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Her er en "sjov" artikel af den tidligere statsminister i Malysia's datter.

Den med at der er langt finere rettigheder for kvinder inden for islam end
inden for ikke-islam, den hopper hun ikke på.
Det er ellers, hvad man ofte hører også fra danske muslimske kvinder, - der
er for det første fuldstændig lige rettigheder for kvinder og mænd inden for
islam, og derudover bliver kvinden respekteret *langt* mere. Sandhedsværdien
i sådanne udsagn er ca lige så stor, som den i udsagn om profetens
vidunderlige etik og moral.

Sjovt at tænke på at det var hendes far som præsiderede over disse tilstande
i utrolig mange år, - men der er åbenbart sket et eller andet tilbageskridt
for nylig, der var et indlæg om det i "Orientering", men jeg glemte at åbne
for det.



No cheer for Muslim women
By Marina Mahathir
TheStar

2006/03/11

In 1948, one of humankind's most despicable ideas, apartheid, was made into
law in South Africa where racial discrimination was institutionalised. Race
laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of
marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of "white-only"
jobs. Although there were 19 million blacks and only 4.5 million whites in
South Africa, the majority population were forced to be second-class
citizens in their homeland, banished to reserves and needing passports to
travel outside them, even within their own country. It was only in 1990 that
apartheid began to crumble and South Africans of all colours were finally
free to live as equals in every way.

With the end of that racist system, people may be forgiven for thinking that
apartheid does not exist anymore. While few countries practise any formal
systems of discrimination, nevertheless you can find many forms of
discrimination everywhere. In many cases, it is women who are discriminated
against. In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid
among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women.

We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women who are
arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women. Non-Muslim Malaysian
women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the
opposite has happened for Muslim women.

For instance, since the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, polygamy
among non-Muslims was banned. Previously men could have as many wives as
they wanted under customary laws. Men's ability to unilaterally pronounce
divorce on their wives was abolished and, in its place, divorce happens by
mutual consent or upon petition by either spouse in an equal process where
the grounds are intolerable adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion of
not less than two years, and living separately for not less than two years.
Compare that to the lot of Muslim women abandoned but not divorced by their
husbands.

Other progressive reforms in the civil family law in the late 1990s were
amendments to the Guardianship Act and the Distribution Act. The
Guardianship of Infants Act 1961 was amended to provide for equal
guardianship for both father and mother, rather than the previous provision
where only the father was the primary guardian of the children. In contrast,
the Islamic Family Law still provides for the father as the sole primary
guardian of his children although the mother is now allowed to sign certain
forms for her children under an administrative directive.

The Distribution Act 1958 was also amended to provide for equal inheritance
for widows and widowers, and also granted children the right to inherit from
their mothers as well as from their fathers. Under the newly proposed
amendments to the Islamic Family Law, the use of gender-neutral language on
the issue of matrimonial property is discriminatory on Muslim women when
other provisions in the IFL are not gender-neutral. Muslim men may still
contract polygamous marriages, may unilaterally divorce their wives for the
most trivial of reasons and are entitled to double shares of inheritance.

These differences between the lot of Muslim women and non-Muslim women beg
the question: do we have two categories of citizenship in Malaysia, whereby
most female citizens have less rights than others? As non-Muslim women catch
up with women in the rest of the world, Muslim women here are only going
backwards. We should also note that only in Malaysia are Muslim women
regressing; in every other Muslim country in the world, women have been
gaining rights, not losing them.