Shabiha reportedly rapes 8-year-old near Al-Suwayda | Women Under Siege

Shabiha reportedly rapes 8-year-old near Al-Suwayda | Women Under Siege

DISORDER IN THE COURT

Towards the end of 2011, the Fifth Circuit judicial panel released a highly anticipated opinion affirming the convictions against the five organizers of the former Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation on charges that they conspired to funnel money to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Those who know, love or support them cannot help but feel incredibly sad. We hoped for the vindication they all deserve. 

Ghassan Elashi has been a man of endurance. In spite of his history and his innocence, he is a man of calm. He is a man of faith. This makes him unlike many other men convicted unjustly.  The problem for men of even the strongest faith, are the families who will simply miss those who have loved them a little bit longer.  We must asked Allah that they be entrusted to his care and that He rewards Shukri Abu Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh,  Mohammad El-Mezain for the good deeds that have been misrepresented and labeled as crimes. 

Many of us still cannot believe that a gentle and benevolent man like Shukri should  have to lived in a perpetual nightmare where everything he has known, loved, touched or hope to be, has been ruined and disfigured by injustice, prejudice and political deception. These are our brothers who refused to ignore the refugee camps filled with starving children, hopeless men and weeping women made homeless by missiles or the crippled children in the hospitals in Gaza.  These are five men who tried to make the lives of innocent civilians, a little easier as they continue to be force

to live within a political quarantine

What the judges have ruled today, will be remedied one day. Our brothers will be compensated in this life and the one to come. For now, they are committed to keeping the faith, the least we can do is keep them in our dua. 

DISORDER IN THE COURT

The Hijab- It's My Prerogative and My Right

If a mere scarf causes discomfort, dissension and social nullification, then its obvious that there is a problem with the way Muslims are being treated and a problem with how non-Muslims in America are becoming more discriminatory. If we hold each citizen to democracy’s standard that insist on equality for all and privileges for none; of we hold each citizen ot democracy’s standard that each American, regardless of background, has equal standing in the public forum -then we must agree beyond words, that this nation is an inclusive nation rather than an exclusive group of human being where everyone’s voice counts, along with the way they manifest their convictions. Central to making this social transactions is truth, we must acknowledge that everything is not fine here and many people are experiencing  the most cruel kind of punishment form a crime he did not, himself commit.  This basic understanding assures that all parties in the conversation recognize that there are systematic social inequities operating in our society, and that the playing field is not level. We may have different ideas about how to repair unfairness , but an acknowledgment of the such incivilities is essential to a productive solution. 

Following Your Instincts

What we often do, is not only suppress, but divert our ethical instincts because we believe that religious solidarity requires us to do so. We do it by giving preference to a sanctioned subculture. We do it by ignoring the rule or the standard that dictates a difference in the treatment between foreign born and American born. At the end of the day, however, you tell yourself the truth about brotherhood. There are two groups of people called Muslim in America,  They are all real people, in two real worlds, with a real but separate human dilemma. Then I tell myself that this dilemma is enough to bury someone. 

All of a sudden, faith kicks in. Then the belief in amazing grace convinces me that all is not over, a sense of disaster subsides and I feel I have a divine assurance that all of this is going to get better, and with increased awareness and merciful enlightenment, for one more day God has given me the ability to overcome. There isn't anything like that feeling. Its like being born again. Amazing !

Being True to Oneself

 Cultural shenanigans and blatant discrimination often reduced converts to becoming supplicants for acceptance. These were people who were in fact victimized twice though in different theaters. 

Being in such crossfire bore into me and challenged my owe acquiescence. It would be fair to say that every individual who silently complies with an injustice shares some degree of blame. 

As an individual what could I do and how long could I submit to my own fears and weaknesses. Lastly, where does someone turn when there is no voice left to listen to, no map to follow, or no obvious direction? Where is a real hiding place when a woman looks behind her and see that she is only being pursued by herself? 

Without being true to oneself, you lose a sense of definition. I tried to assemble the vestiges of my spirit and fuse it together to create the Muslim I first set out to be. In starting out I was remiss, far too impressionable. I did not know, at first, whom to revere and why, whom to deny all consideration and why, and exactly who had a right to my loyalty. Eventually I learned only after counting out the passing of really tough years. I needed to keep my own visions, not have it give way to behaviors or judgments faulty in ethical principle and practice. 

In the end the issue was not being faithful to America or my Arab or Muslim brothers.  The issue was me and what truths I needed to uphold. Love of religion could not erase a bruised history. 

In had to look inward and examine my own fantasies about brotherhood and identity, patriotism and religion, not only as a psychological phenomenon, but what the force of social and historical implications have on the Muslim individual and his personality. 

Virginity Test is a Result of Strength Uncontested

Virginity Test is a Result of Strength Uncontested

By Khalilah Sabra

          A virginity test is the practice and process of determining whether a female is a virgin, i.e., whether she has engaged in sexual intercourse. The test involves an inspection of a female's hymen, on the assumption that her hymen can only be torn as a result of sexual intercourse; many people believe that a girl is only a virgin if she still has an intact hymen. The hymen is a thin membrane of skin that partially covers the entrance to the female private part. This membrane can rupture from intercourse, but that is not the only scenario that causes a disruption. In addition, neither the presence of the hymen nor bleeding during intercourse can truly indicate virginity. Some girls are born without hymens, others will have hymens that stretch and don’t break during sex, and some will have torn their hymens during sports or when inserting tampons. But this isn’t really the point, is it? It’s not of the government’s business to determine if a woman is a virgin or not, but the ultimate test of its superior strength. There has been no eradication of this kind of violence and no real response whatsoever because the sexual degradation of women is consistently papered over and archived by the media, causing us to be far removed from the actual situation. The events in Egypt will be forgotten and we will move past dealing with such “complex emotions.”

Although Egypt and many Middle Eastern and African countries are joined in spirit through the Islamic and Christian faith, the pull of traditional values remains strong in many of these lands, several amounting to pure cultural transgressions. Several cultural expectations in some countries are vastly different from the others, but sexual discrimination and pattern biases dominate the two regions. While some governments have allowed humanitarian gains for their female populations, others have regressed and gender biases greatly influence how women are perceived and labeled. Picking a lifetime partner is still a family affair. Personal choice, at times, is irrelevant. Marriages are still arranged by parents, with the union considered to be a part of family matters, rather than a relationship between one man and one woman.

The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the violence in Libya, have not really enhanced the movement for gender justice and are far from challenging politically sanctioned sexual assault (PSSA). Any speculation that the liberation of women may follow appears to my mind as unrealistic. As long as men believe that they can forcibly control women, they will proceed to do it. In the violent landscape of conflict, it seems inevitable. Sexual abuse seems to be part of the “fallout”  of political conflict and is equally as savage as the other actions of the oppressive class. 

Societies that reprimand women who are “not found to be virgins” and threaten to charge them with prostitution are sanctioning assaults on citizens based on gender and vulnerability. It is more than degrading - it is criminal and an extreme act of perversion.  A woman can kicked, hit, pushed and may attempt to run, but she cannot retaliate in kind.

Human Rights Watch criticized the virginity test as “degrading and unscientific” and a second assault on traumatized women. In its report it raised concerns about Indian courts bringing views of rape victims’ general moral character into their rulings. It is more than “degrading and unscientific.” It is an appalling loss of control over justice and a symptom of an unhealthy society, in which men display contempt for women. It is an ugly characteristic of unnatural behavior that has nothing to do with sex.

Cultural environments, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have erected invisible barriers and act as anchors in the sand when it comes to advancing new ideas about gender equality. Equal rights for women do not fit the existing pattern so it is dismissed, filtered to generalized legal attachments, or subjected to the corners of the parking lot where it will be ignored and unrecognized. Men are bred to be conditioned into recognizing this pattern and advancing the norm, which is usually what has been traditionally defined as conventional behavior of women, or ideas about womanhood, likely to be embraced. 

Amnesty International reports about how women protesters being subject to virginity checks is not uncommon. That they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then threatened with prostitution charges is another atrocity that follows a history to gender violence following political violence.  Throughout history it has not only been a male prerogative, but man's basic weapon of force women into submission - the primary tool being his will and her fear.

Understanding the anatomy of the opposite sex can help eliminate confusion, stop harassment, and challenge misconceptions, but it won’t make government empowered handlers obtain a moral look at their own attitudes toward this devastating crime unless they are punished for it. Without enforced penalties, these “lawmen” are unless likely to succumb to pressure to do something which they should naturally have the wherewithal to oppose. Man's structural capacity to abuse women has been long ignored and nations have not supported the fact enough that a woman’s body is her own.

Frankness about the subject matter will rankle some people.  Stories of men committing assault against women reveal the darkest side of the social and biological differences as well as the potential conflicts between men and women. This type of behavior evokes the worst aspects of gender and racial stereotyping for both males and females. 

While sexual abusers may have a variety of motivations and those who participate in politically sanctioned sexual assault will vehemently disagree with being labeled as a sexual assailant, this kind of biological warfare should be acknowledged for what it is.  Females will continue to be kept tightly under the rule of men as long as men are not held accountable under the rule of law. 

Women should not fear being grope while traveling, on-route to work or the weekly trip to the marketplace without their husbands or a male escort. Egyptian, Tunisian and Syrian women stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their men when their nations called out for democracy. They have also died in furtherance of the cause. Now that the constitutional mandates are being re-written, will women be left out of the process?

Khalilah Sabra, is Executive director of MAS-Immigrant Justice Center and has provided decision makers, the general public, and members of the legal profession around the world with brief, balanced accounts and analyses of significant social developments and newsworthy events that are typically ignored, involving women’s rights and gender equality and other issues that are critical to understanding and enforcement of foreign judgments, child custody, consular relations, female asylum issues and legal assistance for refugee women. Author of  An Unordinary Death, the Life of a Palestinian” and  “Cleansed: Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia- Herzegovina” were testimonies of women forced to endure rape and, in many cases, give birth to the children of their abusers.