memento mori

More Evidence Indicts U.S.
by Dahr Jamail; June 28, 2005

ISTANBUL, Jun 27 (IPS) – New evidence on U.S. war crimes and violations of international law was presented at the concluding session of the World Tribunal on Iraq at hearings in Istanbul Sunday.

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a ‘peoples’ court’ set up by academics, human rights campaigners and non-governmental organisations to take an independent look at the Iraq record of the United States and other occupying powers such as Britain. The tribunal was inspired by the Russel Tribunal of the Vietnam war days.

The three-day tribunal, the 21st in a series of meetings held over the last two years, was held against a background of another spurt of violence that left 41 people dead in bombings Sunday. The dead included four U.S. soldiers, three of them women.

The tribunal says it derives its legitimacy from the fact that a war of aggression was launched on Iraq “despite the opposition of people and governments all over the world.” It adds: “However, there is no court or authority that will judge the acts of the U.S. and its allies. If the official authorities fail, then authority derived from universal morals and human rights principles can speak for the world.”

The last sitting took place before a ‘jury of conscience’ that included author Arundhati Roy and Francois Houtart who participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Vietnam. In all 54 persons gave testimony on several aspects of the invasion and the occupation of Iraq.

“The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future,” Roy said at the hearings.. “We recognise that the judgment of the World Tribunal on Iraq is not binding in international law. However, our ambitions far surpass that. The World Tribunal on Iraq places its faith in the consciences of millions of people across the world who do not wish to stand by and watch while the people of Iraq are being slaughtered, subjugated, and humiliated.”

Denis Halliday, former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations who resigned in protest against sanctions on Iraq said during his testimony that “the UN silently accepted the totally illegal no-fly zone bombing by the U.S../UK of Iraq culminating in softening up attacks preliminary to the unlawful invasion of 2003.”

Halliday said that “by these various means, the UN has itself destroyed the basic human rights of the Iraqi people through the wilful neglect of Articles 22-28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN failed to protect and safeguard the children and people before and after the 2003 invasion.”

Thomas Fasy, associate professor of pathology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, provided evidence of a seven-fold increase in congenital malformations of Iraqi babies from 1990-2001.

Fasy also testified that childhood cancers and leukemia in children below five in the Basra governorate increased 26-fold over 1990-2002.

Fadhil Al Bedrani, a BBC and Reuters journalist who was in Fallujah during the November siege, provided evidence of collective punishment of civilians by U.S. forces.

Iraqi women’s rights supporter Hana Ibrahim said women suffer 90 percent unemployment, and are often the victims of rape, lawlessness, forced prostitution and kidnappings.

“From the day that the occupation started in Iraq there was a systematic violation of women and their rights,” she said.

Herbert Docena, researcher with the group ‘Focus on the Global South’ who has studied Iraq’s reconstruction and political transition pointed to the economic and political forces behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

“As early as February 2003, the U.S. had finished drafting what the Wall Street Journal called ‘sweeping plans to remake Iraq’s economy in the US’s image’,” Docena said. “Just as the U.S. bombed out and physically obliterated almost all of Iraq’s ministries, the plan
entails the repeal of almost all of its current laws and the dismantling of its existing institutions, except those that already fit in with the U.S. design.”

The jury in its ruling “recognised the right of the Iraqi people to resist the illegal occupation of their country.”

It recommended “immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all occupation forces” and called on “the governments of the coalition to pay full compensation to Iraqis for any and all damages, and that all laws, contracts, treaties and institutions created under the
occupation that Iraqi people deem harmful or un-useful to them be banished.”

Other recommendations included immediate investigation of crimes against humanity by U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and every other president of countries belonging to the coalition.

In addition, the jury called for a process of accountability to bring to justice journalists and media outlets that lied and promoted the violence against Iraq, as well as corporations who have profited from the war.*

A Woman’s Reflection on Leading Prayer
by Yasmin Mogahed
(Friday 25 March 2005)

“Given my privilege as a woman, I only degrade myself by trying to be something I’m not—and in all honesty—don’t want to be: a man. As women, we will never reach true liberation until we stop trying to mimic men, and value the beauty in our own God-given distinctiveness.”

On March 18, 2005 Amina Wadud led the first female-led Jumuah (Friday) prayer. On that day women took a huge step towards being more like men. But, did we come closer to actualizing our God-given liberation?

I don’t think so.

What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God—not in relation to men. But as western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left—but men. As a result the western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man—the standard.

When a man cut his hair short, she wanted to cut her hair short. When a man joined the army, she wanted to join the army. She wanted these things for no other reason than because the “standard” had it.

What she didn’t recognize was that God dignifies both men and women in their distinctiveness—not their sameness. And on March 18, Muslim women made the very same mistake.

For 1400 years there has been a consensus of the scholars that men are to lead prayer. As a Muslim woman, why does this matter? The one who leads prayer is not spiritually superior in any way. Something is not better just because a man does it. And leading prayer is not better, just because it’s leading. Had it been the role of women or had it been more divine, why wouldn’t the Prophet have asked Ayesha or Khadija, or Fatima—the greatest women of all time—to lead? These women were promised heaven—and yet they never lead prayer.

But now for the first time in 1400 years, we look at a man leading prayer and we think, “That’s not fair.” We think so although God has given no special privilege to the one who leads. The imam is no higher in the eyes of God than the one who prays behind.

On the other hand, only a woman can be a mother. And God has given special privilege to a mother. The Prophet taught us that heaven lies at the feet of mothers. But no matter what a man does he can never be a mother. So why is that not unfair?

When asked who is most deserving of our kind treatment? The Prophet replied ‘your mother’ three times before saying ‘your father’ only once. Isn’t that sexist? No matter what a man does he will never be able to have the status of a mother.

And yet even when God honors us with something uniquely feminine, we are too busy trying to find our worth in reference to men, to value it—or even notice. We too have accepted men as the standard; so anything uniquely feminine is, by definition, inferior. Being sensitive is an insult, becoming a mother—a degradation. In the battle between stoic rationality (considered masculine) and self-less compassion (considered feminine), rationality reigns supreme.

As soon as we accept that everything a man has and does is better, all that follows is just a knee jerk reaction: if men have it—we want it too. If men pray in the front rows, we assume this is better, so we want to pray in the front rows too. If men lead prayer, we assume the imam is closer to God, so we want to lead prayer too. Somewhere along the line we’ve accepted the notion that having a position of worldly leadership is some indication of one’s position with God.

A Muslim woman does not need to degrade herself in this way. She has God as a standard. She has God to give her value; she doesn’t need a man.

In fact, in our crusade to follow men, we, as women, never even stopped to examine the possibility that what we have is better for us. In some cases we even gave up what was higher only to be like men.

Fifty years ago, society told us that men were superior because they left the home to work in factories. We were mothers. And yet, we were told that it was women’s liberation to abandon the raising of another human being in order to work on a machine. We accepted that working in a factory was superior to raising the foundation of society—just because a man did it.

Then after working, we were expected to be superhuman—the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect homemaker—and have the perfect career. And while there is nothing wrong, by definition, with a woman having a career, we soon came to realize what we had sacrificed by blindly mimicking men. We watched as our children became strangers and soon recognized the privilege we’d given up.

And so only now—given the choice—women in the West are choosing to stay home to raise their children. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, only 31 percent of mothers with babies, and 18 percent of mothers with two or more children, are working full-time. And of those working mothers, a survey conducted by Parenting Magazine in 2000, found that 93% of them say they would rather be home with their kids, but are compelled to work due to ‘financial obligations’. These ‘obligations’ are imposed on women by the gender sameness of the modern West, and removed from women by the gender distinctiveness of Islam.

It took women in the West almost a century of experimentation to realize a privilege given to Muslim women 1400 years ago.

Given my privilege as a woman, I only degrade myself by trying to be something I’m not—and in all honesty—don’t want to be: a man. As women, we will never reach true liberation until we stop trying to mimic men, and value the beauty in our own God-given distinctiveness.

If given a choice between stoic justice and compassion, I choose compassion. And if given a choice between worldly leadership and heaven at my feet—I choose heaven.

Yasmin Mogahed is currently a graduate student in Journalism/Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and working as a free lance writer.

March 24, 2005