It was impressive. In the bright, modern building, bright, modern Bengali women discussed ways of creating new businesses in a miserable corner of London where jobs were badly needed. The practical advice stopped stone dead when assistants wheeled in a wide-screen television so that an imam from the local mosque could describe what careers were open to Muslim women. Very few, it turned out.
He informed the audience that they had no need for feminism. God had given roles to men and women and the woman's divinely ordained task was to look after her husband, produce children and then look after them too. This didn't leave much time for entrepreneurial dynamism, and just about the only firm he could imagine them having the spare hours to manage would be an internet business, which presumably could be run when the husband's meal had been cleared away and the children tucked up in bed.
Had the Archbishop of Canterbury told women members of the Confederation of British Industry that they must look after Dad and the kids, there would have been hell to pay, not least for the assumption that the women were Christians and should take instructions from him. But at a conference supported by public bodies - the University of East London helped organise it and there was some EU money sloshing about - a cleric delivered a sermon which rendered the avowed aim of helping women start companies all but impossible to achieve. No one raised an eyebrow.
Why has the feminist movement abondoned Muslim women? Or are they just afraid?
UPDATE
Found one.
This to some extent explains our reluctance to batter our way into other cultures and put them to rights. But most of all it was because we did not want to be labelled “racist”.
Sure, Muslim communities were “sexist”, but our interference could be seen as “racist” and that was far, far worse an epithet. Social workers and crusading feminists kept away and the police, too. There were language problems and it was all too difficult.
And Muslims prey on this fear by accusing anyone who criticizes Islam as racist. This is nonsense and people need to get over it.
Multiculturalism ends up as ghettoisation, the exploitation of cheap labour and subjugation of women. Even the kindness of local authorities in putting up street signs in Arabic backfires — why learn English if there’s no need? And yet. The situation of a Muslim woman in Britain today is not so different from that of an English woman in the 1950s, in the era of “no wife of mine works”, when virginity was at a premium, when to be a “spinster” and over 25 was a humiliation, to be “barren” a tragedy, when contraception was largely unavailable; when a woman was defined as a person who had babies and to whom many professions were closed. All that changed with remarkable rapidity.
And there is where the reporter, Fay Weldon, fails. The situation of Muslim women in Britain today bears no resemblence to "an English woman in the 1950's". Those women came from many different religious backgrounds and were subjugated by men from many different religions - it was a male thing. We learned and moved on. This is not just about men versus women, this is about a religion that preaches the subjugation of women - Islam.
Weldon is sadly mistaken if she thinks improving ecomnomic condtions will save Muslim women from Islamic subjugation. Only an Islamic reformation will do that and it won't happen "with remarkable rapidity".
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment