Are Saudi Women Victims Of Mistreatment And Abuse?: New Age Islam's Selection, 19 August 2016
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
19 August 2016
• Are Saudi Women Victims Of Mistreatment And Abuse?
By Fawaz Al-Sihani
• Is It Time For Pakistan To Move To A Presidential System?
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
• How Donald Trump Could Make America Great Again
By Mark Levine
• After The Coup Attempt, Turkey Stays On Course
By Lutfi Elvan
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Are Saudi Women Victims Of Mistreatment And Abuse?
By Fawaz Al-Sihani
Aug 19, 2016
ABDULLAH AL-SUBAI’EE, a well-known Saudi professor of psychiatry, once said, “The more women I see at the clinic, the more I realize that Saudi women are being cruelly abused and are victims of social injustices. I cannot believe that they are maltreated in a society that considers itself Islamic.”
Unfortunately, there are some members of society who still think that those who call for Saudi women’s rights are devils and conspirers who want to destroy our social fabric and unity and even our religion. If you try to argue with them, they will say that you are an ignorant and stupid person who is unaware of the hidden agenda of those who call for liberating women.
Despite the fact that Saudi women have been marginalized for a long time in our male-dominated society, the majority of Saudis believe that there is some kind of Zionist plan against Saudi women. If a Saudi writer talks about women’s rights in the media, he will be considered to be someone who has been deceived by the West and who does not realize the real agenda behind the call for women’s rights. Most members of the public believe that the West wants our society to become decadent and sexually promiscuous. Such people believe that Satan lives inside all women and wants to lead them astray. Personally speaking, I believe that these people are exaggerating and are obsessed with women’s bodies.
Let us forget about the above accusations and exaggerations and think more logically to find a better answer. The best way to deal with this issue is to mention the fatwa issued by a so-called scholar who seems to be obsessed with the dangers of Pokemon Go and other games. A woman asked this scholar if she could travel abroad alone without a male guardian (Mahram) because she did not have one. The woman suffers from a serious medical condition and is in dire need of medical treatment. In blatant disregard of her grave medical condition, the scholar told her not to travel alone even if it meant losing her life. He told her it would be better for her to die protecting her honour than to travel without a Mahram and commit a sin.
I do not know how her travelling alone is against the Shariah? The scholar based his fatwa on the saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him): “A woman must not travel alone without a Mahram.” I believe that this scholar intentionally ignored the views of other renowned scholars who permit women to travel alone. Ibn Taymiyyah and many others permitted women to travel alone if they were faced with similar situations.
The fatwa given by the scholar proves one thing—some people are intentionally making life difficult for women. The scholar is one of those people who does not care if a wife, for example, is being abused or beaten by her husband. They will never tell the wife to desert her abusive husband and file for a divorce. Instead, they will ask her to put up with him because she will be rewarded in the Hereafter.
Scholars like him view the movement to liberate women as a Zionist agenda that aims to create social disintegration and decadence.
Source: saudigazette.com.sa/opinion/local-viewpoint/are-women-victims-of-mistreatment-and-abuse/
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Is It Time For Pakistan To Move To A Presidential System?
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
18 August 2016
Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy modelled on the UK, its former colonial ruler, with a ceremonial head of state and an all-powerful parliament. But this arrangement is not serving the country well at the moment.
Like in the UK, the institutional inertia of the parliamentary system ensures that power is retained by the political insiders of the major parties. In some context, this is a good thing. For example, in the UK, this system has enabled a smooth transition of power after the Brexit vote from the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, to his successor, Theresa May.
At a time of great political upheaval, this system allowed for a swift change of leadership toward someone who is regarded as competent and “a safe pair of hands”, someone who is generally trusted to be boring but effective, and someone who would not have otherwise been likely to win the leadership. And so, the country can now focus its attention on the actual Brexit negotiations, which will determine its future for decades.
But the same institutional inertia which keeps power solidly confined to just top political operators is much less positive if those at the top of political parties who control the government and most areas of the state are chronically corrupt. The parliamentary system has given Pakistan a good deal of political stability, after so many decades of on-again-off-again military takeovers.
The parliamentary system has given Pakistan a good deal of political stability, after so many decades of on-again-off-again military takeovers
But this stability has also come at the price of putting most of those at the top of the political class beyond effective accountability. This system has made it more difficult for the military to remove the civilian government from power, but it has made it even more difficult for the people to challenge and hold to account the incumbent government.
If new political movements or parties want to enter the fray and offer an alternative vision and direction for the country, they have decades of work ahead of them – just as in the UK, it has taken the Labour party a great deal of luck and over two decades from being established out of the broad Labour movement into a party with actual impact in the British Parliament.
Time Running Out
Pakistan cannot wait for that long. It is plagued by corruption, mismanagement, and even just plain administrative incompetence at all levels. Yet given the inherent stability of the parliamentary system, there is very little pressure for those at the top to improve their performance. And there is little chance that they will be effectively replaced.
With each new party having to field hundreds upon hundreds of candidates to contest seats in every constituency under the Parliamentary system, successive generations of politicians will not be drawn from the most able and talented, but from those with insider connections, and family ties – mirroring the deep problem with nepotism of the country at large.
In these circumstances, there is a strong argument for shaking things up. The performance of the top leaders will only improve if the people can hold them to account – i.e. if they can get rid of their leaders when they under-perform, or when they are proven to be corrupt.
In other words, there is an argument that the country should shift towards the more directly accountable Presidential system of democracy, where the head of the Executive branch of the state, the government, is directly answerable to the democratic public at fixed intervals of time, such as four or five years.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. And there is also a question of the quality of the democratic public who does the holding to account. The Presidential system has allowed for the likes of Donald Trump in the US and Marine Le Pen in France to pose a realistic chance to take over the reins of power in their countries.
With the power to elect their leader directly, the public will not necessarily elect the most able leader, or the one who is best for their country. They may also elect leaders who are just better liked, look better on television, or who are the most successful at whipping up anger or fear of real or imagined threats to the nation.
These are real concerns and should not be taken lightly. But with each passing year, the virtually guaranteed mismanagement of the country by Pakistan’s sclerotic political elite makes the alternative worth considering more and more, despite the inherent risks.
Source: alarabiya.net/en/views/2016/08/18/Is-it-time-for-Pakistan-to-move-to-a-Presidential-system-.html
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How Donald Trump Could Make America Great Again
By Mark LeVine
18 August 2016
Hinting at presidential assassinations, asking Russians to hack the United States government and picking fights with "gold star" parents were certainly not the best ways for Donald Trump to build trust in his presidential brand.
But if it is becoming thankfully clear to the American public that Trump the candidate has no business possessing even a shred of political power, Trump the political provocateur is forcing us to confront some very inconvenient truths about the hypocrisies underlying US foreign policy, and could play a valuable role in upending an outdated and even absurd foreign policy status quo.
In a recent piece on the Foreign Policy website, Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government, argued that Trump's focus on advancing US interests, stopping free-riding by other countries, and scepticism of nation-building efforts could have encouraged a much-needed foreign policy debate about the scope and limits of American power.
Trump under Fire for Veiled Threat against Clinton
Speaking The Truth
Directly related to these three arguments are Trumps criticisms of NATO, at the heart of which is his argument that the US shouldn't continue to offer unqualified pledges to defend allies who aren't "paying their fair share" to the NATO budget. He went even further, questioning the alliance's continued raison d'etre.
The idea of the US not meeting its treaty obligations to the alliance sparked almost as much outrage as - and in policy circles far more than - Trump's feud with the Khan family.
In response, President Barack Obama during his Democratic National Convention speech declared that "America's promises do not come with a price tag. We meet our commitments".
Frontline NATO allies such as Poland and the Baltic states would certainly suffer if the US withdrew its commitment to defend them from a Russian attack.
But this doesn't change the reality that the US has been subsidising European NATO allies for decades even though the Cold War strategic logic surrounding a zero-sum contest with an expansionist Soviet Union no longer exists.
The truth is, Trump is doing the US and the world a service by holding a giant mirror up to our collective soul, forcing us to confront the ugliness, irrationalities and hypocrisies underlying so many of the policies we think are sensible, or at least inevitable.
Moreover, the alliance's increasingly offensive posture vis-a-vis Russia, which helps justify the US' continuing massively disproportionate military spending, is considered by analysts a central reason for Russia's own increasingly bellicose actions.
Trump's comments on Crimea, Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US-Russian relations are also far closer to the truth than many would like to admit.
Trump's claim to George Stephanopoulos that Russia "is not going to go into Ukraine" is obviously mistaken, given the invasion and annexation of Crimea.
His willingness to consider recognising Russia's annexation of Crimea generated even more condemnation. But the reality is that the US and its allies have already recognised Russia's fait accompli in all but name.
Not only that, the US and other powers has a sordid history of acquiescing to conquest and effective annexation of territory, from Morocco to Israel. All Trump has done is say out loud what everyone already knows.
Who made the US a mess?
Similarly, we can criticise Trump's romance with Putin, given the latter's brutal and authoritarian policies towards his own people and support for the Bashar al-Assad regime.
But Putin's actions are little different from those of a host of Western allies and client states, from Honduras to Turkey, Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan, Egypt to much of Africa.
A protester in an outfit resembling a uniform of the Ku Klux Klan stands outside the site of a rally by Trump on February 8 [EPA]
The same can be said about Trump's seeming praise for Libya's former President Muammar Gaddafi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein - men who were "our sons of bitches", a phrase that was first used allegedly by Franklin D Roosevelt to describe Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza - before they had outlived their usefulness and were disposed of in highly profitable but strategically disastrous wars.
Simply put, if the mandarins guarding the gates of US foreign policy don't like Trump cosying up to Putin, then the whole edifice of US "realpolitik" needs to be done away with, in favour of a set of principles that actually supports human rights and democracy everywhere.
In that regard, it is worth pointing out that, however ugly Trump's rhetoric, it is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton whose hands are stained with blood, not his.
In that sense, Trump's response to the warning from 50 senior Republican-appointed diplomats that he would be the "most reckless" president in history - "these are the people that have made the US a mess" - is hard to dispute.
Similarly, while his labelling of Obama as a "most valuable player" of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) - never mind its creator - are classic Trump hyperbole, it is undeniable that the president's drone policies, never mind massive arms sales to and support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and so many other brutal and oppressive regimes, significantly help the terror group's recruiting efforts.
Making America Great Again
Perhaps the most panic-inducing report comes from CNBC host Joe Scarborough, who revealed that Trump repeatedly asked at least one foreign policy expert brought in to advise him why the US can't use nuclear weapons since it's gone to all the trouble to build them.
This might sound like a preposterous question, until we realise that the US is set to spend upwards of $1 trillion over the next 30 years - that's $1,000,000,000,000 - to "modernise" its nuclear weapons programme.
This bit of budgetary insanity - which could literally lift most of the world's poor out of poverty - is being proposed not by Republicans, but by the Obama administration (PDF). Let's get real: Do we think the US spends a trillion dollars on a weapons system it has no plans or scenarios to use?
The truth is, Trump is doing the US and the world a service by holding a giant mirror up to our collective soul, forcing us to confront the ugliness, irrationalities and hypocrisies underlying so many of the policies we think are sensible, or at least inevitable.
We don't have to vote for Trump or even like him to appreciate the importance of the political, economic and strategic realities exposed by the US' greatest reality TV star.
If we can keep that mirror raised after he returns to The Apprentice, Trump will indeed have made America a better country than it was before he stormed the political arena.
Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/08/donald-trump-america-great-160816095348041.html
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After The Coup Attempt, Turkey Stays On Course
By Lutfi Elvan
18 August 2016
On July 15, a rogue group within Turkey's military attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government, suspend the constitution and impose martial law.
Over the course of several hours, the coup plotters attacked the parliament, the presidential palace and strategic buildings, including the intelligence and police headquarters.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan barely escaped an assassination attempt, while several high-ranking officials were held captive.
Upon receiving news of the coup attempt and hearing the president's call to resist, millions of ordinary citizens took to the streets and risked their lives to defend democracy.
Counting The Cost - Turkey's Economy After The Coup
Thanks to their sacrifice and the resilience of Turkey's democratic institutions, the situation quickly de-escalated and the authorities launched a formal investigation to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators.
According to initial evidence and testimonies, the coup attempt, which claimed 238 casualties, was orchestrated by FETO, a terrorist group led by retired imam Fethullah Gulen.
The group, which started infiltrating civilian and military institutions in the late 1980s, has tens of thousands of operatives placed in the military, the judiciary and various government agencies.
To address imminent risks and hold accountable those responsible for the assault, the Turkish government, on the recommendation of civilian and military leaders, declared a three-month state of emergency - which has had zero influence on daily life.
Had the July 15 coup attempt taken place in any other developing nation, the consequences would have been catastrophic.
But Turkey's strong fundamentals made it possible for us to overcome this challenge with relative ease.
Solid Capital Markets
Today, the economy remains stable, the banking system robust and the investment climate advantageous as ever.
The fatal incident's negative impact on Turkey's financial markets has been limited and short-lived.
By August 1, the country's stocks and bonds had rallied to two-week highs and already recouped more than half of the losses sustained since the coup attempt.
As individuals with links to the coup attempt are brought to justice, Turkey's democratic institutions will become stronger and the decision-making process will become more transparent and investor-friendly.
While there was only an insignificant increase in the interest rate on 10-year bonds, the net capital inflow between July 1 and July 22 amounted to $533m.
There has been no notable decrease in bank deposits, no significant increase in credit demand, and no restrictions on capital movements.
Fluctuations in credit default swap (CDS) and the exchange rate have also been limited. On August 2, CDS stood at 266 while the Turkish lira was trading at 2.99 against the US dollar.
To put things in perspective, CDS was 329 and the $/TRY rate had reached 3.06 amid the turmoil caused by FED's signal to increase the federal funds rate in September 2015.
Keeping in mind that S&P cut Turkey's credit rating over "growing political fragmentation and polarisation", it is important to keep in mind that reconciliatory steps being taken by various political parties, coupled with strong economic performance, we are confident that they will reverse their decision.
Investor-Friendly Environment
Having handled the coup attempt in a professional and confident manner, Turkey's central bank deserves some credit as well.
In the wake of the assault against Turkish democracy, the central bank provided liquidity to the markets to limit capital outflows and restore confidence of investors in the Turkish lira and Turkey's economy.
By passing a bill to improve the investment environment, the Turkish parliament has been contributing to recovery.
Meanwhile, the government sponsored a bill on August 2 to introduce automatic enrolment to the private pension system, which will significantly increase Turkey's domestic savings rate.
Moving forward, Turkey is committed to take all necessary steps and implement reforms to meet growth, inflation, unemployment and current account deficit targets outlined in the medium term programme for 2016-2018.
While Turkey overcame a serious challenge on July 15, this is the right time for investors to come on board.
Major investments, including the construction of Turkey's largest airport in Istanbul, continue as planned.
As individuals with links to the coup attempt are brought to justice, Turkey's democratic institutions will become stronger and the decision-making process will become more transparent and investor-friendly.
Finally, we encourage investors to visit Turkey and meet policymakers to find out more about our plans for the future.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/08/coup-attempt-turkey-stays-160818082420258.html
URL: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/are-saudi-women-victims-mistreatment/d/108298