Asia Security
Monitor
No. 59, December 23, 2003 Muslim women organize for rights, education opportunity;
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December 13: Sixty women representing the workshop panels at the Muslim Women Peace Advocates Workshop/Conference in Zamboanga, Philippines have signed a Plan of Action that would empower Muslim women, reports The Philippines Star. The plan assures women a process in decision-making, and gives them a meaningful role in working for peace and conflict resolution. The conference, attended by some 500 women, also called for more women judges in the Shariah Courts. This resolution followed the oral report made by Judge Nurkarhati Sahibbil of the Shariah Court of Sulu, the only female judge in the 35 Shariah District Courts in Muslim Mindanao. Education was also a key topic. A number of participants were educators running their own madaris (Islamic religious schools). The challenge for such schools is to enhance curriculum and seek more employment by the government and private business for graduates of such schools. December 18: A 500-member loya jirga, or traditional grand council, will start debating the draft of the Afghan constitution on December 14, reports the Far Eastern Economic Review. Western diplomats and senior Afghan officials expect some 50 members of the council loyal to fundamentalist leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf to demand that Sharia, or Islamic law, be enshrined in the document. Afghan officials also claim that U.S. diplomats pressured Sayyaf - who led a Saudi-backed party against the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan - not to demand Sharia. In return Sayyaf would be allowed to appoint several judges to courts in the provinces in Kabul. Liberal Afghans claimed this would be a “grave threat” to the judicial system. December 20: A group of Muslim women in India, challenging sexist decisions by male religious authorities, have decided to build their own all-female mosque, reports Agence France Presse. Women from the village of Parambu in the southern state of Tamil Nadu call their new group Chaaya, or Shadow. Sharifa Khanam, covener of Chaaya, said the women believe the male-dominated jamaats - forums conducted to settle local disputes - were handing down verdicts in family disputes, particularly in divorce cases, that favor men. Sharifa Khanam also stated that the jamaats sat in the mosques in which women were not allowed to enter, preventing females from giving their side of the case. December 21: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has expressed frustration with the reservation of the Constitutional loya jirga (tribal council) to approve the draft constitution (whose development was overseen by U.S. officials and heavily empowers Karzai). This document varies considerably from the version put forward by the indigenous Constitutional Drafting Commission in November 2002, reports The Washington Times. Under the constitutional draft, the president could appoint one-third of the upper house of parliament, dismiss and appoint judges, initiate laws by presidential decree and declare war without legislative approval. December 22: U.S. military officials are trying to develop a viable security strategy by enticing so-called “non-criminal” members of the fundamentalist Taliban movement into Afghanistan’s mainstream society, reports the Washington Post. Lt. Gen. David Barno, the new senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan stated, “Those who are criminals must be held accountable, but for rank and file, the non-criminals, there will be opportunities for reconciliation and reintegration.” At the same time, the U.S. military does not appear to be reconsidering their combat tactics despite two controversial incidents this month in which 15 children were inadvertently killed during U.S. air assaults on two villages in Paktia and Ghazni provinces. The Post observes that Gen. Barno’s comments suggest that, “US officials now agree with President Hamid Karzai that the revived Taliban movement needs to be courted politically [by the Kabul regime and their US benefactors].” |
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Copyright
© 2003, American Foreign Policy Council.
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