A lecture at Western Sydney University, Australia
7 Sept. 2006
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban: Good afternoon.
Allow me first to thank Western Sydney University for allowing me this occasion to talk to you all, and I'd like to thank my sister Rosmery Sulayman who the first time she stepped into my office we talked as if we'd known each other forever, this was my feeling. I'd like you here to allow me to bring you real pictures of Arab women because having traveled so far and I apologize for my voice, this is not my normal voice but I caught a cold and that affected my voice. Having traveled so far I don't want to waste your time and to repeat some of the information that are recycled in the media which are sometimes irrelevant to our life and history.
Think about concept and reality first. Before I became a minister I traveled to the United States and I was the spokesperson of Syria and I met with U.S. officials among whom William Burns who was the secretary assistant and I was talking about Syria and about the Middle East. Elliot Abraham – I wonder if you know him or not- anyway he was in the meeting and he was speaking about Syria as if he were speaking about a country in the moon, not about my country. I told him "what you're saying is not true, simply it's not true about my country". He said to me "who cares about the truth, it's the concept that matters", then I said that this is a very dangerous principle!
The first thing we have to do is to try to change the concept in a way that it becomes compatible with the true situation. I'll try to talk about the real picture of Arab women.
I'm aware from western media and western image what image Arab women have in general, images that started by the orientalists about Arab Harim, Arab dancing, Arab women set as objects in the Arab world locked in doors, having no function in public affairs, Muslim women being inferior to men. These are the concepts in western media, in western films and in western cartoons, unfortunately.
I taught in Michigan University in 2000, I was a professor there, I was teaching a course with my American colleagues and my book "Both Left and Right Handed; Arab Women talk about their Lives" was in the curricula, and they saw a Syrian woman with a book in English coming to teach them English and to teach them about Middle Eastern politics and they said to me "are you the only Arab woman that reached this status?", I said no I was taught by Arab women professors at Damascus University and I asked one of the students "Where did you first get your image about Arab women? When did you first learn about Arab women?" he said that was in my early childhood I saw them in cartoons, I saw them in computer games..
I'm not going to speak only about Arab women but I want also to speak about the image of western women in the Arab world, it's not any better.
A few years ago I did a comparative study between the image of Arab women in the west and the image of western women in the Arab world and I found that the one is worse than the other; many Arab people believe that western women are responsible for the break up of family, for the divorce rate, for the problem children have and I'd like you to think for a moment: where did Arab people get this idea about western women from? They got it from western media, from western TVs showing their women like someone who doesn't care about their families, who doesn't care about their children, who falls in love and leave everything and go.. So the same source that's distorting the image of Arab women in western mind is distorting the image of western women in Arab mind, and I think that it's an area that we have to address because it's extremely important. But I don't know why people do not think how could Arab and Muslims be unfair to women when they have notable achievements; women in Yemen led battles and they even in the early Islamic age Muslim women would send their babies to the Sahara, the Muslim women didn't have even to breastfeed their children if they didn't want to, it was not their obligation. And during the time of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Arab women didn't breastfeed their babies, babies were sent to the desert to be breastfed by nurses. That's how sophisticated they were. You can't have this and have along with it women who are subservient, women who are afraid of men's rule, or who are the subject of men's rule.
So, this is what I find contradictory between the life I have as a Muslim woman, as an Arab woman. I was brought up by very strong women in my village, in my area, very strong grand mother, very strong mother who led a court case against her brothers in nineteen fifties to inherit what Koran entitled her to inherit which is half of what men inherit, but if you apply it correctly it's not half of what men inherit. In the Koran it said women inherit half of what man inherit- remember that this was said fourteen centuries ago where women had no right to inherit or even to live in some cases, but even that it said that the man has to provide for the house, for the home, for the family even for her and what she inherits is only her pocket money. I would accept that very happily as a very liberated feminist to have half of what man inherits but not to have any of the responsibilities.
The problem is not what the Koran said about inheritance but the problem is that in most rural areas all over the world women do not inherit at all, they don't inherit because there are traditional thoughts that women should not inherit and because you shouldn't divide the land, if the land belongs to Shaaban's for example it shouldn't be transferred into the husband's name.
The settlement is not to stand in the West and to speak about the unfairness of Koran as some Arab Muslim feminists do. No, I'd like to stand and to defend Islam and to defend the Koran and to defend Arab women because I lived it and I knew it that it makes me a very respectable and a very able woman. That's the true image of Arab and Muslim women.
Also western people can see that in many Muslim countries women have become prime ministers, in Syria we have a woman who became a vice-president, and she was the first Arab woman to occupy this post.
You know, when I look for example at the meeting of NATO ministers you can hardly find women ministers more than 5 or 7 percent and this is the percentage we have!! We're not happy with that but it's really the process and the development of the countries in the world not only the Arab world. Of course we're not happy with that, we're not satisfied with that, but like all other countries and all other people we're working our way upward towards a better situation.
Now, one huge difficulty that Arab women have been facing throughout the last twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years is foreign occupation. It is the big problem that our women face because no security and no future when your country is occupied by foreign forces. The world is unaware of what our women are subjected to in Iraq. The one who listens to the honest western journalists who visit Iraq can find out that women in Iraq are now back hundred years at least; they can't go out now, they can't work, it's not safe for either men or women to go out. If you want to feel what Iraqi women suffer you can read a novel by an Iraqi woman who called herself "Reval Ben", she doesn't put her full name, and the novel is published in the U.K. –Baghdad Terms- it's all over the internet. Everybody in U.K. is talking about it now because it constitutes an absolute contrast to what president Bush is saying about Iraq, about Lebanon, and about Palestine.
The concept that's being promoted by the United States under the pretext of democracy I can tell you as an Arab woman how I can feel about that concept. I feel that as indigenous Arab woman that this campaign is a genocide against Arab people, archeology, art, and way of life.
In Iraq the whole way of life is being destroyed. Babylon is destroyed, we can't have any other Babylon. What the Israelis first attack in Lebanon? It's Baalbak. Baalbak is the historical archeology of Lebanon and when they destroy Baalbak we can't build another Baalbak.
If you allow me I'd like to show you some pictures of the Israeli attacks and genocide in Lebanon (some pictures are being shown now) this is a picture of Israeli girls drawing on the missiles to Lebanon with love, the missiles that were sent to Lebanon, you probably saw these pictures because they were all over the internet. (commenting on another picture) this is a picture of a mum who's dying and putting her hand on her son telling him take care of yourself baby. (another picture) this is a picture of a British soldier who was trained for two months in Britain to go to Iraq and they told him that when you go to Iraq you have to kill children even if they're two months old because their mothers put suicide built around them and they send them to the soldiers so this soldier committed suicide and he told his mother the last words "I can't go to Iraq and I can't kill these children". You remember three years ago when the intifada went up in Palestine there was a ridiculous media saying that the Palestinian mothers are so happy to send their children to die as explosive bombs because that is what the Palestinian mothers love to see, as if the Palestinian mothers were not human beings. (Another picture) killing in Lebanon published the Independent which is the best newspaper really in the west and the only newspaper that published these pictures. (Another picture) is he a terrorist? Look at the boy saying "I'm not a terrorist". I want to stress the importance of such pictures on our minds. If a single day in the Arab world we see an Arab man sent to Israeli prison or to American prison in Abu Greib or in Guantanamo Bay we will feel so humiliated. If my brother or husband is there I wouldn't mind dying in order to do something against those who humiliated me. I think one thing I'd like you to think of is humiliation, that's what our region is suffering from. Humiliation by military force against what us all believe in, against what we all highly esteem, and because these pictures don't reach you you cannot react the same way we do and you can't respond the way we expect from all human beings to do. (Another picture) here you see!! The soldier is not a terrorist but the child is a terrorist?!! (Another picture) look at this picture! This child has died, is he a terrorist?? (other pictures) look at these children! they lost their legs and their eyes. (Another picture) Look at these children, they're children of Qana. Thirty nine children were killed in Qana massacre and twenty five women killed. (Other pictures) this is Marwaheen massacre in South Lebanon. I'm sorry to hurt your feelings but I felt really that it's my duty to bring you some of the sufferings that we feel. The problem is that I read western media everyday; I read the American media, the British media and I feel as if we're living in two different worlds. You watch CNN and of course they want to provide you with entertainment, they want to provide you with news, they want to provide you with something that's good, that people would like, that people would enjoy but who wants to know about those who're dying and those who're being killed? Who's bearing the brunt of the whole situation?? It's the woman!!. It's the women who have to provide for the family, it's the women who suffer, it's the women who bear the horrible brunt of the situation. Could anyone believe any mother anywhere is different?? Could anyone believe that fathers and mothers don't feel sad for their children?? That children don't come to life with ambition, with hope to live happily??
You know, it makes me sad when I see president Bush in Christmas offering children Christmas presents and I think what about our children?? Don't they have the right to enjoy Christmas?? Don't they have the right to live happily?? Don't they have the right to go to schools?? You know, this year- from the beginning of the school year- six hundreds thousands children in Iraq are not able to go to school because there are no schools for them. Two hundred thousand children in Lebanon are not able to go to school because Israel destroyed the whole of South Lebanon and most of Beirut.
I'm a mother of three children, when I was in Michigan in September 2000 the Israelis killed Muhammad Al-Durrah and I'm sure many of you who heard about and saw the picture seven years ago shot by the Israelis after twenty minutes of trying to deliberately kill him, my son was exactly the same age. Now my son is twelve. Believe me everyday I look at my son and I feel guilty!! Why can I have my son watching him grow, seeing him becoming bigger, lovelier and more interesting and learning languages and the mother of Mohammad Al-Durah doesn't have this right?? Why?? Does anyone have the right to kill anyone else anywhere else?? (Does anyone have the right) to kill mothers, to kill children anywhere in the world??
There's one obstacle in the way to democracy in the Middle East, it's the United States policy in the Middle East. Why should the United States be against Syria?? Syria is a secular country, sixty percent of our students are women, Syria has women ministers and ambassadors, professors, scientists. We've a parliament, we've an electoral system, we've a coalition of political parties, we've a history of being really a constructive country in the region. We're the first country to help the United States after 9/11 to prevent another disaster. Why should the United States be against Syria and support other countries who don't have similar records- I don't want to say anything more than that-. The United States doesn't support people who have dignity. (It) doesn't support people who want to be independent. (It) doesn't support people who are proud. We're proud people and we should remain to be proud and they won't be able to do anything about this.
All what I want you to remember is that all what we need in the Middle East are two things I read yesterday in a poem written by a woman, she said:
"We love our Earth and
we love Justice and Respect"
This is exactly what the Arabs need, it's Justice and Respect. We don't want anyone to support the Arabs, this is not what we want, just support Justice. Justice stands against killing people, against crimes, against genocide. Could you imagine that Gaza today like a prison. Did you read about Rafah Entry?? Israel opened Rafah Entry for one hour a day and people are lying there on their suite cases, children and women waiting to go home!! Waiting for the gate to be opened!! They have no control on the gate. They have no access to go anywhere in the world.
What we're loosing in this war is a lot of women arts, a lot of our arts are being lost, a lot of our museums are being destroyed something that we can't really recover and we can't have again, that's the problem.
When Israel occupied Beirut in 1982 the first thing it destroyed is the Palestinian Cultural Center in Beirut that had so many arts and paintings and rich cultural wealth.
What's the identity of the country? It's the art, it is the music, it's the history that makes the identity of a country or the identity of people. These wars in Palestine, in Iraq, in Lebanon are targeting first and foremost our museums, our archeology, our music, our scientists, that's what they're targeting first. Until now three hundred university professors have been killed in Iraq!! All the Iraqi scientists had been killed, there's no Iraqi scientists now. They killed them all; they have a list of them and they check this list everyday.
You know what the proverb we have about Iraq ten years ago? The proverb we have is that "Cairo writes, Lebanon publishes and Iraq reads". The Iraqis are great readers, great intellectuals, great people. They do not deserve what's being done to them in the name of democracy.
What's being spoken about as democracy taken by U.S. to the Middle East is really a permission to Israel to commit genocide against Arab people. Arab women are bearing huge responsibilities trying to keep the pieces together, trying to be able to go beyond these crisis in the Middle East but we need your help.
My only hope is your listening about what's happening and I have no doubt that when western public opinion knows the truth they will take the right stand in favor of Justice and in favor of Respect.
They told you a lot about suicide bombers, I did a study on suicide bombers. Everyone that was a suicide bomber- including mothers particularly women and mothers- has his/her father or mother or son or daughter or all of them killed deliberately in their homes by Israel. And when you're in despair you might prefer death to life, but that's only when you're desperate.
We're born to live. Islam taught us to love life, to enjoy life and to live it beautifully with other people. They could promote stupid, misinformation about us. We want to get the Nobel Prize if we can but they don't even allow us to have the bread and butter. They talk about Palestinians as if they weren't human beings!! They say the Palestinian have enough bread and enough water as if people only need bread and water to live!!
I'm sure that once American people know what their administration is doing in the Middle East they will stand against it. The problem now is how to convey knowledge to public opinion so that they know truly what's going on in the Middle East. Unfortunately they're trying to build on people's ignorance, or on people's busy time- nobody has the time to read a lot-. We want to build on information or on knowledge that the Arabs are descendents of great civilization, Arab women have the right to live like any other woman in the world with their children and to have their children's future away from humiliation, away from occupation. I want today to rely on your good will to join us to establish Justice and Respect for everyone in the world.
Thank you very much