There are a number of women in the world today who are risking their lives to reveal the violence against women that exists within their communities. It is a tragic irony that in writing about violence against women, they themselves become the targets of violence.
Earlier today Roja Bandari bloggedabout a woman named Jelveh Javaheri who has been arrested in Iran for her participation in the Campaign for One Million Signatures. Her crimes? ‘[D]isrupting public opinion, advertising against the system, and publishing lies.'
Taslima Nasrin, originally from Bangladesh, has been living in exile for over a decade for her critiques of the treatment of women within Islam and the violence against women she had witnessed in the religion's name. She has had a fatwa issued against her, a bounty offered for her head, and regularly receives death threats. Her crime? Blasphemy. On Friday, the author agreed to remove some of the controversial elements of her most recent book - said to be ‘derogatory to Islam' - which have again sparked riots.
Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali also regularly receives death threats for her viewson Islam's treatment of women, and lives in secret and under constant security because of her blasphemy, including her authorship of Submission, a controversial film about violence against Muslim women, plus several other books on similar topics.
Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally acclaimed author most well-known for her writings on the oppression of Arab women and critical feminist commentary on sexuality, religion and violence against women. For her troubles she has been threatened with death, harassed, imprisoned, and has had to flee Egypt for her safety. Several years ago she was also threatened with forced divorce because she had allegedly insulted in Islam, and was therefore accused of apostasy. According to some, apostasy is a crime in Islam.
What do all of these women have in common? Besides the fact that they have all spoken out in defence of women's rights, and against violence against women in particular? They have challenged Muslims about Islam and the practices that some Muslims engage in in the name of the religion. And they have all faced a disproportionate response to their written, and sometimes spoken, accusations.
Whether or not one agrees with their critiques of the religion or particular cultures or practices, the fact remains that they have used literature to make themselves heard, not force and not violence. Yet the reactions they've received have forced many of them into hiding or exile, when they've not already been arrested.
Is Islam such a poor philosophy that it cannot withstand critique? Of course not. But the strength of reaction the critiques have caused exposes just how entrenched gender inequalities are in some people's minds. Here, a written, even poetic, challenge to tradition is taken as insult rather than scholarliness, and equated with a hate of the religion per se rather than a legitimate demand for accountability from those that peach it. Perversely for those issuing the fatwas, all this reaction serves to do is crystallize for me why feminists must continue to write for our freedom.
Photo by ngc1039, shared under a Creative Commons license