An anthropology of Muslims in Europe - A modest attempt by Martijn
From postering activists to virtual cyber art. Forty years of art
history are on display in Rebelle. According to the press statement, while the topic of art and feminism has both champions and opponents, everyone is in agreement about one thing: feminism permanently changed the artistic landscape. The exhibition includes three contributions from Middle Eastern feminist artists: Shadi Ghadirian, Gülsün Karamustafa and Parastou Forouhar.
PhD thesis Diana van Bergen: Suicidal Behaviour of Young Migrant Women in The Netherlands. A Comparative Study of Minority and Majority Women. English abstract.
Om na te gaan welke factoren suïcidaal gedrag kunnen veroorzaken, interviewde Van Bergen vrouwen die eerder een zelfmoordpoging hadden ondernomen;zowel vrouwen met een migratieachtergrond als autochtone vrouwen. In de levensverhalen van de migrantenvrouwen die een zelfmoordpoging hadden gedaan, bleek vooral de strijd met de familie over essentiële keuzen in hun leven centraal te staan. Verwacht werd dat Turkse, Marokkaanse en Surinaams-hindostaanse vrouwen aan zouden geven te weinig autonomie te hebben. Dat bleek echter vooral het geval te zijn voor Turkse en Marokkaanse meisjes, terwijl voor Hindostaans-Nederlandse en autochtoon-Nederlandse meisjes verwaarlozing en gebrek aan affectieve ondersteuning van groot belang zijn.
The Mosque in Morgantown has several interesting articles on the topic Feminism and Islam which includes women led prayer, interpreting the Quran, women’s rights, pluralism, social change, female authority, and so on.
The image of the Muslims woman, the way the appear in public and her type of dress in public is one of the battle grounds on which the integration struggle takes place. This time it is about the public campaign of the province of Overijssel which features a girl with a headscarf that leads some people to engage in actions against the billboards by claiming Overijssel is not Islamic.
As in some other countries such as the US there is a debate in the Netherlands about the pornofication and sexualization of Dutch society. In particular feminists have been active in this debate pointing out the objectification of women (reducing women to objects of sexual desire and moulding women into standardized models that fit the general pattern of what is sexually attractive to Dutch heterosexual men) and men (reducing men into objects that are determined by sexual lust and moulding them into standardized models of what a Dutch heterosexual man should find sexually attractive). Now we have one (!) Muslim man who is on a ‘crusade’ against, what he sees, as pornographic representations of women in commercial ads. ***UPDATED!***
Queensday is in many cases a celebration not only for native Dutch people but also for migrants and in particular the younger generations. This time it has led to a new initiative called the Louka. A group of students will hand out more than 5,000 orange headscarves on 30 April to promote tolerance in the Netherlands in a ‘playful’ way. The orange headscarves will, according to the students, allow Muslim women to express their loyalty to their faith as well as to the queen. I’m afraid such an initiative, no matter how well intended it is, will contribute to the opposite.
The Dutch TV program ‘Lekker Slim’ (Pretty Smart) portrays women as beautiful and dumb, sexy and superficial. If we allow TV to portray women as such, do we still have reason to critique women who choose to cover themselves (Muslims or not) exactly because they do not want to be confronted with such stereotypes? Or does the fact that ‘we’ like women with headscarves as long as the rest of their clothes doesn’t leave much for imagination, mean that we also want to reduce these women into objects of sexism and ridicule?
Tariq Ramadan is a guest professor in Rotterdam. He has been accused numerous times and since ages, probably since he was born as the grand child of Hassan al Banna, of being insincere. On the one hand showing a ‘moderate’ and ‘liberal’ face towards non-Muslims while secretly having radical views and expressing these in a closed circle of Muslims. The latter face then would be his real, true face, the other just a mask. In the Netherlands this debate has resurfaced again after a gay magazine announced to ‘expose’ him.
DutchNews.nl – Burqa ban extended to universities Face-covering Islamic robes known as burqas and niqabs are to be banned from Holland’s colleges and universities, education minister Ronald Plasterk said on Wednesday. In September, Plasterk...
Een Frans huwelijk dat afgelopen mei nog werd ontbonden omdat de vrouw geen maagd meer bleek, is toch geldig, zo oordeelde het Franse Hof van beroep maandag. Over dat eerste vonnis was nogal wat...