Muslim Women Don't See Themselves as Oppressed, Survey Finds

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By HELENA ANDREWS
Published: June 8, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 7 — Muslim women do not think they are conditioned to accept second-class status or view themselves as oppressed, according to a survey released Tuesday by The Gallup Organization.

According to the poll, conducted in 2005, a strong majority of Muslim women believe they should have the right to vote without influence, work outside the home and serve in the highest levels of government. In more than 8,000 face-to-face interviews conducted in eight predominantly Muslim countries, the survey found that many women in the Muslim world did not see sex issues as a priority because other issues were more pressing.

When asked what they resented most about their own societies, a majority of Muslim women polled said that a lack of unity among Muslim nations, violent extremism, and political and economic corruption were their main concerns. The hijab, or head scarf, and burqa, the garment covering face and body, seen by some Westerners as tools of oppression, were never mentioned in the women's answers to the open-ended questions, the poll analysts said.

Concerning women's rights in general, most Muslim women polled associated sex equality with the West. Seventy-eight percent of Moroccan women, 71 percent of Lebanese women and 48 percent of Saudi women polled linked legal equality with the West. Still, a majority of the respondents did not think adopting Western values would help the Muslim world's political and economic progress.

The most frequent response to the question, "What do you admire least about the West?" was the general perception of moral decay, promiscuity and pornography that pollsters called the "Hollywood image" that is regarded as degrading to women.

An overwhelming majority of the women polled in each country cited "attachment to moral and spiritual values" as the best aspect of their own societies. In Pakistan, 53 percent of the women polled said attachment to their religious beliefs was their country's most admirable trait. Similarly, in Egypt, 59 percent of the women surveyed cited love of their religion as the best aspect.

At 97 percent, Lebanon had the highest percentage of women who said they believed they should be able to make their own voting decisions, followed by Egypt and Morocco at 95 percent. Pakistan was lowest, at 68 percent.

The survey, "What Women Want: Listening to the Voices of Muslim Women," is a part of The Gallup World Poll, which plans to survey 95 percent of the earth's population over the next century.

Dalia Mogahed, the strategic analyst of Muslim studies at The Gallup World Poll, said the new data provide fresh insight into the Muslim world, where Western perceptions generally cast women as victims. "Women's empowerment has been identified as a key goal of U.S. policy in the region," said Ms. Mogahed, adding that Muslim women's rights have generated a lot of interest without much empirical information on "what Muslim women want."

Ms. Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and wears a Islamic head scarf, rejected the idea that Muslim women had been brainwashed by the dominant male culture, citing as proof the fact that women freely stated that they deserved certain rights.

"In every culture there is a dominant narrative, and in many cases it is constructed by people in power who happen to be men," Ms. Mogahed said.

Source: NY Times

Stockholm syndrome

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For other uses, see Stockholm syndrome (disambiguation).
Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed. The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28 in 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term "Stockholm Syndrome" was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast.[1]


Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm"Stockholm syndrome" is not a medical term. In 2008, a group of scholars studied twelve highly-publicized cases of Stockholm syndrome, publishing their results in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia. They argued that, as the media accounts lacked "access to primary sources" or an "identification of a pattern of features exhibited in Stockholm syndrome," the characterization of any of these events as Stockholm syndrome could have been due to reporting bias.[2]

Contents [hide]
1 Other uses
2 Psychoanalytic explanations
3 Potential examples of Stockholm syndrome
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links

Other uses

Loyalty to a more powerful abuser – in spite of the danger that this loyalty puts the victim in – is common among victims of domestic abuse, battered partners and child abuse (dependent children). In many instances the victims choose to remain loyal to their abuser, and choose not to leave him or her, even when they are offered a safe placement in foster homes or safe houses. This mental phenomenon is also known as Trauma-Bonding or Bonding-to-the-Perpetrator. This syndrome was described by psychoanalysts of the object relations theory school (see Fairbairn) as the phenomenon of psychological identification with the more powerful abuser. A variant of Stockholm Syndrome includes cases of abusive parents and abusive siblings in which the victim, even after entering adulthood, still justifies the family abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

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So what it's saying is that a majority of Muslim women reject Islamic law?

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So rights should be judged on their economic impact?

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Why is this even an issue? Do the men vote for them or something?

I'm thinking of adding a wiki article on how Islam discriminates against women. Here's a start:

Marriage partners: a man can marry four wives, including non-Muslims. A woman can only have a single husband who must be Muslim.

A husband is allowed to beat his wife with a ?????

A wife is expected to be subservient to her husband. She is expected to please him sexually on demand. Her rights to leave the house etc are at the whim of the husband.

Clothing: A woman is only allowed to show her face in public.

Any errors Abu?

some more:

inheritance - man gets double

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1227877786/42#42

wifely duties:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1227877786/1#1

see also a husband's duties:

16. Admirable Jealousy

-Ensure she is wearing proper hijab before leaving house
-Restrict free mixing with non-mahram men

wife beating:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1227877786/35#35

with a miswak

If the husband beats her too hard she can apply to the court to be allowed to beat him back in retaliation.

Some jurists think full-on wife beating is 'permissable but not advisable'

freediver,

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How on earth did you arrive at this conclusion? According to Islam, women have just as much right as men to elect their leader. No doubt those women see it as their Islamic right, which is being stolen from them by the American-backed puppet governments they live under.

Besides, most Muslim countries allow women to vote anyway, Saudi Arabia does not, then again they don't let women drive either, both things which clearly contradict Islam.

Just a little tidbit about women's suffrage in the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, which was under the enlightened European Dutch rule when women's suffrage was first won. However, it was only granted for women of European background... wasn't until 1941, that Indonesian women finally won the right to vote.

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The economic and political conditions in the Muslim countries are the main problems. Most Muslims, even women confirm this. You seem to just swallow the standard propaganda line though that the problem with Muslim countries is based in the dress code for women.

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Yes, it's all errors. I told you, I'm not particularly interested in helping you spread your vicious lies and hateful misrepresentations of Islam. They are nothing but your spin on the situation.

Ofcourse they don't think they're oppressed, they were raised that way. They weren't raised like us western folk. And maybe that's for the best...

We bitch at them for being so arrogant and religious, oppressing their women. So what are we going to do? Kill them all and make them adhere to the principles of the west? "You'll tolerate this, this, and that and you'll like it!"

Doesn't sound all that different to me... Instead of looking down on The Muslims maybe we should observe and learn from them... They have less crime, less depression, less uneducated vermin...

When a Muslim kills themself, it's for a cause.
When a western kills themself, it's cause they're sad.

Muslims: 1. The West: 0.

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Islam forbids democracy. Those women were claiming a right to vote for who they want without interference.

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Crap. You are the one who told me that Islam rejects democracy. I have made it perfectly clear what my real issues with Islam are.

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But you are doing so by not pointing out the errors you claim exist.

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So what are the facts then?

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Yeah, but I now know that in Islam, the physical abuse of women is institutionalised, sanctioned by All Mighty!

Bugger off Abu, and the rest of ye.

Get ye to Gaza. They need the numbers.

I have nothing but disrespect for any form of physical abuse, even that which does not bruise nor draw blood.................!

I have greater disrespect for a belief, e.g. Islam, which endorses it.

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Never miss an opportunity to parade your ignorance do you fd?

Out of the 22 Arab league states, only 6 of them are members of OPEC. Most of those 6 are tiny little emirates which contain very little of the population of the Arab world. The rest of the Arab world has very little oil, if any.

Also, as you know, in some of those countries, the oil wealth is just squandered by the resident neo-colonialist puppet monarchies, and little if any of it reaches the people.

Anyway the example I gave was Egypt, which is not really an oil rich country.

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There's very few Shi'a in the Arab world. And most are in Iraq, they weren't blowing each other up till the US stuck their nose in there...

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Ummm... last time I checked Afghanistan is not an Arabic country... anyway, no opportunity lost here, parade away.

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Even if we run with that definition, you know there's a lot more implications to it. If it's just about electing a leader, and nothing more, then Islam has nothing against it, and your original point was moot (ie. that Islam rejects democracy).

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Direct democracy shows that clearly democracy is not just about electing a leader. In fact it highlights the point that democracy isn't the leader electing part at all. Direct democracy is about the citizens themselves participating in legislation, and completely bypassing the need for an elected representative.

This shows us that according to democratic principles electing a leader is just a matter of logistics, rather than a staple part of the system. Because it's not feasible for everyone to legislate, elected representatives do it for them.

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Do you have any first hand experience with political opinions of women (or men for that matter) in Arabic countries fd? I doubt you do. I have spoken to quite a few about such issues, and what they want is to be able to elect a leader who will implement Islam, instead of the American appointed lackeys who now rule over them. If free and fair elections were to be held in Egypt (The largest Arab nation) right now, there's no doubting whatsoever that the Muslim Brotherhood would win, this is why the West would never encourage Egypt to become a democracy (ie. hold fair and free elections, accoring to your definition).

You speak quite loudly about women's rights in Arabic countries, but I very much doubt you'd respect their decisions if they were actually able to vote. You already demonstrated this clearly on the Hamas issue (who are related to the MB annyway).

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Islam doesn't place any restrictions on voting, it places restrictions on what kind of parties can exist though. ie. They must have Islam as their ideology, but this is just the same in the West, where they must have democracy/secularism as their ideology.

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Tell me, in which Arabic country do men vote on behalf of women? And while you're at it, in which Arabic country does anyone evven get a chance to vote??? There's none. All of them are either monarchies or dictatorships, where the president always gets 100% of the vote.

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Ok, maybe 100% was a bit overboard. But certainly the vast majority.