In Gaza können Frauen jetzt auch Polizistinnen werden. Wer diese Nachricht als Indiz für die Beförderung der Frauenrechte verstehen will, sollte den Bericht der Herald Tribune von heute lesen. Wie im Iran werden die Frauen in Gaza Teil des Unterdrückungsapparates, der die islamistische Lebensweise durchdrückt.
Gaza ist das größte Freiluftgefängnis der Welt. Für die Frauen wiederum ist dort oft nur das Gefängnis ein Ort der Freiheit:

Rania had been working on the case of an unmarried female university student who had been photographed having sex. It was unclear whether she was engaged in prostitution, which is a crime. Either way, she had put herself in a compromising position that, in Rania’s view, could harm the Palestinian cause. Drugs and prostitution lead to „collaboration with Israel,“ she said.

Rania took the pictures to the woman’s family and told them of their daughter’s „wrongdoing.“

Ramli said that the police usually aim for reconciliation, but Rania acknowledged that in cases of „family honor,“ the women often end up dead at the hands of male relatives or are sometimes married off to those they slept with or were raped by.

„Women are the victims,“ said Zainab Ghonaimi, a women’s rights activist in Gaza.

With Gaza’s court system still barely functioning, justice has become mostly a family affair. As a result, Gaza’s central jail serves in part as a kind of shelter for women at risk.

Recent inmates included a 15-year-old girl, Yosra, whose family said she had been raped by her 22-year-old cousin. Four female relatives were in the jail with her – endangered by accusations that they failed to promptly inform the head of the family of the rape and subsequent pregnancy – while the male cousin was free.

Yosra gave birth to a baby girl after the rape, but her brother „threw away“ the newborn, according to the women, and nobody knew where to find the baby. Yosra’s father had agreed to marry her to the cousin, but the cousin’s father was objecting.

In a separate room, five women from a poor family in central Gaza were taking refuge. Accused by male cousins of prostitution, the five said their lives had been threatened. „We’re protected here,“ one said.

Die New York Times berichtet, in den 10 ersten Tagen des Jahres seien im Iran bereits 23 öffentliche Hinrichtungen erfolgt.
Hingerichtet wurde auch trotz Protesten die 27 jährige Raheleh Zamami, Mutter zweier Kinder, die ihren Mann ermordet hatte. Sie war mit 15 verheiratet worden und nach Angaben ihrer Anwälte von ihrem Mann mißhandelt worden.
In Balutschistan, nahe der pakistanischen Grenze, wurden mehrere Amputationen vollstreckt, und zwar von der besonders grausamen Sorte – rechte Hand und linker Fuß gleichzeitig, so daß die Überlebenden nie wieder laufen können, nicht einmal an Krücken.

„Amputation has been a punishment in Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979 installed Islamic law, but Iran’s judicial authorities have rarely publicized examples of its use and have rarely ordered double amputations. In the newly publicized instances, the courts ordered the right hand and left foot cut off, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the condemned to walk, even with a cane or crutches.

A statement by the Judicial Branch in Sistan-Baluchistan Province, where the convicted robbers were punished, said it hoped the double amputations would “teach a lesson to other criminals,” the news agency ISNA reported.

It was not clear when this week the amputations were carried out. Reports said doctors watched to limit bleeding and infection during the procedure.

“It doesn’t matter how often these sentences are issued; even once is not acceptable, and our laws should change,” Ms. Ebadi said. “We have constantly protested the existence of such punishments in our penal code. But the government ignores our protest.”

Diesen Kommentar sendet soeben Ellen R. Sheeley, die selbst im letzten Jahr ein Buch über Ehrenmorde in Jordanien veröffentlicht hat:

Sorry, I cannot read all of this blog post, nor am I proficient enough to write a response in German. So please forgive me.

But, since I have worked on dishonor killings in Jordan for years now, I wanted to respond.

I recently conducted a nationwide attitude and opinion survey about these crimes in Jordan. In my representative sample, 89% of the respondents support tougher penalties for these crimes (3.5% are neutral and the rest prefer the status quo). Right now, there are three penal code articles on the books in Jordan that offer such leniency to the perpetrators that the average sentence is just six months (not a typo). So my findings are heartening. . .people do know right from wrong. Now, if only the leadership could summon the courage to act in a manner that is consistent with the wishes of the overwhelming majority rather than pander to the extremists.

It is the case that some perpetrators return to their towns, villages, and homes as heroes, but that is not to imply that all Jordanians view these crimes as in any way honorable.

Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
„Reclaiming Honor in Jordan“

(Muss ich das übersetzen? J.L.)

Was Frauenrechte angeht, kommt Bewegung in die öffentlichen Debatten der islamischen Welt. Auch Männer gehen dabei mit voran. Ein neues Beispiel: das Blog LA-HA.ORG (Leading Ahead Her Ambition), das sich mit „Ehrenmorden“ und Genitalverstümmelung, aber auch mit alltäglicher Benachteiligung.
Aus der Selbstdarstellung:

The role of the LAHA initiative will be to network young activists, both male and female, who want to promote grassroots reform. LAHA’s core founding members come from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, and the project hopes to attract a regional following.

One of the main issues that LAHA targets is so-called “honor killings,” where male family members “rid their families of shame” by killing a female relative whom they feel has “dishonored” their family. The problem is not simply social attitudes in some families. Courts in countries like Jordan and Syria routinely give light punishments to men who kill their female relatives. Murderers are often given only brief jail terms because judges claim to understand the motivation behind the killing.

Auf der Website findet sich zum Beispiel ein Essay über eine jordanische Richterin, die ihres Amtes enthoben wurde, nachdem sie einen Mann, der seine Schwester wegen einer angeblichen vorehelichen Affäre ermordet hatte, zum Tode verurteilte.
Die Richterin schlägt zurück und argumentiert als Muslima:

Fatima Habib considers the decision complete barbarism and primitivism. She adds that it will take us ages to convince people here that women are human beings, and they are as wise as men if not wiser sometimes. Fatima would never put her hands up and surrender. She said that she has the right to be a judge or even a prime minister without doing any harm to the criteria of justice.

“Extremists in our midst spread propaganda claiming that women’s liberation is a western thought aiming at eradicating Islamic morals. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of extremism against women. Those extremists know nothing about Islam because one of the major messages of this religion is to defend women and give them their rights to be as equal as men,” says Fatima.

Auf lange Sicht werden sich Frauen wie Fatima Habib nicht aufhalten lassen.

Auch Websites wie mideastyouth und nohonor.org berichten regelmässig über Diskriminierung.

Im Guardian schreibt Brian Whittaker über „Ehrenmorde“ (etwa in Jordanien, wo ein Viertel aller ermordeten Frauen ihnen zum Opfer fallen) als Testfall für die Menschenrechtspolitik. Mit Eifersuchts-Morden an Ehefrauen im Westen seien diese Verbrechen nicht gleichzusetzen, weil die politischen und rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen anders seien: Diese Morde würden im Westen schließlich verfolgt und geächtet, was im jordanischen Fall nicht gesagt werden kann. Die Behörden gehen dort oft nicht oder nur zögerlich gegen die Verbrechen vor, manchmal verhalten die sich wie Komplizen:

„Honour“ killing is Jordan is a different matter. Under certain circumstances, and among the more traditional kinds of family, it is regarded as a social duty. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2003 also noted: „Police rarely investigate ‚honour‘ killings, seldom take any initiative to deter these crimes, and typically treat the killers as vindicated men.“ The report also quoted a Jordanian lawyer as saying that when ‚honour‘ killers turn themselves in to the police, the police „try to calm them down, give them a cigarette. The culture deals with them as heroes.“

Whittaker weist darauf hin, dass Ehrenmorde eine prä-islamische Praxis seien. Allerdings setzt die gegenwärtige islamische Kultur in der arabischen Welt dieser Praxis zu wenig entgegen beziehungsweise ermuntert gar zu ihr, in der Konsequenz einer patriarchalen und patrilinearen Herrschaft.
Whittaker zitiert einen kritischen palästinensischen Wissenschaftler, der die Ehrenmorde in den Kontext der Geschlechterverhältnisse in der arabischen Welt rückt:

Then there’s the gender issue. According to Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University in Palestine, „honour“ killing is the product of a patriarchal and patrilineal society: „What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honour killing is not a means to control sexual power or behaviour. What’s behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.“

Whittaker widerspricht dem Kulturrelativismus, der sich mit Blick auf Gewalt in Geschlechterverhältnissen im Westen jede Einmischung verbietet. Er sucht aber nach einer Möglichkeit, den Fortschritt durch eine Kritik zu fördern, die nicht maximalistisch und selbstgerecht auftritt.

Hier die Vorschläge von Human Rights Watch, wie mit der jordanischen Regierung in dieser Frage verhandelt werden solle.

Muslime gehen nicht in die Disco, und wenn sie doch in die Disco gehen, sind sie keine Muslime mehr. (Diese Meinung wurde hier im Forum von Muslimen und Islamkritikern bereits vertreten.) Die gleiche Logik greift bekanntlich bei der Homosexualität.
Was ist dann mit schwulen Muslimen, die in der Disco tanzen gehen und trotzdem Muslime bleiben wollen?
Wie ist der rege Zulauf zu den Discoabenden im Kreuzberger SO36 zu erklären, wenn dort „Gayhane“ (türk. hane = Haus, Zuhause) stattfindet? Die volle Tanzfläche straft die Meinung Lügen, Homosexualität sei für Muslime „kein Thema“. An dem Thema zeigt sich vielmehr exemplarisch, wie und ob Muslime mit der westlichen Moderne zurechtkommen.
Nachtleben im Gayhane
Und es tut sich durchaus etwas: Türkische Homos bevölkern Internetforen wie etwa Delidivane. Dort trägt der meistgelesene Artikel bezeichnender Weise den Titel: Wie steht der Koran zur Homosexualität? Der Artikel ist der Versuch eines frommen schwulen Muslims, den Koran für sich und seinesgleichen zu retten.
Eine schöne Reportage von der Gayhane-Party für schwule und lesbische Araber und Türken hier in der Herald Tribune.
Sie endet ziemlich düster:
K., a 22-year-old Turk from Hamburg, said: „For us, for Muslims, it’s extremely difficult. When you’re gay, you’re immediately cut off from the family.“

He had recently moved to Berlin not long after being cut off from his mother because he is bisexual. „A mother who wishes death for her son, what kind of mother is that?“ he asked, his eyes momentarily filling with tears.

Hasan, a 21-year-old Arab man, sitting at a table in the club’s quieter adjoining cafe, declined to give his last name, saying: „They would kill me. My brothers would kill me.“ Asked if he meant this figuratively, he responded, „No, I mean they would kill me.“

„I’m living one life here and the other one the way they wish me to be,“ Hasan said, referring to his parents. He said he still planned to marry, but when he turned 30 rather than right away, as his parents wished. „I have to have children, to do what Islam wants me to do,“ he said. „I would stop with everything in the homosexual life. I would stop it.“

He stood up from the table and called to his two friends. „All right, boys, let’s go dance,“ he said. „We’re here to have fun.“ And they marched off to the dance floor, smiling.

Tariq Ramadan hat sich Ayaan Hirsi Alis Kritik zu Herzen genommen, die moderaten Muslime würden nicht genug gegen die extremistische Auslegung des Islam tun, wie sie in den Fällen des Mohammed-Teddybärs und der Verurteilung einer Vergewaltigten in Daudi-Arabien zum Vorschein komme.

In der Herald Tribune kontert Ramadan jetzt, er habe sich sehr wohl geäußert. Außerdem formuliert er eine eigenständige Kritik des Justizsystems so genannter islamischer Staaten. Und er bezieht Stellung zu den Attentaten in Algerien.

Ich finde Ramadans Position sehr gut. Er hat sich ziemlich entwickelt von der Position her, die er noch vor wenigen Jahren einnahm: Damals weigerte er sich, bestimmte Exzesse direkt und ohne Einschränkungen „unislamisch“ zu nennen. (Hier mein eigenes Porträt aus der ZEIT von 2004.) Ramadan zog eine diplomatische Art der Verurteilung vor, um es sich nicht mit Ultrakonservativen zu verderben (es gebe keinen Konsens zwischen den Gelehrten, ob bestimmte drakonische Strafen wie das Handabtrennen und das Steinigen und das Auspeitschen islamisch erforderlich seien, daher seien diese Strafen nicht anwendbar).

Tariq Ramadan

Ramadan bezieht heute eindeutig Stellung, und das verdient anerkannt zu werden. Er ist nicht ganz von selbst und freiwillig dort hin gekommen. Kritikerinnen wie Ayaan Hirsi Ali waren auch daran beteiligt, dass er seine Position vereindeutigt hat. Ich sehe darin einen Beleg für die Produktivität einer offenen, nicht konfliktscheuen, nicht höflichen Debatte über diese Dinge.

Zitat:

I started by rejecting any kind of victim mentality on the part of Muslims, for it would have easily been possible to claim that the media were once again covering only damaging stories about Muslims and Islamic countries. For Muslims to simply blame this „ongoing campaign against Islam, its Book, its Prophet and its values and practices“ is no longer enough.There comes a time, I wrote before Hirsi Ali’s accusation of silence among Muslims, where one should take a hard look at the state of affairs of the legal system in Islamic countries and draw some imperative (and constructive) conclusions. It is simply a shame! In the name of Islam, innocent people are accused, jailed, sometimes beaten and sometimes executed with no evidence and, moreover, no way to properly defend themselves. A woman, victim of a rape, becomes the accused in Saudi Arabia while a British teacher is jailed because her students decided to name a teddy bear „Muhammad“! And then, in Algeria, two recent suicide bombings have killed innocent civilians. If all this is done in the name of Islam, where are we heading?

In Islamic countries the judiciary system is often used for political reasons or so-called „religious concerns.“ The problem is much more serious and deep than the stories we have been getting in the media. These countries need profound reform. Let’s face it. A rape is a rape. While all the evidence has not been shown, it remains unacceptable to start by blaming the woman. To use the story of an innocent British teacher to show how much „we care about Islam“ is nonsense and should be rejected.

It is as if the teacher had become a government vehicle for showing its dedication to Islam and for some Muslims to convey their anger toward the West. First, anger is not good in itself; second to send it through a wrong and unjust means must be condemned. Did not the Prophet Muhammad say: „What is built on wrong foundation is wrong“?

Der ganze Text hier.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali erregt sich zu Recht über das peinliche Schweigen, mit dem viele so genannte moderate Muslime über die schrecklichen Fälle „islamischer Justiz“ hinweggehen, die in den letzten Wochen Schlagzilen machten – die Verurteilung einer Vergewaltigten in Saudi-Arabien, die Teddybär-Mohammed-Affäre im Sudan (nun, da gab es lobenswerte Ausnahmen) und die Hatz auf Taslima Nasrin in Indien.

Die Karikaturen haben den Mob auf die Strasse gebracht,  über den Menschenrechten und jedem Anstand Hohn sprechenden Urteile im Namen der Scharia wird geschwiegen:

„I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so concerned about Islam’s image. We hear that violence is not in the Koran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists and a smear campaign and so on. But the evidence mounts up.

Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.

If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate?

When a “moderate” Muslim’s sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.“

Ganzer Text hier.

Der indisch-amerikanische Filmemacher Parvez Sharma hat eine erstaunliche Dokumentation geschaffen – über Menschen, die das Pech haben, zugleich homosexuell und gläubige Muslime zu sein.

Sharma – selbst ein frommer schwuler Muslim – ist durch viele Länder gereist und hat homosexuelle Muslime interviewt. Viele von ihnen kämpfen mit der Verdammung ihrer Art zu lieben durch die religiösen Autoritäten.

Manche lesen die islamischen Quellen neu und suchen nach einer Interpretation, die mit ihrem Leben vereinbar ist. Manche haben sich für ein Exil im Westen entschieden. Aber auch dort bleibt der Stachel, dass ihre Weise nzu lieben von der offiziellen Religion ihrer Väter und Mütter verdammt wird. Oftmals führt das zu dem Wunsch, die eigene sexuelle Identität ablegen zu können, sich durch Kasteiungen und Enthaltsamkeit „gesundbeten“ und normalisieren zu können.

Das ist beileibe kein rein islamisches Thema. (Man denke etwa an Tony Kushners großartiges Stück (und Filmepos) „Angels in America“, in dem solche Konflikte unter schwulen Juden und konservativen Christen im New York der Achtziger dramatisiert werden.) Aber endlich ist es zum Thema geworden.

Die sexuelle Revolution im Islam hat begonnen.

Sie wird nicht morgen oder übermorgen siegen. Auch bei uns hat sie fast siebzig Jahre gebraucht – von der Veröffentlichung der „Traumdeutung“ (1899) bis zur Aufhebung des Chatterley-Banns (1960).

Hier ein Ausschnitt. Hier ein Bericht in der Herald Tribune.

Der große Akbar Gandschi hat wieder einen richtungsweisen Essay geschrieben über die Unterdrückung der Frau im Iran als Symptom der Krise des Systems. Zitate:

Most secular intellectuals see Iran’s gender apartheid as an integral part of the country’s general system of apartheid. Iranian apartheid is based on a particular interpretation of Islam that divides society into “insiders” and “outsiders.” The class of insiders includes the coterie of the ruling Court, but extends beyond that to encompass all of the pious. This pervasive privileging of the rulers’ ideology ends up creating gender apartheid, because every time the rulers increase inequalities between men and women, they receive the approbation of the traditionalists. The rulers have on occasion shown some flexibility and have even made some adaptations in their ruling ideology. And they have no qualms about suspending beliefs considered foundational to the faith, such as the sanctity of the mosque; the country’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, once temporarily suspended belief in the oneness of Allah. But they have never wavered in their belief in the natural superiority of men over women, and its concomitant idea that women are less capable than men of using reason and bearing responsibility.

As secular intellectuals have emphasized, the ruling ideology conceives of society as analogous to a family, whose members are uninformed minors in need of supervision. This notion of guardianship is intimately connected to the traditional belief in Islamic jurisprudence, which maintains that among minors women are the most minor of all, that among the uninformed women are the most uninformed of all.

Many secular intellectuals believe that devaluing and humiliating women is not only in itself despicable, but that it also degrades the entire society. … Every time the rulers want to intimidate their opponents, they increase their attacks on women. Their suppression of women today in fact signals their weakness. …

… The official ideology in Iranian society betrays a male inferiority complex that is unleashed on women. A litany of humiliations contributes to this inferiority complex, including the one resulting from historical backwardness compared with the West.

In the secular intellectuals’ approach to the question of women, cultural critique is central. They point out that humiliating and insulting women, viewing them as sexual objects, and subjecting them to policies that institutionalize these views have contributed to the deterioration of men’s attitude toward women. Iranian culture, they say, has regressed much in this area since the advent of the Islamic Republic. Criticism of women’s subjugation, they stress, must not be confined to politics and law. Rather, fundamental cultural change is needed: a democratic re-education of the entire society, which requires imbuing men with the spirit of freedom and equality.

When we talk of secular intellectuals, we must bear in mind that not all of them are anti-religion, although they accuse religious intellectuals of a vain search for modern progressive ideas in religion. It is possible to have faith, even Islamic faith, and yet believe in secularism, in the separation of church and state, and in the potential of reason to assess and explicate the affairs of this world. In the West, there are many thinkers who hold religious beliefs but are secular in their approach and offer radical critiques of the religious tradition.

Mehr hier.