JEANS NOT FOR WOMEN: FURORE OVER PANTS RULING, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

JEANS NOT FOR WOMEN: FURORE OVER PANTS RULING

Aceh’s Morality Police (Wilayahtul Hisbah) have taken to hauling up women for wearing tight trousers. In one district, they plan to make women hand over their tight trousers and cut the offending attire up on the spot.

CLAD in dark jeans, a long-sleeved top and headscarf, Henny is exasperated.

“Why is it that it is always the woman’s body that is subject to this or that regulation? It’s a pity our freedom on how to dress is being taken away from us.

“And what about the men? What regulations do they have to shield their eyes?” she adds pointedly.

Henny who works at Beujroh, a woman’s NGO, believes that the focus on personal matters like a woman’s style of dressing is actually to take attention away from urgent issues like corruption.

Most would agree that Henny, who is covered from head to toe with only her face, hands and feet exposed, is dressed in proper attire for a Muslim woman.

But not, apparently, for the Wilayahtul Hisbah or “WH” (pronounced “wee ha”) – in short, the Acehnese Morality Police.

For them, Henny’s jeans – or for that matter any jeans for women – is a no-no. Jeans, they say, are “men’s clothing”.

So women in Aceh should only wear trousers made of non-jeans material and these have to be loose and not made of thin fabric.

Those wearing fitting trousers or tight tops can expect to be hauled up and scolded by the Morality Police.

In Meulaboh, West Aceh, it goes a step further.

From Jan 1, women caught wearing fitting trousers will be given long skirts (for free) by these Morality Squads and the “offending” trousers will be cut to pieces.

And government offices too are to refuse service to women wearing tight trousers!

“Celana ketat ngak tutup aurat. Itu balut aurat. (Tight trousers do not cover the body. They wrap the body),” explains M. Kassim Idris, who is second-in-command of the WH in Banda Aceh where the Morality Squad too has been stopping girls wearing what they see as figure-hugging clothes.

http://newageislam.com/jeans-not-for-women--furore-over-pants-ruling/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/2332

The unseen world of Tamil Muslim women, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

The unseen world of Tamil Muslim women

By S. Theodore Baskaran

A story that covers six Muslim families in a Tamil Nadu village

The many subcultures that surround us make the colourful strands in the tapestry of Indian life. Hepsibah Jesudasan documented the Christian community around Cape Comorin in her Tamil novel Putham Veedu (the new house). Thopil Mohamadu Meeran recorded the life of Muslims in a fishing village of southern Tamil Nadu in his moving novel Oru Kadalora Giramathin Kathai (the tale of a coastal village). These are valuable recordings of a way of life disappearing fast. This English translation of a Tamil novel by poet Salma, The Hour Past Midnight, is set in the backdrop of Muslim community in central Tamil Nadu.

What is special about Salma's work is that it takes you by the hand as it were inside the unseen world of Tamil Muslim women and the problems encountered by them in that milieu. That includes the utter lack of space for women, child sexual abuse, and the persistence of caste prejudices among Tamil Muslim, malaise that could be traced in any Indian community.

Nearly a decade and a half ago, Salma attracted attention as a promising young poet through the pages of the literary magazines Kaalachuvadu and Puthia Paarvai. Patriarchical eyebrows went up when her poems echoing the voice of women, with explicit sexual imagery, appeared in print. The short film, She Write, by Anjali Montero and K.P. Jayashankar in which she featured along with three other Tamil women poets drew a lot of acclaim to her poetry. There are critics who see a close connection between her poetry and this novel. In fact, some of the characters can also be recognised.

http://newageislam.com/the-unseen-world-of-tamil-muslim-women/books-and-documents/d/1701

An absorbing look at Israel as an idea and a nation, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

An absorbing look at Israel as an idea and a nation

By Bill Beuttler

Sep 28, 2009

It was probably only a matter of time, then, until Cohen, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines, tackled Israel. The result is “Israel Is Real,’’ a smart, energetic overview of the history of the place and its relation to the Jewish people, from biblical times to the present.

Cohen’s narrative is propelled by muscular prose and an irreverent wit at times reminiscent of Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show.’’ It is peopled with everyone from Flavius Josephus (“the first writer of the Exile -- the first to realize that for a stateless Jew, power comes only by making yourself useful to the goyim’’) and King Herod (who in rebuilding the Second Temple “followed the plan described in the Book of Kings - God was the architect, Herod his contractor’’ through various familiar leaders of the state of Israel, with pauses en route for pivotal but lesser-known figures such as Theodor Herzl (the father of Zionism), Samuel Zemurray (the banana peddler-turned-business magnate whom Cohen suggests resigned his job running United Fruit for a year to play key backstage roles in the creation of Israel), and “the perfectly named Rabbi Abraham Kook’’ (founder of the settler movement).

Ariel Sharon gets more attention than most: His heroism in the 1948, Six-Day, and Yom Kippur wars; his role in the deaths of scores of Palestinian civilians at Kibbya in 1953 and the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982; his loss of a young son in a 1967 gun accident; and his decision in 2005 as prime minister to relinquish the Gaza and West Bank settlements he had once considered crucial for Israel’s defence. (“A stunning moment of recognition,’’ writes Cohen of this latter. “It was the old man realizing the dream had to be re-imagined, Israel had to get smaller to survive.’’)

http://newageislam.com/an-absorbing-look-at-israel-as-an-idea-and-a-nation/books-and-documents/d/1822

Gaza under fire, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Gaza under fire

John Pilger

Published 08 January 2009

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist". They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and that the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" of 1947-48 resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Israeli army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'".

The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapam party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say . . . who remember who used this means against our people during the [Second World] War . . . I am appalled."

http://newageislam.com/gaza-under-fire--/islam-and-the-west/d/1109

Pakistan and the War on Terror: A Country on the Brink, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Pakistan and the War on Terror: A Country on the Brink

Pakistan is at the center of a gathering fire storm engulfing south and central Asia in the most volatile confrontation since 9/11. Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and NATO all bear heavy responsibility for the crisis. Bush had neither the inclination nor urge to do right by Afghanistan, despite pleas by President Hamid Karzai to eliminate cross-border terrorist strikes from Pakistan and effectively rebuild the country.

Senior US officers serving in Afghanistan say they begged the White House and the State Department for action in 2006, but Bush was cozy with Pakistan's former President Pervez Musharraf and Iraq occupied US attention. Meanwhile, veteran John McCain flails in effectively playing the national security card against Barack Obama because Republican policies failed to secure the homeland against future Al Qaeda attacks.

Extending the combat zone: Last year, Pakistani Taliban militias developed their own political agenda – to Talibanize northern Pakistan and create a new "sharia state"

The Pakistan military and Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) saw Bush's lack of attention as a free pass to re-engage the Taliban as a Pakistani proxy force. The army hedged its bets against possible US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan or danger of India becoming too influential in Kabul, by moving pro-Pakistan Afghan leaders into Kabul and carving out a dominating position in Afghan politics.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan-and-the-war-on-terror--a-country-on-the-brink/war-on-terror/d/849

Anthrax Case Renews Questions on Bioterror Effort, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Anthrax Case Renews Questions on Bioterror Effort

By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE

Published: August 3, 2008

F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field.

If that was the motive, it succeeded. In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, killing five people, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.

After the attacks, for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed $877 million federal contract, though the deal collapsed two years later. Federal documents suggest that Dr. Ivins, along with several colleagues, might have earned royalties had the contract gone forward, but the deal ultimately collapsed.

http://newageislam.com/anthrax-case-renews-questions-on-bioterror-effort-/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/415