This is a report from 2007 about an American woman living in Dubai who has set up an organisation providing shelter to victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking and other forms of abuse. Yes, it happens in all societies including nominally Muslim ones. And even the wealthiest of them are not immune.
Normally we should take for granted that people will mix religion and culture. The idea that religious practice can only exist in a cultural vacuum is absurd. But what happens when those cultural influence leads to the exploitation of women?
The following video from Al-Jazeera English shows the tragic results of certain cultural practices being enforced by religious leaders among Kurdish Muslims in Iraq. The text accompanying the video is as follows:
In the tribal areas of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, arranged marriages have been a way of life for centuries.
But society is changing. Families who engaged their daughters when they were still children are now renegotiating old contracts.
Nicole Johnston reports from Rania district, where some girls are choosing death over an arranged marriage.
Video from Al-Jazeera English. Here is the text accompanying the video.
Tensions are simmering between Bahrain's Sunni rulers and the kingdom's Shia majority population.
The Shias, seeking greater representation in the country's political sphere, accuse the government of fanning sectarian divisions.
But as Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports from Manama, some Sunnis see the Shia-demand as an attempt to undermine the monarchy.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a nasty place. There was little political freedom. Opposition figures were murdered, as were any persons deemed by the regime to belong to the opposition.
At the same time, there was security for ordinary Iraqis. It was a time when Iraqis lived side by side, when even the most devout intermarried across sectarian lines. Then the Americans and Brits came and toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein. The vacuum was filled by various forces - Al-Qaeda, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, sectarian militias and criminal gangs.
Sectarian strife is new to Iraq and has split apart families including the family featured in the following documentary entitled City of Widows, shown on the AlJazeera English documentary show Witness. Here is a short summary of the videos.
Filmmaker Rashad Radwan follows Zahra, a Shia in Iraq, as day after day, she visits police stations, hospitals and morgues in a desperate search for her kidnapped husband, and in the face of disapproval from a society where widows are still expected to be invisible.The documentary is in two parts.
Rageh Omaar talks to prominent African-American Muslims like (now the late) Imam Warith Deen Muhammad. He also visits a half-way house for Muslim ex-prisoners.
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I've already posted the first part of this Rageh Omaar documentary here. Bwlow is Part 2 of this fascinating documentary.
Omaar traces its history in the US and talks to American Muslims about how their belief is compatible with the principles of American democracy. He also looks at the notion that American Islam is tied intimately to the African American struggle against slavery and for freedom from prejudice. There's also a fair bit of stuff on the establishment of Liberia, an African country created by freed African-American slaves.
Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf
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Narrated by Rageh Omaar, this special series was made for al-Jazeerah. Watch and be enlightened. And enjoy the African American Muslim who plays superb guitar!!
Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf
Every life lost to terror is precious. Whether it be Sydney footballers or an anonymous London travellers, terror always claims innocent victims. But one recent terrorist incident should have really shaken the few Muslim left who only reluctantly condemn the terrorists.
Moustapha al-Akkad was no small fish in Hollywood. He was executive producer of the successful Halloween series of movies, from which he made millions. Halloween was released in 1978, and has regularly featured in lists of all-time great horror movies. The film had 7 sequels, the most recent of which was released in 2002.
Akkad was an American national. He had decided to move to Lebanon, taking advantage of the Mediterranean surrounds and the relative peace following decades of civil war and occupation. He was in Amman with his family to attend a wedding.
Akkad was born in the city of Aleppo in Syria, a Muslim town which provided shelter to thousands of Armenian refugees fleeing persecution during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. He moved to the United States at 18 years, and is said to have had only $200 and a Qur’an in his pocket when he arrived in Los Angeles.
Akkad studied film at UCLA, graduating in 1958. He completed his Masters from the University of Southern California where he focussed his attention on documentary making. Akkad went onto make documentaries for CBS across the world.
Despite being held captive to the American dream, Akkad never forgot his roots to his Syrian homeland or his Islamic faith. He used his directing skills to produce two movies regarded as classics across the Muslim World.
In 1976, Akkad produced and directed “The Message”, a film about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. He gathered actors of the calibre of Anthony Quinn, who played the Prophet’s uncle Hamza. Quinn also played the lead role in Akkad’s 1981 film “Lion of the Desert”, which portrayed the life and death of Libyan anti-colonial fighter Omar al-Mukhtar.
In a 1977 interview about “The Message”, Akkad described his reasons for making the film and his vision of his Islamic faith.
I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. Besides its production values as a film, it has its story, its intrigue, its drama. Beside all this I think there was something personal; being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about, which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this bridge, this gap to the West.Akkad’s vision of Islam was as a faith which built bridges between hearts and civilisations. Like most Muslims, Akkad wanted to use his faith to be a source of peace, not conflict. The only terror (if one could call it that) Akkad wanted people to experience was from his horror movies.
Remembered by his friends and family here as a humble man whose words spoke volumes, he lived life to the fullest always loving the art of filmmaking and never stopped in his pursuit of bringing a true and peaceful image of Islam to the West. It is the most tragic of ironies that he died a victim of fellow Muslims claiming to fight in the name of the religion he so loved.Akkad was planning to produce a movie on medieval Kurdish general Salahuddin (known in the West as Saladin) who defeated the Crusaders and drove them out of Jerusalem. Firas al-Atraqchi from al-Jazeera writes on 13 November 2005:
It was only two years ago that I sat across from him and his son Malek as he discussed the challenges he was facing in arranging financing for his new epic project – Salahuddin. Sitting comfortably in a leather chair in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Cairo, Egypt, with a pipe in his hand, Akkad described his Salahuddin troubles as nearly synonymous to the challenges he faced when trying to put together a script for The Message – a film about the rise of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.Atraqchi goes onto describe the problems Akkad faced in trying to convince the fringe Wahhabi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia to approve the making of a film about the Prophet Muhammad. The sunni scholars of al-Azhar and shia authorities of Southern Lebanon had given their approval. Only the wahhabi's were holding back.
