by HAJER NAILI
Campaign of men dressed up as women to support the women of Marivan, Iran. PHOTO/Maryam Namazie
“It’s our era; our time to shine,” says Maryam Namazie in this interview. “It is we who are now on the offensive. Fitnah is a warning to Islamists: It will be our women’s liberation movement that will bring it to its knees.”
Q: What are you planning on doing with this campaign?
A: Our movement plans to bring an end to Islamism. While misogyny will not end with Islamism, the situation of women will improve greatly across the world as one of the leading proponents of femicide is brought to its end.
Q: Your petition reads, “Women are seen to be the source of fitnah or affliction.” Please elaborate?
A: In one Hadith (the sayings and actions of Mohammad, Islam’s prophet), Mohammad said: “I have left behind no fitnah more harmful to men than women.” This is a recurring theme in all major religions. There is a Jewish prayer that says: “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler the universe who has not created me a woman.” In the Bible, there is one verse that says: “Her filthiness is in her skirts” (Lam.1:8-9). There are of course many examples of religion’s misogynist perception of women.
In practice, this translates into an obsession with the control and restriction of women in order to maintain everything from family honor to societal order. This is most visibly experienced for women living under Islamic laws because of Islam’s access to political and state power via Islamism or political Islam.
To the extent that Islamism has power, veiling is enforced by morality police and women are imprisoned for escaping forced marriages or stoned to death for adultery.
The extent of hatred towards women runs deep. Recently in Marivan, Iran, a judge ordered a young man to be dressed in women’s clothing and a hijab and paraded around the city by security forces in order to humiliate him. Being a woman is considered the greatest of humiliations.
While the term fitnah is perceived to be a negative one, if one looks at it from the perspective of religion and Islamism, it represents something very different when looked at from another viewpoint. It is always the woman who transgresses norms that is deemed to be “fitnah.” It is the woman who refuses to submit; the one who resists and is disobedient. In that sense, the women’s liberation movement is a source of fitnah for those who insist on women’s oppression.
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