Houzan Mahmoud

2010-12-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

I took part in an International Conference on the Structures of Patriarchal Violence against Women: En-gendering Peace and Human Security in Beirut-Lebanon.

This conference took place on the 23rd and 24th of November, Many women's rights activists took part from different countries in Middle East.

I spoke about "Gender... Equality, public space, state and politics", the multi layered structures of violence against women in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

My interview on Al-Jazeera English on the Murder of Sardasht Osman

2010-12-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

You can view my interview on Aljazeera English on the Murder of Sardasht Osman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIKs7YV_4iQ

Press Conference in London

2010-06-11T12:52:00.001-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
11/06/2010
Press conference on the kidnapping and assassination of journalist Sardasht Osman in Iraqi Kurdistan
6.00-6.40pm, Tuesday 15 June
Abrar Foundation
45 Crawford Place, W1H 4LP
(Nearest Tube: Edgware Road)

Political activists, academics and writers from Iraqi Kurdistan are holding a press conference to expose the kidnapping and murder of Sardasht Osman and demand justice.
Sardasht Osman, 23, was a journalist and final year university student when he was abducted on 4 May in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil. His body was found on 6 May in the city of Mosul. Sardasht had written articles criticising the Kurdish government, particularly the Barzani family.
This press conference will address violations against freedom of expression and political activism, and attacks on journalists and critical voices.We will address the media in three languages - English, Kurdish and Arabic.

Speakers:
Dr. Kamal Mirawdeli: political personality and writer
Houzan Mahmoud: political activist
Dashti Jamal: president of International Federation of Iraqi Refugees
Khalil Karda: Writer
For further information, contact Houzan Mahmoud and Peshawa Majid
Tel: 07534264481 & 07739337778

Do Iraq's Women Miss Saddam?

2010-04-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Do Iraq's Women Miss Saddam?

Published Sunday, April 04, 2010

Women's advocacy groups say the US courtship of conservative Islamists curtailed women's rights.

Benjamin Joffe-Walt / The Media Line

For some, it was an easier time.

http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=28472

Women could walk freely throughout the streets of the capital, wearing whatever they pleased. A high percentage of women had full-time jobs, women in government were given a year of maternity leave and public day care centers were set up. The country had one of the best education systems in the Arab world and women were well represented in most faculties.

While one would hardly go so far as to describe those times as 'the good ole' days', for many women Iraq under Saddam Hussein had its perks.

Today the situation is quite different. While the fall of Saddam Hussein has led to many overall improvements in personal freedoms and civil rights, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and subsequent courtship of socially conservative Islamic political groups has created quite a different picture for women.

Women no longer have many of the civil rights they were afforded under Saddam Hussein's regime. Sharia law has been written into Iraq's constitution, women have been barred from certain aspects of public life in many parts of the country, women's freedom of movement has been severely curtailed, sex trafficking, prostitution, abductions and assassinations of women have all risen and women in government no longer get a year of maternity leave - that has been cut to six months.

"In general women were living much better off under Saddam," Yanar Mohammed, a women's rights advocate with the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq told The Media Line. "The Iraq that I grew up in was a very modern Iraq and we had basic human rights."

"It was more fashionable at the time to give more rights to women and even Saddam followed the more progressive tendency in the region," she said. "So the Personal Status Law of the time, passed [in 1959] even before Saddam, established a minimum age for marriage, made it very difficult for a man to take a second wife and one almost never saw clerics ruling on civil matters."

"But then the U.S. occupation created a political vacuum and allowed what they call the 'cultural groups' to have their way in Iraq," Mohammed continued. "These religious groups were able to gain access to the constitution and allow people to turn to Sharia instead of civil law. So there is no longer any strong civil law to protect us and there are now big parts of Iraq which are being ruled under Sharia, in which women have very little rights."

"The Americans just let the rule of the jungle go ahead - whoever is the strongest will rule - and the Islamists are the strongest," she said. "So now we are living in a new Islamist Iraq, with Islamic courts all over Baghdad and women totally vulnerable to religious law: a man can marry four wives, a girl that is twelve years old, it's almost impossible for women to get divorced. None of this was the case in Saddam's time."

Dr Haitham Numan, Director of the Baghdad-based Asharq Research Center, argued that the situation for women has significantly worsened since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

"We cannot say that education for women or the general situation for women is better today," Dr Numan told The Media Line. "On the contrary it is worse."

"We can see more general freedoms in Iraq since the fall of the Saddam regime, but at the same time we now have Islamic law, which forbids women's participation in many aspects of life," Dr Numan said. "Ten years ago Islamic leaders had no political clout and this is a major change."

"Political leaders today are interested in their own coalition, not in women's rights," Dr Numan added. "So there are simply no new projects for women."

But Nadya Khalife, Women's Rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, argued that there was little utility to the comparison between women's rights before and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"There are issues coming up that didn't come up in the same way before the U.S.-led invasion," she told The Media Line. "There has been a rise in honor crimes, the targeting of female professionals and politicians, the trafficking of women and children and prostitution. Personal status laws have also changed so there are efforts to legalize polygamy and women have even been killed for wearing the wrong type of attire or going outside wearing makeup."

"There is certainly a conservative push towards personal status laws," Khalife added. "But overall I think we can't compare if the situation for women has improved or not. For example, people say women used to be much more educated and now their levels of literacy is down and their access to education has been curtailed, but this is all affected by the political turmoil, a foreign invasion and the lack of freedom of movement. So things have changed, but there are many factors, so whether they have changed for the better or worse is hard to say."

Houzan Mahmoud, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq's representative abroad, agreed that the comparison was problematic.

"Both situations are horrible," she told The Media Line. "Just because we have a terrible situation at the moment doesn't mean we need to glorify Saddam's dictatorship."

"During Saddam's regime if you were not political you could lead a normal life, but for the majority of us who opposed the dictatorship, it was hell," Mahmoud said. "You were either for the Ba'ath party under Saddam or you were subjected to torture, persecution and abuse. There was no freedom of speech, no freedom of association, women did not have the right to establish women's organizations and he also started to bring socially conservative norms into the constitution. So I don't really like arguments that imply that Saddam Hussein's regime was great."

"Now America has invited the most tribalist, misogynist, Islamist extremist groups to join the government," she continued. "Warlords, ex-Ba'athists, you name it. It's a government of corrupt pullets that has nothing to do with people's aspirations for freedom or welfare and which hasn't brought any normalcy."

"As a result, there is a lot of gender-based violence at all levels," Mahmoud concluded. "We have one or two million women who have been widowed and have no access to social benefits. There is widespread violence and the majority of people live under the poverty line, particularly women. There is trafficking of women and young girls for prostitution both internally and externally. Sharia law has been implemented through the constitution and the enforcement of social conservatism has been brought back into the society."

Mahmoud's colleague in Baghdad Yanar Mohammed said that a law requiring a quarter of Iraq's legislature to be filled by women has made little difference.

"On the one hand it's a good sign because it does bring women to the scene," she said. "But almost half of the women who ended up in parliament came from religious parties. They claim to represent women's rights but in reality they do not want equality, do not demand equality and just support the oppression of women. Even if they try, the rest of the parliamentarians are clerics and don't listen to them."
Copyright © 2010 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.

Have comments? Email editor@themedialine.org

Executing Du'a Khalil's killers is not justice, but a violation of human rights

2010-03-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Statement by Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-Abroad Representative

31/03/2010

Executing Du'a Khalil's killers is not justice, but a violation of human rights

According to official sources at Ninawa Criminal Court, the four people charged with the stoning of Du'a Khalil Aswad on 7 April 2007 have been sentenced to death. The decision was made on 27 March, just three weeks before the third anniversary of Du'as murder.
It is reported that two of the convicted men are Du'a's brothers. Du'a was stoned to death in front of almost 2,000 men; with Iraqi police maintaining "law and order" while the stoning took place. The authorities knew about the atrocity, but did not prevent it.
The International Campaign against the Killing and Stoning of Women in Kurdistan has campaigned tirelessly for the killers to be brought to justice. Our campaign was the first to expose Du'a's murder, and brought great pressure to bear on the Iraqi government and Kurdistan regional government through demonstrations, seminars, conferences and a petition to the Kurdish parliament signed by 16,000 people across the world. We demanded not only the bringing of Du'a's killers to justice, but an end to so-called 'crimes of honour'.

But the decision to execute the killers is no justice and not what we want.

Capital punishment is the most horrendous form of punishment. We oppose capital punishment as a form of so-called justice; it will not end honour killings, but only make our society more brutal and violent, conditioning people to accept killing.
We do not want to go back to the dark days of the Ba'athist regime, when capital punishment was used to silence people and keep them terrorised. Our society has had enough of violence, terror and oppression. The Ba'ath regime brought back 'honour killings' in the late 80s, allowing men to protect their so-called family honour by murdering women. For decades under both Saddam's dictatorship and the rule of Kurdish government in the north, society has been pushed backward, with anti-women values and norms strengthened and men allowed to carry out violence, killings, rape and brutal discrimination against women.

The current family status law upholds patriarchal, religious and conservative norms which discriminate against women. The government has totally failed to promote equality, women's rights and individual rights and freedoms. They insist on implementing Islamic Sharia law and recognising ethnic, tribal and religious mores instead of a modern civil family law. Our basic problem is a ruling class which divides society on the basis of gender, religion and ethnicity and race. This system constantly reproduces violence against women. But executing four men will not solve the problem.

We urge workers', women's and human rights organisations and activists the world over to condemn capital punishment. Laying the foundations for human rights, women's rights and equality is the only solution.

Houzan Mahmoud

Representative Abroad of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

houzan2007@yahoo.com www.equalityiniraq.com

Remember Du'a public seminar in London

2010-03-05T04:32:00.000-08:00

Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq is hosting a seminar to remember Du’a Khalil Aswad who was stoned to death in Iraqi Kurdistan in April 2007

This event is sponsored by the Centre for Gender Studies (School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS-university of London)
Date: 25 March 2010Time: 5:00 PM
Finishes: 25 March 2010Time: 7:00 PM
Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: G52

Speakers:
Nelida Fuccaro
Nadje Al-Ali
Houzan Mahmoud
Heather Harvey will be chairing the meeting.

On the third anniversary of the stoning of Du’a Khalil Aswad to death in public and in condemnation of all forms of violence against women join us in this public seminar to remember Du’a and all women around the world who were killed in so- called honour killings.

On the 7th of April 2007 Du'a Khalil Aswad was brutally stoned to death in front of 2000 men, the killers included her uncle and some of her closest relatives in the Town of Bashiqa. The crime was a so-called 'honour' killing; the event outraged the world, as the perpetrators filmed the carnage on their mobile phones, which footage found its way onto the internet, where the world could see the murderous delight of the crowd and the cooperation of security forces. Despite a worldwide outrage at this act, and national protests to pressurize both Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Governments to bring killers to justice, after one year of this crime, they were released and an amount of 4 million Iraqi dinars were paid to Du’a Khalils family to keep them silent about it.

Speakers' Biographies:

Nelida Fuccaro lectures modern Middle Eastern History at SOAS and she is a specialist on Kurdish, Iraqi and Persian Gulf history. She has published on ethnicity, nationalism and urban history and she is currently writing a history of urban violence in the modern Middle East. She is the author of ' The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq' (IB Tauris, 1999) and of 'Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800' (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Nadje Al-Ali is Reader in Gender Studies and Chair of the Centre for Gender Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her main research interests revolve around gender theory; feminist activism; women and gender in the Middle East; transnational migration and Diaspora mobilization; war, conflict and reconstruction. Her publications include what kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (co-authored with Nicola Pratt) (2009, University of California Press) and Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007, Zed Books). Her most recent book (co-edited with Nicola Pratt) is entitled Women & War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009). Nadje Al-Ali is an elected board member of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS), a member of the Feminist Review collective, and a member of the editorial board of The Middle East in London linked to the London Middle East Institute (LMEI). Last year, she started the SOAS pathfinder programme for female academic refugees at the Centre for Gender Studies. She is also a founding member of Act Together: Women’s Action for Iraq and a member of Women in Black UK.

Heather Harvey: has over 15 years experience in the UK and abroad in the voluntary and public sectors. She has specialised in equality, development and human rights and particularly women's human rights. Her work has included 4 years in remote rural regions of Mali and Zimbabwe, 3 years in the foreign office forced marriage unit and now 4 years in her current post as stop violence against women campaign manager at Amnesty International UK.

Houzan Mahmoud is a political activist from Iraqi Kurdistan. She is the representative abroad of Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. Occasional writer for UK publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Tribune, The Newstatsman and others. Houzan led many campaigns internationally, including campaigns against the rape and abduction of women in Iraq, International Campaign against Killing and Stoning of women in Kurdistan, and campaign to remove articles allowing Islamic Sharia law in Kurdistan and Iraqi constitution. Houzan has written many articles about the situation of women in Iraq, Kurdistan and Middle East, which have been translated into and published in many languages. She appears as a commentator on various TV programs and international media outlets on the situation in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Organizers: Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq and the Centre for Gender Studies (SOAS)

Contact emails: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk and houzan2007@yahoo.com
Tel: 07534264481 www.equalityiniraq.com

Remember Du'a public seminar in London

2010-03-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

My talk at Yorkshire, and humber Trade Union Congress's annual conference in Leeds on 20/02/2010

2010-03-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

My talk at Amnesty International Guildford branch on 01/03/2010 on the situation in Iraq and women's rights

2010-03-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

I will be speaking at an Amnesty conference on the 5th of December 09

2009-12-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

London Look Out - regional conference

Date: Sat 5 December 2009

Meet other Amnesty Activists, share your interest in human rights and learn more about Amnesty's campaigns at our one-day regional conference.

This year's London conference will be an interactive look at human rights issues across the globe also focusing on the Demand Dignity Campaign. Amnesty and keynote speakers: Shao Jiang (on China)Houzan Mahmoud (on women in the Middle East)

This event is now full and we are unable to take any further bookings. If you would like your name to be added to a waiting list please contact the organiser directly at hugh.whitby@gmail.com

for more info go to Amnesty website:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1392

My interview on Women Trafficking in Iraq

2009-12-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

Iraqi Women Forced into Sexual Slavery

Written by Rachelle Kliger

Published Wednesday, December 02, 2009

http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=27272

Iraq’s desperate economic and security situation is leading to the trafficking of hundreds of Iraqi women into prostitution and sexual slavery.

Rising numbers of Iraqi women are being sold into sexual slavery every year because of the waning economy and dire security situation.

Human rights organizations are highlighting the plight of Iraqi women and young girls, sometimes as young as twelve, exploited by criminal gangs for profit.

“The women trafficking trade is at its height,” Houzan Mahmoud, representative abroad of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq said. “There has never been a situation as extreme, and it’s frightening. Many of them have been trafficked to neighboring countries like Syria or the Gulf states or trafficked internally inside Iraq from one city to another.”

The Baghdad Women’s Organization estimates that at least 200 Iraqi women are sold into slavery every year, although the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch estimates that the numbers are in the thousands. The organization warns that the figures may be higher if Iraqi refugee women in neighboring countries such as Syria and Lebanon are also counted.

“The situation has become much worse since 2003, after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq,” Nadya Khalife, a women’s rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa region at Human Rights Watch told The Media Line.

“More women have become widows and orphans and have turned to prostitution to simply make ends meet,” she said. “There are simply no other alternatives for women who head households to locate other sources of income. In Syria and Lebanon, for instance, Iraqi families have simply exhausted their financial savings and some of these families have forced their own wives and daughters into prostitution.”

Mahmoud said that since 2003 more than 70% of Iraqis have lost their jobs, a situation compounded by a lack of welfare provisions.

“We have more than four million widows in Iraq… who will provide for these women?” Mahmoud asked. “The situation created absolute poverty, particularly for women, and these women have virtually no other option but to turn to prostitution.”

“There’s nothing called choice in this,” she stressed. “They are either being forced into it because of the economic and political situation or because of a lack of security, whereby women and young girls are being kidnapped.”

With relatively few rights, the ability of Iraqi women to reintegrate into society after prostitution is limited. The women are often ostracized, attacked by their community and harassed by the authorities with charges of immorality.

“These women lack confidence, lose faith in themselves and blame themselves,” Mahmoud said. “There are so many women who have been jailed for being involved in prostitution. They don’t target the ring leaders for women trafficking – they actually jail the women. If the family finds out, they might kill her, or the neighborhood will shun her and she’ll be stigmatized for her whole life.”

Mahmoud argued that the Iraqi government and political elite have a hand in forcing women into prostitution.

“We’re talking about party politicians who have numbers of women prostitutes in their mobile phones,” she said. “We have to bring this to light. People in the Iraqi parliament and government are basically promoting women’s prostitution and they won’t be punished. As always, it’s the woman paying the price because she’s a woman and in that society and political climate, women are victimized everywhere.”

While human rights organizations were working to expose the practice, Mahmoud said a more holistic approach was required.

“The Iraqi government is responsible for the lives and dignity of these women and children, who’ve been trafficked and forced into prostitution,” she said. “The U.S. and U.K. government [are also responsible] for occupying Iraq and creating such a miserable situation for the population, whose only crime is being Iraqi. They should be blamed and held responsible for this situation whereby people can easily kidnap you and sell you for money. It’s absolutely outrageous.”

Copyright © 2008 The Media Line. All Rights Reserved.

Have comments? Email editor@themedialine.org.

My interview on Aljazeera English about the role of Diaspora

2009-11-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMtdweQJwj0&feature=player_embedded

CNN report about prostitution in Iraq

2009-11-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

Please see the following link to the report:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/02/iraq.prostitute/

Religious superstitions, laws and customs are a disgrace of the 21st century

2009-04-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

Religious superstitions, laws and customs are a disgrace of the 21st century

In the memory of Du’a Khalil Aswad and in condemnation of the flogging in public of a 17 year old girl in Pakistan

By Houzan Mahmoud
07/04/2009

Du’a Khalil Aswad, a sweet 17 year old girl from Iraqi Kurdistan was publicly stoned to death in the town of Bashiqa before 1000 men. None of them did anything to stop the stoning; on the contrary they rejoiced at the killing and took footage of the carnage on their mobile phones.
Du’a wasn’t from a Muslim background, she was a Yazidi, but she feel in love with a Muslim boy. The price of this love was to be publicly stoned in broad daylight. She was stripped of her dignity and pride, her life was taken away simply for falling in love with someone outside of the Yazidi tribe. Her killers were never brought to justice and a year after her murder 40 million Iraqi Dinars were given to her family to keep their silence. The cost of love was a human life. The cost of silence, 40 million Dinar.
The killing of women continues and many more women have fallen victims to so-called honour killings, female genital mutilation, forced and arranged marriages. All of these things are on the rise. In these societies, religion takes priority over the lives and freedom of women.
Tribalism, traditions, Islamic Sharia laws and religious customs are still shaping the lives of millions of women and men in Islamic dominated countries.
Wherever Islam rules there is no place for human enjoyment of life. Religious figures control women’s body, sex and sexuality. They ban music, dance, art, public outings, and anything else that makes ordinary human beings happy.
In countries where the laws are based on Islamic Sharia, there is no place to be free and human life counts for very little. It is impossible to live without the constant fear of being killed for doing or feeling the simplest things.
Every woman, even those who have gained a degree of freedom to enter education or who have managed some sort of economic independence, live with the fear of 'wrongdoing'. They must live their lives according to their family’s and countries code of conduct. Why should women live like this in 21st century?

Just a few days ago our television and computer screens were filled with images of carnage when a 17-year-old Pakistani girl was flogged in public by Taliban militants in the Swat valley.
The footage showed a burka-clad girl being pinned to the ground by two men while a third whips her backside 34 times. The girl is seen screaming and begging for forgiveness as a crowd of largely silent men look on. She is accused of having had an “illegal” sexual relationship. Her brother is among those restraining her. When we see these crimes taking place day in and day out by religious militias, tribes, and governments who base themselves on the teachings of the Quran we come to expect no better.
In most Islamic dominated societies women have almost no rights. They have no right to life. They have no ownership over their own bodies:
· If you fall in love with the “wrong” person, with someone your family doesn't approve of, you are dead;
· If you get raped, then you more likely to be punished than the rapists;
· If you don’t follow religious, tribal, and traditional code of conduct you will be killed;
· If women loose their virginity – whatever the reason - they will be killed;
· Women can not wear what they want, or have make-up;
· Women can not mix with men because they 'arouse' them;
· Women are sexually objectified and are therefore considered filthy;
· Women have to be covered at all times;
· A women’s body can only be seen by her husband because she is his property;
· The wife must reserve herself exclusively for her husband;
· Women should make themselves available to their husbands whenever he is in need of her – she must submit herself to sexual intercourse at the husbands will. This is little more than rape.
Millions of women grow up hearing these words and teachings taken from Islam and its Sharia Law. The oppression of generations of women and men alike stems from these ideas. Girls from as young as 4 years old are forced to cover their hair, and are brainwashed by religious teachings. According to Islam, when a girl is 9 years old she is due to marry. Where the letter of this teaching is implemented there is nothing but child abuse and 'Islamic legal' rape of children.
The ways in which both Du’a and this 17 year old Pakistani girl were punished in public is a method conditioning society to such brutalities and socialising them into accepting such scenes of carnage on daily bases. In this case they make the entire society complacent and bullied by force to accept this as a way of life.

This is typical of Islamists and Islam in general. Because of the violence and terror they use against civilians, they engender ignorance and Dark Age thinking over society.

In spite of the terror they can never put an end to people expressing themselves and acting as they want to. Women are particularly defiant. They are treated harshly because no religion, state, law, The Quran or any other holy book can restrict or prevent human beings from exercising their natural impulse to have sex and physical pleasure. Islam is particularly patriarchal and has always tried to keep women subordinated and use them as subservient of men. Having four wives for the same man is another ugly face of Islam.
Stoning, flogging, beheading, rape, polygamy, veiling – all these have been used against women, yet women continue to fight in every possible way to escape the hell that Islamists want to create in places like, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. They even want to bring Sharia to the heart of Europe.

These forms of religious violence against women are a shameful disgrace on 21st century humanity and it must stop. Every government is responsible for what is happening to women.

www.equalityiniraq.com

International Solidarity for Women's Liberation

2009-02-19T16:01:00.000-08:00

A public meeting to celebrate International Women's Day

Date: Friday 6 Mar 2009
Time: 7:00-9:00pm

Location: Room 3A University of London Union (ULU)
Malet Street
London WC1 7HY
Nearest Tube station( Russel Square)

As women in countries including wartorn Iraq and Afghanistan fight to defend the most basic human rights, women across the world are being hit by the economic crisis - through job losses, wage cuts, cuts in services, increased domestic violence and in many other ways.
We, activists in the women's and workers' movements, are organising this meeting to celebrate International Women's Day in the way its founders meant it to be celebrated: by promoting the international struggle for women's liberation.
Speakers:
-Jean Lambert (Green Party Member of the European Parliament)
-Terri Jude (writer for the Independent)
-Maria Exall (Communication Workers' Union, national executive)
-Tamar Katz (an Israeli school students jailed for refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories)
-Laura Schwartz ( Feminist Fightback)
-Houzan Mahmoud (Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq)

For more info email: houzan2007@yahoo.com Tel: 07534264481
rebecca.galbraith@yahoo.co.uk Tel: 07971 719 797

Organised by Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- UK

Sponsored by Feminist Fight Back

Statement by Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq

2009-01-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

Would you marry your rapist?

The Iraqi penal code has an article which addresses the crime of rape. If the rapist decides to marry the woman whom he raped, there will be no charges against him. This criminal law makes a traumatized raped woman live with a monster who invaded her body and soul, someone who will have legal status to allow a daily rape, but under legal cover after signing the agreement of marriage.
After five years of forced military occupation, after filling hundreds of graveyards and ditches with dead bodies, after terrorizing people physically and imposing a most brutal inquisition-style religious rule, the occupiers seek to legalize their stay by an agreement which "humanizes" the permanent stay of their military bases in Iraq.
They claim to be defending the security of Iraq against terrorism, while in reality they only grant their never-ending economic interests, political control and hegemony over the area. They will always be a source of future military threat on the people of Iraq and the region.
People of Germany, Japan, and South Korea were never able to break loose from that grip; their countries still "host" more than 700 US military bases where the civilians and especially the female population pay the price.
Now that the rapist wants to stay for a lifetime in Iraq, he needs an agreement which makes him the "democratic" loving and friendly husband and father of the house.
A humiliated woman in Iraq usually swallows her pride and pain, and accepts her fate as the wife in such a marriage in order to avoid an "honour-killing" by her male chauvinist relatives.
But, why would a parliament of so called 100% Iraqi representatives compete in order to promote such a marriage which is realized through signing the SOFA agreement? Why would the public Iraqi television preach and brainwash millions over the "patriotic necessity" for the agreement of a so-called withdrawal when it is only legalizing and eternalizing a military occupation.
All the justifications about releasing Iraq from the seventh article of the UN charter[2] are hard to believe. Why should Iraqis be punished about Sadam's decision of aggression? And why should the punishment be prolonged while the US military committed an illegal act of aggression against Iraq?
The withdrawal of the troops from Iraq should be unconditional, with no strings attached.
People of Iraq can never sign to an agreement of legalizing the status of US military forces in Iraq.
An anti-women era started with this occupation. Killings of women by para-military affiliates of the government, writing an anti-women and anti-human constitution of the middle ages, and series of needless military and para-military clashes were all immediate consequences of this occupation. They all happened under the eyes of the US and British military occupation.
The SOFA signature is against the interest of the people and women of Iraq and will be repealed once there is direct representation of people in their government, and not an ethno-religious rule which is appointed by the occupation forces through scam elections.
Long live the people of Iraq free from all military, political, and religious aggression
Long live freedom and equality

Yanar Mohammed

OWFI, president

14/12/2008

[1] Status of Forces Agreement is falsely called the withdrawal agreement while in reality it specifies the right to US military bases in Iraq.
[2] Article 7 determines an aggressor status to a country. It was used against Iraq during the Kuwait invasion, but was never mention against the US during the Iraq invasion.

Hands off The People of Iran Annual conference

2008-12-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

Seminar for Houzan Mahmoud at the University of Leeds

2008-12-02T16:32:00.001-08:00

2008-11-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to our comrade Michael Eisenscher in the US labour against the war who created this
petition for our friends in the USA to support our campaing.

to view the petition please click this link:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2488/t/4187/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1735

Campaign to Stop Polygamy in Kurdistan-Iraq

2008-11-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

Campaign to stop polygamy in Kurdistan-Iraq

-To the Kurdish Parliament and the Kurdistan Regional Government

We demand the repeal of polygamous marriages and all other discriminatory laws against women in Kurdistan.

On October 27, 2008, legislation allowing polygamous marriages was passed in a parliamentary session in Erbil, the capital city of Kurdistan. This legislation is part of a constitutional draft proposing to replace the old family status law, in use since 1958. It was changed partially, under Saddam Hussein, to subjugate women’s rights further.

After the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003, a new constitution was written and passed in Iraq. This constitution was solely based on Islamic Sharia Law and openly stated its support for gender apartheid against women. We clearly see that the proposed constitution for the Kurdish region is no better than the Iraqi one. In fact, it is just a smaller version.

The current family status law was reactionary enough—being purely based on discrimination against women and their treatment in society as second class citizens—but now the Kurdish Regional Government wants to change it further, and not for the better.

Women in Kurdistan have been subjected to all kinds of violence and discrimination throughout their history. Under Saddam’s regime, they endured all kinds of hardship, torture and abuse. They have fared no better under the current Kurdish rule. “Honour killings”, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, bullying women to commit suicide and the denial of civil and individual rights have been the main characteristics for almost the past two decades.

The approval of this current legislation will assist in the oppression of women and lead to a huge increase in violence against women. This is a historical mistake. We hold the Kurdish parliament and its government responsible for the violations of women’s rights in this region, due to these discriminatory laws.

Therefore, we call upon every concerned organisation and individual to support us in this campaign to repeal this law. We also call for unconditional equal rights, freedom and equality for women in Kurdistan to be enshrined in law.

Yours Truly,

-Yanar Mohammed: President of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

-Houzan Mahmoud: representative abroad of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-UK

-Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labour Against the War (USLAW)

-Maria Hagberg: President of Network against honour crimes -Sweden

-Rega Svensson: Head of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-Sweden

-Joe Tougas: Journalist, Human Rights Activist –USA

-Professor at the University in Italy, scientific field of Political Geography and Politics for the Environment.

-Jennifer Kemp: Women’s rights activist based in USA

-Maryam Namazie: Spokesperson, Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran

-Joanne Payton: International Campaign against Honour Killings

-Thomas Unterrainer: Nottingham

-Berit Tybrand: Women´s International League for Peace and Freedom, Sweden

- Sam Azad: Socialist campaigner
-Ingrid Ternert: Representative of the Peace movement in Gutenberg.
-Ruth Appleton Co-ordinator Santé Refugee Mental Health Access Project
-Anna-Lisa: Björneberg- Wilpf Sweden
-Aase Fosshaug: Sweden

For more information or to add your name to this statement please contact:
www.equalityiniraq.com

E-mail: houzan2007@yahoo.com Tel: +447534264481
rega_svensson@yahoo.com

Videos of Remember Du'a Conference in London

2008-05-14T14:29:00.001-07:00

You can find links to my talk at Remember Du'a Conference in London which we
organised it as part on an international week of action against so called honour killings.

Please click on the links bellow:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lcZHKQ970w
Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKwD2b4Wnk&feature=related

My interview about Honour Killings in Iraq and Kurdistan for The Independent

2008-04-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Barbaric 'honour killings' become the weapon to subjugate women in Iraq

Murder of a girl who became infatuated with a British soldier highlights a disturbing new trend

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barbaric-honour-killings-become-the-weapon-to-subjugate-women-in-iraq-816649.html

By Terri JuddMonday, 28 April 2008

At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene.
The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her "honour killing" is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a "genocide" against women in the name of religion.
In the latest such case, it was reported yesterday that a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was stabbed to death last month by her father for becoming infatuated with a British soldier serving in southern Iraq.
In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.
Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase.
Du'a Khalil Aswad, 17, from Nineveh, was executed by stoning in front of mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a boy outside her Yazidi tribe. Mobile phone images of her broken body transmitted on the internet led to sectarian violence, international outrage and calls for reform. Her father, Khalil Aswad, speaking one year after her death in April last year, has revealed that none of those responsible had been prosecuted and his family remained "outcasts" in their own tribe.
"My daughter did nothing wrong," he said. "She fell in love with a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with that. I couldn't protect her because I got threats from my brother, the whole tribe. They insisted they were gong to kill us all, not only Du'a, if she was not killed. She was mutilated, her body dumped like rubbish.
"I want those who committed this act to be punished but so far they have not, they are free. Honour killing is murder. This is a barbaric act."
Despite the outrage, recent calls by the Kurdish MP Narmin Osman to outlaw honour killings have been blocked by fundamentalists. "Honour killings are not actually a crime in the eyes of the government," said Houzan Mahmoud, who has had a fatwa on her head since raising a petition against the introduction of sharia law in Kurdistan. "If before there was one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women.
"In the past five years it is has got [much] worse. It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights."
In August last year, the body of 11-year-old Sara Jaffar Nimat was found in Khanaqin, Kurdistan, after she had been stoned and burnt to death. Earlier this month, two brothers and a sister were kidnapped from their home near Kirkuk by gunmen in police uniforms. The brothers were beaten to death and the woman left in a critical condition after being informed that she must obey the rules of an "Islamic state". One week ago, a journalist, Begard Huseein, was murdered in her home in Arbil, northern Iraq. Her husband, Mohammed Mustafa, stabbed her because she was in love with another man, according to local reports.
The stoning death of Ms Aswad led to the establishment of an Internal Ministry unit in Kurdistan to combat violence against women. It reported that last year in Sulaymaniyah, a city of 1 million people, there were 407 reported offences, beheadings, beatings, deaths through "family problems", and threats of honour killings. Rape is not included as most women are too fearful to report it for fear of retribution. Nevertheless, police in Karbala recently revealed 25 reports of rape.
The new Iraqi constitution, according to Mrs Mahmoud, is a mass of confusing contradictions. While it states that men and women are equal under law it also decrees that sharia law – which considers one male witness worth two females – must be observed. The days when women could hold down key jobs or enjoy any freedom of movement are long gone. The fundamentalists have sent out too many chilling messages. In Mosul two years ago, eight women were beheaded in a terror campaign.
"It was really, really horrifying," said Mrs Mahmoud. "Honour killings and murder are widespread. Thousands [of people] ... have become victims of murder, violence and rape – all backed by laws, tribal customs and religious rules. We urge the international community, the government to condemn this barbaric practice, and help the women of Iraq."

My article for 8 March international Women's Day

2008-04-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

8 March

A century of struggles for freedom and equality!

By Houzan Mahmoud

Here is also a link to it on Google Video:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7298345386961536136

This International Women’s Day will mark almost a century of struggle for freedom and equality. In certain parts of the world some rights have been achieved, yet true freedom and unconditional equality elude vast numbers of women.

In a world where we are defined and “identified” on the basis of nationality, ethnicity and religion (down to the smallest of sects) the category “woman” is increasingly relegated to a second class status. In countries where political systems are based on religious diktat women have no rights to live, think, act or decide for themselves. Their lives are valued at half that of a man. Rigid religious laws show no sign of allowing happiness, prosperity or the simplest of rights to women.

In Islamic countries women are suffocated, suppressed and tied to bigoted norms and values. In this environment women grow up deprived and segregated - thinking that there is only one way to live, that no other choice exists. They are right. In these countries women have no choice but to subjugate themselves to the male members of the family and follow the orders handed to them from “God”.

What we witness in our “countries of origin” is a tragedy without end. A tragedy where from an early age generations of women are told that their minds are not their own. Where their personalities are not shaped by individual will but moulded by the oppressive rules of society.

In my “country of origin”, Iraqi Kurdistan, religious law does not officially hold sway over local law. But Islamic ethics and morality form the norms of everyday life. Islamic law shapes the lives of millions of women from birth to death.

We are the actual survivors of Islamic cultural norms and traditions. No, we are not “victims” but strong activists who have survived some of the worst that religious rule has to throw at us, who have the guts and courage to speak out and be the voice of the silenced women of the region.

From Basra to Baghdad and through to Kurdistan women are being killed on a daily basis, terrorised in the name of “honour”, forced into arranged marriages.
More and more are choosing to be free. The price of freedom is very high – often costing life itself – but so many women are making this choice.

Dua Khalil Aswad, the Yazidi girl who was dragged out and publicly stoned to death by male family members was a victim of religious bigotry.

Nafisa, an Afghan woman whose husband recently cut off her nose and ears.

Zohreh and Azar Kabiri-niat, the two Iranian sisters who have been sentenced to stoning to death, accused of having “illicit relations”.

These women and many more in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic infected countries are being stoned to death in public and hanged. Every day, tens of such examples occur around the world. In Uganda, Sudan and elsewhere women have been and continue to be raped in retaliation during bloody wars. Abject poverty strikes women the hardest. Why all this brutality?

More than ever women are pushed into prostitution and trafficking as a means to survival. Women are being stripped of dignity and pride.

Lack of economic equality, a rigid patriarchy and religious misogyny are pillars of a capitalist system that keeps us divided on the basis of gender and class. This system creates a horrendous situation for women.

Cultural Relativism stands opposed to the universal rights that were only achieved after decades of campaigning. This post-modern view of the world is a direct attack on the status and rights of women around the world, it divides our movement. We must once again affirm that when we stand for the equality of women we stand for all women, in whatever part of the world, from whatever background.

Religious bigotry should be countered more vocally, wherever it raises its head. The Archbishop of Canterbury made the case for allowing the legal recognition of some aspects of Sharia law because more than anything he fears that without such ‘liberalisation’ bigoted Christian laws, values and opinion would be forced out.

We have all these battles to fight alongside the struggle of our class. It is my belief that all this religious fuss and cultural relativism are part and parcel of capitalism in this age. Capitalism cannot survive without keeping people divided along the lines of class, race, religion and gender. It cannot survive without keeping people in ignorance and poverty. Cultural relativism, Sharia Law and Christian ‘values’ all prolong the situation.

Therefore our struggle cannot be successful without the full and complete engagement of society as a whole. Our rights and freedoms, our class struggles and aspirations are universal. Women’s freedom does not mean freedom for some. Our freedom does not accept the idea that a religion, culture, border or nationality excludes the most oppressed. We are all human; we all deserve to live with dignity and to enjoy unconditional freedoms.

This was also my speech in 8 March event organised by Equal Rights Now, organisation for Women's Rights in Iran which was hosted in Conway hall.

Seminar in London on Kurdish women

2008-04-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

Seminar on
The role of Kurdish women in dialogue, conflict resolution and reconstruction,
and in the struggle for democracy and peace

Saturday, 24 May 2008, 1.30-5pm
Garden Court Chambers, 57-60 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2

Speakers and participants include:

-Leyla Zana, prominent Kurdish politician and former political prisoner is making her first visit to London since her release in 2004 to highlight the situation of Kurdish women and put the case for peaceful resolution of the ongoing conflict in Turkey. She received the European Parliament Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the Rafto Prize & the Bruno Kreisky Award

-Dr Susan Breau, Reader in International Law and Assistant Associate Dean for Research at the School of Law at the University of Surrey

-Dr Catherine Barnes, Policy Analyst, Conciliation Resources

-Bairbre De Brun, Sinn Fein MEP

-Jean Lambert MEP

-Houzan Mahmoud: Spokesperson of Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq OWFI

-Margaret Owen, Director, Widows for Peace and Democracy (WPD)
and Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS UK) and member of Bar Human Rights Committee

-Hannah Rought-Brooks, Barrister at Tooks Chambers Vice-Chair, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

The meeting is supported by the Bar Human Rights Committee, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Sebahat Tuncel MP, Democratic Society Party (DTP), Turkey, Kurdish Women’s Project, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, Roj Women’s Group, Kurdish Federation UK, OWFI - Abroad Representative

Please come and join us in this important debate!
For information contact Estella estella24@tiscali.co.uk Tel 020 7586 5892

Report on the London conference to remember Du’a Khalil

2008-04-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

Representative Abroad of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and the International Campaign Against Killings and Stoning of Women in Kurdistan held their first conference as part of a Week of Action initiative denouncing honor killings globally. The conference was dedicated to the memory of Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17 year-old girl from a Yazidi faith in Kurdistan of Iraq, stoned to death on April 7, 2007

The conference was held in central London at the union of London University on April 12th. Many people attended in order to condemn ‘honor killings’ as well as to commemorate Du’a and other victims of such practices. The panel of speakers contained many women’s rights activists. These were:

-Dr. Sandra Phelps, Head of Sociology at Kurdistan University in Erbil, Iraq

-Heather Harvey, Campaign Manager for Violence against Women, Amnesty International
-Houzan Mahmoud, Abroad Representative of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq
-Maryam Namazie, Equal Rights Now, a women’s organization in Iran
-Maria Hagberg, Network against Honor Killings in Sweden
-Azar Majedi, Head of the Women’s Liberation Organization in Iran
-Maria Exall, Executive Committee Member of the Communication Workers’ Union

Maria Exall chaired the conference and each speaker’s talk analyzed the issues of gender apartheid, suppression of women’s rights, honor killing and other horrific crimes. There was also discussion of political Islam and its hand in the religious op- pression of women. Everyone on the panel mentioned that governments, in the form of patriarchy, tribal custom or religious law, are responsible. There was a question and answer session in which the attendees actively participated.

At the end, the organizer, Houzan Mahmoud, thanked all the people who attended. She discussed the many letters of solidarity and support she has received from Kurdistan, Iraq, and worldwide, commemorating Du’a and expressing dismay at the brutal practice of honor killing. She added that this was the bright side of Kurdish society and showed that people—men and women—want to end this barbarity and have become active to end these crimes. She proposed that every April 7th be a day to remember Du’a Khalil, and an International Day against Honor Killing.

It is also worth mentioning that the Week of Action against ‘honor killings’ gained much media attention. As a result, Houzan Mahmoud held interviews with the following media outlets: BBC World Radio Outlook, which included an interview with Du’a’s father about her death, BBC Scotland at Ten, KPFA FM (an American radio station), REM FM (a Spanish radio station) and a Turkish paper, present at the conference (see the link below):

http://www.yeniozgurpolitika.org/?bolum=haber&hid=30407
Questions centered on the reasons for and practice of ‘honor killing’ in general, the situation faced by women in Iraq and the rise of killings both there and in Kurdistan and the anniversary of Du’a’s death. Two members of Parliament and a representative from Amnesty International were also interviewed.

Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-Abroad representative
www.equalityiniraq.com houzan2007@yahoo.com

A poster in memory of Du'a

2008-03-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

A conference in london to Remember Du'a Khalil

2008-03-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

Conference to Remember Du’a Khalil and denounce Honour Killings globally!

Date: Saturday 12 April, 2008

Time: 5.00-9:00pm

Address:

University of London Union (ULU)

Room 3D,

Malet Street
London WC1E 7HY
Closest underground: Russell Square

A year after the world was stunned by images of a 17 year old girl being stoned to death in Iraqi Kurdistan; an international panel will debate the rise of honour killings, violence against women, gender apartheid and political Islam in Kurdistan/Iraq and the Middle East.

The high profile speakers are women’s rights activists, academics and experts from Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Sweden, New Zealand, and Britain and include:

-Dr Sandra Phelps: Head of Sociology Department, Kurdistan University

-Houzan Mahmoud: representative of Organisation Women’s Freedom in Iraq

-Heather Harvey: head of women’s campaign-Amnesty International in UK

-Maryam Namazie: Spokesperson of Equal Rights Now; Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran

-Maria Hagberg: Cofounder of Network against Honour Killings in Sweden

-Azar Majedi: Chair of Organisation for Women’s Liberation in Iran

Chair: Maria Exall, Communication Workers' Union National Executive in UK

For more information and to confirm your attendance please contact the organiser:

Houzan Mahmoud: houzan2007@yahoo.com Tel: 07534264481

Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- Abroad representative www.equalityiniraq.com

We stand for all women

2008-03-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

by Houzan Mahmoud

http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/we_stand_for_all_women

Women's freedom means freedom for all. It is time to stand together, writes Houzan Mahmoud as part of our ongoing coverage of international women's week
In a world where we are defined and "identified" on the basis of nationality, ethnicity and religion (down to the smallest of sects) the category "woman" is increasingly relegated to a second class status. In countries where political systems are based on religious diktat women have no rights to live, think, act or decide for themselves. Their lives are valued at half that of a man. Rigid religious laws show no sign of allowing happiness, prosperity or the simplest of rights for women.
In Islamic countries women are suffocated, suppressed and tied to bigoted norms and values. In this environment women grow up deprived and segregated - thinking that there is only one way to live, that no other choice exists. They are right. In these countries women have no choice but to subjugate themselves to the male members of the family and follow the orders handed to them from "God".
For many of us, what we witness in our "countries of origin" is a tragedy without end, where from an early age generations of women are told that their minds are not their own. Where their personalities are not shaped by individual will but moulded by the oppressive rules of society.
In my "country of origin", Iraqi Kurdistan, religious law does not officially hold sway but Islamic ethics and morality form the norms of everyday life. Islamic law shapes the lives of millions of women from birth to death.
We are the actual survivors of Islamic cultural norms and traditions. Not "victims" but strong activists who have survived some of the worst that religious rule has to throw at us, who have the guts and courage to speak out and be the voice of the silenced women of the region.
From Basra to Baghdad and through to Kurdistan women are being killed on a daily basis, terrorised in the name of "honour", forced into arranged marriages. More and more are choosing to be free. The price of freedom can be high, but many women are now making this choice.
Dua Khalil Aswad, the Yazidi girl who was dragged out and publicly stoned to death by male family members, a victim of religious bigotry.
Nafisa, an Afghan woman whose husband recently cut off her nose and ears.
Zohreh and Azar Kabiri-niat, the two Iranian sisters who have been sentenced to stoning to death, accused of having "illicit relations".
These women and many more in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries are being stoned to death in public and hanged. In Uganda, Sudan and elsewhere women have been and continue to be raped in retaliation during bloody wars. Abject poverty strikes women the hardest. Why all this brutality?
Lack of economic equality, a rigid patriarchy and religious misogyny are pillars of a capitalist system that keeps us divided on the basis of gender and class. This system creates a horrendous situation for women. Cultural relativism does nothing to help, indeed stands opposed to the universal rights that were only achieved after decades of campaigning, it divides our movement. We must once again affirm that when we stand for the equality of women we stand for all women.
Religious bigotry should be countered more vocally, wherever it raises its head. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently made the case for allowing the legal recognition of some aspects of Sharia law in the UK because more than anything he fears that without such ‘liberalisation' bigoted Christian laws, values and opinion would be forced out.
Our struggle cannot be successful without the full and complete engagement of society as a whole. Our rights and freedoms, our class struggles and aspirations are universal. Women's freedom does not mean freedom for some. Our freedom does not accept the idea that a religion, culture, border or nationality excludes the most oppressed. We are all human; we all deserve to live with dignity and to enjoy unconditional freedoms.

Houzan Mahmoud is a representative abroad of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq. You can visit her personal blog here.

Seminar in London on 8 March international women's day

2008-02-25T15:03:00.000-08:00

Sexual apartheid, political Islam and women's rightsA seminar in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day Monday, March 10, from 6:30-9:30pm at Conway Hall, LondonSpeakers:

Mina Ahadi, Spokesperson, Council of Ex-Muslims of Germany and Equal Rights Now; 2007 NSS Secularist of the Year.

Louise Couling, Chair of Unison's Regional Women's Committee and member of the National Executive Council.

Houzan Mahmoud, Spokesperson, Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq.

Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now, National Secular Society Honorary Associate.

Joan Smith, Novelist, columnist and human rights activist
Chair: Hanne Stinson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association

The event is free of charge; donations are welcome.

The seminar is organised by Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now, Organisation against women's discrimination in Iran, and endorsed by the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association and the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq.

For more information, please contact Maryam Namazie at maryamnamazie@googlemail.com or 07719166731 or visit www.ex-muslim.org.uk and www.equal-rights-now.com.

Solidarity with Iranian students in Jail

2008-02-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

Please sign this appeal to free jailed students in Iran:

http://www.petitiononline.com/101207/petition.html

To: Iranian Government

Campaign to free all detained student activists in Iran! To all students’, labour, women’s and human rights organisations and activists worldwide: put pressure on the Islamic republic of Iran to free all jailed students now! Student activists struggling for freedom, equality and social justice need our immediate solidarity! We at the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) learnt about the recent wave of suppression and arrests by the Islamic Republic of Iran against student activists. They have arrested a number of student activists prior to and during mass demonstrations, which are held annually in commemoration of the December 7th Students Day (16th Azar solar calendar) in Tehran and other cities across the country. Traditionally, 16th Azar has been the scene of large public demonstrations, and protests against repression and in defence of freedom, equality, and humanity and against gender apartheid in Iran. A vibrant youth and student movement has always existed alongside Iran’s women’s and workers’ movements in the face of enormous adversity. However, the current climate of threats of war by America has allowed the Islamic Republic to intensify its oppression of these movements. The students are determined to oppose such an atmosphere of repression and continue to demand freedom while opposing any potential war by the USA or its allies.

According to the latest news posted on a pro-student websites such as http://azady-barabary-01.blogspot.com/, the following students are detained:

Mehdi Gerailoo - University of Tehran, Nader Ahsani - Ex-student of the University of Mazandaran, Anoosheh Azadbar - University of Tehran, Victoria Jamshidi - University of Azad Tehran-south, Behrooz Karimizadeh - Expelled student of the University of Tehran, Saeed Habibi - Ex-student of the Sharif University of Technology, Ali Salem - University of Polytechnic , Yoones Mirhosseini - Bahonar University, Shiraz , Milad Omrani - University of Rajayi , Abed Tavancheh - Expelled student of the University of Polytechnic , Sadra Pirhayati - Shahed University Roozbeh Safshekan - University of Tehran, Saeed Aghamali - Art University of Yazd Roozbehan Amiri - University of Tehran, Nasim Soltanbeigi - University of Allameh Mahsa Mohebbi - Sharif University of Technology, Keyvan Amiri - Sharif University of Technology, Hadi Salari - University of Rajayi, Amir Aghayi - University of Rajayi Fashid Farhadi Ahangaran - University of Rajayi, Saeed Aghakhani Okhtay Hosseini - University of Azad, Soroosh Hashempoor - University of Chamran , Ahvaz, Mohsen Ghamin - University of Polytechnic, Hamed Mohammadi - University of Mazandaran arrested a week ago, Arash Pakzad - University of Mazandaran Milad Moeeni - University of Mazandaran, Hassan Maarefi - University of Mazandaran, Behrang Zandi - University of Mazandaran.

OWFI gives full support to the student activists and all progressive movements in Iran and call upon all of you to take urgent action to demand the immediate release of all detained students. International solidarity is the duty of all activists; support your brothers and sisters in Iran against the Islamic Republic and the threat of war!

Campaign initiators:

Yanar Mohammed, president of OWFI and Houzan Mahmoud, Representative Abroad of OWFI

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

What Honour in Killing?

2008-02-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

By Houzan Mahmoud published on 21/12/2007 on The New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/200712210002

The co-founder of the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition writes on a spate of 'honour killings' in Iraqi Kurdistan and BasraFor decades women in Kurdistan have been subjected to all kinds of discrimination and suppression. Falling in love with the 'wrong' person can cost you your life. Sex outside marriage may bring a death sentence.

The price of bringing 'shame' upon family honour can be a woman’s life.The breakdown of law and order in Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion has exacerbated the situation – earlier this month Youssif Mohammed Aziz, the regional minister for human rights in Kurdistan reported that at least 27 women had been murdered in the region over the last four months in 'honour killings'.

There have been many cases of brutal killings, but this is only one side of the story. Many women and young girls have taken or attempted to take their own lives as a way of resisting the social control and subordinated role imposed upon them.For example, Kurdistan’s Hawlati newspaper published a report carried out by a hospital in Sulaymania recording more than 7000 cases of women setting fire to themselves between 2000 and 2007.Only after the stoning of a seventeen-year-old Yazidi girl, Dua Khalil Aswad, did the Kurdistan Regional Government issue a statement condemning so called 'honour killings' and violence against women. But soon after the statement was issued more than seventy women were killed for similar reasons and to this date none of the killers have been arrested.Most Middle Eastern governments base policy and law upon a strict interpretation of Islamic teachings and codes of conduct. The notions of shame, honour, guilt and sin are then imposed on women through a conservative patriarchal culture. War, occupation, corrupt government and the existence and growth of Islamic and traditional conservative parties have all contributed to the formation of a hostile, anti-women environment in Iraq.

Women are considered by many to be the possessions of men - it’s as if we only exist because men wish it so!In a society where violence and sexual abuse towards women is a widespread cultural phenomenon it can be hard to see where any improvement in the conditions and rights of women can be made.In the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq the systematic abuse and suppression of women is bad enough, but in the south the situation is much worse. Under the occupation women have been subjected to all kinds of attacks: beheadings, rape, abduction and trafficking. Political Islamists have formed various armed militias and groups that target women in particular. They do this to further their long term aim of a creating a conservative Islamic society in Iraq governed by their interpretation of the Shari'a, the Islamic law that already prevails in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.In the last three months more than 40 women have been killed by the Islamists in Basra alone, murdered because of their 'un-Islamic' dress, according to Iraqi police.

It is believed that many more deaths go unreported for fear of reprisals. In others cities where the Islamists have a stronger hold on power, the situation is even worse.More violence and oppression against women unfolds with every new political twist and turn in the region. Our rights – the rights of women – have been taken away again and again.

But there is a glimpse of hope in the form of courageous women taking up the fight and speaking out against male chauvinism, misogynistic Islamic ‘values’ and the traditional norms of society that relegate and subjugate women. The battle for equality dignity and liberty is well overdue. In the 21st Century no woman should be treated like an unchained slave – it’s time to turn this world upside down.

The New Statesman

My interviews on Aljazeera English TV about "Honour Killings"

2007-12-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

My interview on Every Women programme on Aljazeera TV-English about the
So called "Honuor Killings"

Part one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yoygzp5gX8&feature=related

This is part two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8aBQvGIdho&feature=related

Middle east: the terrorized half of our society

2007-12-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

By Houzan Mahmoud

The undeclared war on women continues to victimize women worldwide on a daily basis; the Middle East is no exception. Women in our region are amongst the most oppressed and terrorized in the world. The Islamic law upheld in many Middle Eastern countries has turned women into slaves with invisible chains.In Iraqi Kurdistan in April 2007, Dua Khalil Aswad - 17 years old at the time - was brutally stoned to death in front of a crowd of over 1000 cheering men. Her only crime was falling in love with a man from a different religion.

read more:
http://opendemocracy.net/blog/5050/middle_east_the_terrorized_half_of_our_society

My interview on the situation of wome in Iraq

2007-12-04T16:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends
Here is my interview on ( Every Women Aljazeera English TV):

Part one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUkmlMMm8Fw

Part two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=482fzkZSDkE

My interview on Aljazeera English

2007-12-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

Friends
Here is a report by Aljazeera English about the situation of women in Basra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj3W-wHYBKA&feature=related

Human chattel

2007-09-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Human chattel

Houzan Mahmoud

May 2, 2007 11:30 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/houzan_mahmoud/2007/05/human_chattel.html

Once again the murderers of women in Kurdistan in Iraq have committed a crime. This incident, however, was uniquely barbaric. On April 7, 2007, Doa - a sweet, 17-year-old girl - was dragged out in broad daylight and publicly stoned to death. This girl's "crime" was to fall in love with an Arab Muslim man. Doa herself had a background in the Kurdish Yazidi faith. Thus, according to the bigoted values of this belief system, she was not allowed to marry someone from outside her "tribe and religious sect".
Reports suggest that Doa had left her family home three months earlier, to live with the man she loved. She gave up her religion, ethnic identity and even her family to go and share love, passion and her life with another. This was a brave decision. She took it in a heavily religious and patriarchal society that considers women as private possessions and inferior sub-humans.
Men of the Yazidi faith in Bashiqa, near Mosel, organised the handover of Doa from the place where she was secretly living with her boyfriend. They gathered in a crowd of nearly 1,000 men, at the scene of the planned execution.
They dragged her out and tore her skirt in order to shame and humiliate her. Men pushed her to the ground and kicked her in the back and stomach. Others repeatedly battered her head with a large stone. Her face was covered in blood and - despite her state of shock - she cried out for help. Not one of these men had enough humanity to step in and prevent this outrage. They became a pack of angry monsters.
In fact, hundreds of them celebrated. They whistled and some filmed her grisly death, to be uploaded later. She was stoned, kicked and battered until she died in agony. And as her sweet heart - full of life and love - stopped beating, these men rejoiced in the cleansing of the "shame" from the supposed honour of Yazidis.
This "cleansing" was a horrific, inhumane and disgraceful murder. Now Islamist terror groups are cynically using this crime for their own purposes. They have been promising to retaliate and kill Yazidis. The truth is more sordid. Soon after Doa's stoning, 21 Yazidi workers from a textile factory were killed by Islamists on their way back from work - another horror and a cowardly outrage.
Women in Iraq and Kurdistan are victimised even in the way death finds them. Each year, hundreds of women are being murdered deliberately by their husbands, brothers, fathers, or - as in Doa's case - by men from their own faith. Women are less than commodities in Kurdish society. The patriarchal and tribal nature of the authorities in this region has created a climate where violence and degradation against women are almost accepted daily practices. Civil and individual freedoms cannot exist when one's gender means that one has no right to live as an autonomous human being, when one is not a individual in a community, but the chattel of others, a symbol of male "honour", that can be soiled and disposed of, like a rag.
In such a society, sexual purity is a condition for women's survival. Falling in love according to one's own inclinations is forbidden. Although this is not explicitly enshrined in law, the daily incidence of women's suicide, murder and stoning are evidence enough of the true state of affairs. These silenced voices scream out that women find this barbarism intolerable. That they want to break the invisible sanctions on their lives, set themselves free to experience love ... even if only once in their lives.
The stories of thousands of women who have been brutally killed in this region over a period of years are salutary examples. They crossed a line. They dared to express some individual freedom and a measure of choice over their own sexuality. They even had the temerity to choose a sexual partner according to their own desires.
I condemn these brutalities against women and have dedicated my life to fight for their liberation. I feel a great bitterness that many of those young women who wanted to rebel and protest against tribal, religious and patriarchal barriers, are now dead. Doa, and many others who had their lives taken from them, are alive in our hearts.
The only solution is the continuing global fight for our rights and the solidarity of our friends, our brothers and sisters internationally. We have launched an international campaign to ensure the criminals are punished and to outlaw all kinds of violence against women in Kurdistan.
We need international support and your continuing solidarity to win this battle you can sign our petition here.

Please publicise this appeal and forward it far and wide. It needs to reach millions of people so that the world learns that this is what women endure when they chose to be free and live with dignity.

We say no to a medieval Kurdistan

2007-09-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

We say no to a medieval Kurdistan

Houzan Mahmoud

April 13, 2007 8:30 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/houzan_mahmoud/2007/04/the_fight_for_secularism_in_ku_1.html

Around seven months ago, a draft constitution for the Kurdistan region was made available for discussion, suggestions and amendments. Article seven of this proposed constitution states: This constitution stresses the identification of the majority of Kurdish people as Muslims; thus the Islamic sharia law will be considered as one of the major sources for legislation making.
It is clear to the world that in those countries where sharia law is practised - or simply where groups of Islamic militias operate - freedom of expression, speech and association is under threat, if not totally absent. The rights of non-Islamic religious minorities are invariably violated and women suffer disproportionately.
The implementation of sharia law in Kurdistan would be the start of new bloody chapter in the Islamists' history of inhuman violence against the people, of oppression sanctioned by religious law.
In truth, sharia law contains explicit legal prescriptions that justify the violation of women's rights, specifically when it comes to family matters such as inheritance, marriage, divorce and custody of children.
Violent acts against women are already practised in Kurdistan. For decades, Kurdish women have been denied rights and have been oppressed due to patriarchal and religious cultures. Women in Kurdistan are still caught between the "values" of Islamic teaching and the desire for liberation. Thousands of women have been murdered in so-called honour killings, and the slaughter goes on to this day.
Women "self-burning", being forced into marriage and being denied the right to choose a partner are widespread. According to the Kurdistan human rights ministry, more than 533 women are reported to have committed suicide over the past year alone.
Historically, women played an important role in Kurdistan in all political, social and economic spheres, and still do so today. However, this did not win them civil and individual freedoms, owing to the dominant culture of religious patriarchy. A male relative is still entitled to make the decisions for "his" women, and impose his will upon them.
Just recently Iraq's central government passed a law denying women the right to apply for passports without the consent of a male relative. This has all the appearance of treating women as somehow inferiors, or even minors, who need to be "looked after" by "responsible" males.
Here and now in Kurdistan we are facing the forced Islamisation of people's lives. This draconian draft proposed constitution has prompted an international response. Along with five others, I launched a campaign to bring together all those who believe in secularism, and who therefore demand the removal of Article seven, to fight this reactionary clause, which would allow the Islamists to use official state law to justify their crimes against the women of Kurdistan.
Our campaign created a huge and unprecedented debate at the very heart of our society, a debate that has found expression in the Kurdish parliament. We gathered many signatures and support letters from political parties, civil society organisations and women's organisations in Kurdistan and worldwide.
I travelled back to Kurdistan in order to meet with two other members of our campaign, Sozan Shehab, member of the Kurdistan parliament, and Stivan Shamzinani, a journalist, to present our petition calling for removal of article seven to the Kurdistan parliament.
We met the committee responsible for the writing of the constitution and we held a press conference in the parliament buildings. Our campaign and our unequivocal demand for secularism became big news in Kurdistan and we were featured in the national papers and on TV channels, radio and websites.
The media attention given to our campaign panicked the Islamists, and just few days after our visit to parliament they launched a counter-campaign. They have announced their intention to "campaign to retain the Islamic identity of the Kurdish people". They have started to propagate the nonsense claim, via their various media outlets, that we want to impose secularism and forcibly deny people any right to express their identity as Muslims. Of course, this is simply another cowardly lie from a group of reactionaries who have been put on the back foot by our campaign's successes.
The demand for secularism - and a movement that fights for it as a cause - is now a reality in Kurdistan. It has divided the society between two poles: those who want a secular society with space and freedom accorded to all religions and schools of thought, and those who have a programme of the imposition of political Islam on every aspect of our lives.
Our campaign for the removal article seven has opened a new chapter in the fight for secularism and against the medievalism and obscurantism of sharia law.
This struggle marks a particularly bright period in Kurdistan's contemporary history. It is an historic movement for human dignity, for freedom of religions and other forms of thought, for women's equality and human rights.
It is worth mentioning that without international support and solidarity, our campaign would simply not have been as successful as it has. Therefore, I call on all freedom-loving people worldwide to give consistent and unconditional support to important fights of this kind.
Our unity and worldwide solidarity does make a huge difference. It always leaves an impact. My thanks to all who stood with us in our struggle. We will continue with our fight until we win and push sharia law back to where it belongs - in the dark ages.

It's not a matter of choice

2007-09-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's not a matter of choice

Houzan Mahmoud

October 7, 2006 10:30 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/houzan_mahmoud/2006/10/wearing_the_veil_has_never_bee.html

The veil is not merely a piece of "cloth", but a sign of the oppression of women, control over their sexuality, submissiveness to the will of God or a man. The veil is a banner of political Islam used, to segregate women born by historical accident in the so-called "Islamic World" from other women in the rest of the world.
I could never have imagined having anything in common with Jack Straw, but I find myself in agreement with him about how it feels talking to a woman covered up in hijab or the "niqab" that covers women fully.
However, I think he has discovered this rather late; in fact, the whole British government is late in drawing attention to this growing phenomenon. Women covering up their entire bodies, young boys becoming suicide bombers and the ever growing demands of religious organisations in the UK to implement Islamic sharia law when it comes to "Muslim family affairs".
Jack Straw's government has always been proud of its "multicultural society", in which all kinds of backward and anti-human cultures are respected and given space by the state. Women from an Islamic background will be among the most oppressed.
Celebrating "different cultures" the existence of mosques and religious schools is a place for brainwashing the young people with Islamic values which can only produce political Islamists.
A ghettoised lifestyle, isolated communities, lack of integration and institutionalised racism are all part and parcel of this growing number of brain-washed young generation of girls and boys defining themselves by their religious identity.
Political Islamists are seeking to unify youth from a variety of backgrounds around the project of a "jihad" under which the whole world will be dominated and ruled according to the "ethics" of Sharia law.
More than ever I hear many women claiming that wearing the veil, burqa or niqab is their own choice. I totally reject this view. Not wearing the veil can create harsh problems for women - if it doesn't cost them their life, as in Iraq, it can cost them long-term isolation from their community, with those considered "loose women" having less chance of getting a "decent marriage", and less chance of going out and entering education. When a family sees this as a threat to their "honour", it can have disastrous consequences. The policies of cultural relativism have claimed the lives of many women in the UK, with their killers not properly brought to justice because "culture" and "religion" are taken into account by the courts. Women's rights are universal. A criminal must be sentenced according to the law, not on religious and cultural grounds.
Imagine if a girl has been told to wear the veil from as early as four or five years old, where is the choice in this? If you are born and open your eyes in an environment that imposes Islamic values, norms and lifestyles, alienated from the rest of society, how easy is it to make another choice? I understand why girls would veil, but I cannot see it as anything other than a solitary confinement prison.
The government's endless funding to promote religious activities and run religious schools must be ended. We need a secular education system: universal standards must be applied to all schools and educational institutions. I want my daughter to learn about the wealth of human art, literature, music and science, not religion and the joys of "different religious cultures". Children know no colour, race or religious segregation; they are all friends and part of the same community - until parents impose their beliefs on them.
The veil should be banned for under-aged girls and children must be protected from abusive - yes, that is right, abusive - parents who seek to impose their religion on them.
Having a society free from politicised religion is the precondition for women's freedom and progress. In the west where religion has been pushed back and separated from the state, we see women are more free and equal to men as compared to the countries where Islam is dominant.
In Iraq we have witnessed widespread terror and violence against women who refuse to wear the veil. In Iraq the veil is being imposed at gunpoint - the only choice women are offered is to obey.
In Iran women are lashed or sometimes stoned to death for expressing their simple right to exercise human desires. The Islamic Republic has been repressing women for almost three decades now. Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia: we witness how women's oppression and terror against women is top priority for every Islamic regime, whatever its stripe.
Therefore: the veil is not merely a piece of cloth, but a political statement, the banner of a political movement, political Islam, in the Middle East, Europe and worldwide. We must take a firm stand against this by demanding secular laws, secular education and equality for all.
Religion must be privatised! Religion is a personal matter and should not be brought into everyday life. Criticising all religions is our right; freedom of expression should not be compromised.

Women, Gays & Secularism in Post-War Iraq

2006-05-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

International Day against Homophobia 2006

Women, Gays & Secularism in Post-War Iraq

Solidarity with Iraqi gays, feminists, democrats and socialists

Public meeting - Panel discussion, with Qs

Friday 19 May 20067 - 9 pm Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq, London WC1 (Nearest tube Holborn) All Welcome

Panellists include:
Ali Hili of the Iraqi LGBT- UK group,

Houzan Mahmoud: of the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq

Peter Tatchell: of OutRage! This event is a part of the International Day of Action AgainstHomophobia programme organised by GALHA, with the support of OutRage! and other LGBT groups.

Women, the Iraqi Constitution & the Politics of Empire

2006-05-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

Women, the Iraqi Constitution & the Politics of Empire

A seminar organised by the Xenos Research Group, Department of Sociology

4.00pm – 6.00pm, Wednesday 17 May 2006
Room 141, Main Building,
Goldsmiths College, Lewisham Way, London SE14 6NW

Among the legal and political disputes surrounding the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq - disputes concerning among other things US imperialism and UK involvement, the nature of the military resistance, and the importance of oil - comparatively little attention has been paid to the impact of the war and its aftermath on Iraqi society, and in particular on women. This workshop aims to redress this neglect and to take the situation of women in Iraq as a focus in its own right, as well as a prism through which to reconsider debates around the war. In particular, we wish to consider the manner in which the social and political space for women has been violently curtailed both by a 'democratic' constitution that defines their civil status in patriarchal and ethno-religious terms, and by an ongoing military conflict that functions as a vehicle for extreme forms of misogyny and oppression.

SPEAKERS

Iraqi Women's Struggle Against the Occupation and Political Islam
Houzan Mahmoud, Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq

Civility and Solidarity
Alejandro Colás, School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London

If you wish to attend please contact Alberto Toscano: a.toscano@gold.ac.uk

Aljazira.net interview with Yanar Mohammed and Houzan Mahmoud about the situation of women in Iraq

2006-04-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

Iraqi women much worse off under occupation

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10980

4/13/2006 8:48:00 PM GMT

Iraqi women were treated far better during the Saddam Hussein era, and their rights were much more respected, local rights NGOs concluded after an extensive survey in Iraq.
"We interviewed women in the country and met with local NGOs dealing with gender issues to develop this survey, which asked questions about the quality of women's life and respect for their rights," said Senar Muhammad, president of Baghdad-based NGO Woman Freedom Organization, a sister organization of MADRE, an international women’s rights group. "The results show that women are less respected now than they were under the previous regime, while their freedom has been curtailed."
According to the survey, women’s basic rights under Saddam's regime were respected and guaranteed in the constitution, with women often occupying top government posts. But now, although women’s rights are still enshrined in the national constitution, they complain that they lost almost all of their rights. "Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, women were free to go to schools, universities and work, and to perform other duties,” Senar said. “Now, due to security reasons and repression by the government, they're being forced to stay in their homes."
The new Iraqi constitution, which was written under the U.S. government's supervision, is based on the Islamic Sharia law, which, according to Senar, has been misinterpreted by some elements within the government. This resulted in the frequent denial of women’s right, especially in matters related to divorce, she said.
Women make up about 60 percent of the total Iraqi population. Despite a 25 percent representative presence in parliament, they are seldom entrusted with senior government positions, while their contribution to political debate is rarely taken seriously. Women’s rights group also say that many members of the new government have a conservative view regarding the role of women. "When we tell the government we need more representation in parliament, they respond by telling us that, if well-qualified women appear one day, they won't be turned down," said Senar. "Then they laugh at us."
Government officials deny the charges, claiming that women’s political views are respected and that they are better represented in the new government than under Saddam regime. "They occupy important positions in our ministries, positions which Saddam never gave them. But they have to understand that some posts, such as the presidential one, are difficult for women because of security problems, said government spokesperson Laith Kubba.
But many female activists disagree, saying that the presence of a few women in some decision-making positions shouldn’t mislead people. "The U.S. administration has handpicked a few women and imposed them on people in the so-called parliament," said Houzan Mahmoud from the Organization of Women’s Freedom. "These women are very unknown to Iraqi women. Most of them belong to the reactionary, right-wing parties in power and they follow their agenda, which is discriminatory against women."
Houzan also noted that the position of women vary within Iraq. "In the Kurdish part, the situation of women is slightly better because Iraqi Kurdistan was not part of the U.S. military attacks in 2003. However, the attitude toward women is not progressive there." But the south is directly under daily military occupation, she said. "Also, the so-called parliament is divided on the bases of religious sects and ethnic backgrounds,” she Houzan added.
The NGOs survey also found out that women’s unemployment and poverty levels have increased dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion. "Female unemployment is now twice as high as that for males, while female poverty has also increased," said Iman Saeed, spokesperson for another women's NGO that helped conduct the survey. "In addition, the number of widows – already high as a result of the Iran-Iraq war [in the 1980s] – has increased since the U.S. invasion, making the situation worse."
The authors of the survey urged the United States and international organizations to pressure the Iraqi government to give some top government positions to women. "The current leaders don't think of us as potential presidents or vice-presidents, arguing that women can't hold such important posts," said Shams Yehia, a professor at Baghdad University who helped conduct the survey. "We appeal to all bodies to force the Iraqi government to give us our rights back."
The NGOs are also calling for the deployment of a UN-led peacekeeping force in Iraq and an immediate end to the U.S. occupation. As the crisis in the war-torn country intensifies, female activists say women and their families are in urgent need for security, functional government and the provision of basic services within a human rights framework.
Over the three years of occupation, the situation is getting more dangerous and bleak with the presence of the occupation forces, and “the more violence and terrorism is in function in Iraq, the more women will fall victims of such climate," said Houzan. “The rape, abduction, abuse in prisons by prison guards, and killing of women is widespread… The lack of security and proper protection for women is a major issue and no one, neither the occupying forces nor the local police of the puppet regime, is doing anything about it."Women would first like to see "an end to the military occupation which has created chaos and destruction of Iraqi society and also resulted in the daily mass killing of ordinary Iraqis,” Houzan said. Women particularly would "want to see security restored so at least they can go out freely without being attacked, kidnapped, or having acid thrown on their face…. In addition, women want equality, freedom, and their rights to be recognized in the constitution, and above all to be treated as equal human beings."

My Article which was published in the Tribune on the 3rd anniversary of Iraq war

2006-04-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Iraqis still live with “shock and awe”

On the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Houzan Mahmoud says that women in the country are bearing the brunt as things go from bad to worse.

This article is published by the Tribune on 31 March 2006

On March 20, the Iraqi people have reached the dismal milestone of the third-year point since the United State-led invasion of Iraq. From the shock and awe of the aerial bombardment of 20 March 2003, they are now contemplating a fourth year of continuing terrorism, extreme insecurity, destruction, and the daily violation of women’s rights.

As we know, war in Iraq was sold to the world as a mission to bring about an end to “terrorism”, to plant the seed of “democracy” in this part of the middle east, and to free Iraqis from Saddam’s country-wide torture chamber. And as we equally now know, this has been far from the outcome, with Abu Ghraib’s ghastly porno-torture images, mass imprisonments and the daily bombing and shooting outrages.

Meanwhile, a parliament headed by a Shia majority are currently intent on ruling Iraq according to a version of Islamic law, or Sharia. Apart from the horrors of growing Shia–Sunni sectarianism, a major concern is the effect this is having on women’s rights in Iraq.

Resurgent Islamists are pushing Iraqi women back into a corner. Having enjoyed greater rights compared to women in the region for years, Iraqi women are now being stripped of even their basic rights. The ability to choose their own clothes, to be able to love or marry whom they want to. Life’s simple things are all now under heavy threat.

It has been calculated that in the last three years in excess of 2,000 women and girls in Iraq have been subject to kidnap, rape or even death on the grounds of preserving so-called ‘family honour’. The forced veiling of women has made a comeback. Women are now genuinely frightened of punishment from violent “moral” groups in the streets.

And it gets worse. Representatives of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq recently discovered a jail in al-Kazemiah district of Baghdad holding over 200 women (and some children) in appalling conditions. They were held by the Shia-dominated authorities, some for supposed involvement with the insurgency, some for other reasons. Many had been tortured or raped. I have the names of several victims (which cannot be revealed for reason of safety) and I have passed them to Amnesty International.

Between the roadside car bombs, hostage-taking and sporadic US “offensives”, we don’t hear much of the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Perhaps because it is not a happy subject. Children are queuing up at hospitals in various cities to sell their blood to raise money to survive. Drug abuse is widespread and many orphans are dependent. Child prostitution is now rife. One untold story is the growing gangsterism surrounding prostitution in general - countless women are being forced into selling their bodies. The lucky ones are fleeing the country in large numbers - chiefly to Jordan and Syria.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster. I hold absolutely no brief for Saddam Hussein, whose cruelty was well-known. His regime was often vicious. I am one of its victims and I personally witnessed much brutality under his rule. But the subjugation of women was never a Ba’athist goal. Instead women are now caught between a pincer movement of a heavy-handed (and despised) occupation that cares little for women’s rights in Iraq, and an increasingly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection that aims to imprison women.

But there is still hope. Ask most Iraqis (the vast majority) and they will tell you that the exit of the Multinational Force is an absolutely essential if violence is ever to end in Iraq. And women’s rights need to be brought right up the political agenda. For example, the present Iraqi administration has provided absolutely no financial support for women’s refuges in Iraq. Instead my own organisation provides safe houses and safe rooms in Baghdad and Kirkuk. But we do this on a shoestring, dependent on support from women’s groups in the US and the Netherlands.

But there are signs that people in Iraq are determined to resist the violence of the insurgents, the occupying powers and the Islamists. In a number of districts of Baghdad, for example, committees formed by a new non-religious grouping called the Iraq Freedom Congress have recently formed to defend people’s safety. In Alexandria, Mahmoodya and Husseinya districts of the capital people do simple ‘community watch’ things like warn neighbours of possible impending attacks. It is a basic, homespun activity taking place in the security vacuum enveloping Iraq, but it works.

It is these efforts in Iraq that need international backing, and not divisive religious parties. The US/UK governments’ claim that they have “freed” Iraq has been thoroughly exposed as a lie. Three years on it’s time to start supporting the people of Iraq and their efforts to turn the corner on sectarianism and war.

Houzan Mahmoud is an Iraqi who lives in the UK. She is the UK head of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and a member of the central council of the Iraq Freedom Congress

Photos of my speaking tour in USA and Canada 18-26 March 2006

2006-04-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Investigating women and war

2006-04-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

March 30, 2006

The role of women as leaders, victims and helpers in the Iraq war drew strong debate at a CUNY Queens College conference held to commemorate Women's History Month.

http://www.nysut.org/newyorkteacher/2005-2006/060330he_women.html

This is my interview which was conducted by Bill Weinberg

2006-04-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW

The Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Civil Resistance

by Bill Weinberg

Houzan Mahmoud is a co-founder of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC), a new initiative to build a democratic, secular and progressive alternative to both the US occupation and political Islam in Iraq. Mahmoud, who fled Iraq in 1996 and is currently studying at the Univearsity of London, is also a co-founder of the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition and editor-in-chief of Equal Rights Now, paper of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). A key representative abroad of the Iraqi civil resistance, she spoke in New York City on March 21 at a talk sponsored by the New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (The New SPACE). Later that night, she spoke with WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg on WBAI Radio.
BW: Welcome aboard, Houzan Mahmoud, of the Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. You were just speaking on the Lower East Side this evening and the night before at Queens College, to raise awareness in this country about the existence of a civil, secular resistance movement in Iraq—which shamefully, many people know nothing about, even people who are supposedly progressives and committed to the anti-war movement.
HM: Yeah, that's very true, unfortunately. So thank you very much for this opportunity, for me to be able to address the listeners about the resistance and the work we are doing to end the occupation.

To read all please press this link: http://www.ww4report.com/node/1798

2006-03-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

Untold stories of the rape scandal in Abo-Gharib prison in Iraq

2006-03-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

This is an article on rape of Iraqi women.

Written on 03/06/2004

Untold stories of the rape scandal in Abo-Gharib prison in Iraq

By Houzan Mahmoud and Nadia Mahmood

Many Iraqis believe that sexual abuse of women in Abo-Gharib prison has been rampant.
There have been a lot of photos and talk about women being raped by coalition soldiers. Sometimes the US/UK authorities claimed that these were fake photos, but the live evidence of their crimes is now emerging.
Recently the news from women prisoners who have been released from jail and have either committed suicide or were killed by their own relatives have shocked us. Rape is considered as a shame on “family’s honour”. These women have been impregnated in prison after been raped by US soldiers.
The voluntarily killing of women after their release informs us that there is no space for a raped women in a society that is been destroyed. The most backward and inhumane values once again are reborn with the emergence of the occupation, which has provided the platform for the Islamists to inflict and impose the most misogynist ideas and norms on people. They look at rape as a “shame” not only on family “honour” but on the nation’s honour too. So they have yet another excuse to exploit the situation and yet carry out much more terrorism, and locate big sums of money to award those who can kidnap US and the allied women soldiers so they can take revenge.
USA’s and Islamist’s methods are both sadistic, oppressive and are both the two sides of one coin, both of them are crimes against women and they should be stopped.
These raped women did not want to live the resentful life in social exclusion and denial even by their own closest relatives in a society that been driven back into the dark ages by the forces of political Islam, and US occupation.
These women appear to have been arrested - not because of any crimes they have committed, but purely because of whom they are married to, and their impending intelligence value. US officials have previously acknowledged that they detain Iraqi women in the hope of convincing male relatives to provide information, and confess; when US soldiers raid a house and fail to find a male suspect, they will often take away his wife, sister or daughter instead.
This is exactly the same method that was used during Saddam’s regime and is been repeated now by different totalitarian forces. On invading Iraq, George W, Bush said now people in Iraq will be free from Saddam’s prison, torture and persecution, What has been happening in the prisons of Iraq is again showing the hypocrisy of the US government and its false and inhumane justification for occupying Iraq, and that actually they have just the same methods as the oppressive regime of Ba’ath and are inflicting the same rules and persecution on the Iraqi masses.
This shows us that actually abuse; rape and violent attitudes have always been part of the culture of the imperialist army whenever they have been invading any country.
Hearing about cases of women been raped by soldiers has shocked us, and it is a matter of fact that the occupation has been a reason for the enslavement of women in Iraq and the unleashing of a host of reactionary norms and values.
As a result, female prisoners face a solemn future after their released: rejection, ostracism or killing by committing suicide or killings by member of family in order to clear the “shame” that has been brought to the family’s “honour”.
In societies that still consider woman the honour of family and nation, rape in itself represents a death sentence for women.
What is happening to women in Iraq is unacceptable and is to be condemned. The US officials must be brought to justice for their crimes against women and what they have been doing to women in Iraq. Any women who are arrested, for whatever reason, should be treated with dignity and have all rights to defend herself. These women deserve all kinds of protection, physical and psychological treatment. The Iraqi police of the Puppet Government and the US forces should be held responsible for these crimes, these sadistic crimes against women in Iraq.

The killing of women by Islamic groups in Iraq continues unabated

2006-03-30T01:52:00.000-08:00

This is my article which I wrote in 2004 and still the situation of women is not
better under the US occupation.

it was first published in Equal Rights Now and then on the website of a women's organisation in US called Awakened women:
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/mahmoud_islamic.htm

By Houzan Mahmoud

October 2004

The suffering of women in Iraq has intensified considerably at the hands of the Islamic groups since the start of war and the occupation of Iraq. These atrocities take place before the eyes of the occupying forces and without ever being condemned by them. The treatment of women by occupying forces themselves is not much better than that of the Islamic groups. The treatment of women in their custody which has included harassment, torture, rape as well as degrading attitudes towards women in general has contributed to an atmosphere of fear and haplessness for women.
The Islamic groups resort to every possible method to terrorize Iraqi women; by inflaming the sense of insecurity, kidnapping and killing and by terrorizing the whole society they pursue their aim of forcing women out of social life and into the confines of homes. While opposing the occupying forces the main trust of the Islamic group's violence is aimed at women. Fighting the occupying forces has served as a pretext to direct the brunt of their attacks against. Separated, isolated, excluded and enslaved women is the foundation for an Islamic society. Preventing women from work and education, two important elements of a woman's independence are also being targeted.
In the last three months 8 women have been killed in the city of Mousel alone by Islamic terror groups. These women have been killed because Islamic gangsters do not want women to go to work, terrorizing them to stay at home, wear veils, remain segregated from men, and to prevent them from working in public. The crimes of these women were that they did not observe the Quranic rules. They paid for it with their lives. The wrath of the Islamists has also been targeted against the foreign nationals, including women, in Iraq. Simona Torretta, the head of the Baghdad office, and Simona Pari, both 29, and the two Iraqis who were identified as Raad Ali Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam - who were working for an agency called "A bridge to Baghdad" in Iraq - were the victims of the kidnappers. Targeting women for their political gains is a desperate act by the Islamists. However, such acts have exposed the real characters of these criminals to the Iraqi people.
The Islamic groups are terrorizing Iraqi society to impose their dark rules. They target civilians to advance their inhumane agenda. We have seen how they kidnap workers who have been forced to migrate to Iraq in the hope of earning a living to feed their families. The killing of the 12 workers from Nepal is yet another example.
The recent kidnapping of the two journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, working for Radio France-Internationale and Le Figaro, shows the ultimate bankruptcy of Political Islam, demanding the French government lift the ban on veil at France's schools. These are some examples amongst many, and they are in facts demonstrating how remote these Islamic gangsters are from the demands, aspirations and desires of modern human beings. The veil, polygamous marriages for men and stoning of women are to become the norms of the society. But the question is that if these were to become the norms of any society, would we really call it a "human society"? Or the brutal rules of the jungle. In order to end all these violations of women's rights in Iraq by Islamists we have to be united and confront political Islam wherever it starts to threaten our liberties.

A statement by OWFI-abroad representative on 8 March international women's day

2006-03-30T01:19:00.000-08:00

A statement by organization of Women’s freedom in Iraq – abroad representative on International Women’s Day (8 March)

Make it a day to say No! To Islamic Sharia law in Iraq!
For secularism, equality and freedom!

The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) sends its greetings for this historic day to women activists all over the world. For centuries women have been struggling for their rights and for equality and liberation in all parts of the world. Major changes have been won, but nowhere do we have real equality, and in many parts of the world the oppression and exploitation of women are still striking. Iraq is one of those places.

The US-UK occupation has pushed Iraqi society back into a medieval world in which “honour killings”, beheadings, forced veiling and seclusion and sexual servitude are now a part of everyday life.

Now the reactionary, tribalist and sectarian government the US has installed in Iraq wants to go further by institutionalizing the oppression of Iraqi women. The outcome of a war and occupation which was sold to the world as bringing “liberation” and “democracy” has been a hand-picked group of political hacks and tribal elder imposed on Iraqi society through a pseudo-parliament and a constitution that makes women second class citizens.

For the last three years Iraqi women have stood up against not only the occupation but against political Islamist groups who are fighting to establish an Iranian or Saudi Arabian-type regime of gender apartheid, with all marital and family matters regulated by Islamic Sharia law.
OWFI is fighting to mobilize Iraqi women and their supporters across the world against the occupation and Islamisation of Iraq. The USA and its allies claim that in facilitating our subjugation they are respecting “Islamic culture” and “Arab culture”.

We say that this viewpoint, permanently relegating people in the so-called Muslim world to barbarism, borders on racism. We oppose politicized religion and demand a secular and egalitarian constitution for Iraq!

They want to divide people along lines of religion, ethnicity and gender. We are demanding equality for all Iraqis regardless of their origin! Women in Iraq need your support more than ever. OWFI has been able to maintain and continue its work because of international support and solidarity, because of solidarity from women’s, progressive and workers’ organizations all over the world helping us to stand firm for our lives and our liberties.
We call upon you to join with us this International Women’s Day (8 March) to say No to religious law in Iraq and yes to equality and freedom.

No to Islamic Sharia Law in Iraq!
Long Live International Women’s Day! Long live freedom, equality, and secularism!

Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- Representative abroad
February 2006

For further information please contact Houzan Mahmoud:
houzan73@yahoo.co.uk
Tel: +44 79 56 88 3001
www.equalityiniraq.com

Call from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- abroad representative

2006-03-30T01:18:00.000-08:00

Call from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq- abroad representative

To make International Women’s Day on 8 March a day of saying No to Islamic Sharia law in Iraq

To all women’s, progressive, secularist and labour movement organizations

Iraqi women are facing a historic threat. The US/UK occupation has strengthened political Islamist groups, who now constitute a majority in the US-installed parliament and have a dominant position in the new constitution based on ethnic division and the principles of Islamic Sharia law. Iraq’s personal status law will now be abolished and all marital and family matters will be conducted on the basis of Sharia and other forms of religious-tribal law. This means the enslavement of Iraqi women under a system of laws developed hundreds of years ago in the dark ages. Iraqi women will not accept their subjugation. We will stand firm against both the occupation and political Islam in Iraq.

To do this we need your solidarity - please support us in our struggle.

Please sign the following statement and send it back to us:

"The war and the occupation of Iraq by the US and UK have opened the way for reactionary forces in Iraqi society to impose a constitution based on Islamic Sharia and other forms of religious-tribal law. We the undersigned organizations and individuals condemn the introduction of religious law. We demand freedom and equality for Iraqi women and support their Struggle for a democratic, secular and egalitarian constitution."

For further information please contact Houzan Mahmoud:
houzan73@yahoo.co.uk
Tel: +44 79 56 88 3001
www.equalityiniraq.com

Campaign to defend the life and safety of Marywan Halabjaye

2006-03-30T01:12:00.000-08:00

please sign the petition by clicking on to this link in support of a Kurdish secular pro women writer:

http://www.petitiononline.com/01021970/petition.html

To: Kurdish Authorities

Campaign to defend the life and safety of Marywan Halabjaye

Defend this secular writer against the threats of Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan! Marywan Halabjaye is secular Kurdish write who recently published a Book entitled “Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam”. In this book he discussed the status of women in Islam and according to the text of the Quran. The book has received an overwhelming response from the secular, progressive masses of Kurdistan. Three of Kurdistan’s Islamic parties, the United Islamic Party, the Islamic League and the Islamic Movement, have started to threaten Marywan Halabjaye and mobilise the Kurdish media against him and his book. They have filed a complaint against the writer in a Sulaymania court and are using mosques in many towns and villages to provoke people against him. This is part of the ongoing drive of political Islam to attack Freedom of expression across the world and silence the voices of those who are critical of the treatment of women in Islam. It is our task to defend the right of secular, progressive and enlightened writers and thinkers to express their ideas and thoughts without fear or intimidation. We the undersigned condemn the reactionary attack on Marywan Halabjaee and secularism in Kurdistan and argue strongly for the Kurdish authorities to:

- Provide unconditional protection for Marywan and his family, who are now in hiding. - Guarantee protection of freedom of thought, expression and Association in Kurdistan.

Houzan Mahmoud Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq - UK Branch 09/02/2006

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

My interview with Inter Press Service News Agency

2006-03-30T00:51:00.000-08:00

Dear reader bellow is my interview with IPS News Agency

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32693

IRAQ:Saddam Better for Women

Sanjay Suri LONDON, Mar 29 (IPS) -

Women were far better off under former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein, a women's group has found after an extensive survey in Iraq. ''Under the previous dictator regime, the basic rights for women were enshrined in the constitution,'' Houzan Mahmoud from the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq told IPS in an interview. The group is a sister organization of MADRE, an international women's rights group. Under Saddam, she said, ''women could go out to work, university and get married or divorced in civil courts. But at the moment women have lost almost all their rights and are being pushed back into the corner of their house.'' The recent constitution which was written under the U.S. government's supervision is ''very backward and anti-women,'' Mahmoud said. ''They make Islam the source for law making, and the main official religion of the country. This in itself means Islamic Sharia law and according to this women will be considered second-class citizens and will have no power in deciding over their lives.'' The whole of Iraqi society has been subjected to ''chaos and brutalisation,'' she said. ''Security is absent, all basic services, and above all the protection for women's rights is in no way on the agenda of any of the political parties who have been hand-picked by the U.S. administration in the installed so-called parliament.'' MADRE is calling for the deployment of a United Nations-led peacekeeping force and an immediate end to the U.S. occupation. As the crisis in Iraq intensifies, the group says women and their families in Iraq face an urgent need for security, functional government, and the provision of basic services within a human rights framework. Over three years of occupation, the situation is becoming more dangerous and bleak with the presence of the occupying forces, and ''the more violence and terrorism is in function in Iraq the more women will fall victims of such climate,'' she said. ''The rape, abduction, abuse in prisons by prison guards, and killing of women is widespread,'' she said. ''The lack of security and proper protection for women is a major issue and no one, neither the occupying forces nor the local police of the puppet regime. is doing anything about it.'' But the position of women does vary within Iraq, she said. ''In the Kurdish part the situation of women is slightly better because Iraqi Kurdistan was out of the hands of the Ba'ath regime from 1991, so it was not part of the U.S. military attacks in 2003. But the attitude towards women is not progressive there.'' Beyond any dangers from the political situation, ''a lot of so- called 'honour killings' are still taking place, and the Kurdish authorities are not doing much to prevent it from happening.'' But the south is directly under daily military occupation ''and the presence of various Islamic armed militias who are terrorising women has made their situation worse,'' Mahmoud said. ''Also, the so-called parliament is divided on the bases of religious sects and ethnic backgrounds, so the majority of Shiittes who are in power are institutionalising women's oppression and are systematically forcing Islamification on Iraq.'' Women are 60 percent of the population of Iraq but they are not being consulted on any political issues and are being deprived of this right, she said. The presence of a few women should not mislead people on the situation of women, she said. ''The U.S. administration has handpicked a few women and imposed them on people in the so-called parliament,'' she said. ''These women are very unknown to Iraqi women. Most of them belong to the reactionary right wing parties in power and they follow their agenda, which is discriminatory against women.'' Women would first like to see ''an end to the military occupation which has created chaos and destruction of Iraqi society and also resulted in the daily mass killing of ordinary Iraqis.'' Women particularly would ''want to see security restored so at least they can go out freely without being attacked, kidnapped or having acid thrown on their face,'' Mahmoud said. ''In addition, women want equality, freedom and their rights to be recognised in the constitution, and above all to be treated as equal human beings.

'' (END/2006)
Send your comments to the editor

Houzan Mahmoud: Iraq must reject a constitution that enslaves women

2006-03-30T00:39:00.001-08:00

Houzan Mahmoud: Iraq must reject a constitution that enslaves women

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article305879.ece

Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing, among other weapons, acid attacks

Published: 15 August 2005

Today is the deadline for Iraq's ruling political classes to agree a brand new "constitution" for the country - but don't be deceived, this is likely to be nothing but another false dawn for Iraq's women. Much of the debate over the constitution's main articles has centred on the degree to which Islam will be the source for future laws in Iraq. This spells disaster for Iraq's women, and represents a cave-in to the terrorist Islamist groups who are "committing crimes against humanity" on an almost daily basis, in the words of Amnesty International.
The constitution's drafting committee, like Iraq's legislative assembly, is dominated by religious, ethnic and tribal figures. Committee members have been pushing for Islamic Sharia law to be the sole source of the constitution and there is strong resistance to the incorporation of any human rights standards that are seen as usurping Islamic legal supremacy.
By all accounts, the finished document is going to reflect the growing forced Islamisization of Iraqi life, as the poison of Islamic groups spreads into the mainstream. Supposedly moderate politicians are disastrously disinclined to challenge the increasingly powerful Islamist factions that now hold sway in almost every quarter of post-occupation Iraq.
Whether Sunni or Shia; in the current government or in opposition; affiliated directly to al-Qa'ida or to the Jordanian fanatic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or are former Baathists who "freelance" as so-called "resistance fighters", what unites Iraq's armed Islamists is a fierce hatred of women that rivals their hatred for US and British "invaders", foreign "infidels" and other assorted enemies.
Across the country, a steady clampdown on women's rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks.
My women's rights group, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, has been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against Islamists who literally tore the women's clothes off their bodies. Sadr's men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that their parents would receive the photos if they didn't refrain in future from "immoral" behaviour.
More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed - notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women's faces and on to their uncovered legs.
So-called "honour killings" are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn't go anywhere without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.
Islamist repression against women is a campaign of "moral" terror. Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.
This is a recipe for future gender enslavement, second-class citizenship and ignorance. Thousands of female university students have now given up their studies to protect themselves against Islamist threats.
Islamist hostility is contagious and echoed daily in high-level political debate. Currently there is a drive over the "right" of men to have four wives, to make divorce a male preserve and for custody of children to be given to men only. Even women on Iraq's National Assembly - the country's parliament - have been calling for resolutions to allow for the beating of women by their guardians (males relatives, such as husbands or fathers).
This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and influence in Iraq and in the region.
The January so-called election and today's constitution are all part of the same procedure, which is to legitimate the current installed government in Iraq. It is only in an atmosphere of occupation and terror, they can push their reactionary ideas forward.
The constitution is set to add to a growing fearfulness among Iraqi women, as their rights are passed over or signed away to Islamists hostile to Iraq's entire female population. Women in Iraq face being dragged back into the dark ages. We need to stop this tragedy before it's too late. A constitution based on enslaving women, religious sectarianism, and tribalism must be rejected.
The writer is the UK Head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq and co-founder of the Iraq Freedom Congress
houzan73@ yahoo.co.uk
Today is the deadline for Iraq's ruling political classes to agree a brand new "constitution" for the country - but don't be deceived, this is likely to be nothing but another false dawn for Iraq's women. Much of the debate over the constitution's main articles has centred on the degree to which Islam will be the source for future laws in Iraq. This spells disaster for Iraq's women, and represents a cave-in to the terrorist Islamist groups who are "committing crimes against humanity" on an almost daily basis, in the words of Amnesty International.
The constitution's drafting committee, like Iraq's legislative assembly, is dominated by religious, ethnic and tribal figures. Committee members have been pushing for Islamic Sharia law to be the sole source of the constitution and there is strong resistance to the incorporation of any human rights standards that are seen as usurping Islamic legal supremacy.
By all accounts, the finished document is going to reflect the growing forced Islamisization of Iraqi life, as the poison of Islamic groups spreads into the mainstream. Supposedly moderate politicians are disastrously disinclined to challenge the increasingly powerful Islamist factions that now hold sway in almost every quarter of post-occupation Iraq.
Whether Sunni or Shia; in the current government or in opposition; affiliated directly to al-Qa'ida or to the Jordanian fanatic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or are former Baathists who "freelance" as so-called "resistance fighters", what unites Iraq's armed Islamists is a fierce hatred of women that rivals their hatred for US and British "invaders", foreign "infidels" and other assorted enemies.
Across the country, a steady clampdown on women's rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks.
My women's rights group, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, has been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against Islamists who literally tore the women's clothes off their bodies. Sadr's men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that their parents would receive the photos if they didn't refrain in future from "immoral" behaviour.
More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed - notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women's faces and on to their uncovered legs.
So-called "honour killings" are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn't go anywhere without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.
Islamist repression against women is a campaign of "moral" terror. Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.
This is a recipe for future gender enslavement, second-class citizenship and ignorance. Thousands of female university students have now given up their studies to protect themselves against Islamist threats.
Islamist hostility is contagious and echoed daily in high-level political debate. Currently there is a drive over the "right" of men to have four wives, to make divorce a male preserve and for custody of children to be given to men only. Even women on Iraq's National Assembly - the country's parliament - have been calling for resolutions to allow for the beating of women by their guardians (males relatives, such as husbands or fathers).
This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and influence in Iraq and in the region.
The January so-called election and today's constitution are all part of the same procedure, which is to legitimate the current installed government in Iraq. It is only in an atmosphere of occupation and terror, they can push their reactionary ideas forward.
The constitution is set to add to a growing fearfulness among Iraqi women, as their rights are passed over or signed away to Islamists hostile to Iraq's entire female population. Women in Iraq face being dragged back into the dark ages. We need to stop this tragedy before it's too late. A constitution based on enslaving women, religious sectarianism, and tribalism must be rejected.

The writer is the UK Head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq and co-founder of the Iraq Freedom Congress
houzan73@ yahoo.co.uk

Houzan Mahmoud: Why I am not taking part in these phoney elections

2006-03-30T00:39:00.000-08:00

This is my article which was published on 28 January 2005 on the so called elections in Iraq

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article17099.ece

Houzan Mahmoud: Why I am not taking part in these phoney elections

Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity
Published: 28 January 2005
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.
Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.
Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.
The new norm - enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists - is to see women as the repository of honour and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation. Ken Bigley's abductors perversely wanted to redeem the "honour" of Iraq through obtaining the release of female prisoners. Since when did Islamic groups - the very people doing the hostage-taking, torturing and killing - start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?
Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces. This to clear the shame on the tribe's honour for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation".
In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone - all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city's law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work, and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.
The occupation has in effect unleashed this new violence against women, while in some cases adding its own particular variety. Iraqi women have been tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. The social taboo against speaking about sexual abuse is so strong in Iraq that these women will almost certainly have no-one to turn to upon release.
Methal Kazem is one woman who has spoken publicly of her treatment at the hands of the occupiers. Last February a US helicopter landed on the roof of her house. She was hooded and handcuffed and taken to Abu Ghraib. Accused of being a former Baathist secret policewoman, she was made to run on sharp gravel, tied up and suspended and made to listen to the screaming of other inmates. She heard one man repeatedly screaming "do not touch my honour", and Methal believes that the man's wife was being raped in front of him.
When Allied forces handed over power to the interim government last June, they should, as Amnesty International has argued, also have handed over prisoners. Instead they have illegally detained over 2,000, without charge. Few of these may be women, but it still leaves thousands of wives, mothers, sisters and other family members in distress and despair.
I also believe that Iraqi women have been raped by American soldiers. They dare not talk about it, however, as they face being killed by their own families if they do. My associates in Iraq have been counselling Liqaa, a former Iraqi female soldier, who was raped by an American soldier in November 2003. The savage truth is that if she returns home, male family members may murder her for her "dishonour".
If Iraqi women take part in Sunday's poll, who are they to vote for? Women's rights are ignored by most of the groupings on offer. The US government appears happy to have Iraq governed by reactionary religious and ethnocentric élites.
The one glimmer of hope is that courageous demonstrations against rape and kidnapping have taken place. In September, a women's protest fused opposition to the occupation, a demand that all Islamic militia forces leave cities, and a call for safe streets for women. This new women-led secular progressive movement is against the interim government and against the violence and restriction of political Islam. Those who support us should publicly renounce these phoney elections and campaign for a truly free Iraq.
The writer, an Iraqi living in Britain, is the UK head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.
Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.
Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.
The new norm - enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists - is to see women as the repository of honour and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation. Ken Bigley's abductors perversely wanted to redeem the "honour" of Iraq through obtaining the release of female prisoners. Since when did Islamic groups - the very people doing the hostage-taking, torturing and killing - start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?
Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces. This to clear the shame on the tribe's honour for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation".
In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone - all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city's law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work, and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.
The occupation has in effect unleashed this new violence against women, while in some cases adding its own particular variety. Iraqi women have been tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. The social taboo against speaking about sexual abuse is so strong in Iraq that these women will almost certainly have no-one to turn to upon release.
Methal Kazem is one woman who has spoken publicly of her treatment at the hands of the occupiers. Last February a US helicopter landed on the roof of her house. She was hooded and handcuffed and taken to Abu Ghraib. Accused of being a former Baathist secret policewoman, she was made to run on sharp gravel, tied up and suspended and made to listen to the screaming of other inmates. She heard one man repeatedly screaming "do not touch my honour", and Methal believes that the man's wife was being raped in front of him.
When Allied forces handed over power to the interim government last June, they should, as Amnesty International has argued, also have handed over prisoners. Instead they have illegally detained over 2,000, without charge. Few of these may be women, but it still leaves thousands of wives, mothers, sisters and other family members in distress and despair.
I also believe that Iraqi women have been raped by American soldiers. They dare not talk about it, however, as they face being killed by their own families if they do. My associates in Iraq have been counselling Liqaa, a former Iraqi female soldier, who was raped by an American soldier in November 2003. The savage truth is that if she returns home, male family members may murder her for her "dishonour".
If Iraqi women take part in Sunday's poll, who are they to vote for? Women's rights are ignored by most of the groupings on offer. The US government appears happy to have Iraq governed by reactionary religious and ethnocentric élites.
The one glimmer of hope is that courageous demonstrations against rape and kidnapping have taken place. In September, a women's protest fused opposition to the occupation, a demand that all Islamic militia forces leave cities, and a call for safe streets for women. This new women-led secular progressive movement is against the interim government and against the violence and restriction of political Islam. Those who support us should publicly renounce these phoney elections and campaign for a truly free Iraq.

The writer, an Iraqi living in Britain, is the UK head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq

An empty sort of freedom

2006-03-30T00:30:00.000-08:00

This is my article which was published on 8 March 2004 in The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1164429,00.html

An empty sort of freedom

Saddam was no defender of women, but they have faced new miseries and more violence since he fell Houzan Mahmoud Monday March 8, 2004The Guardian
Women in Iraq endured untold hardships and difficulties during the past three decades of the Ba'ath regime. Although some basic rights for women, such as the right to education, employment, divorce in civil courts and custody over kids, were endorsed in the Personal Status Code, some of these legal rights were routinely violated.
The Ba'ath regime's "faithfulness campaign", an act of terrorism against women that included the summary beheading of scores of those accused of prostitution, is just one example of its brutality against women.
However, it is now almost a year after the war, which was supposed to bring "liberation" to Iraqis. Rather than an improvement in the quality of women's lives, what we have seen is widespread violence, and an escalation of violence against women.
From the start of the occupation, rape, abduction, "honour" killings and domestic violence have became daily occurrences. The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (Owfi) has informally surveyed Baghdad, and now knows of 400 women who were raped in the city between April and August last year.
A lack of security and proper policing have led to chaos and to growing rates of crime against women. Women can no longer go out alone to work, or attend schools or universities. An armed male relative has to guard a woman if she wants to leave the house.
Girls and women have become a cheap commodity to be traded in post-Saddam Iraq. Owfi knows of cases where virgin girls have been sold to neighbouring countries for $200, and non-virgins for $100.
The idea that a woman represents family "honour" is becoming central to Iraqi culture, and protecting that honour has cost many women their lives in recent months. Rape is considered so shaming to the family's honour that death - by suicide or murder - is needed to expunge it.
Like Iraqi men, many women have lost their jobs. Marooned at home and lacking independence, women are faced with new miseries. Islamist groups have imposed veiling, and have issued fatwas against prostitutes. Now "entertainment" marriages aretaking place. This is an Islamic version of prostitution, in which rich men marry women temporarily (often for only a few hours) in return for money.
The Iraqi Governing Council - an American creature - offers no hope for Iraqi women, consisting as it does of religious or tribal leaders and nationalists who rarely make any reference to women's rights. In fact, many IGC members have a history of violating women's rights.
For example, the Kurdish nationalist parties that have been running northern Iraq for more than 13 years have violated women's rights and tried to suppress progressive women's organisations. In July 2000, they attacked a women's shelter and the offices of an independent women's organisation. Both were saving the lives of Kurdish women fleeing "honour" killings and domestic violence. More than 8,000 women have died in "honour" killings since the nationalists have been in control.
One of the IGC's first moves was symbolic. International Women's Day in Iraq has been changed from March 8 to August 18, the date of birth of Fatima Zahra, the prophet Mohammed's daughter. This has nothing to do with women's rights, and everything to do with subordinating women to religious rules.
When the IGC proposed replacing the secular law with sharia, there were big demonstrations, but these have received almost no media coverage. This is no surprise. When the Union of the Unemployed marched for jobs, American soldiers arrested some of the organisers. This, too, passed unnoticed.
What is needed is a secular constitution based on full equality between women and men, as well as the complete separation of religion from the state and education system. At a demonstration in Baghdad recently, Yanar Mohammed, Owfi's chairperson, received two death threats from an Islamist militia group. They threatened to assassinate her and "blow up" activists who work with her.
Amnesty International has taken these threats so seriously that it has written to Paul Bremer, the US chief administrator in Iraq, raising its concern for Yanar Mohammed's safety. It is urging the Coalition Provisional Authority to ensure that, amid the bombs and the atrocities, the deterioration of women's rights doesn't become a secondary issue.
The groups represented in the IGC are irrelevant to Iraqis' demands and desire for freedom. American support for Islamist groups through the IGC exposes US hypocrisy. The parties in the IGC have no legitimacy, and have not been chosen by Iraqis.
Iraq's lack of basic rights for women and the rise of political Islam are the result of three wars and the ongoing occupation. The only way out of this chaos is through the direct power of the real people of Iraq - the progressive, secular masses.
· Houzan Mahmoud is the UK representative of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
houzan73@yahoo.co.uk
www.equalityiniraq.com

Denmark: Freedom of expression under attack from Islamists!

2006-02-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Denmark: Freedom of expression under attack from Islamists!

By: Houzan Mahmoud
E-mail: houzan73@yahoo.co.uk
www.equalityiniraq.com

Politicised religion – of whatever denomination – will leave no place for freethinking, reason, or the conscious will of humans. This is a stark truth, but one that needs to be stated. Instead of the conscious ability of human beings to shape their world, we are subordinated to an imaginary “God”. In the particular case of Islam, we are meant to live our lives according to a long dead “prophet” who has become a symbol of the oppression of women and a rigid patriarchy

A Danish newspaper - Jyllends Posten - has recently published a story about 12 different portraits of the prophet Mohammed. This has provoked a backlash from political Islam, both in the form of groups and states. The common denominator - whatever the relative size or political weight of these protesters - is that all preach that people cannot use that most intrinsic of human capabilities – our imagination – to depict the prophet. Islamists assert that Mohammed never sat for a portrait, so – by definition – his pictorial representation is an act against Islam, a blasphemy.

The political Islamists in Denmark have not been alone in this: ambassadors of countries including Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Pakistan have objected. They have fired off letters of complaint to the Danish prime minister and demanded he condemn this newspaper and clamp down on it.

This is not surprising. For those of us who have bitter first hand experience of Islamist groups and Islamic states in the Middle East, it is a depressingly familiar story. This is a template for how they maintain their ferocious, anti- egalitarian rule over the people of that part of the world.

By making Islam the “exceptional religion” – with the clear implication no one has the right to even mildly criticise it, let alone paint a portrait of its prophet – effectively a gag is placed on any radical, dissenting voice. The people who want to raise their voices against the suffocating blanket of religiosity in their societies are silenced.

The brutal truth is that for the last two decades Islam – in the contemporary Middle East – has justified people killing, stoning, imprisoning veiling and forcing women into Borqa’s. Women are imprisoned in the name of political Islam – a crime against all of humanity.

Not only women have suffered. Progressives and secularists of all kinds have been persecuted simply because they have challenged political Islam’s intrusion on the private realm of human beings, their right to decide their faiths and how these might impinge on their lives.

Islamalicists in power rule according to the precepts of sharia law. This institutionalises the oppression of women and the suppression of any kinds of democratic rights. Yet, in Europe, where this reactionary political trend has no opportunity to come to power, so-called ‘freedom of choice’ is cited to impose the veil on young girls and ‘freedom of expression’ to open Mosques, religious schools to bring up a brain washed generation of young people, and to silence those of us who want to tell the truth about them to society.

Many of us secular women live with death threats issued by Islamists for the simple fact that we are liberated, secular and use our brain to think, decide and live the way we want. We do not accept their rule, but actually question and challenge their power over us. They attempt to impose their thinking on us even in a European context; if someone dares to say something critical about Islam they are labelled an “islamaphobe” or even a “racist”. This is a tactic to silence criticism, not engage in a dialogue.
But now women like us in Iraq have formed a women’s organisation that is outspoken against political Islam, despite the daily threats from their terror gangs. Our Organisation of Women’s Freedom of Iraq (OWFI) has been exposing the Islamists and their crimes against women in our society. This shows the potential for secularism and free-thinking among our people. Activists of OWFI inside Iraq and abroad are pioneering a movement against political Islam and have been exposing it on an international level and telling the whole world about the notorious nature of this dangerous contemporary trend which is political Islam.

The fact that women in our society are standing up to oppression, in the face of political forces that force us to wear the veil at a gun point, is an inspiration to friends of freedom, equality and secularism the world over.
In Europe, the Islamists use every possible opportunity to advance their agenda and to de-sensitise people to its reactionary inhumane content.
They refuse to accept the fact that in Europe people have won the right to criticize all religions and political ideologies. So far Islam has escaped this. They have used the western states’ espousal of “multiculturalism” to inflict violence against women and girls and practise the most barbaric “traditions” within these so-called “Muslim communities”. This, we are told, is part of the ‘traditions’ of people from that part of the world. This must stop! Islam, like any other religion, must be a private matter and separate from politics.
I see no reason why ambassadors of all these countries and Islamic exiles make such a fuss about these portraits in Jyllends Posten. Of course, I don’t have to agree with or approve of how artists have portrayed Mohammed – that is not the point. I believe strongly that artists should be free to create art without threats hanging over them.

Freedom of speech and expression should be protected. Criticism of all religions and Islam must be viewed as a normal right of all people. The progress of any human society can be measured by how free it is from religion. Questioning, criticizing and finally separating religions from politics is the only guarantee for a healthy, secular and egalitarian society.

Date: 1st November 2005