It is not a new thing that the Syrian government traffics women like some religious figures who have sold their consciousness, values and humanity to enable their masculinity to enslave women. The government seems ready to do this again again. What is really scary this time round is that the government started to pay “the cost” of the attitudes taken by few of those religious figures, and it seems that women would be again the victims of this compromise in many ways.
The Syrian Arab News Agency/SANA [state-run news agency] announced the following on 6th of April 2011:
Ali Saad, education minister in Syria's caretaker government, said teachers who wear niqabs can now return to their jobs. “The teachers, who have committed themselves to the requirements of the educational system," were permitted to get their jobs back, he said.
Which requirements is he talking about when we teach our children that women are only a source of fitna and shame! Where are the requirement of the educational system when the child would see only a black scary figure! Where are the requirements when the child would deep inside understands that his teacher is a shame to the whole society and life that should be covered from head to toe, otherwise the sin would spread? How will a young boy look at his sister and mother? Or at a girl walking in the street? How will he even look at himself?
Will putting off the niqab inside the school, and then putting it on at the gate of the school cancels any of these requirements?!
How dares the government to support such a blunt and clear violence against the Syrian woman by insulting her and treating her as a sexual ticking bomb walking in the street and a thing that need to be avoided?!
Shaikh Ramadan al Buti proved that women don’t exist in his own dictionary. They are only a subject matter for sex, domination and delivering babies. That is why he still defends the niqab, after being paid the price of these positions that support the Syrian government during the current situation. The right to live is something that is of no concern for Buti and his likes. Punishing those who arrested and tortured children is not something that concerns them, neither the right for the woman to live as a human. Their only concern is to accumulate the masculine power and harness the lives of women.
They are shaking to their keens fearing that women would gain their freedom and their rights to be real citizens. Such freedom would mean that those men will be no longer able to rape young girls in what is known as “early marriage”. They will be no longer able to rape their wives in what is known as “martial rights”. Neither would they be able to beat, house-imprison or deny them their right to work, and other endless inhumane decisions.
If this is from where the government started to compromise, then we wonder where will it ends?
Will we witness tomorrow a Talibanic Personal-Status Law that entrenches racial discrimination based on religious grounds! Are they going to draft laws that enable the government to separate married couple using meaningless excuses? Will they be able to enslave women by new Talibanic laws instead of a fair family law? Why not? It seems the government has already started that and is ready to sell all the Syrian women as a compromise with some religious figures.
For all of that, we say it clearly: We are against any such movement. We call for all Syrian women to start defending their rights. The attack against them has started. Unless they stand in unity against this notorious movements, they will find themselves soon slaves, virtually. It is not even strange that they are trying to regain the leftover rights that we have now.
The niqab and any other manifestation of violence against women is only a consolidation to the notion that the woman represents fitna, shame and vice. The niqab is something that is rejected altogether regardless of what few religious or governmental traffickers try to say.
The niqab is a message of blunt violence and extremism in the Syrian society, it says that any woman without that black prison, consists a real danger. How long will it take until we see religious police in our street? The government seems ready to do that as long as it serves its interests.
The notion of citizenship based on equality in rights and duties without any discrimination of any kind, whether it is based on religion, race, nationality etc… is the only guarantee to protect out country and assure its progress towards a humane future void of violence and discrimination. Enslaving half of the society is only another step towards aggravating the situation more and more. Replacing the violence of the authority with the violence of religious figures will not solve any problem. It will only aggravate the crisis.
Let’s say it loudly that we are against any movement by the government to sell women in collaboration wit few religious figures. We want to say: Women are citizens, they are our life partners, and not slaves. We refuse to teach our children in schools that sow violence, extremism and sectarianism using the name of religion.
Syrian Women Observatory editorial, 7/4/2011, (Watch out compromises against the Syrian Women! The government is ready to sell them cheaply!)
Source in Arabic (click here...)