[lit-ideas] Re: Feminism's Failed Agenda?
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 13:38:54 -0500
Judy: But it's my (informed) opinion (based on
experience) that there are a number of feminist
academic groupings and circles where it is
axiomatic that Islam oppresses women and
more, that Muslim women working "within the
system" cannot be feminists.
Eric: This article may be of interest. It's long
so I will only post a bit of it.
_______
Daughter of Islam
An eloquent (and elegant) foe of Muslim
fundamentalists.
BY NANCY DE WOLF SMITH
Saturday, February 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
WASHINGTON--Yenny Wahid has a smile that could
melt a Hershey bar at 100 yards. Her sunny
disposition is all the more remarkable because Ms.
Wahid is on what may be the world's most difficult
mission right now: She's a prominent Muslim (and a
woman at that) who speaks out against terror and
the hijacking of her religion by ideologues who
twist it to their own political ends.
After 9/11, many Americans assume that the radical
Islamic agenda is to destroy the U.S. The reality
is that attacks on Western targets are designed to
function as brutal propaganda coups that will
attract recruits to the cause of violent
revolution. The main goal of ideologues like Osama
bin Laden is to topple the governments of Muslim
countries, including, most famously, the Wahabi
royal regime of Saudi Arabia. But the real
strategic plum, Ms. Wahid says, would be her
native Indonesia and its 220 million
citizens--with the largest Muslim population on earth.
"We are the ultimate target," she told me in
Washington during a trip to the U.S. earlier this
month. "The real battle for the hearts and minds
of Muslims is happening in Indonesia, not anywhere
else. And that's why the world should focus on
Indonesia and help."
Think of it as a potential domino whose fall would
be felt far beyond Asia. "It's big enough to
destabilize the region," Ms. Wahid notes. But
"imagine if Indonesia became a hotbed for
terrorism, or a source for people to get martyrs
from. We've got enough people to provide an army
of terrorists if we're not careful."
At present, Ms. Wahid calls that a "worst-case,
doomsday scenario," and she is probably correct,
given Indonesia's history of moderate, syncretic
Islam, with elements from the region's Hindu and
Buddhist past. While there have been
demonstrations there over the Danish cartoons that
lampooned the prophet Muhammad, they have
generally involved only few hundred people. By
contrast, Ms. Wahid points out, a December rally
she helped organize under the banner of "Islam for
Peace" attracted some 12,000 marchers.
At the head of that crowd, riding in a wheelchair
alongside Ms. Wahid, was her father, Abdurrahman
Wahid, the respected and beloved Islamic scholar
who headed Indonesia's largest Muslim cultural
organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), before
becoming the first president of newly democratic
Indonesia from 1999 to 2001. In a seminal article
for this newspaper--"Right Islam vs. Wrong
Islam"--Mr. Wahid wrote on Dec. 30 that "a
terrible danger threatens humanity" in the form of
"an extreme and perverse ideology" that grossly
distorts the true meaning of the religion. He
called on fellow Muslims to end the "complicity of
silence" about terrorism and other acts of
intolerance which characterize the radicals' behavior.
At 31, Yenny Wahid--her real name is Zannuba--is
trying to follow her father's example and defend
the values their faith teaches. Educated in
Indonesia, she got a Master's degree in public
administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government in 2002. Her ease in Western
surroundings is apparent not merely from the
snappy cream-colored pantsuit she was wearing when
we met but also from her elegantly accented English.
She is active in the NU's political wing, the
National Awakening Party, and an adviser to
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The
job most dear to her heart, however, is running
the Wahid Foundation--named after her
father--which works to promote, in the words of
its Web site, "democratic reform, religious
pluralism, multiculturalism and tolerance amongst
Muslims" and reflects "a universal Islam [that]
desires justice and prosperity for all."
The key word may be prosperity. Indonesia, which
was on its way to Asian Tigerhood until the
currency crisis of 1997-98, has not recovered from
the economic meltdown that coincided with the fall
of the Suharto dictatorship. The country is a
democracy now, but a struggling one to which few
investors have returned. It also has a free press,
among the friskiest in Asia. Yet the new openness
has also paved the way for vocal opponents of
Indonesia's traditional secular approach to
government--voices previously suppressed--and they
are gaining ground.
It is still politically incorrect to call for an
Islamic state; and the mainstream press, along
with the vast majority of Indonesians, vigorously
supports efforts to fight and arrest terrorists
such as the ones who perpetrated the Bali and
Marriott hotel bombings of 2002 and 2003. Even so,
Ms. Wahid says, the fear of being labeled
un-Islamic has become intimidating to many
moderate political candidates. Radicals who want
to install an Islamic regime--those who dream of
violence while many ordinary religious
conservatives still do not--also are operating in
an economic milieu not unlike the one communists
exploited in poor countries a generation ago.
Poverty and a lack of education make millions of
Indonesians desperate, and easy, targets, Ms.
Wahid says. "After the fall of Suharto, people
expected democracy would solve all their problems.
But of course it takes a long time for things to
fall into their right places, and people are not
patient. They want a quick answer. So there is
this sense of democracy-fatigue in Indonesia. And
my fear is if people are willing to entertain the
idea of Islam, and an Islamic state, as an
alternative solution to governing, because they
are so frustrated by the level of corruption . . .
we'd be in big trouble."
FULL ARTICLE AT:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008016
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