In August 2008, a 32-year old Egyptian-born pharmacist named Marwa al-Sherbini took her son, Mustafa, to a children's playground near their home in the northern German city of Dresden.She asked a man to please move from a swing so her little boy could play.
Alex Wiens, an ethnic German who immigrated from Russia in 2003, looked at her dark complexion and her hijab and began to rail at her, calling her a "bitch," a "slut," a "terrorist," an "Islamist." At one point, he even tried to rip off her headscarf.
Sherbini brought charges against him for insult and abuse in the German courts. Weins was found guilty and given a fine of about $1000. He appealed.
On July 1, 2009, Sherbini -- three months pregnant with her second child -- arrived in appeals court to give her testimony.
During the hearing, Weins pulled out a 7-inch long kitchen knife and, in full view of her son, her husband, and the stunned courtroom, stabbed her 18 times.
Within moments she was dead, and her husband, who leaped to her defense, was critically wounded from more a dozen stab wounds. He survived, and was on hand on November 11 to watch Alex Wiens sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Since her death, Sherbini has been dubbed the "hijab martyr," killed for her Muslim faith, made obvious to a rabid xenophobe by her headscarf. Muslims in Europe and Egypt have rallied in the streets to protest both the killing and what they perceive as a lack of interest by Germans in combating anti-Muslim violence and discrimination within their country. It has become yet another wedge between two often sharply divided communities.
This story came to mind yesterday after reading Deborah Young's excellent OS post "Why Western Feminist Is Incompatible With Islam." Deb's argument is correct, but incidents like the Sherbini murder show the difficulties in dealing with that incompatibility.
Westerners are in a bind, because they can't deny legal immigrants entry to their countries without violating deeply-held principles of religious tolerance, and once Muslims are in a given country they can't be prevented from practicing their faith like millions of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Neopaganists, Rastafarians or Africans tribal faiths. Yet much about Islamic philosophy is directly counter to European philosophy. And neither side is fully invested in trying to bridge the gap.
Feminists have been completely silent on the Sherbini murder. Why? This was a educated woman with a career and an a family who -- rather than give in to a misogynistic, racist attack -- used the laws of her adopted country to find justice. She died, brutally, in the defense of her rights. In my mind, that makes her a feminist martyr. Feminists should have rallied to her cause when she was alive, and they should have joined the mourners in the streets when she died.
To do so would have gotten them further with the Muslim community their current tactic of presenting all Muslim women as oppressed, dominated, and in need of secular salvation. This is the message behind every public debate on the wearing of the hijab, the chador, or the burqa: we'll free you of the shackles of your clothing, and you'll step into the light of reason.
Certainly, there are women who are oppressed by Islam, and where that manifests itself as physical or mental abuse, any state has the right to step in and give those women the help that they need AND to punish their abusers.
But what about those women who are committed to their faith because it is their faith? Women who adopt the hijab or even the burqa as a sign of religious fidelity, just as a Christian might wear a cross or carry a rosary? Do we have the moral right to get between a woman and her religious philosophy because we find it disagreeable? Is it right to force women to live a philosophy they didn't come to on their own?
There is no one Islam, just as their is no one Christianity or one Judiasm. Most religions tend to merge with the culture around it. In the West, Islam will become more Westernized -- not overnight, but over time. Women will look at the culture around them and decide how they want to reconcile their religious beliefs with that culture.
Some will even become feminists.
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If you haven't yet, please hop over to Deborah Young's blog and read "Why Western Feminist Is Incompatible With Islam
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Comments
What is perhaps an even more appalling detail in the story is that it was the *husband* who was initially targeted by the security guards in the melée that followed the attack.
Muslim women in secular societies that profess to offer "freedom of religion" should indeed be free to practice their faith as they see fit. The Muslim women I know who wear hijab in my community most often resemble Marwa al-Sherbini: educated professional women raising families peacefully within our community. They should be free to do so. It is what we promised them.
In the news since yesterday: the killer is appealing his conviction
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1107679&lang=eng_news
and:
Marwa's family is suing the German court for their abysmal security:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1513145.php/Family-of-slain-Egyptian-to-sue-German-court
When I lived in Japan, I didn't wear sleeveless shirts or anything that showed cleavage because that was inappropriate for that culture. However, when I was going out with my friends I also didn't wear short shorts up to my butt cheeks with stiletto boots in the dead of winter (as was the fashion), because that made me feel uncomfortable, for more reasons that just the cold. Thus I can understand why a Muslim woman who's not even particularly religious would stick with hijab in Western countries.
Start of Trial (from Al Jazeera)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCb2bZAjehY
Muslim Reaction on Conviction (Al Jazeera)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zm1tpJ7xcs
Discussion of Sherbini case & Muslim women:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq-RIxpf1V8
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