Countering Radical Ideology with the Arts and Culture
Fellow Advocates,
In the last month since the takeover by the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have seen a concerted effort by human rights defenders all over the world along with Afghan women to push back against the Taliban’s “Islam”, their imposition of the burka, and the many new rules that have undermined women and girls’ rights.
First though, in America this October 2nd, I will be speaking at the Women’s March in Los Angeles in support of a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy. This march is organized in response to the American Taliban’s effort to curtail women’s reproductive rights.
#MarchForReproductiveRights #BootsOffOurWombs @wmnsmarchLA @WMAction
Our Indonesian friends, the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN), an umbrella organization of activists in South East Asia, have organized an open mic virtual forum where they have compiled video messages from women’s rights activists to send to Indonesian President Joko, appealing for him to speak up for women and girls rights in Afghanistan. I was invited to contribute and you can see my two-minute message here.
In an interview with BBC, an Afghan official was seen on camera stating that it is important to impose the burqa as ‘we have to undo the 20 years of western influence’. This is one of the many problems with the Taliban, they apparently don’t even know their own cultural heritage. This is the land where Rumi was born, where women sufi saints not only have their own physical shrines but are deeply enshrined in people’s hearts.
In an effort to retake their Afghan women identity, a #DoNotTouchMyClothes campaign started by Dr. Bahar Jalali took root, with Afghan women all over the world sharing photos of themselves in traditional Afghan attire that are colorful, rich in texture and nothing short of beautiful. You can see me in an interview on burqa and culture here.
The cultural battle is not just in Afghanistan. Women in much of the Muslim world have lost out to the radical interpretations of Islam that have stripped us out of our right to self-expression and into a uniform of black, grey, and beige robes, hindering movement not just physically but shackling us mentally. I have written about this in the past. In Burundi, Muslim women are expected to also dress as a “Muslim”, and wherever you go, Somalia, Malaysia, or Pakistan, our cultural heritage is being stripped away. In Malaysia, it is not just in the attire, but it is in our language, the art of storytelling through puppeteering, wayang kulit, banned as forbidden in Islam, while ignorant of the fact that, some of the reasons why Malays of Malaysia converted to Islam from Hinduism and animists was through the stories told by wayang kulit.
With the ‘win’ of the Taliban, the radicals, the ISIS in hiding, and the Muslim Brotherhoods are all feeling empowered. As the Iraqi President said in an interview “the chatter of the radicals” are amped up. Any entity that have been oppressive of Muslim women in the name of religion are now feeling even more emboldened. U.N. Special Rapporteur Karima Bennoune in her report on Malaysia recommended the government: Remove the bans on Mak Yong, Wayang Kulit, Main Puteri and Dikir Barait in Kelantan, and on women performing in public. In consultation with a diversity of practitioners, take steps to redress the harm done to these art forms and their practitioners by these bans, including through compensation and the promotion of spaces for their performance and transmission.
What is missing from this report is the Islamic justification for the prohibition and limitations to our cultural artforms and to women performers. People are horrified by what is happening in Afghanistan but look the other way when it is happening in other ‘moderate’ Muslim societies. For too many years, the UN has allowed for human rights abuses in the name of sharia law. Somehow, Afghanistan is an exception.
While many in secular states enjoy the arts, the pulse of what makes us human, the arts is one of the most poorly funded areas in the developing world and especially in the Muslim world.
You think countering radicalism is best done through military hardware. That has not worked, has it?
Onward and upward…
Ani Zonneveld
Founder, President
Muslims for Progressive Values
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Editor’s Note: This Message was originally published in the October 2021 issue of the MPV Monthly Newsletter. You may subscribe to the newsletter by clicking on the tab at the bottom-right corner of this page and you can read previous newsletters by clicking the button below.