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Benazir Bhutto
should be remembered both for being a positive role-model for Muslim women
and for championing the rights of the unborn, writes Babette Francis.
All murders are tragic, but the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto was particularly so because she was the last hope for some time for
the emancipation of Muslim women.
She was by no means perfect - her stints as Prime Minister were riddled with
corruption, and in the 1990s she had apparently co-operated with Afghanistan's
Taliban movement, thus proving that he who sups with the devil needs a long
spoon.
Nevertheless, Benazir was a brave and articulate
woman who risked her life to bring improvement to the political life of Pakistan.
It was an affront to Islamic extremists that she dared show her unveiled face
- the scarf over her head was worn well back and showed her hair; it was an
adornment, not a covering. That she was beautiful was a further affront to the
"guardians of morality".
Assassination
Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for her assassination. They don't like
unveiled women; they don't like women being educated or participating in
public life - actually, they just don't like women. They regard women only as
essential but degraded objects for breeding children, and, more recently, as
suicide-bombers.
I have an abiding memory of Benazir at the UN's
Fourth World Conference for Women in Beijing,
1995. While Hillary Clinton, then First Lady and head of the US
delegation, arrived with an entourage of 300 and argued for the rights of
women to abort their babies, Benazir Bhutto argued
for the protection of human life.
At the opening of the conference she said: "To please her husband, a
woman wants a son. To keep her husband from abandoning her, a woman wants a
son. And, too often, when a woman expects a girl, she abets her husband in
abandoning or aborting that innocent, perfectly formed child."
Both in Beijing and at the International
Conference on Population and Development in Cairo,
1994, Benazir Bhutto stood firmly with the Vatican
in opposing the Clinton Administration and UN agenda of imposing abortion as
a solution to the problems of women in developing countries. Bhutto called
the practice of gender-selected abortions "tragic", and said it
"still haunts a world we regard as modern and civilised".
So an odd thing happened when Benazir died. Even
though she was a role-model for the liberation of Muslim women, liberal
feminists seemed not to notice this aspect of her character, just as they
have failed to acknowledge the oppression of women under Islam.
There is a deeper issue at work. Feminists hate President George W. Bush so
much that they would rather remain silent about Islamist oppression of women
than applaud him for promoting democracy.
Benazir Bhutto was an ally of the West. In
contrast, feminists detest Western traditional values while being committed
to "multiculturalism", which apparently includes Islamist
oppression of women.
In her book The Whole Woman (1999), Australian-born radical feminist
Germaine Greer compared female genital mutilation, which is forced on young
girls who have no right of refusal, with breast enhancement, which is an
adult woman's choice. For Greer, an operation that robs a woman of the right
to enjoy sex is justifiable as a part of "culture".
In Saudi Arabia,
where women are forced to wear black head-to-toe burkas,
they are banned from driving. Greer comments: "I get a bit worried about
certain heavily-veiled ladies driving because they have no peripheral vision
at all. You can understand why in some countries they are not allowed to
drive."
Greer has previously suggested that as a protest against the (Afghan) war,
women should wear burkas - even though in Afghanistan
the burka was forced upon women by men who would
use sticks and electrical cable to beat those who did not comply.
Naomi Wolf is another feminist who has condemned Islamist terrorism, but
seems more concerned to promote her theories that America is becoming a fascist
state than to champion the causes of women trapped in Islamic societies.
Why is the Canadian Commission on the Status of Women silent about the murder
of a 16-year-old Canadian schoolgirl, Aqsa Parvez, who was strangled by her father for wearing
"non-Islamic" clothes?
In Britain, with its estimated 109 cases of honour killings and around 250
young British Muslim girls annually forced into arranged marriages, British
feminists have bought the myth that women in veils and headscarfs
who submit to arranged marriages are "liberated" because they are
evaluated on their abilities and not their body image.
Muslims are big on "martyrdom". I hope Benazir
Bhutto's martyrdom will spark a movement for emancipation by Muslim women.
Perhaps they could use a teddy-bear named Mohamed as a symbol of resistance.
May Benazir Bhutto rest in peace.
- The author Babette Francis is national co-ordinator of Endeavour Forum
Inc
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