Amnesty International honors Women's Month with speaker
Staff Writer
In accordance with the theme of Women’s Month, Amnesty International recruited former Alma political science faculty member Dr. Mahmood Monshipouri to discuss women’s rights in the Moslem world in a completely packed Dow L4.
Edward Lorenz, Reid-Knox professor of history and political science and Director of the Public Affairs Institute introduced him as, “A real expert on human rights.”
Monshipouri began his lecture with a discussion of women’s rights and roles in general in the Moslem world. He then introduced a very important concept that he labeled the globalization factor. This factor has two major components: mass education and mass communication.
Monshipouri claimed that together these two processes are beginning to change perceptions of women in the Moslem world. He asserted, “The Moslem world is no longer operating in a vacuum.”
In order to further explain the unique challenges that women face in these particular countries, Monshipouri attempted to describe the context of the conflict occurring around women. He elaborated that currently three groups are battling for control.
The first group is the reformists that were labeled as the globalizers. Their counterparts on the opposite end of the political spectrum are the conservatives that are primarily interested in local issues. Sitting between these two groups is the transformationalists who want to find some kind balance between these two extremes.
The issues that the three groups are battling over involve the control of three major social influences. Those influences are rationality, modernity, and power. After laying the contextual groundwork, Monshipouri began to discuss the four fronts that women must simultaneously battle on.
Muslim women must first battle the state elites, who usually consist of largely men wishing to retain the power that they currently enjoy. Second, women must compete with the predominating patriarchal values that continually oppress them.
The third obstacle remains women’s exclusion from the political economic system. Finally and perhaps most importantly, women must fight Islamic extremists and neo-fundamentalists. After a discussion detailing some of the strategies used by women’s groups to combat these obstacles, Monshipouri returned to the globalization factor that he has mentioned earlier.
He elaborated that the globalization factor has two paradoxical results. First, it creates a transnational identity between women all over the world. Second, the globalization factor re-awakens local differences. From this contradictory process, Monshipouri asked, “Can Muslim women preserve cultural integrity and universal ideas at the same time?”
After discussing his perceived solutions to this question, Monshipouri had just enough time to leave the audience with a few final thoughts. At this point, Monshipouri left the audience with extremely provocative statement when he said, “Gender is a social and human concept. It does not enter the divine realm.”
Content copyright ©2004 The Almanian