart store again.

Tawakkol Karman - Yemeni Revolutionary

     I've spoken earlier about Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, human rights activist, member of Yemen’s main opposition party, founder in 2005 of Women Journalists Without Chains, and a mother of three . . . in short, one of those women in the world of whom you really want to keep track. Unfortunately, the news hardly ever manages to land on her, and I have Google Alerts to thank for this outstanding article in The New Yorker, which offers an excellent briefing both on Karman and the turbulent nation whose freedom she's struggling to realize.
     Block out some time on a weekend: it might be a lengthy writeup, but it's shorter than any book you're likely to encounter, while still conveying a volume's worth of information. Now that Yemen has joined the ranks of nations we bomb in secrecy (did you know we're bombing it now?) we owe ourselves, and our so-called enemies, the barest margin of knowledge .

Mona Eltahawy on "The Power of the 'I'"

     Before I follow through on my promise to stop irritating my readers with my fanboy relationship with Mona Eltahawy, I wanted to share a dynamite video of a speech she offered at the Personal Democracy Forum 2011, where she discusses "the power of the I"; that is, the transformation of revolution and war from the abstract to the intensely personal. The latter, she argues, is the most effective means for revolutionary thinking to spread. 

      It's ten minutes long, but very much worth it: 

Happy Birthday, Merrick!

     I wanted to take a moment to wish a happy birthday to my sister Merrick.
     I'm not sure the term "Renaissance Woman" has come into vogue yet, but when it does, she should be first in line to receive it. Without any kind of exaggeration, I can attest to her incredible skill as a painter, sculptor, poet, carver, dancer, and world traveler.  
     Here's to 26 years of astonishing talent, sis. The world can't wait for at least 52 more.

A surprisingly happy ending to the flooding of Atchafalaya

    In mid-May I blogged in dismay on Louisiana's bayou country, the Cajun community therein, and the profound danger both faced at the hands of an imminent flood.
    One month later, the waters appear to be receding, this thanks to a series of engineering miracles and the perseverance needed to see them through. The damage was much less severe than expected - negligible in some areas - such that Paul Naquin, the President of a local parish, remarked, "everything is working in our favor right now."
    It's the kind of ending that one might find habit-forming.

Some scattered but encouraging threads from the Strauss-Kahn case

    With the Strauss-Kahn case poised at the brink of getting ever more hideous, it's worth noting at least a few heartening threads in the narrative.

   First, Kenneth Thompson, one of the attorneys representing the maid, has appealed on French television for other potential victims of Strauss-Kahn to come forward and testify. His statement is stirring: "My law firm champions the rights of people who are taken advantage of all over the world. And so we take this case because we feel that no woman should be sexually assaulted anywhere."

     Nor - as I pray this case will help to establish - should any assaulter ever be able to operate with impunity. 

    Second, the increasing visibility of French feminists who protest the actions of Strauss-Kahn is helping to challenge what at times seemed a monolithic image of French chauvinist tolerance. Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, an analyst of French politics and culture, argues that "this is a key moment, a watershed moment,” and that, while "France is a difficult country to budge," the case is "an important step." 

    "Women are emboldened," she concludes.

    Third, the case has shed some light on the exhilarating power of the New York Hotel Worker's Union, rated one of the strongest worldwide. The Union provided buses to hotel workers who wanted to protest at Mr. Strauss-Kahn's arraignment, and has opened dialogues with hotel associations about equipping chambermaids with panic alarms. Since the commencement of the Strauss-Kahn case, at least one other cry for help has been honored:, a former chairman of one of Egypt's banks was arrested at another Manhattan hotel, also on charges of sexual abuse.  

     Finally, and perhaps most encouraging of all, two Democratic lawmakers responded to the Strauss-Kahn case by introducing legislation that would require hotel owners in New York State to provide sexual harassment training to their employees, and establish reliable system for reporting incidents of sexual assault.  

     Am I always on the lookout for a little dash of morale-boosting? Certainly, but these reports at least make it apparent that I can do so without grasping at straws.

A compelling anti-Islamophobic website & video teaser: My Fellow American

    It's an inspiring moment for any blogger to be reminded that someone is reading his or her work.

    I was therefore heartened, and honored, when someone from the Unity Productions Foundation reached out to me and requested that I blog about one of their projects: My Fellow American, an anti-Islamophobic website aimed at re-asserting Islam's rightful status as a vital component of the national community.

     A short video teaser is featured on the site. Among other strengths, it offers a morbid recap on the sheer mass of hateful discourse that's been shed on the Muslim faith:

My Fellow American

     Visitors to the site can browse through a series of video testimonials and written anecdotes, compiled by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, which challenge stereotypes and offer refreshing counter-narratives to the ones put forward by our paranoid media.

      See below for a personal favorite, where a non-Muslim resident of Northeast Tennessee recounts a simple but ingenius solution to a Muslim's neighbor's feeling of isolation:

Sandy Westin's Neighborhood

     Visitors to the site can submit their own stories as well.

     Finally, the website features a pledge, which, like most articles of its nature, shouldn't be necessary, but nevertheless hearkens from a place of gritty demand:

     Muslims are our fellow Americans. They are part of the national fabric that holds our country together. They contribute to America in many ways, and deserve the same respect as any of us. I pledge to spread this message, and affirm our country’s principles of liberty and justice for all.

     

A tribute to God and Galaxy

     When asked to recount a perfect night in New York, I'd have no reservations listing last Friday evening among their ranks, if only for the atypical camaraderie of God and the Heavens.

     It started with a hasty reading of an e-mail, the invite from the Progressive Muslim Meet-up Group, whose events I've attended off and on for the last eight months. With typical absent-mindedness, I failed to note both the name of the venue and the significance of its location when I Googled the address, impressed only by the fact that I could walk there from my office on Wall Street. My cluelessness held me all across Lower Manhattan, and even to the entrance of the building in question, where a lone police officer stood with his hands on a barricade. It wasn't until I'd gone inside, shed my shoes at the rack, taken a seat on the rug of the prayer hall, and listened to the coordinator for the space introduce himself to the nine or ten people present that I realized I was sitting in the Ground Zero Mosque.
     "Ground Zero Mosque," the derogatory label for the Park 51 Community Center, is a phrase I've never uttered with anything shy of the utmost sarcasm, but at no point had it incurred quite such disgust from me as it did right then.
     There we were, a handful of people, most of us students, all of us exhausted from a hard week of work, sitting on a rug in an empty white room quietly discussing peace. A more unassuming focal point for a nation's hatred I can't possibly imagine.
     The theme of the evening was intrafaith healing.
     Sunnis and Shi'ites swapped stories of what it was like to watch popular rhetoric breathe violence into the very distinctions we pondered in harmony. Good-natured teasing ("you Shias are so obsessed with history") seemed a universe apart from the bloodbaths of Baghdad or Bahrain. Two young women, a Sunni Malaysian and a Shi'ite Pakistani, both impassioned, both graced with good humor, sat knee to knee, laughing at the commonality of their experience, while at the same time professing pride at their own distinct paths, and all this made possible by Park 51, a so-called factory of terror.

      I stayed until 9PM, rounding out my experience with God and humanity, then took the C-train to Brooklyn Bridge Park for an accompanying dash of the Universe.

     In conjunction with the World Science Festival, amateur and professional astronomers had gathered by the dozens in the cool grasses of the East River embankment, telescopes of all dimensions aimed at the sky. While the lights of Manhattan glowed in the distance, and the tug-boats and barges slid past in eerie proximity, three world-class astronomers addressed a rapt audience on the wonders of the cosmos.
        Charles Liu, a professor of astrophysics; Carter Emmart, a visual artisan for New York's Hayden Planetarium, and Timothy Ferris, a prolific author and producer of no less a phonograph than the one contained in the Voyager spacecraft . . .  all of the panelists were equally guilty at exacerbating my life-long vulnerability to awe and wonder - of the Earth, of the firmament, of the view from outside.
    "Number two question I always get," said Ferris. "Is there a God? Sure: why not."
    At the end of the talk, the crowd dispersed to the awaiting telescope array.
    I pressed my eye to a weathered viewfinder and beheld in perfect alignment the planet Saturn, its rings a thin slice of light extending through the center of the orb.
    Whether a thing of design or of glorious accident, she was a genuine sight to see.
 
  


 

A tragic subject but an extraordinary woman

     Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist and activist whose speech at John Jay College I attended in April, was interviewed by CNN yesterday morning about the deteriorating situation in Syria.
     The talk focused specifically on Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, a 13-year-old boy whom the Syrian government tortured and murdered in April, and raised the question of whether or not his death would galvanize or demoralize the opposition.
      Mona, sticking to that distinctive balance between optimism and and practicality that she impressed me by striking before, argued that demoralization was the one outcome that the people of Syria would resist
      Though the interview is only three minutes long, I encourage anyone who is interested to view it, if only to get a sense of the infectiousness of her passion and convictions.

An online magazine has invited me to write an article

    Encompassing Crescent, an online monthly magazine aimed at exploring the Muslim world and facilitating interfaith dialogue, has generously invited me to write an article on Islamophobia.
    Following on the months of research and interviews I compiled and the multiple books read in preparation for my novel, my topic of choice will be dismantling Islamophobic stereotypes of the docile, unambiguously oppressed Muslim woman. I'll keep everyone updated as I go, and will post a link to the article when complete.

An update on the role of women in the Arab Spring

     Okay, so it's not much of an update, but it's the best I could do.
     Having forbidden myself from losing track of the Arab Spring's heroes, and in particular its game-changing women, I ran a Google News search on Tawakul Karman, the founder of Women Journalists Without Chains, who has been leading protests in Yemen for the last three years. Tawakul - also a politician and a 32-year-old, hijab-sporting mother of three - is most certainly worthy of attention, but I was unable to find any information on her more recent than a 5/13/11 article from the Sydney Morning Herald.
     While it may not qualify as cutting-edge, the article offers a useful portrait of the revolution's female narrative.
     Some stand-outs:

     -  Zainab al-Khawaja: a figurehead in the Bahraini revolution, who went on a hunger-strike to protest the brutal treatment of her husband, father, and brother-in-law.

     - The Libyan mothers, sisters and widows of men killed in a 1996 prison massacre who protested en masse outside a courthouse in Benghazi after their lawyer was arrested, helping to set the stage for the subsequent national uprising.

     - The female protestors in Yemen (another nod to the influence of Tawakul Karman) who poured into the streets by the thousands to rebuke dictator Saleh's assertions that it was un-Islamic for Yemeni men and women to protest side-by-side.

      - Iman al-Obeidi: a Libyan women (blogged about earlier) who on March 26th broke into the Tripoli Hotel housing Western journalists to blast to the world the horrific story of her gang rape at the hands of pro-Qaddafi forces.  As Qaddafi loyalists struggled to remove her, al-Obeidi shouted to the rolling cameras, “I am not scared of anything.”

      Giving voice to the truths these women bear out, the headline of an opposition newspaper in Benghazi, cited at the start of the Herald article, offers a moving declaration:

     “The role of the female in Libya: she is the Muslim, the mother, the soldier, the protester, the journalist, the volunteer, the citizen.”

     Yet the article also raises the sobering question of whether women's transformative roles in the revolutions will result in a reciprocal transformation of their own status in society.
     While crucial, I fear the question inevitably invites speculation on what this means for the women of Islam, which distracts from the one message I always try to end on: the oppression of women is global, and so must be its dismemberment.