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The network dynamic of Islamic feminism
Today’s news treat us to http://abcnews.go.com/International/...erlin-48077687 where one-world-religion, naturally social-libertarian, impulses are pushed forward while wearing the niqab is a problem.
Just shortly after Berkeley’s female-led mosque that started the same earlier this year in Northern California. http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/a...n-11072445.php
Following last year’s same case in Denmark. https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-mosque-mariam
The rise of a female-led mosque in Bradford, the archetypical Muslim population in the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...radford-mosque
And of course, the seminal case of Los Angeles’ ‘Women’s Mosque of America’ from 2015, which opened as literal safe space where women and children are allowed but men aren’t, who served as the stepping stone and example for the Berkeley one where the message will now be distributed to adult men as well
http://womensmosque.com/
While the generic observer could easily be made to believe that this process is somehow the spontaneous rise of muslim women fighting for their rights, and ‘adapting tradition’ to fit contemporary lives (a romantic and childish delusion people want to believe in subconsciously), reality is that there is a more complex process at play here.
A cursory read on the information available from each of these mosques shows three distinct things:
1) The complete invisibility of the funding that goes to such organizations to pay for their rent, their media coverage, their staff or the drafting of their written resources.
Using the well-known technicality that has been used for a long time now to develop astroturf societal initiatives, tracing such donors gets tricky.
2) A consistent relation of the leaders of said mosques with mainstream authorities and interests, as well as an unexplained prevalence of people who aren’t very Islamic in their activities or backgrounds in the governing body of each of them.According to the IRS:
The list of donors filed with Form 990 is specifically excluded from the information available for public inspection, except for donors to private foundations and political organizations.
This means that trying to learn who has donated to a particular nonprofit can be challenging. However, some nonprofits may thank their donors, particularly major donors, in public documents, like annual reports, newsletters, or their web sites. But be aware that these donor lists may not be comprehensive or indicate the donation amount."
But one can safely induce that given the quality of their websites, the fact several newspapers fall head over heels to do long pieces on them (in spite of their material inanity, what is one further mosque in a city really?), and the workshops and summits that have taken place, often requiring intercontinental travelling, there is a deep enough financial backing taking place.
For instance, the organization that Sherin Khankan used as springboard for the establishment of the Copenhagen female-led mosque, has the following board of directors:
http://www.kritiskemuslimer.dk/?page_id=60
Apart from her none of the actually study Islam but rather connected social marketing issues. Mahvish Ahmad is a correspondet of the Christian Science Monitor and a current PhD candidate at Cambridge. Journalism.
Abdulqadir Hussein is the president of a student association in Copenhagen, as well as as the “Future Entrepreneurs of Denmark” collective. Said collective is known to be sponsored directly by western conglomerates:
http://cphftw.dk/event/meet-join-fut...rs-of-denmark/
“in collaboration with our excellent partners such as McKinsey&Company, Google, Future Navigator, Microsoft, Designit, StartupBootcamp and many others.”
His studies relate to Urban and Environmental Planning to complement this, nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.
Saliha Marie Fetteh is an university professor of Modern Middle Eastern studies and Arabic, from a secular perspective, and to leave humour for last, Ellen Chakir seemingly made the board of directors by being the owner of a bed and breakfast establishment in Morocco.
Clearly the people one would expect to develop critical theory of the ensemble of Islam.
Yet the exercise may be repeated consistently across all of the figures of the female-led mosques that are making their appearance as of late.
Perhaps a case that ought to be addressed is Edina Lekovic, the Montenegrin refugee woman behind the Women’s Mosque of America. Her university degree is “American Literature and Culture”, and has enjoyed the sponsoring of every main American major media outlet whether audiovisual or written. In such a way, she has developed an image of spokesperson of the American Muslim community, in spite of not having any specific Islamic formation nor trajectory. Instead, she has enjoyed a comfortable media career sponsored by major American media outlets, whether the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune or the Los Angeles Times.
More importantly however, Lekovic was one of the representatives that the US sent to Malaysia (we will return later to this specific country) in 2003 to the International Conference of Muslim Young Leaders with official sponsorship.
3) The existence of clear networks between all of the organizations behind them, that not only raises the question once more as to who is leading this societal movement, but also disproves any notion that this is a local-based spontaneous movement of women addressing their specific needs in the country where they are located, as simultaneity regarding their rise across the world as well near-perfect concordance in their ideological approach, is just too well-fitting to be accidental.
A telling case was how the Muslim Council of Women, the association that led to the rise of the Bradford mosque mentioned above, runs this program called “Daughters of Eve” in cooperation with the American Rawiya Foundation (another entity whose funding is entirely undisclosed), developing meetings with the typical entertainment hooks destined for the current generation of young people, using hip hop, karaoke and the like to develop gatherings with young women.
http://www.muslimwomenscouncil.org.uk/daughters-of-eve/
But more importantly, it is necessary to refer to the Musawah network.
Musawah was established in 2009 in Kuala Lumpur, following 2 years of preparation where doctrinal arguments were built to push for the spread of Islamic feminism as a current of thought.
http://www.musawah.org/about-musawah...global-meeting
Musawah’s network is directly accessible via the Berkeley mosque (reference is directly there in the SFChronicle article linked in the first set of links) and it has been consulted by Danish media along with Sherin Khankhan when it comes to devising ways to ‘adapt Islam’ to fit the ethos of human rights:
https://menneskeret.dk/nyheder/kroni...erettighederne
Musawah is an emanation of the Malaysian association “Sisters in Islam”, or SIS (perhaps unsurprisingly, the same acronym that British Intelligence once had). Its founders are noteworthy for they’re the complete opposite of what an ‘organic grassroots’ network would be like all about.
Zainah Anwar, the head figure for decades of the organization is the daughter of the Malaysian politician credited with coming up with the name for UMNO (United Malays National Organization), the party that has ruled Malaysia ever since the British Empire decided to withdraw its direct political presence. And her sister is the chairman of the Malaysian Security Commission, overseer of the financial markets in the country. A less suspicious perspective could perhaps believe that the chief feminist organization stemming from such a person is just a coincidence.
A co-founder of said organization is the American convert Amina Wadud, known for engaging in controversial episodes across the world, from South Africa, to Egypt, to India. Always heavily publicised, yet somehow not too connected to Malaysian daily reality.
Context:
It should come as no surprise that Malaysia would be selected as the place where such a movement would emerge either.
Tracing the history of the country reveals a remarkable degree of collusion with Western structures, which of course refers to the British Empire.
Unlike other countries in Southeast Asia with a longer and defined history, Malaysia is essentially the unified collection of various colonial possessions that the British once held due to its strategic naval importance, and which motivated the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of the XIX Century dividing the western areas of influence in the region. Malacca, Penang, Singapore, Brunei , Sabah and other possessions were to become a single entity in the aftermath of World War II and the defeat of the Japanese. However the conflicts between some of the composing parts (reason why both Brunei and Singapore went on to become separate countries), as well as the rise of anticolonialism in the public discourse complicated the Malayan Union that was designed in 1946, which was opposed by the UMNO party, who asked for the reinstatement of the ceremonial functions of the royal families of the region, punished by the British for passive collaboration with the Japanese.
This was easily solved by reshaping once more the political system, and making UMNO (Zainah Anwar’s father’s party) the leading political force in the renamed Federation of Malaya, and using it as a strong anticommunist bulwark during the early part of the Cold War, with heavy investment from British intelligence as confirmed last year by a son of one of the agents detached there for this purpose:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-37892878
Malaysia was eventually granted full political independence, though it remains in the Commonwealth of Nations to this day, in the mid 50s as a way to avoid the political cost of handling the country directly. This collided with the interests of both Indonesia and the Phillippines, which saw in this ex-nihilo new country a way for neo-colonialism to rebrand itself via a new State, and Sukharno went on to deploy military forces to oppose such a development. It should come as no surprise then, that the coup which deposed him and led to the staunchly anticommunist and notoriously pro-Western general Suharto to power in Jakarta would happen shortly after.With a young family in tow, he began running counter-insurgency troops during the Malayan Emergency.
"When we went to live in Kuala Lumpur, I believed he was straight-out diplomat," Mark Colvin said.
"I went out into the jungle one time with him and reviewed a troupe of jungle fighters - hill tribesmen - but I thought that was part of his normal work. I thought he was a colonial diplomat. I didn't realise that was essentially part of his intelligence work."
Of course, said independence didn’t really change the strategic situation on the ground. Not only did a British commission led by Lord William Reid, but every military site that was held was naturally retained.
It is worth noting for instance, that Malaysia was granted a specific military protection treaty in the form of the Anglo-Malayan Defence Agreement of 1957, which would then be updated into the current Five Powers Defence Arrangements, which unite in the guise of a transnational treaty the usual British assets in the region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_P...e_Arrangements
Not too unlike Five Eyes when it refers to matters of cyber-espionage really.
Conclusion:
Islamic feminism isn’t a recent development. SIS was established in the late 80s, and preparatory work for Musawah was started in 2007, prior to the Arab revolts of 2011 which are touted as being the source of social media/youth movements in Islamic contexts. The crystallization of said work happening only from 2015 onwards in the shape of female-led mosques which push for acceptance of homosexuality and whose only requirement seems to be to ban burkha and the niqab merely represents the time that has been invested in this.
Islamic feminism barely lacks theologians of repute behind it and instead has a penchant for recruiting people of the secular world with a knack for pop culture items such as cyber journalism, start-ups or crowdfunding.
Islamic feminism doesn’t have any rebellious edge to it, as it’s transparently sponsored by the Western political apparatus as well as firms. Even if the legal departments of the mosques have ensured that access to their specific funding, disseminated in the classic atomized model of British subversion of having loads of small groups and foundations, it’s clear that it’s a sudden rise in donations for feminist causes from the part of Muslims is not the reason why they manage to sustain themselves so well.
Islamic feminism is piloted by people close to the establishment even from a filial angle at times, and whose central pillar of global cooperation has been safely located in Kuala Lumpur, a traditionally reliable centre for the Anglo-American power structure.
The drones of reddit and social media has reacted positively to all the developments, further confirming that the process is welcomed by westerners as a way to achieve uniformity and full compliance over liberal ethics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comm...iberal_mosque/
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Originally Posted by Sekarotuinen
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