On Idols and Islam

As an Islamic/Arab child, I was raised on Islamic beliefs and how Mohammad came and told people about God, saving humanity through the Koran. We heard all the stories about how he marched to the Ka3be, and destroyed all the stone idols, throwing them away and ending the adoration of idols in his time.

Personally, I was always fascinated by the way people told these stories. And I used to agree: we "should" only worship a one and only God.

After hanging out with way too many radical feminists, I started hearing about goddesses. And these immortal figures where each god and goddess represented something different. All of my life I've heard about how islam fought against idols. And now I was shocked to hear about goddesses and deities. And there was this contradiction in my head…

Now I realize that the stone idols were representations of these goddesses… people didn't worship stone! They worshiped the gods! And they created a symbol to represent them… just as we have the sword of Ali, or the Cross in Christianity.

And then I started researching these goddesses online. And I couldn't find anything written positively about lilith. Although from what I heard and understood: she represented the women who refused to obey the first man Adam. She rebelled.

During my research, I found out that she is said to be evil. She disobeyed god. She ran away from heaven, and then god sent her two guys to tell her that she had to submit and come back to heaven. She refused. They told her that as a punishment, she was no longer able to give birth! To revenge against her cruel sterilization, she said that from now on she was going to kill other mothers' babies. At the same time feminist describe her as a woman who wanted to be on top.

And then in the islamic world, lilith is said to have slept with devil and that was how jinn were born

I was intrigued because…in islam, jinn came before adam! Wtf?!

And then there is a resemblance between the devil and lilith because they both refused to submit to adam and they were both kicked out of heaven. And they made a promise to god that they would have a way to come back at god.

And so, after what I just learned through my research, and what I have learned all my life , I know that I wanna be a believer of the one and only God and his prophet, but also of the goddesses that represent something that I did not find in religion.

Zainab

When harrassment meets racism at prejudice boulevard

This story has been lingering in my mind for while now. Last week, I don't remember which day I was going home a bit late. Nothing extraordinary about it, I knew that there would be predators on the road and all. But luckily for me there was a certain distraction, there was another woman on board, which is rare to say the truth, I'm usually the only female at that time taking a bus.
So to describe that woman, she had very well done hair, tight cloth and all the accessories and make-up. And no I am not saying it was excessive, it was just more than me, but she was quite conforming to the social norm, if I may say.
But apparently, the predators thought otherwise. Now at first when we were at dawra, in the bus, waiting for it to move, this guy gets closer to the window and leans over it. The girl who had an open window tried to ease her way out of the situation with minimum friction and scandal. But the guy doesn't seem to care, he just leans over from the window and starts inviting the girl to drink from his redbull!
Now I had been in bad situations where I get harassed and I had been in situations when I see racism taking place and I had made myself a promise not to let such behavior go on, like to do something, anything, at least give these predators an evil look. It usually doesn't work.
This time, when I heard him, I turned back (because this was all happening in the seat behind me) and I gave the guy a look, a very obvious what the fuck kind of look. But still the guy didn't care, he didn't even turn to me or anything, he just didn't notice my presence. But then when he was done (and she didn't drink his redbull) the girl looked at me and I just said: "He's an asshole"
Then the bus leaves, but of course the driver had to turn back and ask the girl where she was going... There were no reason for him to do that but he wanted to talk to the girl. Then he tries to initiate an aggressive annoying and abusive conversation but she just puts an end to the conversation, so the driver turns and laughs with his gang of obnoxious men.
Then the girl smokes a cigarette! Big mistake if you are not in a safe environment, a female-smoker is a free of charge prostitute in the minds of abusive people.
Then the final punch was right after the girl left the bus, the guys kept staring till she disappeared and then the driver launched his chef d'oeuvre:
حدا يعطيا سيف العبد
Someone give her Seef l 3abed
and if you don't know what seef l 3abd is then it's this label of cleaning equipment and it's one of the most racist things ever, do you remember the famous nigger heads thingy?:
yeah the seef l 3abd is pretty much the same and you can guess what the obnoxious driver was implying to.
Yes the girl was brown, ironically, she was not african, she did not have the facial traits of one but she had a darker skin.
Now you would understand why this girl attracted so much harassment, she just happens to be darker than the average Lebanese... or should I say normal Lebanese.

أبناء الجزائريات جزائريون

Today I was refered to this article in Assafir Online  magazine: أبناء الجزائريات جزائريون 

Now the article quotes the Associated Press but provides no link. So with the intention to write about this in this lovely blog I started searching for the Associated Press article that reported this major improvement in Women's rights in Algeria.

Now you do the experiment, google "algeria citizenship rights for women Associated Press". The result is mind blowing if you think of it:

1. The first 4 results talk about Lebanese women's struggle
   for citizenship rights.
2. In the first page only 3 out of the 9 results also spoke of the
   Lebanese women's struggle for citizenship rights.

Halla2 first of all, I would like to give a HUGE hug to feminists and
women's rights activists in Algeria, you have achieved a great
milestone. Now I have not yet worked on that issue, I haven't even
cooperated with the CRTD on this issue. But I know how difficult it
can be and how resistant patriarchies are to giving anything to
women.

On the other hand, I think of the Lebanese Activists that have been
struggling so hard and for so long for this very basic right. No this
is not right, it is not really my problem if anyone worries about the
demographic balance in this country. I will not pay my rights as a
citizen for peace in this country. Not because I am not into peace,
but simply because, this system failed to preserve peace with
or without giving woment their citizenship rights. I don't see how
depriving women (and so many other minorities) of their rights
has helped prevent any of the wars that took place in my beautiful
country. So give me a break for once, try it my way, try giving
people their individual rights for a change and let's see if we will
have peace or not.

Bench for Feminism

Last night, a good friend of mine told me a story that is all too familiar to my little feminist ears. She was running late on her way to pick up a friend of hers from Jisr El Moushet at the junction of Dawra and Zalka. When she arrives at the meeting point, she reaches for her cell phone from her bag to find a bunch of missed calls from her friend. Frantic, her friend rushes into the car and tells her that she was just assaulted by a man on the pedestrian bridge. "He followed me and wouldn't go away, no matter how much I ignored him or shouted at him to go away," she said. "Then he grabbed me and tried to kiss me, so I screamed and ran away. He kept following me till I reached the gas station where a bunch of people were standing waiting for buses." Her story was covered up with tears and sobs and my friend got super angry and went back home to get her brother-in-law and his friend to come find the guy. They all arrived back on the spot and looked everywhere for the man but they couldn't find him. "I wanted us to beat him up and then give him to the police," my friend explained.

How do we begin to tackle this problem? Do we start with:

·         The lack of safety of our public streets?

·         The "I will get away with it" mentality of some men?

·         What women should or shouldn't do in these situations?

·         How these cases should be reported?

I was thinking about these questions on my way back from Jounieh last night when I passed the pedestrian bridge. How many hundreds of cases like this happen every month? How many women get raped or harassed or assaulted in this very spot? What am I going to do about it? What I imagine the girl and her friends or family did about it was say: "Don't go out after dark alone anymore!" or "Don't go walking on that bridge anymore!" But how much is that really going to solve?

So I started to wonder about strategies to take back the night: empowering women to be less afraid, creating an emergency response unit for these cases, raising awareness among people about guarding their community. holding night walks or vigils. Traditional sorta stuff. And then I thought: if she was strong enough or ready enough, she would have fought him off and pulled out his eyes. Predators fuel up on fear. If she were less afraid and more confident in her physical strength, he would fuck off or lose a piece of his flesh. By that time, I was passing under the Nabaa bridge of Bourj Hammoud and to my right I saw a sign for a gym. Oh, I thought: a feminist gym! We should have a women's gym that's not about losing weight or looking good, but about looking darn nasty and building some muscle. Put in all the un-girly sports: boxing, kicking, iron-pumping, wrestling, mortal combating!

Ok, so maybe a feminist gym won't solve all our problems with public sexual harassment. Maybe it's a symbol of what we women need. Strength. Some biceps wouldn't hurt.

من... فعلاً من؟

من اختار اسمها؟

من أخبرها أنها فتاة وأنّ عليها الالتزام بدفتر تعليمات يولد مع الفتيات في العالم العربي؟

من رسم لها طريق مستقبلها منذ كانت في عامها الأوّل... قل في يومها الأوّل؟

من منعها من ممارسة مهنةٍ صنّفت بقاموس المجتمع مهنةً للرجال؟

من أقنعها بأنها لا تستطيع مقاومة الاحتلال في الميدان وفي ساحة المعركة وأن تحمل السلاح دون منّةٍ من أحد؟

من وضعها في إطار خشبي ولمّعه وزيّنه وعلّقه على الحائط أو في المطبخ؟

من حصر اهتماماتها بالفنّ والجمال والموضة والأولاد؟

من قمع رغباتها وألبسها قميص العفّة غصباً عنها فنمت العُقد والأمراض في جسدها وعقلها؟

من علّمها الخوف من جسدها والخجل به؟

من حلّل قتلها حفاظاً على «الشرف»؟

من ربط تحرّرها وحريتها بالابتذال والملابس الفاضحة والـ«بوتوكس»؟

من علّمها أنّ الرجل هو من يحميها وأنّ رضاه مقدّس؟

من سمح للدين بأن يتدخّل في شؤونها ليحلّل ويحرّم تبعاً لمزاج «رجل» دين؟

من أرعبها من الحبّ ومن السعادة؟

من قسّم مجتمعها إلى «بنت منيحة» و«بنت عاطلة»؟

من قال لها إن اللون الأبيض هو الأنسب لفستان الزفاف... ما المشكلة بالأزرق أو الأحمر أو الأخضر؟

من عمّم عبارة «عريس بالبيت ولا شهادة عالحيط» (أنا لا أمزح العبارة فعلاً متداولة وبكثرة)؟

من جعل اللون الزهري القبيح لوناً بنّاتياً؟

من كوّن وعيها الثقافي انطلاقاً من روايات دانيال ستيل وبربرا كارتلند؟

من عوّدها الابتسام أو حتى الضحك في كل مرة تسمع فيها نكتة أو تقرأ رسالة إلكترونية تختصر المرأة بصدرها وأردافها ومؤخرتها؟

من خاف من تمرّدها فحجب عنها تاريخ ليلى خالد وجميلة بو حيرد وروايات نوال السعداوي وأحلام مستغانمي؟

ليال حداد - جريدة الأخبار - مصدر

Attending two poverty reports

So, on I went this morning to the launching ceremony of two reports issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs and UNDP. With titles like "The Mapping of Human Poverty& Living Conditions in Lebanon, in 2004"and "Poverty, Growth, & Income Distribution in Lebanon," I knew these were two reports that I didn't want to miss.

The ceremony itself was a classical Lebanese event. It was a bit late, first of all. Many of the people present seemed to know each other, which made me feel like that, in many ways, this was a social get-together for the usual crowd. Mostly older people. Though there were the younger women there as well. Then the event officially started with a national anthem, where people had to stand up and women and men alike had to boast how our country is a "manbitun lil rijal."Anyway... the whole thing was an interesting presentation of 2 important reports (at least because it's good to have that data available to us), though I do wonder why the publication of reports about poverty does not seem to invite low-income individuals. Because such presence would definitely create a different dynamic than having all of us middle class people looking at these statistics and treating them as charts and figures.

Thankfully, there were plenty of handouts for me to take home, as well as the reports themselves. Because there was a lot to process in those two hours. Some things stuck, however. Like, how female headed households represent only 14% of families in Lebanon, but 44% of them live in poverty—mostly those whose heads are women widows. How a change in the health conditions or physical ability of the breadwinner is one factor of sinking into poverty. How many low-income families are actually older couples, or families with many children to support. How there may not be a large number of people living in extreme poverty, but there is a large percentage of people who are living below the poverty line. And, very importantly, how there should be policies that are biased to low-income people and families.

Ya3ni, to make a long story short, these reports are good to have out there, and you usually do get to learn one or two things from attending the launching of them; but mostly, as many of the attendees there noted, it's about what we do with the reports that matters: how we use them to come up with viable initiatives and policies; making sure that all these resources that went into making these reports will ultimately become a good investment into improving the lives of low-income individuals and families and dealing with the socio-economic and cultural problems that locks them into poverty in the first place. 

Deems

Tu es Gentil

Last week on Friday, the Feminist Collective had gathered to discuss the issue of rape and sexual harassment. There is a lot to say about this subject, a lot of stories to tell, a lot of incidents to talk about. What was ironic is that less than 12 hours later I would face a form of harassment that I have never been in contact with before. Listen to my story.

It is Saturday morning, and I am having a bad morning, no a seriously bad morning! But my attitude in these situations is to take the bad bi sadrin ra7eb :), there is a quota of good luck and bad luck if you have all the bad luck at a certain point you will have an equally good luck later. Plus the negative attitude will only add to your bad luck a bad mood. So I get over myself, my broken shoe, my aching feet and my lack of sleep and get to a peaceful point, I am sitting at Columbiano Cafe  Achrafieh, Beirut. Minding my own business and drinking my coffee and my water, recharging my phone... And then I see an old man coming into the coffee shop. He's one of those cute old men that you would see in this area, the kind that is above sixty but that still insists to wear his jacket and his suit and his shiny shoes and his cute old fashion hat. I watch him as he painfully climbs up the stairs of the coffee shop. I like these old men that are still living life as if they were in the 60s.

Then the old man comes down and looks at me. The first thing that crosses my mind is that I am sitting in his favorite spot, so I ask him: "Am I sitting in your place?"

The old man apparently has hearing problems and he comes closer to me to hear what I was saying. When I repeated what I siad, he answered with the sweetest voice ever: "Non, non, tu es gentil assieds toi, ana bi23od hon"

And hon in his dictionnary meant on the seat in front of me. Then he starts talking to me, asking me about my name, my last name, what I do in life etc. And I was not bothered by his behaviour at all, I was starting to get impatient but I figured maybe he was bored and wanted someone to talk to. 

Then rapidly I was harshly informed of his intentions... Because out of no where he asks me about my mobile number, so I give him a wrong number and I start to panick. And the old man did nothing to make me feel any better.  He asks me if I am single. When I answered that I am engaged he was clearly dispointed (he didn't care to hide it) but he went on to ask me what does my boyfriend work in... at that point khalas ana sakkar rase w I gave the first answer that came into my mind: "byishtighil bi qatar". Don't ask me why! And all of a sudden he actually felt happy and he offered to be my fiance for the time being in Lebanon.

And to add to my misery he insisted on taking my hand, when I gave up and gave him my hand he rubbed it on his cheek. By this time I had realized that this person is not balanced so he won't get my hints when I put him to his limits. So I drink my coffee as fast as possible and then excused myself to leave. Before I even stand up, I was getting all my stuff, the guy wants to catch up and win my affection, what does he do? He takes out a small kitkat (regular length but with only two fingers not four) and he throws it on the table, I still remember what it looked like, and it even had the price tag still on it: 495LL.

I just smile and stand up. So the guy just blocks my way and starts begging me to stay:

"s'il te plait, reste un peu, khallike b2i2teyn bas, lesh bta3mle fiyye heyk? lesh bit7ibbe t3azbine? Tu es gentil!"

I excuse myself again and walk away, the rest isn't that important, the point is that I pay for my coffee and get the fuck out of Columbiano.

Al je suis gentil al!

Sometimes I just don't want to be gentil