Feminine "Resistance"

From the AP on the secret key to Hamas' victory being its political mobilization of women.

For historical background on the rise of Hamas, see here.

The word "Hamas" is alternatively translated into English as "courage", "zeal", "bravery", or "resistance."

Certain elements of the AP analysis caught me eye.

One: University-age women campaigning door to door with "housewives." Notice how young many of the women appear in the above photo.

The poor and the uneducated have to be indoctrinated into such movements--Marxism had to send middle class (read: educated) Marxists to the factories and rural populations to teach, factory workers for example that they were in fact the industrial proletriat and were being abused by the bourgeoisie.

Very doctrinaire movements, such as Hamas, require the idealism of youth. Palestine, like the Near East generally, is undergoing a massive youth bulge, many of whom are educated with very little hope currently for jobs, stable family life, and development.

Two: Notice what the Female Students told these homemakers: That Islam protects women's equality and offers equal partnership in society as for men.

Islam has deep patterns of male-female partnership and equity from the beginning, for all the aggressive male patriarchial imagery perpetrated in Western media concerning Islam. For example, the Prophet Muhammad taught women and men. His first wife Khadija seems to have been his support (much like a Coretta Scott King) during times of despair and near collapse.

[And if readers think I am out of my mind comparing MLK, Jr. to Muhammad, I would say that is symptomatic of the disease of Western anti-Islamic bias].

The traditional attribution of the wearing of the hijab (scarf, headress worn by some Islamic women) is that the original female members of the Prophet's Family worn them. It seems this veiling of the Prophet's Family was meant to afford them protection in an otherwise hostile, tribal patriarchial culture.

Many Islamic women choose to wear a hijab to help remind them to be like the honorable matriarchs of Islam--heroines like Khadija. Also, many Muslim women feel that they are not reduced to sexual objects as are women in Western societies. Many Muslim women feel the rules concerning male-female interaction common throughout much of the Muslim world (particularly the Middle East, Arabia) help guard women's sanctity.

Now, I'm not saying I'm in favor of a Taliban-style burka. And if a woman feels letting her hair out is a sign of her freedom, more power to her. But if a woman also feels that wearing a hijab is helpful to her liberation, how can I not trust her intuition? How would I or for example a Western feminist know what is best for her?

Now Islam arose during a period of patriarchy and the initial prophetic and revolutionary constructs/actions of the Prophet and the early ummah (Muslim community), like all religious movements, degraded and settled into a more comfortable, co-opted pattern of male domination.

Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism being no different on this account by the way. St. Paul for example wrote that In Christ there is Neither Male nor Female. He also told the Corinithian church that women must cover their hair and not speak in public church forums.

Three: The death of Pan-Arabic Nationalism. Hamas just like Fatah, though in many ways ethnocentric, mythic membership in its worldview, is in fact a response to the modern world. Islamic Fundamenatlisms, like Fundamentalisms across the board, are modern responses, it is a modern cognitive appartus that seeks to restore/bolster a premodern traditional base.

And because of that interesting mix, movements like Hamas, once they come to power break up into smaller sub-sections. I mean notice--you have university-educated women in Palestine going door to door to Palestinian mothers/wives, telling them that they should vote for Hamas because it will create educational opportunities for their daughters and protect women's role in public society.

How would that have existed in the premodern agricultural world? Now, given that the techno-economic base of Palestine is so massively underdeveloped, many of the best desires of the Hamas women's youth movement will not yet have the capacity to really sustain themselves or take hold in a structural way in society.

As long as women do not have access to cheap, reliable, and safe means of contraception and live in societies without government welfare systems, they will have multiple children in order to create a lineage to support them in their old age.

I imagine that those young university Hamas female supporters had the free time and mobility to campaign because they weren't suckling infants as their breasts. By increasing educational opportunities for women, women delay childbirth. This is a well known fact across the political, religious, and cultural landscapes of our world.

Of course, also well known is that violent doctrinaires come from the educated classes. In most cases, take Ayman al-Zawahiri (Number 2 Man for al-Qaeda) is a Doctor from Egypt, they are educated but find that underdeveloped societies do not have means for them to achieve status, success, and (especially for men) pride, family stability.

As these young Hamas women run up against the realities of politics, some may come to feel betrayed by the movements they've supported (for a number of reasons, like way outside chance, Hamas recognizes the State of Israel and gives up its claim to the return of refugees or the pre-1947 Palestinian boundaries). In which case, such idealism can easily turn to absolute cynicism and despair--leading to suicide bombing.

The earlier great Middle Eastern response to the modern proejct was Pan-Arab Nationalism. Pan Arab Nationalism (PAN), as the name suggests, sought to emphasize the Arab (not Islamic) traditions and character of social-political achievement. And nationalist, i.e. secular, not religious (like Hamas).

The great names of PAN are: Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Kings Hussein and Abdullah of Jordan; Yassir Arafat, Abu Mazen, and the PLO; Hafez and Bashar Assad in Syria; and (psychotically) Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

PAN was discredited in large part, in the eyes of Arab populations, by the humiliating losses at the hands of the hated Israelis in 1956, 1967, and 1973. From then on various Arab governments recognized Israel in exchange for territorial concessions---Camp David 1978 Egypt recognizes Israel and Israel returns the Sinai. Jordan recognized Israel in 1994. Syria had its chance during the Clinton years, but stupidly refused, continuing its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, its terrorist security appartus in Lebanon (Rafik Hariri's murder). Syria is now isolated diplomatically, and its regime is tettering on the brink.

Sadat recognized Israel and was murdered by a violent extremist from the Muslim Brotherhood (the Egyptian equivalent if you will of Hamas).

Itzhak Rabin recognized the PLO and was murdered by an extremist Zionist.

Hussein is deposed. Fatah voted out of power.

The second great reason of the loss of grassroots support of the PAN vision is that, after the loss to the Israelis, they reverted to authoriatarian state-security (secret police) conditions. The governments did not support economic assistance and culture-humanitarian welfare at the local level.

Arafat was too busy pocketing all the money from international groups (including the US), to pay off his cronies.

Only groups like Hamas, Hezbollah (Lebanon), and the Muslim Brotherhood fulfilled this role, acting out of the great Islamic virtues of justice and charity. Much as Christian Evangelicals in the US are currently the leading voice for military support to end the reign of terror in Sudan. Evangelicals are pushing the White House and US government on human rights in China and Sub-Saharan Africa like nobody else.

The military-state establishments being more focused of course on the Middle East democracy project of Bush's.

And in all of these faith-based charity programs, of both religions, women figure prominently. The Feminine Typology, it is said, emphasizes connectivity, immediacy, communalism, and touch. These young female Hamas supporters go physically into the homes of their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, sisters, and build strong bonds, strong female companionship.

I have said before that the democracy project and freedom language of Pres. Bush is a leftover from the neoconservative agenda of Wolfowitz & Co. from W.'s first term. The entire neocon agenda was of course rapid invasions of Iraq, Syria, and Iran (in that order--Wolfowitz's vision had it been done...we would have already demolished Syria and would gearing up for Iran....whoops).

So Condi, Rummy, and VEEP left out the entirety of the neocon agenda, and Bush is left with one of the mythic elements of neconservatism: democracy=rule of law. In other words, create democratic elections, and the populace will immediately choose modernist, pluralist, rule of law governments (in integral speak, the orange wave).

But that doesn't happen. There isn't the techno-economic flexibilty nor the existence of legitimated civil socities institutions in these countries--remember they're police states, with places like Iran and Saudi Arabia buying off the population with oil money and cheap foreign labor, what Thomas Friedman calls petrolism.

So when people have a chance to vote, they are going to vote in the (from their point of view) legitimate groups on the street, the ones that form bonds, generate welfare, show concern for the people, and hold a cohesive vision.

Strongly religious Shi'ite parties win in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah among Shi'ite Lebanese, and so on.

There are retrograde elements in such movements. There are renewed Iranian style Shi'ite theocracy and burka-style veiling of women in Southern Iraq, which previously its Shi'ism was fairly moderate.

And no doubt Hamas, in the short term, is likely to sour the prospects for peace--if there were any--between Israel and Palestine.

On the other hand, we have to think long term here. The Spiral is descending in terms of depth, a bit--but not as much as many might imagine--in order to sweep a larger span into its maternal-like folds, to bring the entire movement up.

Lest I be accussed of overly negative criticism of Bush (and neoconservatism more generally), its important I think to recognize the one thing Bush actually got right: namely that just destroying al-Qaeda (which he didn't do unfortunately) was only a step in the process.

For true lasting peace to occur, America had to undergo the hard work of helping transform the Middle East. That a huge gap, in terms of social, human, legal, and economic capital exists between across North Africa, the Middle East, through Iran, Central Asia, and into Pakistan. He rightly bucked trends within his own Republican party to get beyond this notion of the inherent conflict of civilizations between the West and Islam (think Pat Buchanan).

That Bush messed everything else up is the great loss of the worldwide sympathy we had after 9/11. It would have taken a grand grand vision and visionary to effectively bring good out of that terrible tragedy.

Instead Bush invaded Iraq alone, with insufficient post-combat troop levels, no plan for reconstruction, and leaving the operation in the hands of Donny Rumsfield and not a man by the name of Powell.

Bush never asked for sacrifice from the US populace. As Wolfowitz said, WMDs was the de-facto choice for selling the war. The inner war circle agreed that would be best way to have the US populace "buy" the idea of war. Yikes.

He cut taxes and wants to see those cuts extended.

He severely weakened our connections to traditional Western allies. Good news on that front, though, is NATO's increased role in Afghanistan. [Think of what could have been in Iraq].

And therefore, when Rumsfield says that we are in for a long war, the American population freezes. A dire gloom and doom scenario extended. Then Bush with his disconnected airy-fairy talk of Freedom and Progress just doesn't cut it.

First it was Saddam and al-Qaeda, then WMD, then democraticizing the Middle East (the only sound reason for ever conceiving of the operation whether it should have been done or not). So he only came to the right answer by choice number 3, sadly not being exactly the charm in this case, leading to inherent suspicion of his motivations.

Bush was hampered of course by the political-historical malaise of Continental (did I almost Old?) Euopre and the Democratic Party in the US. Did you see that Cindy Sheehan (like Harry Belafonte) hung out with Hugo Chavez and thanked him for his resistance to the American Empire? You think she got a tour of the prisions for those who speak out against Chavez? You think they are pleased with El Dictator's resistance? Do you think she would love to be a Venezeulan and be affored their version of free speech?

What Barnett calls the Systems Administration---what should have been in place for post-Saddam and what is happening only in fits and starts in Afghanistan--a combination humanitarian aid, civil engineering, peacekeeping forces, all of this would have been populated by Canadians, Australians, French, Germans, Swedes, the UN, NATO, China, India, Brazil. Think of the expertise squandered because of the lack of vision and courage on both sides.

The next realization that Bushy and Condi need to figure out is that Political Islam (Islamist parties in Western media) are not inherently terrorist organizations. There are wide varities of political Islam. Maybe the Hamas win will let them see that, as opposed to everyone saying we should stop the democracy train because it is going to bring in anti-American, anti-Israeli governments.

It will of course unless we couple our democracy agenda with intelligent, pinpointed economic aid, civil institution building, and goodwill gestures (SysAdmin). Its not going to happen overnight.

Political Islam is the only hope for a modernizing of the Near East. Arab secular nationalism is dead. But it is going to require the US to get over their hang up on the separation of church-state.

Islam can be a Official State Government and still protect minority religions--hey its not like the Islamic Empire didn't do a better job of that than say the Western Christian ones, for I don't know something like a 1,000 yrs.

The best book on the subject of the plurality of political Islams see Noah Feldman: Islamic Democracy. (Again I would have called it Islamic Modernity or Islamic Rule of Law, but that doesn't quite sound right).

And the one place where Bush's ideas would work best, where there is a strong history of civil insititutions and free thought is of course IRAN. Which is why his total lack of any vision for connecting with different moderate elements of the Ayatollahs (and yes Virginia there are some), the Reformists, Rafsanjani, the people etc is beyond my mind. I guess they'd rather talk about bombing them. [God even McCain is on that track now].

Condi Rice would get a superstar welcome in IRAN. I guarantee it. We could be co-opting the internal struggles there. Condi needs a little counseling from Mr. Kissinger on that one.

Islam is going through its most creative and destructive (they always go together, look at the history of the West) phase in I would argue about 1,000 years or so. It ultimately comes down to how a people wants to define itself. But we can help. We are, in fact, in this together and are growing closer by the day, the question is whether are coming together is going to be a Clash or a Linkage?