At the end of March the Afghan parliament approved a law making it compulsory for wives to have sexual relations with their husbands and forbidding them to look for work, be educated, leave the house or be visited by a doctor without their husbands’ permission. This law furthermore gives fathers and grandfathers exclusive custody of children. This instantly resulted in condemnation from western politicians and civil society, asking Afghan President Hamid Karzai to abolish this law, seen as the last of a never-ending series of concession to Islamic extremism (in this case Shiite, because the law is applied to Family Law for the Hazara ethnic group).
Resetdoc actively joined in the international debate and on our website we published the appeal and on-line petition to the Afghan government made by Emma Bonino, Vice-President of the Italian Senate and former Minister and European Commissioner. This initiative did not escape the attention of Giuliano Amato, former Italian Prime Minister and former Vice-President of the Convention for the Future of Europe, who also signed this appeal. From the pages of Italy’s most important financial newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, Amato remarked on our commitment to this issue in an article inspired by the Afghan Law, in which he debated the relationship between the West and the Islamic world (a debate in which he played a leading role also when Minister for the Interior in the Prodi government).
Amato calls upon moderate intellectuals
Events such as the one involving “Shiite Family law” can cause a “dangerous gap” between these two worlds, and this is precisely why – wrote Amato – non-radical Muslims should not remain silent, such as those “who in recent years expressed positions advocating the modernisation of Islam. Scholars seeing this faith as all that leads to peace and not war, to equality among human beings and not the inferiority of infidels, to respect for human rights, primarily those of women and not to their abolition.” Amato named two scholars in particular, both reference points for European Islam; the Egyptian theologian Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, who teaches in Holland, and the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan, a professor at Oxford.
Amato expressed his appreciation for their work on the interpretation of the Holy Books, for their reasoning on Muslim logic from within. “I am perfectly aware that so-called moderate Islamic intellectuals would never be able to persuade those sharing the same religion, should they disregard the Holy Books to dialogue with us and be perceived as westernised strangers.” Now however, according to Amato “One must instead distance oneself from these events. As Muslims speaking to other Muslims, one must state that Afghanistan’s return to Taliban positions in Family Law does not respect the Koran. On the contrary it violates it and is instead a reaction to the exasperation of a backward culture with which no one should any longer identify.” “Should there be silence, I would be forced to deduce one of the following facts” he said. “Either the Koran is effectively the source of such ideas also for its more enlightened scholars; or that these same scholars do not have the courage to say what they think and hence I will no longer be able to consider them as my interlocutors.”
The philosopher from Oxford, had on the other hand, been implicated only a few days earlier – as Amato himself mentioned – by the deputy editor for the Corriere della Sera Pierluigi Battista. On April 2nd, Battista who on other occasions had already argued with Ramadan and those in Europe attempting to legitimise him as a moderate Muslim, harshly criticised the tinidity shown by Westerners concerning the “affront to human rights” in the Islamic world. “Nothing has been said and nothing will be said, because any expression of criticism or protest would be perceived as an attack on ‘dialogue’, or even as the insolent expression of unacceptable cultural colonialism.”
“Tariq Ramadan, an intellectual who incomprehensibly enjoys the reputation of being a cultural ‘bridge’ between the western world and Islamism”, he wrote in ‘Il Riformista’, “claims he can make Muslims accept homosexuality, ‘reveals a new dogmatism’, darkly fomented by not better identified ‘lobbies’ and even not without ‘ancient colonial elements that are at times xenophobic.’ Had these words been pronounced (even in a more veiled manner) by a representative of the Christian world – wrote Battista – there would have been a vigorous revolt against an arrogant example of clerical homophobia. However, they were debated by one of Islamic extremism’s intellectual leaders, and therefore prudent silence will prevail once again, as it has for legalised rape in Afghanistan.”
Abu Zayd’s answer
As requested by Reset’s editor-in-chief Giancarlo Bosetti, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd decided to join the debate, answering Amato through our website. Abu Zayd has answered from a theological perspective. Before emphasising the existing distance between the Koran and Shari’a, a collection of Koranic interpretations that date back to the Middle Ages, he then speaks of the role played by women in the Koran and the respect shown by Mohammed himself for his wives. “Marriage is presented in terms of serenity and reciprocal love. They are one.” “Shari’a is after all nothing but a historical interpretation of the Koran expressed on the basis of Medieval laws that the Koran itself opposes – concludes the Egyptian philosopher. The problem and the challenge faced nowadays by Muslims consists of acknowledging, respecting and implementing absolute equality, in a modern society such as ours, in which equality, freedom and human rights prevail, as established in the Koran at the highest level.”
Waiting for Tariq Ramadan
What about Tariq Ramadan? For the moment he has not yet responded, but will certianly do so at the next Resetdoc Istanbul Seminars di Resetdoc (May 30th – June 5th 2009), where influential Arab, Israeli, American and European intellectuals will once again debate the East-West relations. The many speakers include Nasr Abu Zayd, Giuliano Amato, Andrew Arato, Benjamin Barber, Seyla Benhabib, Mustafa Ceric, Nilüfer Göle, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Avishai Margalit, Nadia Urbinati and Michael Walzer.
Translation by Francesca Simmons