In the last two decades, thousands have been executed, decapitated, stoned to death or tortured by Islamic states and movements using the Islamic doctrine. Islam knows no limits in murder and repression. Young and old, children and grown ups, women and men are all legitimate targets for its blind terror. No one any more doubts this religion’s savagery.
Words cannot do justice to Islamic movements’ repressiveness, backwardness and rottenness. For a long time Islam was kept at arm’s length from political power in Islam stricken countries. But in the last two decades, with the rise of an Islamic Republic in Iran, there has been a resurgence in Islamic movements in that region. In some countries Islam has become the ideology in power, as in Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan. In others, we are faced with powerful Islamic movements in opposition, as in Algeria, Palestine and even Egypt. In all of them, however, society has suffered serious setbacks in civil rights, especially women’s rights.
The carnage and repression in Iran, the primitive monstrosity established by Taleban in Afghanistan, and the indiscriminate terror and savagery in Algeria all go to show that fighting Islamic movements and Islamic ideology is a crucial priority for women’s rights and progressive movements.
But different forces - from Western governments to bourgeois opposition organisations - have come up with the concept of “fundamentalism”. Allegedly, fundamentalism is the villain to fight, and every attempt is made to divert people’s rightful loathing for Islam and Islamic movements towards fundamentalism. They try to reduce anti-Islamic struggle to an anti-fundamentalist one. They pledge “reforms in Islam” in order to save it from people’s attacks. Western media talk about fundamentalism in Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan. Academics criticise fundamentalism and praise its Islamic opponents. They tell women - the first victims of these regimes and forces - that it is fundamentalism that is male-chauvinist and anti-woman, not Islam. An “Islamic feminism” has been raised that is worshipped by the fiery ex-feminists of academia. They admire “advances” of Moslem women in Iran and criticise fundamentalism.
The same people raise the concept of ‘cultural relativism’. Under the guise of respect for different cultures and avoiding eurocentrism and racism, they harass not only people living in Islamic countries but also those who have moved abroad. Women and children in Moslem families in the West have their rights violated as a daily routine. They get sentenced to death in family courts, and the sentences are gruesomely carried out by the zealous and “honourable” men of the family. However, ‘cultural relativism’ comes to the rescue and the culprits go scot-free. These men of honour are either acquitted or have their sentences reduced out of “cultural” considerations. Moslem academics and “intellectuals” get their rewards too. In the name of defending the Third World, East against the West, home culture and nationalism, they are dished out scholarships to do research in Islamic culture and national identity.
Meanwhile women continue to be attacked and stoned to death. Infants are decapitated. Any voice of dissent and freedom is killed off on the spot. The robe, turban and Quran continue to drive millions of people into Islamic dungeons.
Let’s not play with people’s lives. Let’s listen to the voices of millions of women and men fighting for justice. Islam is the villain. Let’s say this loudly and clearly and drive Islamic movements out of the social and political scene.
This article was first published in Medusa no.1, January 98 and is translated by Bahram Soroosh.