An Essay by Shukri Abu-Baker, Political Prisoner
When the woman becomes the enemy; her face - war; her voice - venom;
her intellect - threat. No nation will be able to win defending misogyny.
No man can call himself a "holy" warrior when it's his mother, sister, wife, or daughter that he set out to finish. No woman should live and die at any man's pleasure.
Nor can a woman's life, like that of Mahsa's, be a fair-market price for her loose hair, or not-so-loose pants. A piece of clothing that didn't fit the "code" tightly. Or didn't tear to rags all decencies.
Or didn't rub out men's desire to find work; didn't
asphyxiate to death anyone; but did expose a tyranny shamelessly deployed in the name of the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful, Most Just. Blasphemous!
A system that feels threatened by a woman's outer look is, indeed, hollow on the inside, without heart or insight. And when such hollowness is filled with a sense
of divine right to rule, piousness becomes business and morality brutality.
A woman's body that's "inadequately" covered is not a crime. Covering the name of God with blood is the crime.
What? The West is applying double standards here? Great. Tell us, then, what "moral" standards did your "morality" police apply in torturing and butchering a harmless women citizen of yours?
What, exactly, is the Islamic threshold here? Please, preach to
the "hypocritical" West if you will. But if you thought their standards were too low to begin with, why then did you choose to plunge to their "despicable" level or even lower?
And how low can one go before they stop, or hesitate, calling themselves "Muslims"? Misogyny is not defendable. Nor is inaction. Educators, Imams, and community leaders must bear a hand, speak up, and take a stand.
A woman isn't the enemy. She can be the reason why a man stands and a nation rises. Her face isn't war; it's a ray of hope when the world wants to drift into a very scary and dark place.
Her voice isn't venom. It's the sound of reason when mad men
want to crack their whips and drive us to the brink of insanity. Her intellect isn't a threat to the nation; the lack of it is.
Shukri. 9/25/22
(Hashtags are my own. - G.E.)
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