Posted on 10/06/2001 4:48:32 PM PDT by Pokey78
In 1996 Mohammed Atta, the hijacker who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, wrote instructions for his funeral. Even then, at only 28, he was obsessed with the thought of his own death.
His directions give us an insight into the mind of the fundamentalist, particularly his attitude to women. Atta clearly despised them. "Neither pregnant women nor unclean people should say goodbye to me," he wrote. "Women must not be present at my funeral or go to my grave at any later date."
In life, he was not averse to having women near him, but his treatment of them shows equal contempt. He and another of the hijackers stayed in the Philippines several times and staff at the hotel remember them drinking whisky with bar girls and dining out. Atta was often seen letting a girl go at the gate in the morning. It was "always a different girl".
Fundamentalists who die in battle are promised paradise: among its delights, the attentions of 72 virgins. Now, we learn that some do not have to die to experience such pleasures; a former Taliban bodyguard revealed last week that soldiers were given blank marriage certificates signed by a mullah and encouraged to "take wives" during battle - a licence to rape.
What has all this to do with Islam? Virtually nothing. As an Islamic feminist academic I have devoted my professional life to highlighting the plight of women living behind the veil. They suffer the most basic inequalities. In Bangladesh, women are not allowed to own land. In Saudi Arabia, my homeland, women are not allowed to drive, nor leave the country without the permission of a male "guardian", usually their husband or father.
In almost all Islamic societies, a woman's quality of life depends on the tolerance and far-sightedness of her male relatives. Women have no right to education, nor any right to divorce. However unhappy or cruelly treated, there is no escape without their husband's consent.
But in Afghanistan, the indignities inflicted on Islamic women have been taken to extremes. The Taliban have outlawed education. Women have been the victims of public executions and amputations. They must hide behind burqas and are beaten for laughing or other "immodesties" in public.
They cannot be attended by a male doctor, and as they are not allowed to be doctors themselvesmany suffer unnecessary pain or early death. Those who run secret schools live in fear of being denounced. I don't think that even 1,000 years ago there was such brutal repression there or anywhere else.
Echoes of this can be heard in Atta's letter concerning his death. This is not religion, but fanaticism. The Taliban have grown from the strict Wahhabi tradition of Islam, taught in areas of Pakistan (the word taliban means students). But the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden and his followers, take religious observance to an extreme that has never been known before.
Afghan friends who have read the text of Atta's letter in the newspapers have rung me, shocked. There is no rational explanation for this man's views. Perhaps something in his background is relevant. His father described him as "a mother's boy", who was reluctant to marry. He must have been in some way mentally disturbed.
It is true that Muslim radicals have reduced funeral rites to a stark minimum. The body is washed, wrapped simply, then buried, with few prayers. But the ban on women? Ironically, the funeral rite is the one time in mainstream Islam - which numbers one billion adherents - when gender barriers drop.
Though men and women pray in separate sections of the mosque, afterwards the whole family cries, the whole family hugs. Both men and women attend the funeral and go to the grave and mourn or chant or celebrate a life together. Why pregnant women should be excluded, I don't know. I have read the Koran many times and have never heard of such a thing.
Certainly, women who are menstruating are considered unclean and cannot pray at the mosque or fast or touch the holy book. This has given men the opportunity to claim that as women cannot pray as often, they are less devout than men and therefore less valuable in God's eyes and as human beings.
Fundamentalists, though, seem to hate women. They seem to take pleasure in interpreting obscure verses from the Koran to say that you should beat up your women or kill them for adultery. Any kind of behaviour that departs from a 14th-century norm is bda, dangerous.
This is the picture of Islam, unfortunately, that so many people have been seeing since September 11. But just as there are many interpretations of the Koran - Shi'ite, Sunni and, more particularly, Sufi, Wahhabi and others - not all Islamic states are the same.
In countries such as Tunisia and Jordan, there is a secular legal system and men and women have rights under the law. The problem is not religion, per se, but the use of religion as a tool of repression.
The most obvious sign of that repression is the veil. In Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran, women are required to wear a burqa or chador by law. But there is not one verse in the Koran that says women must be covered from head to toe in public; only an exhortation to dress "modestly".
In Saudi Arabia 55% of university graduates are women, yet they make up just 5% of the workplace. For all their education, there are few "suitable" jobs for them, other than teaching. Even nursing is outlawed, lest a female nurse be required to tend a man.
When I was a child, there were virtually no schools for girls in Saudi Arabia. I was lucky enough to be born into a family that appreciated and encouraged education, yet even so I spent my first years at a school called the House of Tenderness (the boys' school was called the House of Success).
I went on to boarding school in Switzerland and university in the United States and Britain. I could not go back. I needed books, my freedom of expression. But many of my contemporaries did return to Saudi Arabia and subscribe to the idea that girls should be educated "to make them better mothers".
Women with degrees will tell you the veil is there "for our protection". "Do you really want to be like the West, with individualism and the breakdown of the family?" they ask.
And though the world is changing, even young men cling to old values. I interviewed young people in Saudi for a book on the young generation: I asked a 17-year-old boy how many children he wanted. "Seven," he replied. "But what if your wife does not want to bear seven children?" I asked. "Then I shall take another wife. As a Muslim man, it is my right."
Curiously, times of upheaval have been good for Muslim women. Women stood shoulder to shoulder with men against the invader in Kuwait and this has given them a voice. Women there have just been denied the vote but at least there was a debate: they stood up in front of the government and said we want to vote, which would have been impossible before.
In Iran, during Ayatollah Khomeini's time and up to today, we see nothing but thousands of women in black chadors. But women in Iran were smart. Immediately after the revolution they said, okay, Islam is our power, and they argued their case using the Koran.
It was not easy. Some were imprisoned, but their willingness to stand up and their knowledge of the Koran meant that there were real debates about women's rights and women won significant court victories, including the right to ask for divorce and to ask for nafaqa, maintenance. In Iran there are influential women at every level of society. There are women MPs and many women lawyers. They have adopted the veil as a compromise with the religious regime. Most don't enjoy wearing it but they regard it as a kind of national uniform.
There is nothing in Islam that says a woman cannot play a political role or become a leader. Indeed, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia have all had women leaders. The Prophet's first wife, Khadija, was a businesswoman who employed him. His second, Aisha, was active in politics and led men into battle.
The Prophet could deal with strong women. The fundamentalists cannot. They interpret the Koran for their own ends. As I researched my PhD at Oxford, my superviser used to say: "Remember, the devil can quote scripture for his purpose." Fundamentalism is spreading like a cancer through the Middle East. It is a terrible system and it cannot last.
Mai Yamani is a research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and daughter of Sheikh Yamani
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