THE AGE http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?path=/news/2001/01/25/FFXI36PVBIC.html No honor in barbarism By PAMELA BONE Thursday 25 January 2001 On a day in May, 1994, Kifaya Hussein, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was strapped to a chair by her 32-year-old brother, who gave her a glass of water, told her to recite an Islamic prayer, then slashed her throat. Then he ran out into the street waving the bloodied knife and crying: "I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor". His sister's "crime" was to have been raped by another of her brothers. This case did not receive attention in the international media. The case of Bariya Magazu did. Bariya, a 17-year-old Nigerian girl, was this week given 100 lashes of the cane after being found guilty by a Muslim court of having had "illegal sex". Bariya, who said she became pregnant after having been raped by three men, was originally sentenced to 180 lashes, which included 80 lashes for making false accusations against the men. Under Muslim sharia law a woman's testimony is worth only half of a man's. It is unclear whether international outrage was instrumental in reducing the sentence. If it was it is surely evidence of one of the positive aspects of globalisation. "Nobody was expecting this sort of international protest and of course, like any democratic government, we have to bow to international pressure," the Nigerian high commissioner, Dr Rufi Soule, said on ABC Radio this week. Nigeria is a democracy these days, if a fragile one. It is also a conflict-ridden federation between the mainly Christian south and Muslim north. Bariya was so little harmed by her flogging that she was able to walk home, according to the deputy governor of the Zamfara state, where the sentence was carried out. As well, a man in the village has offered to marry her. "She is no longer disgraced. She has her honor back," the deputy governor said. An Australian woman who was raped in Egypt some years ago was shocked when the Egyptian authorities offered to force the rapist to marry her as a way of restoring her honor. Can we, in the West, understand such a concept of honor? Even if we can't understand it, should we respect it? It is, after all, part of their culture, and don't we all have to respect each other's cultures? According to the United Nations about 5000 women are victims of "honor killings" each year, mostly in Middle Eastern, Islamic countries. Many Muslim scholars insist such practices have nothing to do with Islam. Others disagree. The Jordanian Islamic Action Front recently issued a fatwa saying that: "A man who restrains himself from committing an honor killing, leaving this unpleasant burden to the government, negates the values of virility advocated by Islam." Globalisation and massive immigration from Africa and the Middle East to Western countries is bringing the conflicts between Western and Islamic cultures into greater focus. In a recent article in The New York Times Moustafa Bayama, an American researcher on Islamic writings, noted that "there is a shift from a racism based on skin color to a racism based on culture". Of course, to any intelligent person the color of another person's skin does not matter. But cultures and beliefs can matter, especially if those holding them want to inflict them on others. Does criticising cultures or religions now brand one a racist? It can, unless the culture is Australian and the religion is Christianity. There is a polite restraint about criticising Islam, Hinduism or (perhaps especially) Buddhism. But does liking multiculturalism have to mean being a cultural relativist? Is there not something patronising about being tolerant of all cultural and religious practices? Doesn't it ignore the fact that the cultures themselves are constantly changing and that religions aren't monolithic? Islam is practised differently in Malaysia or Bosnia from the way it is in Africa or the Middle East, and it is practised differently in different Middle-Eastern countries. There are passages in the Koran that can be used to justify the oppression of women, just as there are passages in the Bible. But it is also possible to find in the Koran, as many Muslim reformers are doing, support for the rights of women. In France, there are now estimated to be more Muslims than practising Catholics. Yet while this has not been without conflict, the race problem there is smaller than it is in the US. Discrimination against Muslims in France tends to be on the basis of class rather than race, and when they become middle class they tend to see themselves as French; just as Australian Muslims see themselves as Australian. At a human rights conference some years ago, a doctor from the Sudan, describing the horror of her own clitoridectomy, asked: "Why is it that only when women want to bring about change for their own benefit does culture become sacred and unchangeable?" For cultural relativists, trying to end practices such as genital mutilation is to be guilty of cultural imperialism. We should rather, they say, encourage the use of anaesthetic and hygiene when these operations are performed. Why not instead name genital mutilation, public executions (whether in Iraq or America), stonings, floggings and amputations for what they are - barbaric? Pamela Bone is a staff writer. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/01/25/FFXI36PVBIC.html ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
