The discussion

First Speaker:

I just wanted to pick up on your point about motherhood. I always find that the people who talk the most about what motherhood is, how it should be put on an equal par with other employments, are also the women who get to write great columns in the Guardian and so on. It’s either single women, single men, or people with nice jobs for whom motherhood is a very different experience than that of most of the rest of society.

As far as other women are concerned, the problem is that that we don’t defend modernity enough when it comes to getting them out of the home. It’s hardly surprising that they do, because in the 60’s and 70’s, as Rosie Boycott was saying, women didn’t want just to be mothers - they wanted to enter the public sphere, to make history, to have an influence in public life.

As for Muslim protectiveness towards women, I think this tends rather to reflect a disillusionment with western values borne from the freedom that modernity gave us. I think it’s more that than a positive assertion about Islam. My parents are Muslim but I became an atheist at quite a young age and reacted against all that. I think that religion generally is reactionary and treats women as different from men. And I just worry that in Western society we don’t defend modernity enough. We’re indulging ourselves with this new romantic ideal of motherhood.

New Speaker:

My name is Chris Padoa and I’m from Mexico. I’ve only arrived in Britain recently and I find this discussion very interesting. I would just like to broaden it by bringing up the Latin American situation as well. As you may know our society has been labelled as conservative and also as ‘machista’, probably with very good reason. But recently of course feminist movements have been important. Especially in the cities there has been a lot of change in the role of women. But at the same time we are running the risks of just considering modernity as the perfect state – as the Utopia. From my perspective, interesting things have happened such as women in our societies kept a lot of very important virtues that sometimes many men didn’t have like statistically you could prove that before women were more faithful than men in our societies (I don’t know, perhaps another maybe silly example) women knew, much more, of course how to cook than men.

Recently you would say then that in urban societies women and men don’t know how to cook and are unfaithful – Both of them. So I think that instead of men learning the good thing of women, women have learned a lot of the bad things that men used to have. So what I just want to ask is do you think that these societies, when they go through this process of modernisation, could we just jump some of the problems that have been detected here with this idea of modernity.

New Speaker:

It just an observation as I was reading about it today and Ahdaf Soueif’s comment reminded me of it.If you go back to pre-modern texts – if you have a look at Aristotle’s discussion of politics you get a relationship that he draws between philia – which is sort of friendship and he says that the main form of philia is the relationship between a mother and a child and the love that the mother has for the child. And he says this that there’s a relationship between this and political society – philia and the love that you have for each other and friendship is the same sort of relationship that a political community has when they come together – so he draws a relationship between the two, and I think that that is quite interesting following what Soueif was saying because in a way if you go back to ancient texts or ancient religions or pre-modern situations very many texts and thinkers draw on this relationship and it’s quite a modern phenomena that tries to privatise motherhood and doesn’t see its contribution to political community or economy.

New speaker:

I’m Sima, I’m from Pakistan and I’ve only been in the country for 10 years or so and I’ve had so many observations because back in Pakistan I thought “this (England) is such a wonderful country, which it is – you come here and you get all the freedom and there’s no imbalance. My views have slightly changed. I don’t understand the way in which Islam has been picked up upon about anything that goes wrong, Muslims do wrong – The broad message is that Islam’s got this wrong with it. But I believe that Islam is just a principle, a legislation so if you were to look at British society I can see a lot of things wrong with that whereas the legislation is great. It says ‘never drink and drive’ but we see that happening. It says ‘never rape women’ but it happens. It says ‘ a child cannot get married until they’re 16’ but girls get pregnant before they’re 13. So that’s the imbalance that I can’t get over, and I was quite frustrated with that being a foreigner. Plus the other thing I get amazed by is people who make statements in the media about Islam, I want to know how much they really know about Islam because being Muslim’s even we don’t really know what Islam is about because we don’t actually go and study it that intimately so I’d like to know how much these people know about Islam and come out with statements because if I was a Pakistani and came over here and saw things happening on the street I’d think “what a country!”, “What is their legislation about?!” being very narrow minded until I went and investigated it myself and found out that British culture and British legislation doesn’t allow you to go and mug people and destroy cars and so on.

New Speaker:

I’d like to pick up on that last point that was made – For me I think that Islam like most other ideologies or religions lends itself to interpretations and basically whose Islam are we defending – (break in tape)

If I am an extremist I will be able to find verses in the Koran that justify and give me every single right to oppress women, or if I’m on the other side I can also find verses from the Koran that tell me yes – as a woman you have the right to go and pursue education and so on. That’s why I see it as a bit irrelevant to defend Islam’s point on women, I know that this will rise many people, but my main point or question is ‘whose Islam are we defending?

New Speaker:

I’m an ex children’s and general nurse and when I first went to work in a very poor run down south London hospital in the gynaecological ward women were coming in they were suffering from abortions which were back-street abortions and then we have the pantomime of the consultant coming round and he tried to, in a loud voice from the bottom of the bed, get the women to say who’d done it, the after that we had the priest come round – and I thought, what is it about we women that we allow ourselves to be oppressed and chained in the name of any religion or any ideology? And as far was the west and east overall is concerned we have to somehow relate in a position of a trade off – at this very moment in Ireland we have this bitter debate about whether women have control of their own bodies or not and some women, if the law is passed will be incarcerated in prison for 12 years, I won’t say anything about the premier of Ireland except to say that he’s a shadow of a person, let alone a man. Now the other thing is – when one takes on any ideology one does, from what I know of my Jewish friends and my Muslim friends, they pick and choose. There isn’t one big ‘other’ in their minds saying “you must do this” and “you must do that”. Polygamy has not been touched on this evening – that’s one thing which of course in our society is practiced without the actual marriage taking place. The other thing that concerns me greatly, and I work with several groups of women from Somalia and from Nigeria and they are concerned with irradicating the practice of female genital mutilation but what concerns me is that they are not in the least bit concerned about protecting their baby boys from genital mutilation and this is something whish they cannot address because, as an orthodox Jew said on Radio 4 to Edward Sturton the other day, this is a covenant between God and ourselves and it’s non-negotiable.

And I think that’s it’s this business of any one person saying “this is not negotiable” That terrifies me.

Chair:

I’m just going to come back to our speakers, Rosie was longing to come in

Rosie Boycott:

Well it’s just a very quick observation to you as someone who has worked in newspapers for a long time: Islam is a fantastically short word and it’s really handy in headlines. Do with that what you will, I have done it and done it wrong and been visited the following morning by a delegation of Muslim people, and I’m sorry.

But just picking up on the point about women taking the worst aspects from men – Certainly when feminism began it was very much the goal that women were going to do it differently – we weren’t going to crash into the boardroom and behave in a high handed arrogant manner and you here all to often does she behave like a man, do women run companies differently, sadly I don’t think they do it enough. Certainly our one woman prime Minister was a really lousy example of women can have a bit of sisterhood. But every so often you do genuinely see women starting to run companies slightly differently and that’s what you want to see in the future.

Sarah Joseph:

I feel so much that, if I can just pick up on a lot of threads and join them together – there’s a verse of the Koran that says Islam has appointed you a middle nation and you should act as witnesses unto mankind and the prophet should act as a witness unto you. And I think very much that although yes, at the back, which Islam are we defending, the verses that you use can sometimes tell you more about the person than it does about the Koran. I think ultimately historically Islam has been a balance and when it has moved from it’s balance it has been at its lowest and when it has been at balance and has been comprehensive and full and truest to trying to find the balanced middle nation path it has been at its best and at its height. And I think that, in so many ways, as human beings we are reactionary. Rosie, your speech was so much like the stories that my mother told me when I was a child – in 1971 she was the only bread winner but my father had to sign the hire purchase form for the sofa.

When I as a Muslim know that all of the money that I earn is mine and all of my husbands money is mine, as I like to remind him.

What Ahdaf said, The political fight for the vote in this country – Yes you may make mention of 1956 and the Egyptian revolution giving women the right to vote then but actually historically right from the beginning, right from the allegiances given to the prophet women gave their allegiance and therefore said “we are going to be social participants within our society. In relation to marriage I think that our discourse on marriage as Muslims is a reaction to the feminist reaction. There was much, if you like, oppression, that for many I feel the feminist movement was a reaction to that oppression and it went too far the opposite way. And the discourse that is going on at the moment is trying to bring us back to that balance that says “what do you mean when you say I’m only a housewife” Where does this “only” come from! This “only” came from taking the male goal standard this idea of work, money, earning the buck as the way to status – that is where that “only” comes from. But you know as Malcolm X said “if educate a man you educate one person, if educate a woman you educate and liberate a nation” and I truly believe that my mothers one goal, and she’s here today and for this I’d like to thank her publicly – her one goal was that she should have 5 unprejudiced children and that those 5 unprejudiced children go forth and create more unprejudiced children and that lack of prejudice led me to search out Islam and to her shock I became a Muslim. But I have a goal for my children that they too will be unprejudiced so I do feel that I can liberate a nation through them and I feel tremendously honoured – its not that I have a right to work, I have a right not to work and that is a complete shift in thinking – I have a right to stay at home and look after those children because I owe it to them to give them the best and I am the one who can give them the best… I do work and God, I juggle and I have all of the problems that all of us do but I do it in the lone hours and I don’t say “I’m only a mother” and so I think that the Islamic discourse is trying to bring it back. That’s not to say motherhood is the only Islamic identity and the only role – Aisha - God, she was the person for which we have a quarter of the sayings of the Prophet Mohamad – she never had a child but whose to say that she didn’t have a role in society. But it’s to remove this “only” to remove this thing that if you don’t earn the buck then you don’t have the status. And Ahdaf I don’t think we’re going to get paid for it I’m being realistic but what I would like to see is a sea change, a mental sea change that means that earning money is not where status comes from. Earning our money is a means to an end. And our history as women in this society was to participate fully as volunteers and our society is diminishing very much because that is being lost, because in order to achieve status we have gone for the paid work and unfortunately our voluntary work has disappeared

(Heckle from the crowd)

Sarah Joseph:

My baby boy is circumcised.

(Heckle: Why?! Why?!)

Sarah Joseph:

As such he’ll be at far less risk from AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases. He will not likely inflict cervical cancer on women with STD

(Heckle: It’s not true!)

Sarah Joseph:

It is true, it is a statistic.

(Intervention from chair)

New speaker:

I think that there’s a certain danger in talking about the west according adverts – I mean I’ve never met a woman who was really oppressed by a Wonderbra advert or who really thought about nothing other than what they were going to buy – people just don’t live like that and I think that the myth of feminism is partly responsible for perpetrating the myth of the sex object – it is always over-estimated the impact of adverts upon women and how they actually thought about themselves and how they related to men – people do have relationships – there has to be a negotiation there.

However I do think that there is a problem the panel are getting at about western society in the sense that there is an abundance of choice but people, for whatever reason don’t feel able or confident to take those choices or don’t feel that they’re meaningful. We have lifestyles everywhere but lifestyle is playing at being someone, its not actually being someone – its not a particularly meaningful thing – the doors have opened but we cant really walk through them or make decisions – I think that there is a real problem about malaise and uncertainty but I’m not sure that it’s down to adverts.

New Speaker:

I’m actually slightly disappointed with some of the things that have been said and I loved the description earlier of Muslim atheist as I’ve always been trying to work out whether I’m a Muslim atheist or a very, very lapsed Muslim or somewhere between the two but I grew up in the Pakistani community in Manchester and over the last 10 years I’ve seen that community change – its always been a community that’s had to suffer a lot of racial violence and a lot of racial aggression and the youth within that community have reacted quite aggressively now and I’ve been fairly horrified by how the fundamentalists have locked in to this and used it for their own gain. When the Eid festivals happen in Manchester it used to be quite an amusing event to go and see all the young people there and it was very celebratory about the cricket etc. etc. and you’d frequently get trouble with the police but it was never as extreme as it became when Satanic verses happened and I remember one particularly lamentable piece of media coverage – the Independent at the time – they did a tour of Manchester and Bradford and Leeds and they went and asked a lot of Pakistani and Bangladeshi youth “What do you think of Salman Rushdie” and they were going in arcades where the average age was 11, 12, 13 which is the equivalent of going to Liverpool and asking what you think about Manchester City and from there they extrapolated these great theories about ‘we’ve got a population of Muslim youth in this country that are never going accept Western values and are going to be very aggressively anti-Western values and it became, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy and you saw it very quickly on the Eid celebrations where suddenly there were lots of young men with beards turning up (and I’m not being stereotypical) I actually saw that happen and the chants very quickly became “Jihad! Jihad!” and “Death to Rushdie” and I speak as someone who will always defend my community and I’m very, very proud of the fact that I grew up in a Muslim family and I’ve seen many different Muslim values ranging from the Islam of my mother which is very much about peace and tolerance and respect for the family and protecting the family, to the elements that are very much about bigotry – all religions are prone to that. It’s quite frightening that due to Israel’s excesses over the last 10 or 15 years its becoming fairly acceptable to be fairly anti-Semitic amongst Muslim youth at the moment and that’s something that’s very worrying for the future and it’s worrying when you see Jewish settlers shouting ‘Death to Arabs’ and it’s not necessarily all…

(Interjection from chair: we can’t discuss everything)

One of the things that has been missed out here is the issues that a lot of Muslim women, primarily in the northern communities are dealing with where they don’t necessarily have the same support network that Muslim women in middle class communities have and how you can perhaps reflect the issues that they’re dealing with and deal with the whole wider issue of what it actually means to be young and Muslim in this country and the wider globe that we live in rather than just individual stories.

New speaker:

My question is that I think we are listening to the panel in the context of open democracy and therefore we are assuming a framework of concepts such as tolerance and difference so my concern with this type of discourse is why do we have to present Islam in a very defensive way and in raising assumptions which allude to the fact the Islam has superior ideologies of family values, and against women’s bodies as if non Muslim western or non western ideologies don’t have that.

New Speaker:

The question simply was to Rosie – your disappearance of a sense of sisterhood I was rather interested in I was wondering if you would elaborate on that

Rosie Boycott:

Well I think that it sort of got lost in materialism. And it got lost in the ‘me’ generation of the 80’s. We could have a really long conversation about this but I’m just trying to come up with simple ideas as to where it vanished to. And of course there was another – not mistake – but a fundamental naiivity about the beginning of feminism which was an idea that all women were alike and that somehow we were all going to want the same things, do the same things and, of course, as the 70’s progressed, it became very clear that wasn’t true.

But I still mourn its passing and I think it’s sad that someone like my daughter who is very aware, and quite politically aware, doesn’t really quite understand how wonderful that was.

Farah Khan:

As someone who lives in Newcastle and has lived in Manchester I just wanted to come back on the point about Northern women. It is very different up north in the sense that there aren’t the networks of support that people in London would have for women. In Manchester there is a very strong Muslim community and there are a lot of women who do work together so I don’t think that’s a major problem there – I but in places like Newcastle and elsewhere, yes there is a problem but a lot of the problems that women face are due to cultural misunderstandings and the lack of knowledge of the Muslim communities there about Islam and so therefore you get extensive problems in Bradford and elsewhere with forced marriages and all that but that shouldn’t be a reflection on Islam that’s unfortunately a lack of knowledge.

Heckle from the floor:

But it’s a reality that needs to be acknowledged!

Farah Khan:

But it is acknowledged – nobody’s denying that that doesn’t happen and there are people who are trying to address it but it’s difficult because there isn’t the funding and there isn’t the same kind of support and networks that exist down south unfortunately.

Anita Anand:

I was really struck and touched by the comment that we don’t defend modernity enough and I was trying to think that I should do that because [the speaker] said it so powerfully and I was trying to work out what am I defending and the way I see it – and again I’m not sure if I’m right – but if you think that modernity is the opposite of primitivism then we can all sit quite comfortably under that same umbrella. There is brutality and cruelty then there is an open-minded open democracy way of living your life and that, I would say, is modernity that allows different experiences to exist with respect and with each other and without tearing each other’s throats out.

The other thing is that it is very problematic when you’re sitting up here and you have such articulate people both on the panel and in the audience and we’re all so terribly nice aren’t we and the lady at the front [heckler] is not so nice and I like that because it’s right! We haven’t touched ion some things which I do find problematic and I’ll say it right now and we haven’t got enough time to do it – the fact that I do have a problem with things like polygamy and I would liked to have spoken about that because I can give you anecdote for anecdote and we can match things up – I could tell you a story about someone who is a very close friend of mine who is the second wife in a terribly miserable marriage at the moment so I think that we’ve been told that this the start of something and I would like very much if this to mean anything other than a group hug that we’ve just had then I think that these things should be talked about and I wish that we had more time to do it.

Sarah Joseph:

Yes I think we are being terribly nice and not only that but we are talking ion caricature as well and there’s a caricature of the west presented and there’s a caricature of Muslims presented and neither are accurate because the west isn’t a homogenous entity and neither is the Muslim world. There is diversity in the Muslim world and I like to think that we’re not just one green bloc or as Willy Klaus said in 1995 the green menace. If you want to take green we’re emerald green we’re olive green we’re bottle green, we’re light green, we’re lime green we’re green that’s almost yellow – there’s a whole variety of it that makes up this garden of green if you like and so we’re not one homogenous identity but we are drawn together by a belief in God and a belief in values. Those beliefs cross over in our Vendiagram with many non Muslims and this is what becomes tremendously interesting in society and it’s seeing those points of union and trying to understand the points of division without feeling superior. Now I think that we have a media and a presentation in that media and in the discourse that in many ways is putting forward a Western superiority –we are civilised. But as far as it comes to Daisy Cutters – if that’s civilisation then call me uncivilised.

And so, as a reaction Muslims are defensive and are trying to say “hey, our values are good too”. And once we get over this, this initial “hey how are you” kind of discomfort of the first meeting, we can get down to the more real issues and realise the common humanity and as a Muslim that’s what I realise because we are all the children of Adam and Eve and, by the way Eve was forgiven and she wasn’t responsible.

Ahdaf Soueif:

Well what can I say – Everything has been said and yet nothing has been said – this is a starting point I would love to take up various points – I think the question of polygamy is a very interesting one. The question of how you deal with certain aspects of the faith and of the practice that – Are they immovable and if the are immovable how do you get round them and should you get round them and so on.

And the things that are laid at the door of Islam such as female genital mutilation which is not Islamic custom, it is not practiced in Saudi Arabia etc.etc It’s in Africa and so on…

But I think that the main point that struck me was why are we presenting Islam in a defensive fashion and think that Sara has answered that in that a couple of mothers I wouldn’t have believed that I’d be sitting here trying to represent Islam but because of the constant barrage – you open the paper, you switch on the radio any given day and you come cross misinformation. Misinformation that is unjust and is unfair and I guess that one tries to do what one can to redress the balance and, being a Muslim oneself of course makes you more sensitive because you see this misinformation as being directed at your Grandmother and Grandfather and all the people that you grew up thinking ‘this is what Islam is like’ which of course touches on this other point of “Whose Islam anyway”. So I think that we live in interesting times, lets hope that they don’t get much more interesting.