It’s about the Women
Published in today's Jerusalem Post: It took the tragic killing of Neda Soltan in Iran for the world to realize that the lives – and deaths – of women are at the center of the struggle for human rights against religious extremism. The astounding protests taking place in Iran over the past week, since the fraudulent victory of Islamic extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh, is really a story about women. According to an article in last weekend’s Yediyot Aharonot, written in collaboration with an inside Iranian journalist, the protests were started not by supporters of Massawi but rather by supporters of his wife Zahra Rahnavard. It was Rahnavard, a professor of art history, author of over a dozen books on art, former government minister and former chancellor of Alzahra University in Tehran, who called for the protests when the altered results came in. (She and her husband were originally told that they won, and then several hours later the official announcement was changed.) The million protesters running to the streets calling for an end to radical Islamic rule in Iran came because of her not him. In fact, what you might not read in the media is that at the beginning, most of the protesters were women. Read the rest of this entry →
I don't know about you, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the way rabbis and poskim freely discuss the bodies of little girls. Sure, we can call it halakha if we want. But really, when rabbis talk about how girls need to cover their bodies, aren't they bordering, just a tad, on pedophilia? What exactly do rabbis mean when they say that a girl needs to wear skirts? Or long sleeves? Or whatever latest mishugas is on the order of the day, from braids to socks to cellphones?
When President Obama uttered the words "women's rights" during his speech at Cairo University last week, my ears perked up. The fact that a US president is putting women's rights up there on the international agenda -- on par with peace in the Middle East, no less -- is indeed historic. That he has the guts to say to a room full of Egyptian men that women's rights in the Muslim world are a topic that needs addressing, was quite a thrill. The fact that there was some applause after he made that opening statement, "the sixth issue that I want to address is women's rights," was absolutely startling. Signs of change, perhaps.
But when Obama started to outline the details of his vision for women's rights in the Muslim world, that's when I started to bristle. 