Letters to the Editor, November 26, 2003

why do obsessive Muslims insist their women cover their heads and in even more extreme cases their faces? What is wrong with hair? God gave us hair. We are all human beings with hair blessed on us by God why should Muslim women be ashamed of their hair or faces? No where in the Koran are women supposed to be treated like second class citizens and no matter how weak Muslim women try to justify the covering of their hair and faces, will it be convincing-it is a nonsense. A country which treats its women as second class citizens i.e. no education, no freedom cover up completely, will never, never ever prosper-not in mind nor spirit. If God did not want us to think for ourselves He would have made us all robots so that he could completely control us-what we think, what we do, how we dress, how we relate to each other and so on. God gave us minds and souls and freedom-do not keep all that only for the Muslim male members extend it to Muslim women. It is time for Islam to modernise and stop living in the dark ages-change with the times-be clever not war mongerers-do not be bitter and twisted trying to make all Muslims guilty of their every move. MODERNISE AND PROSPER IN MIND, SOUL AND FORTUNE.

Donna Jmsn

Islam and Women

Dear Editor,

whether citizens of the world who are Moslems like it or not, the Moslem religion is considered extremely medieval in its attitude towards the 52% of the world which is female. In the West, all we see and hear is how insecure Moslem men - some ready to kill women - want to suppress Moslem women, and keep them only as domestic servants and beasts of burden. It is clear that no reconciliation can occur between the non-Moslem world, especially the majority of women and men in the West, and the outside world until Moslem women receive the rights accorded to them by the Prophet and his teachings, which certainly did not accord women an inferior and servile status.

Yours sincerely

Tim Symonds

United Kingdom

Editor:

Dear Donna and Tim,

Thank you for your letter and questions. I’ll try to answer them in the following points hoping that this will show you if Muslim women are treated as second-class citizens or not. I hope that your letters are not part of a new anit-Islamic campaign to justify more wars on Muslim countries, this time "to liberate women."

Devoted Muslim women cover their heads in compliance with Qor'anic teachings, just like nuns in Christianity, who cover their heads, and just like when Christian women go to Church or meet with the Pope. According to Islamic teachings, the beauty of a woman should be enjoyed only by her husband, not by other men. It is unfair to generalize about all Muslim women in the world. Each country is unique. Muslim women generally who cover their heads do that out of piety, they are not forced by men. Just think about Muslim women, who live in the West, many of them still cover their heads, too.
Muslim women are more politically recognized in their countries than women in the West generally. For example, the largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, has elected a woman President, Mrs. Megawati Sukarnoputri. She is still the President, her photo is published in the front page of the Nov 26 issue. She is covering her head, too, as she is attending prayers in the Mosque. Also, Pakistan elected Benazir Bhutto twice in 1988 and 1992. Turkey elected Tansu Chiller as a Prime Minster in the 1990s and she visited the US during the Clinton’s presidency. Bangladesh has an elected female Prime Minister right now. I know that Ireland has a female President, Britain elected a female Prime Minister, and there is a female Prime Minister in Norway. But Germany, France, Italy, and the United States have not elected a female as a president or a prime minister yet. The same applies to most of the Western nations.
A Muslim woman keeps her maiden name after marriage. She never changes her last name whenever she gets married. However, Western women have to change their last name whenever they get married. They even keep the last name of the ex-husband after divorce.
Muslim women have the right to sell and buy their property by themselves for 1424 years, while American women, for example, had these rights only since 1920.
Muslim women have the least divorce rate and the least teenage pregnancy incidence in the world, which means that the are the least among women in the world to be left alone to fend for themselves and for their children, like women in the West who suffer from the two conditions.

Despite all these positive conditions that Muslim women enjoy, I do not claim that they are completely receiving fair treatment from men or from the state. Many Muslim countries still deprive women from their political rights. But men also are deprived of political rights in the same societies. If women or men are mistreated in a country or another, it has nothing to do with Islam.

Stop the Separation Wall

Dear Friends:

We received an urgent appeal from the Bethlehem Municipality urging us to do what we can here in the US to stop the separation wall being built by Israel that will rob 15% of the Municipality land and property. The wall will cut off many Bethlehem families and homes near Rachel tomb and on the main road to Jerusalem. It will also further isolate Bethlehem from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

We have written to the Administration including the State Department, the White House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee strongly condemning the Wall. We will post some of these letters on our website.

In the meantime we urge all of you to sign the international petition being organized by Stop the Wall movement at the following link: http://stopthewall.org.il/mashacamp/petition/index.html

Thank you

Edward Hazboun

President, The Bethlehem Association

http://www.bethlehemassoc.org

Palestinian Deaths Statistics

Hello. I wanted to congratulate your organization. The other day, Google had one of your stories listed on it's front news page. Along with New York Times and Washington post headlines. Excellent work your site does.

I wrote to make a suggestion. I collect statistics about the latest Palestinian deaths at Israeli hands. This was easy to do as Yahoo or some other equally large source posted them on a daily basis. Recently something odd has happened. Yahoo no longer gives Palestinian deaths front page billing. My other sources also seemed to have stopped printing the daily Palestinian deaths.

I am concerned that the adverse publicity, people like me collecting the death statistics and posting them all together so the public can see exactly how many Palestinians are killed on a daily basis, has caused the media organizations to stop reporting these incidents. This seems especially likely in light of the focus on Israel after Mathahir's speech.

The only reason I know that any deaths have occurred lately is by visiting Arabic sites that are obscure for most people.

I would like to suggest that your organization post the daily reports of Palestinian deaths. This would put those statistics back in front of the public. My feeling is that if someone went to the trouble to remove these articles from Yahoo and other news sources, the articles must be causing trouble for the Israelis.

This should not be too much work if you have access to the information. I have found that if a name of the person, as opposed to anonymous "Palestinian boy, girl, woman" is posted, the information means more. People can identify with "abu Mahmoud was murdered" more easily than they can care about "Palestinian boy, girl" etc. The name of the person killed, the method of death,( shot in the back, face etc), and the circumstances, (going to school, going to the store, )are all that is needed. A full background helps make the story more human.

If your site is too busy or too full, that is fine. I understand that people can only do so much. Your site has so much information on it that you must keep your staff fully occupied with the work load they have now.

Thanks for a fantastic website.

Editor:

Dear Joe,

We have been doing this for the second year. Look at the Human price section. You may find detailed information, including names and ages in the Palestinian News Agency Website but these are in Arabic. Summary statistics are found in English in two official websites, the Palestinian President Website and the Palestinian Red Crescent Website, all of which are posted on the Human Price section of Al-Jazeerah.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).