women are set to participate in the Olympics today. But back in Saudi Arabia, millions of Saudi women and girls are effectively banned from practicing sports inside the Kingdom. Also, they aren’t allowed to drive, although there is no law stipulating that.
Bottom line: It’s the worst of both worlds right now for women. “On the one hand, women have made great advances and there’s been this economic shift, but there’s cultural residue. Many men my age still feel entitled,” Prinz said.
Liberalization of social and sexual mores has stopped providing women with payoffs, asserts Dr. Greta Kroeker, associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. “We can play in the same sandbox now, but we often only get the side with the cat piss.” Kroeker adds that part of the challenge is the fact that the right has a vocabulary for talking about morality, though it misidentifies the sources of immorality (i.e. homosexuality, government, unwed mothers). As a result, when liberals want to respond, they either lack the vocabulary to argue about it in secular terms or they dismiss the issue of morality altogether because they find the religious agenda of the right distasteful. “Liberals need to develop a vocabulary to address these issues.”
So can men be retrained? Yes, says Prinz. “The shift is already happening — we’re just at a cultural lag.” As women continue to earn more and be the bread winners and as men continue to be more involved in child rearing and share house hold responsibilities, the two sides will meet in the middle.”Wujdan Sharkhani, the Saudi judoka banned from wearing the hijab head scarf when she competes at the Olympic games, and Sarah Attar will not take a trophy home as they were invited to compete under a “universality” clause that allows athletes without qualifying times to participate “for reasons of equality.”
To support this claim, some figures cite the Qur’anic injunction to “command right and forbid wrong.” This command, taken at face value, might seem to call for the government enforcement of Islamic morality on men and women, but a closer look at the Qur’an yields an abundance of evidence indicating that the sacred text does not support such an interpretation.
To “command good and forbid evil” (amr bil ma’ruf wa nahy an al munkar - امر بالمعروف و نهى عن المنكر ) is one of the basic moral obligations that the Qur’an places on Muslims. This injunction, given by the Prophet Luqman in verse 31:17, is binding on all believers:
Keep up the prayer, my son; command what is right; forbid what is wrong; bear anything that happens to you steadfastly: these are things to be aspired to. (31:17)
Elsewhere in the Qur’an, the ideal believers are described as those who “enjoin good and forbid evil” (9:112). The following is merely one of several verses sprinkled throughout this holy book that echo this message:
The believers, both men and women… enjoin what is good and forbid evil, they attend to their prayers and pay the alms and obey God and His Messenger. On these God will have mercy, for God is Almighty and Wise. (9:71; see also 3:104, 3:110)
Muslims interpret this principle in many different ways. Some believe that “commanding” and “forbidding” mean giving sound, sincere advice grounded in Islamic tenets to friends and family. Others apply the principle to government, assuming that the state should legislate Islam. Striking a balance between these two poles, others still read the injunction as a call to public preaching and educational outreach, or a general obligation to speak against oppression. Many radical thinkers, like the influential Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, gave politicized readings of these passages. In the second volume of his famous exegetical work, Fi Zilal al-Quran, Qutb writes that “[a]nyone may be able to invite to what is good, but no one can enjoin and forbid unless he is equipped with real authority” (p. 165, emphasis added). For him, “enjoining” and “forbidding” amount to state enforcement. The straightforward logic of this conclusion is certainly attractive, but in actuality, this line of reasoning finds little support in the Qur’an.
Arabic words are based on a system of trilateral roots. The root of the word “enjoin” is a-m-r, and its variations appear dozens of times throughout the Qur’an, usually translated as “enjoin,” “command,” or “bid.” Some readers assume that an element of force is involved in “commanding,” but the word’s usage throughout the Qur’an suggests otherwise.
In a passage about Moses and Pharaoh, the word “command” is used in a way that removes all possibility of force. Pharaoh, growing wary of Moses’ burgeoning influence in his kingdom, consults his advisors about how to proceed, asking them, “What, then, do you enjoin (tamuruna - تَأْمُرُونَ )?” (7: 110) According to the Qur’an, Pharaoh was a supremely arrogant, narcissistic man who forced his people to worship him as a deity (26:29, 28:38). If the Arabic word for “enjoin” suggested force or coercion, Pharaoh would never have used it when speaking to his advisors, over whom he had absolute authority.
In another passage, the careful reader finds that the word “enjoin” is distinguished from compulsion even more clearly. Verses 34:31-33 describe an exchange between two groups of sinners in the afterlife, with the weaker ones blaming the stronger for leading them to hellfire: “…it was your scheming, night and day, enjoining us (tamurunana - تَأْمُرُونَنَآ ) to disbelieve in God and set up rivals to Him” (34:33). But had the weaker group truly been forced to rebel against God, God would not banish them to hell in the first place. After all, the Qur’an warns that “one who denies God after he has believed, with the exception of one who is forced to do it, . . . shall incur the wrath of God” (16:106, emphasis added). Obviously, by virtue of their abode in the afterlife, this group of people does not fall within the category of those coerced into disbelief. They were not compelled to reject God, but only encouraged (see 39:64 for a similar usage).
The Arabic word which specifies coercion in verse 16:106 is ukriha (أُكْرِهَ), from the root k-r-h. In the Qur’an, this root denotes true compulsion (see 4:19, 10:99, 20:73, 24:33), and it most famously appears in verse 2:256, which declares that “there shall be no compulsion (ikraha - إِكْرَاهَ) in matters of faith.”
Interestingly enough, a group of verses about Satan remove any doubt about whether or not the use of the verbs “enjoin” and “forbid” in the Qur’an imply coercion. At cursory glance, we find several verses warning us that Satan will “command” humankind to do evil:
Satan threatens you with the prospect of poverty and commands you (wayamurukum – وَيَأْمُرُكُم ) to do foul deeds; God promises you His forgiveness and His abundance…. (2:268)
[A]nd whoever follows in the footsteps of Satan should know that he enjoins (yamuru – يَأْمُرُ ) only indecency and evil. (24:21; see also 4:118-119, 2:168-169)
Those familiar with the Qur’an will know that Satan’s command has nothing to do with force or compulsion, because God has assured readers that Satan “has no power over those who believe and put their trust in their Lord; he has power only over those who are willing to follow him” (16:98-100). In another passage, Satan’s tactics are described in more detail:
And when everything will have been decided, Satan will say: … I deceived you. Yet I had no power at all over you: I but called you (da’awtukum) – and you responded unto me. Hence, blame not me, but blame yourselves.”(14:22)
How can Satan “command” people when he “has no power” over any being except “those who are willing to follow him”? The obvious answer is that his “commands” are not enforced; he only “calls” to people – and they choose to listen. Thus, the Qur’an makes clear that “enjoining” something does not mean enforcing it, but rather promoting it.
Just as “commanding” or “enjoining” good does not imply coercion, neither does “forbidding evil.” The Arabic word for “forbid” (based on the root n-h-y) is used in three different ways in the Qur’an. In a metaphorical sense, it refers to exerting self-control or making oneself “immune” to bad inclinations. For example, the Qur’an describes a type of person who “feared the meeting with his Lord and restrained (wanaha - وَنَهَى ) himself from base desires” (79:40), and tells Muslims are to pray regularly, because prayer “restrains one (tanha - تَنْهَىٰ ) from indecency and evil” (29:45). Both examples illustrate a more abstract, spiritual meaning of “forbidding evil” — to shield oneself from becoming vulnerable to evil.
The third, and most common, usage of “forbid” (n-h-y) is in reference to revelation. Scores of verses (such as 6:56, 4:31, 7:157, 7:166, and 11:61-2) describe God “commanding” and “forbidding” through His prophets and scripture. As with the word “enjoin,” we should not understand forbiddance as an act of force, but rather, an act of communication. Many translators, for example, render “forbid” in verse 11:116 as “speak out against” or “warn against”:
Why, then, were there not among the generations before you upright men who would speak out against (yanhawna – يَنْهَوْنَ ) the [spread of] corruption on earth—except for the few whom We saved?” (11:116)
The Qur’an often employs the words “forbid” or “command” in the context of a person using his or her intellect. These passages show that enjoining and forbidding depend on reason and conceptual understanding, rather than force:
Say, “I have been forbidden (nuhitu – نُهِيتُ ) to invoke those whom you invoke besides God—seeing that clear signs have come to me from my Lord.”(40:66)
Other verses describe people being “commanded” by their own beliefs (2:93) and “ordered” by their reason (52:32). It is interesting to note that the word “understanding” (al-nuha, seen in verses such as 20:54 and 20:128) shares the same Arabic root (n-h-y) as the word “forbid” (nahy).
Radicals like Sayyid Qutb (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) may insist that Islam’s holy book commands Muslims to enforce “Islamic law” through state power, but it seems their views are not grounded in careful study. The Qur’an does not require Muslims to force their morality on others when it tells them to “enjoin right and forbid wrong.
Still, by sending these two women to London under the guise of progress, Saudi Arabia will indeed be taking a trophy home for once again proving that among its Arab neighbors, when it comes to blatant backwardness, hypocrisy and systemic gender discrimination, it takes home the gold, and then some.
I grew up in the Arab world with two older sisters, both of whom participated in sports beginning as little girls. My oldest sister played tennis and ran cross-country competitively. My other sister, Luma, grew up playing soccer competitively and would go on to help found the first women’s soccer team at one of the Arab world’s premier universities — the American University of Beirut.
My Arab mother raised me to respect both women and men as equal. It is one thing to segment your society and prevent gender-mixing, but to prevent women from exercising and participating in team sports in 2012 and to justify it with the importance of adhering to Sharia law, obtaining a male family member’s approval and dressing modestly is insulting to women, Islam and the Olympics.
What is worse, on July 5 2012, Saudi Arabia’s sports ministry denied a request by private citizens to hold a women’s Ramadan sports tournament that would have included basketball, volleyball and football.
Less than a week later, with just under two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Saudi Arabia reluctantly ended its status as the last Olympic nation to refuse to send women athletes to compete.
Saudi Arabia’s international attempt to save face is as pathetic as it is paradoxical.
Human Rights Groups may have forced Saudi Arabia’s hand, after spending many months demanding that Saudi’s male athletes be banned from the games so long as the government refused to allow women to compete. Eventually, the government gave in.
But unlike Qatar, another Arab state that is sending women to the Olympics for the first time, Saudi Arabia continues to be the only country in the world to prevent girls from taking part in sports in government schools. Qatar on the other hand is also building a high performance training center aimed at involving women in sports and has boasted a Women’s Sport Committee for over a decade. Saudi Arabia still segregates and oppresses women in society, which includes preventing them from playing sports, not providing any state sports infrastructure for women and marginalizing them from participating in public life.
On Twitter, the anticipation around Sharkhani and Attar’s participation has prompted a hashtag to emerge in Saudi Arabia that describes the women as the “Prostitutes of the Olympics”.
Ahmed Al Omran, a famous Saudi blogger and a friend, shared this tweet featuring a list of all Saudi athletes that will compete in London. In it he notes that Sarah Attar appears without a headscarf on the Olympics website.
Ahmed also points out that Saudi’s most senior sports official Prince Nawaf bin Faisal said the women can only participate if they “wear suitable clothing that complies with Sharia law, are accompanied by their guardian… and they do not mix with men during the games…”
The offensive Arabic hashtag, #عاهرات_الاولمبياد, has also prompted a backlash.readmorehttp://muslimjournalmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/07/is-it-muslims-duty-to-enforce-islamic.html
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