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"The
War on Women" (Lashawn R. Jefferson,
OpinionJournal, 2002/08/22)
"After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government threw its full
energies into combating terrorism emerging from militants in the
Islamic world. But it has done little to expose and condemn the ways
some states are using radical interpretations of Islamic law, or
Shariah, to subordinate and exclude women. ... Just this week, an
appellate Shariah court in northern Nigeria upheld a "death by
stoning" sentence against a woman for having sex outside
marriage. The case of Amina Lawal, the 30-year-old Nigerian woman
sentenced to death, should raise grave concerns about how Islamic law
is used in Nigeria and in other countries to brutalize and subordinate
women. ... If she loses her final appeal, Ms. Lawal can expect to be
buried up to her chest and stoned to death, leaving behind three
motherless children. ... A woman in Pakistan who has been raped and
wants the state to prosecute her case must have four Muslim men
testify that they witnessed the assault. Absent these male witnesses,
effectively the rape victim has no case. Equally alarming, if she
cannot prove the rape allegation, she runs a very high risk of being
charged with fornication or adultery, the criminal penalty for which
is either a long prison sentence, including public whipping, or,
though rarely, death by stoning. ... The U.S. identified the
restoration of Afghan women's basic rights as one of the principal
goals of ousting the Taliban. This must be a goal not only for
Afghanistan, but also for the other parts of the world where the
growing power of discriminatory law, including certain interpretations
of Shariah, is a pernicious and chronic threat to women's very
existence."
"God
will get me through, says mother" (Janine di
Giovanni, The Times, 2002/11/13)
"As more than 80 young women arrived amid great fanfare in the
Nigerian capital to take part in the Miss World contest, an illiterate
31-year-old woman sat in a stark room a few miles away contemplating a
very different fate. Amina
Lawal has been sentenced to death by stoning. ... The beauty queens
welcomed so effusively by the Nigerian Government on Monday night are
symbols of the West’s obsession with sex, celebrity and material
gain. "We're here to put Nigeria on the map of international
beauty," declared Julia Morley, the Miss World president. Ms
Lawal, by contrast, has become a symbol of hardline Islam's
intolerance of any form of moral laxity, at least among the poor. For
the alleged adultery that led to the birth of Wasila, now ten months
old, she is to be buried up to her neck and stoned until she dies. ...
One day, after accepting a lift on a motorcycle, she was raped by a
man she thought was a friend. When it became obvious that she was
pregnant the fundamentalist vigilantes, known as Hisbah, turned her
over to the Sharia court. ... There are four other cases of women
sentenced to be stoned for adultery. There are also 11 children in
Sokoto state awaiting amputation for stealing. Ms Lawal's lawyer,
Hauwa Ibrahim, said: 'We have heard they are waiting for the
amputation machine to arrive.'" (See also: "The
Next Hotbed Of Islamic Radicalism" (Paul Marshall, The
Washington Post, 2002/10/08) and "The
War on Women" (Lashawn R. Jefferson, OpinionJournal,
2002/08/22))
"The
Next Hotbed Of Islamic Radicalism" (Paul
Marshall, The Washington Post, 2002/10/08)
"Since Nigeria's independence, sharia has regulated family and
personal law, but the newer versions, introduced largely from the
Middle East, are far more restrictive and wider in scope. Since 1999,
Zamfara state has required "Islamic" dress and sexually
segregated public transportation. It has banned alcohol and closed
churches and non-Muslim schools. These regulations are enforced by
hizbah (religious police). In July the governor, Ahmed Sani, announced
that all residents, including non-Muslims, must begin using Arabic, a
language few speak. ... The governor has said that sharia supersedes
the Nigerian constitution and indicated that Islam requires Muslims to
kill any apostate, which could include a Muslim seeking a trial in a
civil court. Ruud Peters, who reported on Nigeria's sharia for the
European Commission, fears that the new laws are
"irreversible," because anyone trying to change them could
be charged with attacking Islam. This extreme version of sharia is
provoking the worst violence since Nigeria's civil war 30 years ago.
In the past three years, some 6,000 people have been killed in sharia-related
conflict nationwide. ... This type of sharia is more typical of
extreme Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran but has been
spreading in Africa, to Sudan, Somalia and now Nigeria. Saudi and
Sudanese, as well as Palestinian and Syrian, representatives have
visited Nigeria's sharia states and offered them aid."
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