WOMEN CONFERENCE CALLS FOR REFORMS IN ANTI-WOMEN ISLAMIC LAWS
By Safa Haeri
STOCKHOLLM 18 June ((IPS) Maria Rashidi’s life changed in seconds when, returning home on a dark, cold September evening, someone, hired by her jealous husband, throw acid on her beautiful face and escaped.
Since then, and after more than 40 difficult, complex, expensive operations, she decided to give her destine a new direction, her life a new life by translating her fate into the battle ground on behalf of the millions of women, mostly in Muslim societies, who are insulted, humiliated, beaten up by their husbands, fathers or brothers.
"But the pain is not in one’s face of eyes destroyed", Ms. Rashidi told a packed, but shocked audience at the Stockholm’s University, relating courageously her hell of life back in native Iran and afterward in Sweden.
"When for the first time I was slapped and kept silence, I turned a puppet in the hands of my husband. It was me who allowed him to become my master until the day I decided to free myself", she said.
And it was here, in Stockholm, the Capital of a country where women enjoys the greatest of freedom and equalities with men than she had to pay a heavy price for freedom.
"Between staying at home, crying alone my tragedy, killing myself or cry out on behalf of all other women victims of men’s domination, I decided to fight o0n behalf of all the women in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh or in Africa. My cry is that of my mother who would suffer alone, never protesting out when beaten up by my father, and the cry of all those women who are insulted, humiliated, their face and body mutilated, stoned or just burned alive", she said, speaking at a panel on Women and Violence.
According to Ms. Rashidi and other Iranian and Afghan women who addressed the last day of a conference organised here by the US-based Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation (IWSF) under the title of "What Is To Be Done?" this dangerous trend of men’s domination over women has its roots in Islamic laws and until these old-aged perceptions are not changed drastically, most Muslim men would continue violating women’s rights unpunished, even in advanced, Western nations.
"But what about psychological acids that burns deep inside women, the insults and humiliations they are subject to by their males, burns that are not evident physically" observed one member of the audience, after Mrs. Tahereh Geilani, an Afghan professor who lives in Germany observed that there are "hundreds of Maria" in her native, war-torn nation, but as well as in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.
Ms. Shahla Heydari, a researcher working in England confirmed that the culture of violence of men over women is part of the domination of Man over Woman in Islamic societies, "an integral part of that religion and culture", she said, noting that according to international statistics, one fourth of women’s population in the world is violated one way or another domination.
"Total fidelity to husband and obedience to him is a condition that women accepts in Muslim communities", Ms. Heydari said, giving Iran as an example, as since the installation of the Islamic Republic, not only violence against women has increased dramatically, but discrimination between boys and girls have also increased.
"Using Islamic canons, the Taleban who rules over Afghanistan as well as their opponents have istitutionalised women’s slavery", said Mrs. Tahereh, adding that under the Taleban, Afghanistan has "sunk in an unending dark night of rule of violence and anti-women laws applied by uneducated, self-appointed Islamic judges, prosecutors and executioners".
Proclaiming Ms. Maria Shahidi as the "living document of criminal incrimination of men’s domination and violence against unprotected women", the three-days Conference insisted Sunday on the "necessity of establishing closer co-operation between women’s organizations and groups working for the rights of women in Muslim societies".
The Conference also concluded that emancipated women from Muslim or other traditional communities should become more active with international organizations and Western governments in order to bring as much as pressures on nations that allows inhuman, degrading attitudes and practices against women, like the forced marriage of nine years-old girls to men, sometimes as old as ninety and over. ENDS IWSF CONF 18601