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Speech by Azar Majedi
Conference Cologne, Germany
8th march 2006
Political Islam, a sophisticated
machinery of suppression!
First of all I would like to congratulate everyone here on 8th
March, International Women’s Day. However one can not help but feel so sad to
see that in 21st century, in the year 2006 celebrating the
International Women’s Day one has to hear these horrendous figures that Ayan
Hirsi just told us. We read and hear them but tend to forget. I don’t think we
forget because we don’t care. We forget because it is our self defence
mechanism. How can we sleep every night to know that every year around 2 million
women in the world are killed based on gender oppression, discrimination in one
way or another?
Ayan compared it with Rwanda. I remember when Rwandan
catastrophe happened. We were all so outraged. One million people were brutally
killed in an ethnic genocide and we became outraged that world did not do enough
to stop it. It happens all the time. Every year a Rwanda happens in the world
and we don’t do anything about it and forget it! I don’t think we don’t care. We
are conscious human beings otherwise we wouldn’t be here. It is difficult to
bear such tragedies on our minds every single day knowing that we can’t do
anything about it. But we COULD do something about it. This is what I am trying
to talk about here today. What can we do about it?
Ayan talked about genocide, ethnic genocide, and racial
genocide and now we know there is sexual or gender genocide as we have gender
apartheid. There is gender apartheid in countries under the influence or the
rule of Islam or Islamic ridden countries. I won’t call them Muslim countries.
By Islamic countries I mean countries being under Islamic rule or groups or
movements or political Islam.
Some of you may be too young to think that there was racial
apartheid in South Africa. I am one of those who do remember. I fought against
racial apartheid in the 70’s and 80’s. I was part of the movement against racial
apartheid in South Africa and I still remember those days. I still remember when
Nelson Mandela was freed and when apartheid was dismantled in South Africa. It
was a nice day. Dismantling racial apartheid was one of the few good things that
happened at the end of the 20th century. And I hope that one of these
days I hear the same thing about gender apartheid. We need to dismantle sexual
apartheid in Iran. So we have to build a movement as strong as the one built
against racial apartheid in South Africa. I think that is one of the things we
can do. And if we do that and become a member of such movement we can sleep
better at night and we feel better about ourselves.
Violence
We are here today to talk about violence against women and
against honour killings. What a strange name they have given it: “honour
killing”! Or “crime of passion”! So romantic! We are talking about passion and
all of a sudden someone gets killed, maimed and the killer walks away! Passion,
isn’t it? Passion is nice. We see it in films. Or we call it honour killing. It
is related to honour. “Honour?” Is this supposed to glorify the murder? Is it
supposed to make it look acceptable?! Is it to dignify the murderer? All these
names are used in order to mitigate the concept of murder. They are trying to
say it does not matter if a woman is raped, if a woman is killed. They are
killed for a good cause. They are killed so some “sacred” political and
religious ideas and traditions are preserved. It boils down to this: It doesn’t
matter, it is the culture, and it is the religion. It is crime of passion, it is
honour killing.
Or think about this! Violence against women at home is called
domestic violence. Automatically the word domestic softens the act. It makes it
a personal matter. Domestic has these connotations: cosiness, privacy, warmth.
So it cannot be that bad. It is not that outrageous. Can you see the trick the
sexist and misogynist values play on us?
We have to name it as it really is. It is murder. It is first
degree murder and has to be dealt with as first degree murder. No mitigation for
in judging the crime, no leniency for those who commit it, be it the father, the
husband, the brother or the cousin. No mitigation! It has to be dealt with as
the most horrendous act, as act of terrorism. The culprits should be treated the
same as terrorists who blow up a train, the underground, a bus. This is one of
things we have to establish. We should make states and governments deal with
those who kill women for “passion” or “honour” as first degree murder without
any mitigation.
They say it is their culture and religion, we have to respect
them, we should be tolerant! Let me tell you, we do not respect any values or
ideology that does not respect human beings, women’s rights, children’s rights,
liberty or equality. We do not respect religion, faith, ideology, political
ideology that instigates murder and violence against women. How could we respect
them? Humanity has fought for equality, secularism, freedom of expression,
gender equality, and universality of human rights. What has happened to us at
the end of the 20th century? Why are we talking about tolerance and
respect for inhuman values and ideas at the beginning of the 21st
century?!
I am not talking about Muslims. I really want to emphasize
and clarify this point. I am not talking about Muslims. I am not disrespecting
Muslims for believing in whatever they want to believe. And I do not believe
that the mere force of believing in an ideology or religion make you commit such
murders no matter how violent those values you believe in are. There has to be
another organisation that takes these values, religion, and ideas and puts them
into force and creates a sophisticated machinery of suppression. That is why I
am saying it is a political fight.
We have to look more deeply and question the arguments that
try to portray these serial killings as results of mere religious belief. In
fact there is a political force that transforms these religious beliefs into
such a force of suppression, terror, maiming, discrimination, and torture at the
end of the 20th century, a force capable of intimidating the whole
world, It is not a mere belief in Islam. There is a political movement and
organisation behind it all. A mafia like organisation based on Islam, getting
its ideas from Islam. It is a reactionary political movement that tries to gain
power, share power in the region and also globally. It is a modern, contemporary
concept and movement, based on ancient, antiquated ideas and ideology. It has
moved globally now. When it was nurtured with the help of the USA and the
Western governments in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and in Iran by
importing Khomeini and Islamic Republic into the country, at the time of 1979
Revolution, it worked in the region. However, now, it has assumed international
significance. This organisation or industry is now fighting for power globally
and September 11 was one of those tragic events that demonstrated this global
trend.
Violence against women is not an isolated action especially
when you talk about 2 million world-wide every year. It is organised. They are
not all done by political Islam but a great deal of them are committed, incited,
encouraged or supported by political Islam. I am talking about this orchestrated
global religious machinery. I think this is important and we should talk about
it. We have to talk about other political and religious movements as well. There
are misogynous, sexist, chauvinist ideas that can create this situation against
women. When you talk about male chauvinism as an ideology, we are told that we
can fight them by education and cultural transformation. Of course we need
education and cultural transformation. But how are we going to do it? Are we
going to just get those people and talk with them? Educate them and tell them it
is bad to kill other people? Or are we going to the base and root of the
problem? How is that these ideologies and values, male chauvinism, anti women
values are maintained regardless of all the struggle carried out against them
over centuries? How is it upheld? One needs to consider the role of the
dominating values in the society carried out by states.
I have not got enough time to expand on the last point. Now I
like to focus on political Islam as one of these main movements that creates and
terrorises the world. It intimidates the world and tries to silence any
criticism of its movement or its ideas. Islam, where it can, where in power it
kills, tortures, maims people and stones them to death. Where it can NOT do
blatantly kill, where it does NOT have the power it becomes clever and sassy and
it uses terms like “respect”, “tolerance”, “Islamophobia” and “cultural
relativism”. So some very decent, freedom loving people, conscious people out of
fear of being stamped as racists, do not dare to criticise them, do not dare to
support the secularist. They look the other way, thinking if they criticise, if
they stand against these values and actions, they might be racists, they have
not respected other people’s culture or religion. The apologists of political
Islam, the academia, the media, the Western governments come to their rescue.
They ask for tolerance too. They demand respect for their outdated, backward,
reactionary traditions, they demand respect for their culture. And they justify
this with the help of concepts such as cultural relativism. These tactics are
used to silence us. We are called racist, islamophobic, intolerant, if we do not
comply. Nonsense!
I like to bring your attention to the fact that it is not
only genocide, murder and submission that we are witnessing. We are also
witnessing resistance. The film we saw tonight called Submission. But it was not
only about submission, it was also about resistance. The heroine was not
submitted. She had not submitted to the act of god. She was trying to resist it
and protect herself. I believe there is a resistance movement against this
genocide, backward and male chauvinist ideology in the world. My time is up. In
Iran there exists a very strong a vibrant resistance movement by women against
gender apartheid, against the veil, against women’s subordination. This movement
needs your support.
I believe it is not just a question of women mobilizing
against this genocide. I am calling upon everyone, every decent, conscious,
freedom loving human being to mobilize against this genocide, murder, violence,
and chauvinism. Political Islam is mobilized globally and internationally, we
need to mobilize internationally as well. We need to fight against political
Islam, for secularism, universality of women’s rights, and for women’s equality.
This is one important way to stop violence committed against women. I don’t
think we need to wait one century. We can’t afford it. We need to bring about
the transformation NOW. I think we are able to do it now if we mobilize against
it. So I call upon all of you to support our movement and to fight for these
goals and values. We should unite and organise for a better and more humane
world, to safeguard freedom and bring about equality. We need a world free from
religious superstition and terrorism. We need to stand against two poles of
terrorism, Islamic and state terrorism led by US and the Western governments. We
have to organise to fight Oppression.
Thank you
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