Apa orang islam yang dungu-dungu kayak anjing disini masih mau ikut budaya Arab
atau ikut Swedia dan negara demokratik lain yang menghargai gender equality...?
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Why Arab world must learn to talk about sex
By Shereen El Feki , Special to CNN
March 20, 2013 -- Updated 1452 GMT (2252 HKT)
(CNN) -- Earlier this month, a video of young men doing the "Harlem Shake" --
bare chests and thrusting pelvises -- in front of the Muslim Brotherhood's
headquarters in Cairo attracted worldwide attention, for putting one finger up
to the moral authority of Islamic conservatives now struggling to govern Egypt.
But over in Alexandria, a soft-spoken teenage girl offered a far more
unsettling challenge to the powers that be. Hebat Allah Mahmoud, a young karate
enthusiast, was refused a place in her school's tournament photo because, she
claimed, she does not cover her hair with a hijab.
Her teacher denied such charges of discrimination. Hebat Allah, however was
unwilling to take this lying down. Instead, she took to YouTube, in a video in
which she tearfully lambasted authorities for willful blindness and
narrow-mindedness. Did they not know, she asked, that most of the girls put on
the hijab at school but took it off once they left the premises? And she
criticized teachers' interpretation of Islam, for insisting that the hijab was
religiously mandated and that those who did not wear it were less worthy than
those who covered. "We should have equal rights as stressed by the Prophet,"
she told the camera.
Read more: Harlem shaking the Arab world?
Hebat Allah's challenge to the one size-fits-all vision of Islam presented by
Egypt's now ruling religious conservatives shifted to the international stage
this week. At the United Nations, governments and NGOs from around the world
have been negotiating a document on the elimination of violence against women,
under the umbrella of the Commission on the Status of Women. The final text,
hammered out after weeks of hard negotiation, reiterates the rights of women to
lead their lives free of violence, coercion and discrimination.
The mere discussion of such issues was, however, enough to send Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood into a frenzy. "It eliminates Islamic morals, and seeks the
destruction of family institution," the Brotherhood warned in an apocalyptic
official statement. "Then society dissolution will occur, and last steps of
cultural invasion will be complete." In urging other Muslim-majority country
governments to reject the document, the Brotherhood attacked it for undermining
what they consider a man's God-given right to control women (through various
means, including marital rape, it seems, according to their communique),
further alleging that it promotes homosexuality, adultery, abortion and free
love.
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Egyptian Pres. on democracy, human rights
Read more: Egyptian blogger -- why I posed naked
This hysterical response to any attempt to promote gender, sexual and
reproductive rights, at the United Nations and on the ground in the Arab world,
is nothing new; the Mubarak regime was just as intransigent on many of these
points. And I've come across it time and again in the past five years I've
spent traveling across the Arab region, talking to men and women about sex:
what they do, what they don't, what they think and why. Sexuality might seem a
strange focus in these tumultuous political times. It is, in fact, a powerful
lens with which to study a society because it offers a view, not just into
intimate life, but also of the bigger picture: politics and economics, religion
and tradition, gender and generations that shape sexual attitudes and
behaviors. If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their
bedrooms.
In today's Arab world, the only socially-accepted context for sex is
heterosexual, family-sanctioned, religiously-approved, state-registered
marriagea social citadel. Anything else is "forbidden", or "shameful" or
"impolite." The fact that large segments of the population in most countries
are having hard time fitting inside the fortress -- especially the legions of
young people, who can't find jobs and therefore can't afford to marry -- is
widely recognized, but there is also widespread resistance to any alternative.
The upshot of this refusal to grapple with the changing realities of sexual and
personal life in the Arab world can be seen in statistics: spiraling rates of
HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections, a rising tide of sexual
violence, on the street and in the home, and the thriving business of
clandestine abortion. And I've heard it in the stories of desperate housewives,
dissatisfied husbands, conflicted youth, hard-pressed sex workers and many
others whom I've met along the way
For all our constraints, the Arab world is neither hopeless, nor helpless, when
it comes to sex. There are innovators from across the region who are trying to
tackle the taboos, break the silence and deal with the fall out, be it getting
sexuality education in schools or providing sexual and reproductive health
services for young people, or tackling sexual violence, or trying to find space
in society for those cross social norms, unwed mothers or men and women in
same-sex relations among them. Nor are these projects simply carbon copies of
efforts elsewhere in the world; the reason they are taking root is because they
are adapted to the region, and work along the grain of religion and culture.
Read more: Tahrir's bodyguards fight to 'cure Egypt's disease'
Now Islamic conservatives argue otherwise. Too often, they say to tackle such
matters is "un-Islamic" and a sell-out to the West. But this is simply not the
case. Arab and Islamic culture has a long history of talking about sex, in its
all its problems and pleasures, for men and women -- and that includes Prophet
Mohammed himself. There is precious little in "Playboy," "Cosmopolitan," "The
Joy of Sex," or any other taboo-busting work of the sexual revo¬lution and
beyond that Arabic literature -- much of it written by Islamic scholars --
didn't touch on over a mil¬lennium ago.
On a wide variety of gender and sexual issues -- be it contraception or
abortion or even the incendiary topic of homosexuality -- there are alternative
interpretations in Islam. It's not just Arab human rights activists at the UN
who have been making this point in recent days; Egypt's teenage karate
dissident argues much the same. Those who seek to control society through
religion -- in any culture -- discourage such independent thinking and
diversity of opinion. But with the new climate of freedom of expression
emerging in Egypt, and elsewhere in the Arab region, millions now feel
emboldened to challenge these dictates. Politics, religion and sex are the
three "red lines" of the Arab world: subjects you're not supposed to tackle in
word or deed. But just as people in countries across the region are busy
contesting received wisdoms in politics, and are starting to challenge the role
of religion in public policy, I hope they will start asking the same hard
questions of sexual life.
Read more: Don't lose hope over Arab Spring
The "slippery slope" logic reflected in the Muslim Brotherhood's statement
remains all too common in across the region. It's the fear that any move toward
greater personal freedom -- especially sexual freedom -- will lead to a
free-for-all and a violation of Islamic principles. But this reflects a
fundamental lack of trust in the citizenry, which is a feature of dictatorship,
not the hallmark of democracy. If Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood wants to walk the
talk of freedom and justice, dignity and equality, that means giving people
information and resources and trusting them to use it responsibly -- in and out
of the bedroom. Achieving these goals in personal life is important to
realizing them in public life, and vice versa: the political and sexual are
natural bedfellows.
Read more: Kate's breasts, Pussy Riot, virginity tests and our attitude on
women's bodies
The opinions expressed in this opinion piece are solely those of Shereen El
Feki.
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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