Responses on the night

Ruth Francis

This was not an inclusive discussion – it felt like a series of lectures. I believe in forums like this and feel – strongly – that this CANNOT STOP HERE! This dialogue needs to happen here, on TV, on teen programmes, etc. It must span all races and religious groups. In general, pressure must be put on the media to raise the level of consciousness of this society, if we are all going to learn to value and tolerate our differences!

There is so much more to be said – but one of the reasons for ignorance is FEAR – that is possibly what we all need to face and discuss.

My background is West Indian, and there is much of what was discussed here tonight which I can relate to – eg growing up with five other siblings, with a diplomat father and a mother who sacrificed her career to nurture her husband and children – children who are all strong, caring people with our parents’ values.

My mother to this day is embarrassed about being a ‘mere housewife’ and mother. She meets people who ask: ‘And what do you do?’ We have all got to stop and do our own reality checks; we are not successful only because we are super career women – we must return to our core values. I have a lot more to say, but we’ll have another occasion, I hope.

Thanks for starting something!

Sunith Surana

It was said at the beginning that time would be devoted to discussion. Questions were asked and were not really addressed. The panel did not take on the challenge of the audience. What was said beyond the obvious?

Maleiha Malik

Excellent debate – develop this into a regular event, supplemented by access to these ideas in the media.

Rebecca Moy

Housewives are not being valued – even I am guilty of seeing them as ‘less’. This is due to us all being brought up under a ‘male’ value system – aggression, career etc. Motherhood needs to be valued - perhaps housewives should be paid more than any other career. If women were allowed to be themselves - if their strengths fed through socially and at work, maybe these values would feed through to ‘less war’, less under-age pregnancies, less rages, less hang-ups about appearance and advertising.

A propos of feminism, I think there’s a move away from the reactionary ‘male-valued’ feminism towards just wanting to be valued equally but not having to be aggressively feminist in order for that to happen. This would then help the dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, because things like what we wear wouldn’t matter – if only we realized the importance of these underlying values.

Christine Panks

You ask what could be done to advance the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim women:

1. Specific campaigns eg anti-war, against Bush’s Christian fundamentalism.
2. Focus of core feminism, on socialist values, to combat fundamentalism.
3. Unity through anti-racist and feminist struggles.
4. Focus on a ‘spiritual’ value system which can be embraced by Muslims and non Muslims, rather than on fruitless specific religious labels, since every religion has a multiplicity of contradictory interpretations, and is dominated by a patriarchy of bishops, priests etc.

Luis Padua

We should ask Muslim women to speak more, to make films, TV series etc which explain their world.

Actually, I’m making a short film and I would like to establish contact with the panelists.

Ayesha Saeed

We need more time to unravel the key issues, particularly those like the Zionist media machine which are most potent in oppressing the Muslim community.

M. Preuss

Comment: what this discussion did not at all address is the fact that Islam and the East probably have just as many stereotypes of the West as the West has of the East. Also, why talk only about Islam oppressing women? The ways in which the West oppresses women seems to be a no-go area. Dialogue needs to go both ways. Also, the point wasn’t made that we are mostly talking about the conduct of Islamic society rather than Islam. What a country and a people make of a religion cannot be blamed on the religion.

Margaret Christie

Tonight in this discussion there has been talk of western prejudices about Islam. Sarah Joseph and Farah Khan criticized Tony Blair for condemning Islam for suppressing women by ‘forcing’ them to wear the burqa. The idea that women are ‘forced’ to wear the burqa is a stereotype, they were saying. But both speakers were guilty of just the same stereotyping when they said, or at least implied, that ‘all Western women are easy because of the way they dress’. (I exaggerate, but only for emphasis). There’s a lop-sidedness in these two viewpoints which needs exploring. It suggests perhaps that there are misconceptions on both ‘sides’. Certainly a lack of understanding.

In the debate in general I felt that stereotypes of the West were not refuted, whereas those about Islam were – more so, at any rate. I feel we have to remember that for every viewpoint there is an opposing one, equally valid to those who hold it.

Take what Ahdaf Soueif was saying, for instance. She didn’t like what the press was saying about ‘Islam’ and the people who practise it. But we all know that you can’t believe everything you read. If it’s true to say that there is an assumption in the press that all things Muslim are bad, then it must probably be set against the equally crude assumption that everything George Bush does is great, and that everyone in the West supports this ‘war’ on terrorism. Misrepresentation is rife, and there is always bias in the media.

Mortaza Sahibzada

When you ask what can be done to advance the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim women, what I want to know is this: which non-Muslim women are you talking about?

Rachel Abedi

The panel: intelligent, articulate and media-savvy women broadly agree. Surely we should work harder to see such consensus reflected in the media, in and beyond Radio Four and the broadsheets. The majority of day-time TV viewers are women: perhaps the consensus of the discussion this evening could be worked into creative TV ideas? We need to broaden the covereage of diverse things Islamic, including Muslim lifestyles in the UK and beyond, and the flourishing arts scene. Also, we need more coverage of Muslims debating controversial issues – eg polygamy – between themselves, for a Muslim and non-Muslim audience, to show the diversity within Islam, to show the common humanity behind the different viewpoints. Currently, an extreme, monolithic version of Islam is usually presented.

Sarah Marshall

One positive thing that could be done to advance the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim women is to let them mix in an un-forced way. They key is to mix children in schools, to let them make friends at an age when they have not yet defined themselves by colour/race/difference/sameness.

Lupin Rahman

Is Islam compatible with modernity? Can it be ‘modernised’, or is it an alternative to modernity? What elements of Islam aren’t consistent with modernity? And what problems does this pose for Muslim women in the UK?

Catherine Lowe

I’d like to think before I write, but I will be visiting your website.

Eliza Ilyas

Positive things that could be done: to share events and ideas, to have open minds, means integrating. This is hard work.

Integration means the sharing of and selection of the best of each other’s societies and cultures/faiths, this is just the beginning – we need more events like this.

Western women have progressed steadily towards equality and freedom over the last century. Or have they? Have we become enslaved to the market – tyrannised by a consumerism that worships wealth and the cult of physical perfection to the exclusion of other values?

A new generation of Muslims, including converts, sees Islam as offering a liberating framework for educated women. What do the rest of us have to learn from their experience?

To continue the discussion, please do email Susan Richards.

Related articles and background reading:

• Dr Fadia Faqir, Director of the Middle Eastern Women''s Studies Department at the University of Durham, published her article on Women and the War in Afghanistan in this week''s issue.
• Prominent European intellectual, and Spanish Minister of Culture from 1988 to 1991, Jorge Semprun has a provocative challenge only the Europe and Islam series as a whole can hope to address: Islam’s place in Europe’s future can be measured by one criterion: the status of women.

• Many of the articles in the extensive After 9/11 strand of openDemocracy are relevant, particularly the Travails of Faith and Modernity section, and Paul Gilroy''s article on British race relations Diving into the tunnel: the politics of race between old and new worlds

• Fareena Alam, news editor of Q-News, is webmaster of a site which covers many issues relating to Women in Islam, and is highly recommended browsing.