[Sadik]

FYI, for those who want to cover/publicise this event, or copy it in other
(esp US) cities where such attacks are prevalent

Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 3:21 PM
Subject: [smvo] "National Headscarf Day" in Australien

http://www.netspace.net.au/~avigail/

Friday 29 November 2002

A National Day of Solidarity with Muslim Women and a Protest Against
Racially Motivated Attacks on Muslim Women in Australian Cities.

On Friday 29 November all Australian women everywhere are invited to wear a
headscarf in public for the day. You do not need to change your attire,
there is no rally to attend, no petitions to sign. It's easy. Dress as
usual, put a scarf over your head and go about your day. Any scarf will do.
Headscarf Day is in solidarity with our Muslim sisters who have been the
target of racially motivated attacks in Sydney recently. Traditional Muslim
women are an easy target because their traditional dress makes them
visible. Let us make them feel that they belong, and that they are
protected, by helping them blend in. And let us send a message to the
racist thugs who attack them that their behaviour is unacceptable. Men are
also invited to join us by wearing some form of traditional Muslim head dress.

I am a Jewish woman, a former Israeli and an Australian citizen. I have
decided to organise Headscarf Day because with my background I simply
cannot sit by and watch while Muslim people and women in particular are
becoming the target of racism.

ASIO's raids on Muslim homes are giving legitimacy to racist attacks on
Muslims in our streets, and helping to create a culture of `us and them' in
Australia. We must make it clear both to street thugs and our government
that the Australian people are united in our rejection of racism, and that
we will not allow the population of our country to be polarised. Surely
there are appropriate ways to deal with security concerns without resorting
to bullying and intimidation.
Top of Page

First They Came for the Jews
by Pastor Niemoller
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no-one left to speak out
for me.
Top of Page

Endorsements
Headscarf Day has now been endorsed by:
Senator Kerry Nettle, Australian Greens
Muslim Women's National Network of Australia
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo, author, Joint Secretary of Jews for a Just Peace
The Australian National University
Islamic Foundation of Australia, Inc.
Psychologists for the Promotion of World Peace
Australian Jewish Democratic Society
If you want to add your name or your organisation to this list, please use
the feedback form.
Top of Page

Frequently Asked Questions
Have you checked that this isn't offensive to Muslims?
Headscarf Day has been endorsed by Muslim women's organisations and other
Muslim organisations around Australia. I am receiving emails every day from
many Muslim women all positive. Many Muslim women who are not religious and
who do not usually wear a headscarf or traditional dress have told me that
they will wear a headscarf on the day.
What's more, those emails have made it even clearer to me just how bad
things are for Muslim women at the moment. One woman, not even a Muslim,
put a scarf around her head just to keep warm on a cold and windy Canberra
evening, and was spat on.
Isn't the headscarf a symbol of women's oppression?
Many women have been concerned that by wearing a headscarf they are
promoting the oppression of women.
Firstly I encourage everyone to act according to their conscience and
values. If you're not comfortable wearing a headscarf, don't do it. No-one
should act against their values. If you support the day in spirit, but
decide not to wear a headscarf, that's OK.
My personal view is that it is not the headscarf in itself that is
oppressive, it is forcing women to wear it (or not to wear it) that is
oppressive. I believe in freedom of choice for all people.
If we put forward an argument that the headscarf as an item of clothing is
oppressive, then I think we need to look also at suits and ties being
oppressive to men and high heeled shoes and makeup as being oppressive to
women. We tend to overlook this kind of oppression in our Western culture
and are very quick to judge other cultures.
National Headscarf Day is not about criticising or endorsing the customs of
other cultures. It is a simple, symbolic gesture to support those among us
who do choose to wear their traditional dress and are being harrassed for it.
What should men put on their heads if they want to participate?
I have no clear answer to that. Muslim people come from many cultures and
what men wear depends on where they come from. I invite men to use their
creativity and improvise. Perhaps you could ask a Muslim friend for a
suggestion.
Top of Page

Download a flyer for National Headscarf Day [PDF 236K]. (This is a new
version, quite a bit clearer than the old one, and 100K smaller!)

Come Join Us on Headscarf Day and make your mark!

[Nyako ber]

Be weary of all the happy go lucky western friends. What good is it for them to wear headscarfs on November 29, 2002 if they can't set up initiatives to improve the quality of life for exploited Muslim women in underserved regions of the globe? I don't believe that they are genuine! They should be rallying their politicians to set up reward systems for people that report the atrocities and laws sanctioning the offenders. Not impressed at all! I will be letting my locks flow freely! :)

[Mshindi]

http://www.observer.co.uk/internatio...837035,00.html


Unlikely martyr who battled the mullahs forced to flee for her life

The 'Dutch Salman Rushdie', a Muslim woman who dared to criticise Islam, has ignited a firestorm

Andrew Osborn
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer

She makes an unlikely martyr. But Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a 32-year-old Somali-born Muslim immigrant to the Netherlands, who took cleaning jobs while she studied Dutch, has been forced to flee her adopted country under threat of death. Now she is becoming known as a latter-day Salman Rushdie.
Her crime is uncannily similar to the author of The Satanic Verses: she launched a stinging attack on Islam, a religion she herself has rejected, and in doing so earned the enduring hatred of the mullahs she targeted. The fact that the criticism came from a woman and one who had turned her back on Allah made her situation all the more precarious.

Nor did she mince her words. A political adviser to the Dutch Labour Party, she savaged what she said was the cruelty and abuse meted out to many Muslim women living in Western societies - and she did so on national TV.

Calling Islam a 'backward' religion, she claimed that orthodox Muslim men frequently indulge in domestic violence against women as well as incest and child abuse. To make matters worse, she added, such unacceptable behaviour is routinely covered up and never spoken about. And she launched a strong attack on the Netherlands' programme of multicultualism, which she said encouraged the isolation of Muslim women.

She can't have known what effect those words would have, but in a post-11 September world and in a country which was still mourning the loss of Pim Fortuyn - a gay maverick anti-politician who despised Islam and openly said so - her words generated a political and cultural firestorm.

Within days she had received several serious death threats - apparently from extremist Muslims - and was forced to go into hiding. Now she has fled the Netherlands, a refugee once again, hounded out of her adopted home by a torrent of messages of hate.

The messages - which were anonymous and delivered over the phone - called her a traitor to Islam and a slut. Hate mail also appeared on the internet claiming she deserved to be knifed and shot. The police advised her to change address and questions were asked in parliament about whether or not she warranted bodyguards.

At a time when the Netherlands' almost one-million-strong Muslim community (out of a total population of 16 million) felt itself vulnerable and subject to attack, her words seemed to some to play into the hands of those demanding a clampdown on immigration, and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Uproar followed the first death threat, with one prominent news magazine claiming they were a fraud, a claim which Islamic lobby groups seized upon with delight but one which turned out to be baseless. More than 100 Dutch writers took out newspaper ads offering her their support.

In an effort to distance themselves from the affair, 17 Muslim organisations signed a declaration condemning the death threats, but many Muslims felt betrayed by Hirsi Ali and took serious issue with her allegations. Her comments had, they said, opened up a rift in the Dutch Muslim community at a time when it needed to be more united than ever.

The views of Ali Eddaudi, a Moroccan writer and cleric living in the Netherlands, were typical of many. He dismissed 'all the fuss' over a Muslim woman who 'pandered to the Dutch' and wanted, he said, to be a model immigrant.

Fearing for her life, Hirsi Ali - by now dubbed the Dutch Salman Rushdie - remained in hiding until last month. But now she has gone one step further, decided that enough is enough and fled the country she sought sanctuary in 10 years earlier.

Rumoured to be in the United States or the UK, she has also spoken out for the first time about why she felt the need to blow the whistle on 'the unacceptable side of Islam' and has turned her fire and her back on the same Dutch Labour Party she used to work for.

'I had to speak up,' she told the New York Times yesterday from her hiding place 'because most spokesmen for Muslims... are men and they deny or belittle the enormous problems of Muslim women locked up in their Dutch homes.

'I've made people so angry because I'm talking from the inside, from direct knowledge. It's seen as treason. I'm considered an apostate, and that's worse than an atheist.'

She explained: 'Sexual abuse in the family causes the most pain because the trust is violated on all levels. The father or the uncle say nothing, nor do the mother and the sisters. It happens regularly - the incest, the beatings, the abortions. Girls commit suicide. But no one says anything. And social workers are sworn to professional secrecy.'

However, her scorn is not reserved for orthodox Muslims alone. She also blames the Dutch Labour Party for the apparent failure of the country's immigration and integration policy.

Although no longer in power, Labour has governed the country for long stretches and has, she says, pursued a damaging 'strategy of silence' when it comes to Islam and problems surrounding immigration in general.

Branding the Labour Party's approach to multiculturalism 'soft', she argues that its tactic of promoting the preservation of Muslim identity by subsidising special schools and associations has backfired. The result, she says, is segregation and misery for Muslim women, who are left isolated and unprotected.

'If the West wants to help modernise Islam, it should invest in women, because they educate the children.'

Ton van Lierop, a political journalist, says: 'The feeling on the street is that it is ridiculous that a woman like this can't say what she wants. There is a feeling that Muslim women are oppressed by their men and people think it's a good thing that this woman has dared to stand up and say so.'

Hirsi Ali's views carry all the more weight because they are perceived to come from someone who knows what she is talking about.

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, she underwent what she calls the 'cruel ritual' of female circumcision when she was five and for much of her youth was kept veiled and locked indoors.

At 22, her father tried to force her to marry a distant cousin she had never met, but she managed to escape to the Netherlands where she obtained political asylum. It was while working as an interpreter for the Dutch immigration and social services that she discovered 'suffering on a terrible scale' among Muslim women in the Netherlands.

The solution, she believes, is to use Dutch law to pursue more vigorously Muslim men who beat their wives and daughters, to stop teaching immigrants in their own language and to stop paying for the 700 Islamic clubs, most of which, she says, 'are run by deeply conservative men and perpetuate the segregation of women'.

Hirsi Ali has refused to moderate her views in the face of the death threats and does not intend to hide away forever.

'Either I stop my work, or I learn to live with the feeling that I'm not safe,' she said. 'I'm not stopping.'

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28.04.2002: Comment Extra: How to offer a piece

[Sadik]

@Mshindi

I have seen stories in the UK about this somali woman. The truth is she is not educated enought to challenge anything. What she says is Islam is backward ...I wonder what is forward, then.

Arguments like Islam is backward does not hold any water. I would read a clear thought arguments, even against Islam, which we can respond to, rather than some simple rhetoric about Islam been backward.

The story in town here in London is that this somali woman is trying to play religious card to seek a better life for herself, as she tries to go to USA and seek political asylum. Or to be a model. Other than she stands little or no chance to challenge anything.

I would imagine that she should challange herself first, and come out with proper education to a dignifies level. Then we can listen to her yells. At the moment, she is a fly tinkering with the tail of the elephant.