출처: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32737703
20 May 2015
Viewpoint: Islam v feminism? 관점: 이슬람 對 페미니즘이라고?
Huda Jawad's viewpoint
Why on earth would any girl abandon the liberties of a modern democracy to join the dark ages of IS? Huda Jawad attempts to offer an answer. 도대체 왜 어떤 소녀는 현대민주주의의 자유를 포기하면서까지 이슬람국가에 합류하였는가? 후다 자왓이 이 질문에 대답한다.
I was born in Baghdad and grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Syria before coming to settle as a teenager in London in the late 1980s. My parents were political activists during the time of Saddam Hussein and fled Iraq after the death sentence was imposed on them in absentia. 난 바그다드에서 태어나, 80년대 말 십대 청소년으로 런던에 정착하기 까지 아랍에미레이트와 시리아에서 자랐다. 우리 부모는 사담 후세인 통치시기 운동권에서 활동하다, 부재재판에서 사형을 선고 받자 이라크로 탈출했다.
My mother has been a shining example of strength and endurance since her childhood. Her great-grandfather was an ayatollah, a famous religious jurist - Ayatollah Naini - and as a result she was raised in a deeply religious atmosphere. 우리 어머니는 어린 시절부터 힘과 인내의 좋은 본보기셨다. 어머니의 증조부께선 아야톨라(밝은하늘註: 이란 회교 시야파의 종교지도자), 유명한 종교 법률가, 아야톨라 나이니 라는 분이셔서, 어머니는 깊은 종교적 분위기에서 자라셨다.
However, Ayatollah Naini was a vehement advocate of constitutionalism and the superiority of reasoning, who described freedom of ｅxpression as God-given. Perhaps that explains in part why she was the first girl in her family to go to university and go on to have a career as a head teacher. 그러나 고조부 아야톨라 나이니께선 입헌정치와 추론(논증)의 우월성을 강력하게 옹호하시는 분이셔서, 표현의 자유는 신이 주신 것이라 말씀하시고 하셨다. 이 점이 왜 우리 어머니가 집안에서 대학교에 진학하여 커리어 우먼으로 교장까지 되었는지 부분적으로 설명해줄지 모른다.
Before her, women in her family and social circle were not allowed an education, save for home-based Koranic and Islamic learning. 그녀 이전세대까지 집안이나 사회의 모든 여성들은 교육의 기회가 없었고, 오직 집에서 배우는 코란과 이슬람 교육이 전부였다.
Likewise, my father grew up in southern Iraq into a family with a heritage for political and religious activism since the 1900s. Both my mother and father fought against the now defunct Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain. 반면에, 우리 아버지는 남부 이라크에서 1900년대부터 정치적 종교적 활동주의 경향을 지닌 가정에서 자랐다. 우리 어머니와 아버지는 사담 후세인의 바티스트 정권에 대항하여 싸웠다.
As a result of this, my parents had to continually flee from where they had settled and make a new start in foreign lands, at least four times in their lives. Imagine doing that with young children who also happen to be girls. 그 결과, 우리 부모님은 정착했던 곳에서 도망가야 했고 낯선 땅에서 새로 출발해야 했다. 그분들 생애에 네 번 그랬다. 어린 아이들과 함께 그것도 십대인 딸들을 데리고 그런 도피를 했다는 걸 상상해보라.
While most of the time it was a life rich with adventure for us girls, largely due to our parents' ability to shield us from the emotional turmoil, there were some very dark moments in an otherwise happy childhood. 그럼에도 우리 딸들한테는 우리의 삶이 풍요로왔다. 왜냐하면 우리 부모님께서 정서적 혼란에서 우리를 보호해주셨기 때문이다. 물론 힘든 순간도 있었다.
You may have by now picked up on a theme in my life story so far - that of identity politics. It certainly seems to be one way of explaining the journeys that I encounter in life. 여러분은 지금쯤이면 제가 해드린 얘기 속에서 본 글의 주제인 정체성의 정치학을 알아맞췄을지 모른다. 이 주제는 분명히 제가 지금까지 인생에서 조우했던 여정들을 설명해주는 한 가지 방식이 될 수 있다.
A more recent experience of this was two and a half years ago when my uncle, an Iraqi Shia who lived in Syria for more than 30 years and married a Sunni Syrian woman, was kidnapped by rebel fighters outside his house in a southern suburb of Damascus. 2년 반 전에, 30년 이상 시리아에서 사셨고 순니파 시리아 여성과 결혼하셨던 시아파 소속인 우리 작은 아버지가 다마스커스 남쪽 외곽에 있는 자택 밖에서 반군 전사들에게 납치되셨다.
He was taken as he was getting out of his car after driving home from work and was held captive for weeks under the most appalling conditions. He experienced awful treatment that to this date he cannot talk about but re-lives continuously in his nightmares. 작은 아버지께서 퇴근하시고 집으로 차를 몰고 오셔서 차에서 내리시던 찰라 납치되셨다. 작은 아버지께선 여러 주 동안 가장 끔찍한 상태에서 붙잡혀 계셨다. 작은 아버지께서는 지금도 얘기하기 어려울 정도로 너무 끔찍한 경험을 하셔서 지금까지도 악몽에 시달리신다.
When asked why he was abducted, his kidnappers simply said because he was Shia, even though he might have not described himself as such. Luckily for him my father and I have worked with a number of Islamists and religious activists from the Middle East, so knew who to turn to for help. To this day, we are indebted to the very few people who worked so tirelessly to secure his release. 왜 자신을 납치했냐고 물으니, 납치한 사람들은 자신이 시아파였기 때문이라고 단순히 말했다고 한다. 다행스럽게도 우리 아버지와 나는 중동출신의 많은 이슬람인들과 종교활동가들과 함께 일하고 있었기 때문에 누구에게 도움을 청할 지 잘알고 있었다. 지금까지 우리는 작은 아버지의 석방을 위해 쉼 없이 애를 써준 분들에게 마음의 빚을 지고 있다.
Huda with her father and mother in Sharja, UAE in the 1980s
So I watch with a mix of utter fascination and revulsion at the apparently continuous trickle of young women from Britain making the journey to Isis-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. 그래서 난 매료와 섬뜩함이 섞인 상태로 젊은 여성들이 영국에서 이라크와 시리아의 Isis가 통치하는 지역으로 흘러가는 현상을 지켜보고 있다.
Why would intelligent, seemingly well integrated daughters with bright futures ahead of them, enjoying the liberties granted by modern democracy, want to travel back in time to the darkest of dark ages? Where running water and electricity are a luxury. Where basic human rights such as freedom of movement or association are strictly regulated and in some cases cost you your life. 어째서 현대 민주주의가 부여한 자유를 향유하면서도, 앞날이 창창한 지적인 능력을 갖춘 딸들이 어두운 시대의 가장 어두운 곳으로 여행하고자 하는가? 그곳에선 수도와 전기가 사치이다. 그곳에선 이주의 자유, 집회의 자유와 같은 기본적인 인권이 엄격히 통제되고 어떤 경우엔 귀하의 목숨도 빼앗는다.
As the recent tragedies of capsized boats from Libya to Europe illustrate, hundreds of people literally risk their lives and that of their children to escape what these girls see as the ultimate Islamic utopia.
As someone who was born in the Middle East and escaped war and persecution as a child, knowing what it is like to be without water or electricity, or fearing that knock on the door at any moment, I cannot comprehend the choices these young women make.
As a committed Muslim and human rights activist, it makes me furious that these naive women accept and advocate the brutality and savagery committed by these terrorists and, furthermore, endorse them as Islamic or Sharia-compliant.
This desire to return to an imagined traditional and pure state of halal living as practised by the early generations of Muslims, free from the contamination of modernity and vice makes exceptions for smartphones, Twitter and Tumblr accounts. Surely I'm not the only one who can see these glaring contradictions?
Huda with her father and sisters in the UAE before the family were expelled
Having said that though, I do connect with these young women at some level. I share their sincere desire for wanting to do the "right thing" and live a life where you are part of a greater whole working for the greater good. I share their yearning to learn more about who they are and where they fit in the world.
I share their rejection of the media's portrayal of Islam and Muslims as inherently violent. I share their frustration at experiencing prejudice and disrespect for being a Muslim. And for being a woman and a Muslim woman, whether by mainstream society or their own religious communities. I share their hunger for wanting to learn and their confusion about Islam.
Like the young women who are targeted to make the journey to Isis-controlled territory, I sincerely believed in my faith, in the innate way it seems to call for justice and equality and for collective social responsibility. For looking after the poor or the sick, for seeking the fairest and most just solution to problems - for the value it places on life, whether human or animal. on reason, on learning and on equality.
However, I know that according to clerics and men of learning, Islam sanctions some seemingly unjust rulings and opinions. How can it be that women have to seek permission to work or to marry?
How is it that forced marriage and violence in the family can be excused by the "natural right" of men over women? Why is it that women's movements and choices are so restricted? Why should women inherit half a share of that given to a man? These were all questions that I asked every day and was told that this was decreed by Allah in His Book.
British teenagers Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana and Shamima Begum fled to Syria in February
Fearing disloyalty to my community, betrayal of my religion at a time when it was under a global siege and not wanting to commit psychological suicide, I never approached the Koran, never dared to open its pages for fear of reading something that I didn't like.
However, unlike these young women, a chance encounter with a work colleague, Yusuf, who is now a friend for life, gave me an opportunity that transformed my sense of God completely.
Yusuf thought I might be receptive to studying the Koran in a radically different way - a way where you critically engage with it, just as you are, without the need to spend years studying in a seminary or deferring to a scholar.
Our facilitator - that is what he calls himself rather than a teacher or an imam - gave us the framework for questioning and understanding meaning by using the Koran itself rather than any outside source like history, prophetic tradition, or commentary.
It was a thrilling experience. It enabled me to have a direct and unmediated conversation with God.
Yusuf and I set about inviting others who might be interested in this form of study. We were a diverse group of fellow Muslim believers - bankers, fashionistas, lawyers, medics, teachers and students.
We came to the collective realisation that our religious obligation is to ask questions and use our divine gift of reasoning to understand the words of God, and see how they relate to me and humanity now, then and in the future.
I have questioned and continue to question Allah and His words. My new-found relationship with God and His words has nourished and set me free. It highlighted the importance of taking responsibility for our religious learning. It also shows the power invested in those who read and interpret scriptures for and on our behalf.
A few years after my start on this journey of reclaiming God I began working in a secular domestic violence charity in London. My work brought me in contact with hundreds of women and children who were survivors of the most horrific and abhorrent form of abuse and betrayal of trust.
These women came from all ethnic, racial, educational, economic and religious backgrounds. Domestic violence did not discriminate, whether you were young or old, secular or religious - what mattered was that you were a woman.
Many of the women that I worked with identified with a faith or a religion. Some were told that their faith sanctioned this abuse, some were told that they were being tested by the Divine. Almost all saw their faith as a source of support and empowerment.
What struck me was the extent to which religious tradition can be used to excuse violence or challenge it. I was enraged to hear that Islam was used in the most perverse ways to maintain women's vulnerability and persecution and enable the perpetrators, who are usually men, to coerce and control them.
It was at this moment that all the various strands of my life's work came together to ignite my passion for Islamic feminism. The answers to the questions I detailed earlier became clear - women's voices from the interpretation and understanding of Islam were absent.
Since then I have come to learn of Muslim feminists who have in the past 10 years produced rigorous and religious paradigms that question long-held beliefs and presumptions about central tenets of religious laws and the handful of Koranic verses that have been used to discriminate against women and girls.
Like the victims of domestic abuse, jihadi brides are similarly indoctrinated and vulnerable.
They yearn for an empowering space where their religious identity is welcomed, nurtured and seen as integral in their ability to establish the so-called khilafah based on an intolerant, literalist, patriarchal and medieval interpretation of fiqh or jurisprudence. It is a fiqh which is an interpretation or understanding of sharia that is not only an excuse for violence but that restricts and defines women's relationship to men and society according to standards far from what we know as equality and justice today.
Looking at their blogs and tweets it's clear that they seek evidenced religious opinion on what they can "do", where they belong and how they can actively contribute to creating a just society. This poses a timely and urgent opportunity to engage them in looking at how Islamic feminism can provide them with the intellectual and religious tools they seek.
It will enable them to seek answers that honour their faith while also honouring their gender, maintaining their dignity whilst excelling in helping society and those around them. They can remain faithful while challenging the narrative that argues that salvation and the role of a Muslim woman can only be fulfilled by raising children and building a "home" to men who think that sexual exploitation, slavery, abuse, murder and torture are the religiously authentic way of building a society.
How different would things be if women owned and were part of the production of religious knowledge. Surely it's no coincidence that one of the first acts of social policy and justice in the Prophet's message was the banning of female infanticide so ubiquitously practised at birth by Arabs at the time.
Therein lies a lesson for us all.
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