A judge in Germany refused to give a woman who was being beaten by her husband a speedy divorce because Muslim women should be accustomed to abuse.

"In January, the judge turned down the wife’s request for a speedy divorce, saying that the husband’s behavior was not an unreasonable hardship because they were both Moroccan. “In this cultural background,” she wrote, “it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife.”

Cultural relativism and ignorance at their absolute worst.

Via Adfreak

I received a lot of e-mails because of my previous post. People wrote in to make sure that I understand that while women are equal to men, they are certainly not identical. Quite profound e-mails I must say. I had certainly never known that women and men were NOT identical.

Here's one difference between men and women:

A recent article in the Online Journalism Review measured where men and women's eyes linger when they see a picture. Women look first and longest at the face, while men look at both the face and the "private anatomy."

"[Researcher] Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site."

I always knew that you men were dirty, dirty creatures...but dogs????!!!!!

Sexism is so worn out. The whole "women can't do this because they get pregnant" spiel is just so old. Egypt serioulsy needs to get out of the dark ages and stop stifling her girls.

No, I take that back. Egypt needs to get rid of the idiots that reside there, that's what she needs to do.

_______________________________________

Mar 14, 5:04 PM (ET)

By SALAH NASRAWI

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Egypt's judiciary chief has named the country's first female judges despite opposition from conservative Muslims, according to a decree published Wednesday.

Mukbil Shakir, the head of the Supreme Judicial Council, appointed 31 women to judge or chief judge positions in Egypt's courts, the official Middle East News Agency said, quoting Shakir's decree.

The move is expected to give a boost to President Hosni Mubarak's political and social reforms that have been widely criticized as too restricted. But others said the announcement still falls short of providing women equal opportunities.

The decree said the women, who previously were state prosecutors, passed a special test before being named to their new posts.

Women's rights advocates have been pushing for female judges for decades, but the government had refused, fearing angry reaction from conservative Muslims opposed to a move they consider un-Islamic.

In 2003, Mubarak named a female lawyer, Tahany el-Gebaly, as a judge in the nation's constitutional tribunal, a post which does not include overseeing civil or criminal court cases. It was not immediately clear what courts the 31 women would preside over.

Some hard-line critics said Shakir's decree contradicts an article in the constitution that states the principal source of legislation is Islamic law. They base their argument on a Quranic tenet that holds that two women are equal to one man if they are called as witnesses in a court. A woman, they argue, cannot be a judge if she cannot be a sole witness.

Yahia Ragheb Daqruri, president of the judges' syndicate, has vehemently opposed appointing women to be judges.

"Women must not sit as judges because it would be against Sharia (Islamic law) as they would have to spend time alone with men," he was quoted as saying in a recent interview in the independent al-Masri al-Youm daily.

Others argue that female judges might become pregnant while serving on the bench and that would affect the judiciary's prestige.

But a leading Egyptian cleric, Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, has ruled that there is nothing in Islam's holy book, the Quran, that bans women from becoming judges. Tantawi is head of Al-Azhar, the leading Sunni Muslim center of religious thought. His rulings carry substantial weight in the Muslim world, and his statement may have lent legitimacy to campaigns by feminist activists to get women on the bench.

But others said the decree did not go far enough. Fatima Lashin, a lawyer whose request to join the judiciary was turned down solely on the grounds she is a woman, called the move cosmetic because the women who were named were chosen from among state prosecutors and excluded defense lawyers and civil servants. She also contended the government
intends to send the female judges to family status tribunals and not criminal courts.

"The government should open the post for all women, not those of its choice," Lashin told the Associated Press.

I'm the kind of person who, when traveling, suffers from severe jet lag. It's one of the reasons I'll never visit Egypt for just a week. Most of that time is spent sleeping all day and tossing and turning in frustration all night. It takes about a week or two before my internal clock catches up with my environment.

I know a lot of people who are able to reset their internal clocks and I've always envied them. Me, I can't do that. I'm addicted to my creature comforts - mess with them and you mess with your life. Toots gave me this shout-out once:

"Fierce...like a snarling wolverine, especially if you slight her a) gender b) friends c) the weak and the ugly. The plus side is you know she has your back. What's intriguing is that she's as sweet as a hostess twinkie and just as soft...if you can ever get past the snarling wolverine bit. Generous to a fault, curious mind and all about her creature comforts: mess with her food, her sleep or her head and she will engage 'cranky' mode and you'll be sucked in like a fishing boat in a whirlpool..."

So when daylight savings hits and my internal clock gets screwed with, I'm a pretty unhappy person. Daylight savings crept up on us yesterday, three weeks ahead of schedule. I hate it. Hate it. I love the longer days, but I hate what it does to my bodily rhythm. Couldn't get to sleep at all last night. I usually try to get to bed by 11, but 11 last night was really 10 and so I was tossing and turning till nearly 3! It drove me crazy! Woke up at 6am, which my body still recognizes as 5am. The crank was on all day long.

Right now I'm EXHAUSTED. But it's too early to sleep!! If I get myself into bed right now I'll toss all night. Grrrr.

This made me laugh :)

One of my favorite paragraphs:

"Christian Syrians in this 15% Christian country say they do not wish to get involved in what they see as a intra-Muslim issue, but privately, some think the Muslims have gone nuts (“We had the good sense to ban all multiple marriages by the third century after our faith started, and anyway we see abstinence as the ideal to strive for; you folks seem to swing the other way”)...

NOTE TO THE NUTTY ANONS OUT THERE: THIS IS SATIRE.

-------------
The Polyandry Fatwa
By Mohja Kahf

(AL-TAL, SYRIA) Women in this small Syrian town have had absentee husbands for decades, like women in many other poorer Arab states, where the lack of livable income drives many men abroad in search of work. Now, thanks to improved DNA testing and a fatwa from Syrian ulema that some think will soon be followed by the ulema of other countries, women here have the option of taking a second husband, even if they do not want to divorce the first one.

Polygamy in Islam has traditionally been a male prerogative. The preservation of nasl, or paternity, is cited as the reason why the Quranic verse allowing polygamy for men cannot be assumed to apply in both directions. This has always posed an interpretive problem, since Quranic commandments phrased in the male gender case are not generally assumed to apply exclusively to men. Many verses commanding prayer and fasting, for example, or detailing how zakat must be distributed, are offered in the male pronoun, but apply equally to women.

With enhanced DNA testing now making it possible for paternity to be determined non-invasively from the moment of conception, in a process accessible to everyone in this socialist state, where all health care services are considered a universal human right, ulema in the small, Muslim-majority country are relieved to be able to extend the blessing of polygamy to women. The secular government has not played a role in devising the fatwa, but a representative of family court says such marriages will be recognized.

“It solves a real stress that is on our society,” Sheikh Habib-uddin says, as one of the scholars who was instrumental in coordinating the ijma effort. “We have political prisoners who are arrested and never seen again by their wives. We have men who migrate to the Gulf for work, but send paychecks once in a blue moon, and God knows what wives and families they have taken there.”

His own daughter, Carima, was married for four months to her cousin Rafik, in a match that had been arranged and happily celebrated by the two families, when the state police hauled Rafik away for political activism.

“I don’t want to divorce him,” Carima says. “even though my mother and father said that would be okay. He’s my cousin, and I’m fond of him.” She blushes. “He should come out of prison and find an empty room? I can’t do that to Rafik. I should be there for him if he gets out one day. When. When he gets out.” She pauses to wipe the tears that have sprung to her eyes. “But—I should put my life on hold? Not to be able to build a family of my own? My younger sisters were having babies, and I had none to cradle in my arms.” She cites the example of another woman in the extended family who lived on tenterhooks for twenty-two years because her husband, also a political prisoner, was reported alive by a prisoner who was released. Five years later he was said to be dead, then alive again. Doubt and hope went on for more than two decades, with prison authorities unwilling to release information.

“Divorce is allowed in such circumstance, of course,” Sheikh Habib says. “But the woman refused it as long as a shred of hope remained.” Finally it became clear that her husband had been executed the first year, in one of the repressive massacres of the Baathist state.

Carima waited three years after Rafik’s arrest before allowing her parents to arrange another marriage for her, to neighborhood shopkeeper Abu Tosheh. She still goes to the authorities with Rafik’s parents at the start of every year to file an inquiry, and meanwhile is pregnant with her first child and glowing.

“This is exactly the sort of difficult dilemma God created polygamy to relieve,” says Muslim Brotherhood representative Aqil Fahim, a Syrian dissident who lived in Riyadh for four decades. “I’ve seen men in the Gulf who are supposed to be there to support wives and children back in Syria, but they end up finding a nice local girl and settling down. What happened to sending money back home?”

More than money is on the mind of Um Wisal, whose husband is one of those deadbeat dads in Riyadh. Abu Wisal’s father and clan were willing to support Um Wisal and her eight children, given the abandonment of their son, who wouldn’t divorce her. Rumor had it, he’d married two women in Saudi, a Moroccan and a Somali. Whenever she sent word asking for a divorce, he’d wire money, along with the words “Baby, don’t go.” So Um Wisal had no case for divorce on the grounds of non-support, plus the words made her remember his charms. “That was our song,” she says, pulling the edge of her veil over her mouth to hide a smile. “Maybe he’ll come back some day, and we’ll have us some more good times.” She puts her hand on her ample hip and says, “But I wanted a man by my side. A woman needs support in this world. I wanted the weight of a man.”

She found one, in the hefty shape of a truck driver from Ifrin, Farris al-Youm. Her husband’s clan was furious. They tried to take the children, but she wasn’t divorced from their son, so they couldn’t. “I’m halal married,” she says triumphantly. She sends the children to their father’s clan after school, at dinnertimes, and for breakfast and lunch on weekends. Asked whether she is a good mother despite her second marriage, she insists that she is; Farris’ driving schedule allows her time to give them plenty of motherly affection, as well as to tend her two goats and to harvest her seven walnut trees.

Advocates of the Polyandry Fatwa insist that it’s not just about sex. Areej Basaleh (who, with a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, teaches at Damascus University’s Islamic College) says it’s about companionship, being a couple, having a mate at the dinner table, for some, while for other women it is also about finding a provider and a protector in a world that is still tilted toward male power. Others want to balance between family obligations incurred with a first marriage, and personal inclinations addressed by a second spouse. Sometimes the first spouse is mentally instable, or infertile, or brainstem dead, but the wife wants to keep the bond out of loyalty, or for the children or inheritance issues.

And then there is also sexual need, she admits. “Marriage is a sexual outlet, among other social glues it provides.” Some first husbands have prostate problems and cannot take Viagra because of heart conditions, she explains, or simply are unable or unwilling to understand how to bring a woman to climax, even though her equal right to orgasm is, nominally at least, recognized by Islamic jurisprudence. They want to clamber on top of a woman without the foreplay of “kisses and words” advocated by the Prophet Muhammad. Or they master vaginal sex in one traditional position, but are unwilling to adventure further, leaving her frustrated and bored, staring at the ceiling. Yet other aspects of the marriage may be fine, and the wife may be willing to stay in the marriage for those reasons, seeing it as cruel and selfish to leave, especially if there are children. She is thus left with a sexual dilemma.

“Marriage is the one place we, as a faith community, do sanction sex, right?” Areej continues. “So it’s supposed to fulfill that natural, God-ordained function, in a context of love and compassion.”

“When it’s not doing so for too many women because the men are not stepping up, something is wrong, and religion should provide a compassionate answer,” says conservative cleric Imam Hamid al-Fahl, who works out at the gym to stay in shape for his wife, and brings her roses on the anniversary of the publication of the book that founded the Shafi’i school of fiqh. “Something had to be done about all these restless women.” With the Polyandry Fatwa, men will realize that, for the first time in history, there are consequences for such shortcomings, Imam al-Fahl believes. Even those whose wives do not consider the polyandry route will be more motivated to try harder.

Opponents of the Polyandry Fatwa point out that it’s not just for women with absentee first husbands. Women with husbands who are present and accounted for make trouble in the family by marrying over them, they say. Feminists who would rather see polygamy ended all together are not pleased, but polyandry proponents say such activists are just not being realistic. Christian Syrians in this 15% Christian country say they do not wish to get involved in what they see as a intra-Muslim issue, but privately, some think the Muslims have gone nuts (“We had the good sense to ban all multiple marriages by the third century after our faith started, and anyway we see abstinence as the ideal to strive for; you folks seem to swing the other way”), while others say they were glad to see Muslims finally being fair to women on the multiple marriage thing.

Romantics who insist that marriage means a pairing of two souls meant exclusively for each other are outnumbered by those who say that is a highly individualistic view, contingent on specific economic conditions in other societies. They add that marriage in Syria, rather than being merely an individual act, is a societal institution at the center of a web of complex, pragmatic roles. Nature can be brought in to support either view, with romantics pointing to the lifelong pairings of monogamous animal species and polygamy advocates noting the proliferation of multiple partners in other species.

Conservative Muslim adversaries of the polyandry ruling, meanwhile, derisively tag it “the Slut Fatwa.” “Only a slut would want to sleep with more than one man,” says Mafini Dam of the Center for the Syrian Family in Damascus.

“Case in point, my neighbor Sharifa Izzat,” she says. “She’s got the apartment upstairs with her first man, and an apartment down in the basement with the second one.” There is a rhythmic rattling from the ceiling and Mafini, a widow, puts her hands to her ears. “A’ouzu billah,” she says.

Sharifa Izzat, 35, freshly showered, brushes aside Mafini’s disdain, as she enters the apartment house lobby. Sharifa’s upstairs husband is a respected contractor twelve years older than she, paunchy and bald, “but a dear,” she says, and a good father and provider.

The downstairs spouse is a long-haired starving artist with rugged good looks who takes her dancing on the town and paints loving portraits of her three children (from the first husband) in oils. Seven years younger than she, he made her feel alive after sixteen years of marriage had settled her into a rut. She was not willing to have an affair; it had to be halal and aboveboard. Nothing sordid: a clean, responsible act.

“Each husband satisfies a different side of me. I’m a complex woman in her prime,” Sharifa says brightly, pushing the “down” elevator button.

“One for the money, two for the show,” Mafini says of Sharifa’s two husbands, grimacing.

Sharifa is open to the idea of a third husband, “but only if the right man came along.” It would make her life even more complex, she knows, and while her two current husbands have adjusted to each other, a third might change the dynamic. “I’ve always had a soccer player fantasy,” she says with a wink, as the elevator door closes on her.

Islamic education materials distributed by imams in support of the Polyandry Fatwa remind women that the Quran limits polygamy to four spouses, and that they must be scrupulously fair in dividing their time and attention among them, an ideal men have had a hard time living up to. The pamphlets also note that monogamy continues to be favored implicitly in the Quran. Most Muslims, says Shaikh Habib, historically have been monogamous, and polygamy has been limited to small numbers in society, even if the spotlight often falls on those few. And most Muslims, he believes, will continue to be monogamous.

“But it’s nice to have options,” his daughter Carima adds.

It's full of unexpected little delights!

I've been working like a dog recently. Have taken on a lot more responsibility than I need to AND am taking a class on Saturdays for the next five weeks. A six day workweek has left much to be desired. If I'm not working, then I'm in hibernation mode. No amount of convincing will make me leave my house once I return to it after a hard day's work. An evening well spent is one where I can watch "Rome" or "Heroes" in peace and fall asleep right after.

Last night, however, I managed to muster enough energy to go see a movie at the Paris. Nothing planned...I just so happened to be in midtown during the evening and just walked in. Probably the only spontaneous thing I've done in the past six months to a year.

I've always wanted to watch a movie at the Paris. Been in NY for 17 years and never once made it. It was the opening night of "The Namesake", the new movie by Mira Nair. I'm a big Nair fan. I think she's got a great eye and gives us great stories. I had read the book as well and Carmen likes any book that talks about the complex lives of immigrants.

Anyway, here's why NYC is so wonderful:

As I was standing on line waiting to get into the theater (the line was almost a block long) I saw a poster about a movie coming out soon on the little sparrow of France. I LOVE Edith Piaf. Her songs magically transport me to a cabaret in Pigalle.

I've always been an old, young woman. When my peers were listening to Debbie Gibson, I was obsessed with the Beatles and the Temptations. I've gotten a lot of flack for blasting Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich in my car. I had a friend try to get out of my car because she was so embarrassed by the music! But screw 'em all! The minute this movie comes out I'm going to be the first on line to see it. At the Paris.

So already I'm in a good mood. I'm entering a theater I've always dreamed of visiting and was warmly greeted by Piaf. As we're sitting waiting for the movie to begin, the manager comes out and introduces herself. The Paris truly IS a special theater! Thank you for coming to our theater and we hope you enjoy the movie, she said. Tonight we have a special treat for you. The director of the movie, Mira Nair, is here with us tonight!

By this point I'm beginning to remember why it is that I love New York and began wondering why I keep myself so busy that I can't seem to live spontaneously anymore.

After Nair talked to us for a bit the previews start. I'm already enchanted by the entire evening at this point. The preview just put the icing on top of the cake. "Paris, Je t'aime", a romantic ode to the City of Lights, should be coming out soon.

There is no city in the world that I love more than Paris. I love traveling, I love playing in various cities. I've got several favorites and several that I wouldn't mind moving to. But I am in love with Paris.

"The Namesake" was great and had the entire audience in tears, especially those who never read the book. I've never been to a movie where EVERYONE was crying.

It was a great Friday night full of unexpected surprises. I need to do this more often.