Visualising Shi'isms numbers

Trouble flares in Bahrain as the Shia majority becomes discontented with minority Sunni rule. Writers such as Vali Nasr write about the rise of Shi'ite political power as Sunni states fall out of favour or are forced to become more democratic/representative. But judging the influence of Shi'ism in politics is a notoriously tricky thing to do. Whether that's because quietist Shia ulama discourage political participation, Shi'ites end up being counted amongst non-religious political forces, as was the case in Iraq...

Qasim had no political party of his own and it was the powerful Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) which provided him with a mass political base. Founded in 1934, the party had an impressive record of anti-colonial resistance and commanded widespread respect because of the tenacity with which it had pursued its struggle. In the 1940s and 1950s, its membership and support had expanded dramatically, particularly within the Shi’ite community. The tilt towards the Communist Party by the Shi’ite community has been explained as the response of a politically disenfranchised community from which ‘the poorest of the poor’ were drawn. In the 1960s the drift of Shi’ite youth towards the party was so alarming that the traditional Shi’ite ulama even issued a fatwa against those supporting or joining the party. (source)

Or because people lack the basic mathematics to put their numbers into context. Here is an interesting blog post that tries to visualise Shi'ite influence by population.

Iraqi resistance recruits women to their cause... by raping and humiliating them

News that an Iraqi woman named Samira Jassam allegedly recruited 80 women to be suicide bombers as part of the "resistance" in Iraq comes as no surprise. One of her recruitment tactics however, shows how the fratricidal "resistance" is can offer nothing more to the Iraqi people than an example of the very lowest that humanity can sink to.

It's not like Koreans thinking electrics fans will kill them in their sleep or people in Tanzania, Botswana and other countries murdering albinos because they think drinking blood and eating albino body parts will give them magical powers. That is the result of religious mumbo jumbo, superstition and misinformation that is hard to stamp out.

But Samira Jassam's actions are the result of a culture and a movement eating itself and it's own people. What she has done is the cultural equivalent of waterboarding -- setting up a situation in which the body's own, life-saving reflex is used against it. Knowing the immense shame and destruction of a life that would follow she organised for women to be raped and then sent to her. There she would pressure them into becoming suicide bombers to redeem themselves and wash away the stain of their shame.

Shame is a public emotion, turned inwards. Shame is the result of culture, people's actions towards a victim, the turning away of family members. The embarrassment and humiliation of having to look people in the eye. People who know. The strong, powerful feelings of shame and guilt in conservative Iraqi society and other countries in the Middle East lead to such horrific crimes as the systematic rape of women to make them feel the only way they can redeem themselves is through suicide bombing, the murder to Leila Hassan and her daughter Rand for "dishonouring" their family, the victim of a gang rape being sentenced to 200 lashes. This whole notion of crime, justice and right is inverted.

The feelings of self-loathing victims feel and their sense of shame are common worldwide, but most countries don't have the combination of ultra-conservative public morality, fratricidal civil war and desperate old crones ready to exploit them.

Mourning the murdered mother of a murdered Iraqi girl

Leila Hussein became known around the world for refusing the accept the brutal murder of her daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader. Rand was kicked and stomped to death by her father and brothers. Her father is reported as saying:

My daughter deserved to die for falling in love.

... even though her falling in love was nothing more than a schoolgirl crush. Her brave mother refused to accept the murder of her daughter as a cultural/religious necessity to cleanse the family of shame. Aligning herself with Iraqi feminists (because who else was going to shelter her?) she was murdered 3 weeks later.

The sad truth remains that in many countries in the world:

[a]ny woman who does not submit to her role as a passive piece of human garbage is a potential target in a patriarchal society scarred by years of violence.

Nobody will be punished for either of these crimes. When Du'a Khalil Aswad was crushed, kicked and stamped to death by the men in her family, videos put on the internet showed the police just standing by and watching.

Even in the UK female genital mutilation happens, forced marriages happen and girls are murdered by their families because of who they befriend or are attracted to. Why? Maybe a clue lies in the inability to challenge the communities and attitudes that allow these things to happen.

Whilst debating Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the thoroughly British former Islamist Ed Hussein can't quite bring himself to properly condemn stoning. He doesn't like it, but his condemnation is weak and spineless. He should have been angry, clear and ferocious in his denunciation of the violence against women in the Middle East, Europe and, sadly, in the UK. That lack of strength of conviction and anger from even progressive Muslims and missing discourse in Islam helps people like Leila Hussein's husband get away with their crimes.