Local anthropologist/feminist activist passes away

When I interned at the Post-Gazette in college, one of my assignments was an obituary of an Oakmont doctor, T.J. Ferguson. I was really nervous about the assignment because it's a tall order to sum up someone's life, especially who you've never met.

But it turned out to be one of my favorite assignments. By the end, I was wishing I HAD met Dr. Ferguson.

That's how I feel about this woman, whose obit ran in the PG today: Carol McAllister.

She was a professor at Pitt, which is how I first noticed the item at all. But wow -- it sounds like she did some truly amazing things:

• director of the University of Pittsburgh Women's Studies Program and was active with the Thomas Merton Center, the Women's Resource Center for Greater Pittsburgh and the Social Justice Action Team of the First United Methodist Church, Pittsburgh
• work with Early Head Start, a component of Head Start which helps low-income mothers and families prepare sooner for the health and education of their children.
• gave the children in these communities disposable cameras and told them to chronicle their lives. Her work and their photos were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005.
• organized a conference with speakers from Rwanda, Israel and Canada that focused on the roles that women can play in conflict resolution and rebuilding war-torn communities.

I am so sorry for her family's loss, a loss for the community and world as well. And, I find her story truly inspiring. I would be proud to do half as much in my own life.

'Throwing acid on the uncovered faces of women ... There is no harm in it.'

From 3quarksdaily, a truly chilling report from a physics professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Pictures courtesy of Ishaque Choudhry.

What next after Karachi's carnage?

by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Since Jan 21, 2007, baton wielding burqa-clad students of the Jamia Hafsa, the women's Islamic university located next to Lal Masjid, have forcibly occupied a government building, the Children's Library. In one of their many forays outside the seminary, this burqa brigade swooped upon a house, which they claimed was a brothel, and kidnapped 3 women and a baby.

Students of Jamia Hafsa (Women’s University) in Islamabad demonstrate for Shariah law

Victory for the Burqa Brigade

The male students of Islamabad's many madrassas are even more active. They terrorize video shop owners, who they accuse of spreading pornography and vice. Newspapers have carried pictures of grand bonfires made with seized cassettes and CDs. Most video stores in Islamabad have now closed down. Their owners duly repented after a fresh campaign by militants on May 4 bombed a dozen music and video stores, barber shops and a girls school in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Enjoying video burnings in Islamabad

The Lal Masjid head cleric, a former student of my university in Islamabad, added the following chilling message for our women students in the same broadcast:

The government should abolish co-education. Quaid-e-Azam University has become a brothel. Its female professors and students roam in objectionable dresses. I think I will have to send my daughters of Jamia Hafsa to these immoral women. They will have to hide themselves in hijab otherwise they will be punished according to Islam. Our female students have not issued the threat of throwing acid on the uncovered faces of women. However, such a threat could be used for creating the fear of Islam among sinful women. There is no harm in it. There are far more horrible punishments in the hereafter for such women.

If the truth be told, QAU resembles a city of walking double-holed tents rather than the brothel of a sick mullah's imagination. The last few bare-faced women are finding it more difficult by the day to resist. But then, that is precisely the aim of the Islamists. On May 7, a female teacher in the QAU history department was physically assaulted in her office by a bearded, Taliban-looking man who screamed that he had instructions from Allah. President Musharraf - who is the chancellor of QAU and often chooses to be involved in rather petty university administrative affairs - has made no comment on the recent developments.

What next? As Islamabad heads the way of Pakistan's tribal towns, the next targets will be girls schools, internet cafes, bookshops and western clothing stores, followed by shops selling toilet paper, tampons, underwear, mannequins, and other un-Islamic goods.

In a sense, the inevitable is coming to pass. Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city different from all others in Pakistan. Still earlier it was largely the abode of Pakistan's hyper-elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio-cannons mounted on minarets, as well as scores of madrassas illegally constructed in what used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students with little prayer caps dutifully chant the Quran all day. In the evenings they roam in packs through the city's streets and bazaars, gaping at store windows and lustfully ogling bare-faced women.

Pakistan's 'virtue vigilantes'

(Image: Stringer Photo)

As a follow-up to my last post on women in Iraq: OutlookIndia has a story on a similar climate developing in Pakistan.

Just the other day Tahera Abdullah was driving down the spiffy Margalla Road in Islamabad, the windows rolled down to enjoy the evening breeze. A development worker, her silvery hair could tell anyone she's 50 plus. Tahera stopped at the traffic signal; an eight-year-old boy accosted her: didn't she know Islam required her to cover her head? Tahera immediately rolled up the window. "How do you argue with an eight-year-old?" she asks. But the encounter with Pakistan's religious extremism, at once frightening and puerile, has prompted Tahera to choose sweating inside the car over letting in the breeze. "We women are feeling more threatened today," she says.

Sherry [Rehman, leader of the Pakistan People's Party] ... has experienced the destructive passion of the country's religiosity. Two months ago, she was in a truck leading a PPP procession. An assailant stabbed her in the neck with a sharp object, to express his anger against women in politics. "The person who attacked me hasn't been apprehended yet," she said. "We are in a state of anarchy today. It's a dangerous retreat of the state. There's simply no check on the vice and virtue vigilantes."

Women in Iraq: The first victims of 'freedom'

Yanar Mohammed, architect, sculptor, and founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, is interviewed in Guernica Magazine.

"When I was a student, I was dressed like a modern girl and I wore long shorts. That is part of the past. There is fear in the streets. You cannot go out in the streets. You are looked at as if you come from another age. If there are any militias on your street, they will tell you to go back home and dress decently. They could beat you up or punish you worse than that. Some of us who have grown up in Baghdad are used to wearing what we please and walking where we please. ...

"At its worst, the women look like black objects: black gloves and black stockings—no flesh can show. I have never before in my life seen young women dressed like that. In 1993, when I left Iraq, I had never seen the black gloves. Now you go to Baghdad and with the high level of poverty you see women begging on the sides of the street; even the beggars wear black. ...

"The Star Academy winner [Iraqi singer who won on the Lebanese "American Idol"-style show] is a young woman who is in an open dress and is lovely. She is a symbol of the Iraqi life we used to have. That's what people voted for. If these Islamists grow stronger and more powerful, she will not be able to look like that or sing like that. This is the answer to the U.S. administration when it tells us that this is the elected representative government of Iraq. These Islamist parties are not only U.S.-backed but also backed by the Iranian government and ruling parties. They do not represent the people of Iraq. The U.S. said they’d bring democracy but they waited to see who is stronger— the rule of the jungle—and gave power to the strongest, best funded and best armed. But, then again, maybe the U.S. was hoping to have an Islamist modernist government, similar to the Saudis. They were thinking of something like that, but the genie came out of the bottle, and it will not go back any more. ...

"At this point, the women of Iraq do not even dream to have even a small part of the reality we used to have before. We have been put under the most notorious Islamic authority in Iraq. Our monies and resources have been taken away from us. If there was the possibility of a resourceful society, we have lost that also."