* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The attack on "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan has become an iconic event for many, confirming widely-held beliefs, at least in the United States, about violence and Muslim men and their victimization of women..
Women’s eNews' editor Corinna Barnard pushed back against the media storm of coverage, arguing in a recent column that claims that the assault underscores that the Middle East remains a dangerous place for women are way off-base. The real deal, she argued, is that women suffer from inordinate violence across the globe.
What is clearly on-base, however, are concerns over whether the revolutions underway in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen will actually include changes to the rights of women and address the legal infrastructures that does violates women’s rights each day.
Like Muslim men, Islamic law, known as Sharia, has nearly become synonymous with the extreme limitation of women’s rights. Leading Muslim women’s rights advocates don’t necessary accept that and say the Koran supports women’s full equality. Other Muslim female leaders argue strenuously against Sharia, saying women must insist on civil laws to protect their rights.
How this dilemma affects the treatment of women in the region remains to be seen. However, a partial answer might lie with Egypt’s influential Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has substantial political power in the country. As Women’s eNews' correspondent Merryn Johnson wrote: "The Brotherhood continues to exalt the roles of mothers and wives for women and it prohibits a woman from serving as president." Johnson cited Mariz Tadros, a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, England.
However, Johnson also quotes Mahmoud Ghozlan, of the Brotherhood's Executive Bureau, as saying, "We welcome the participation of women in all our activities,” with the sole exception of being the organization’s president.
Not exactly a full-blooded commitment to equal rights but at the same certainly a recognition that at least lip service must be paid to women’s equality. Moreover, the Brotherhood’s views may continue to evolve. As has happened elsewhere, women who participated in the pro-democracy protests may begin to press for changes in the local laws governing their lives.
A year ago, Women’s eNews' Middle East Bureau Chief Dominique Soguel and I attended a women’s rights conference in Cairo with women from throughout the Muslim world.
An Egyptian attendee, Mawra Sharafeldin, told us how her 11-member network solved the Koran-versus-civil laws dilemma. She said the opposition to polygamy was unanimous, but any changes to the customary financial terms of marriage and inheritance failed to gain widespread support. The organization eventually decided just to focus on the collective opposition to polygamy since network members were united on that front. Each member could individually decide whether to mount her argument on the basis of Islam or international human rights documents, but they all would confront it.
Women’s eNews will continue to cover this dilemma in each of the nations where the old tyrants have fled, asking whether the tyrannical control of women’s lives throughout the region is also losing its grip on power.
