Jenny’s Pennies

Banda Aceh, capital of the Indonesian province Aceh, was one of the areas worst affected by the 2004 tsunami. CBC News now report that the tsunami has been used as a pretext for implementing harsh Sharia laws in the province. The tsunami is seen as God’s punishment for women being immoral:

When the thousands bodies of women were found after the tsunami, almost all of them were naked. The sarongs and nightgowns they would have been wearing in their homes the morning of the tsunami were ripped right off their bodies by the force of the water. But conservatives pointed at the naked bodies as examples of the immorality of Muslim women. They said that God punished Aceh because the women didn’t wear the jilbab, the Indonesian term for hijab or headscarf.

The water that hit Banda Aceh, at one point reached 50 metres high in the air, and it came with such force that entire homes and buildings were swept away. The conservatives refuse to accept that it was perhaps the force of the water that removed the women’s clothing. In their minds, or at least in their propaganda, there were hordes of immoral women roaming around somewhere on this Muslim island, naked in the streets.

In the centre of the city, local officials put up a poster of a naked woman’s body with a caption declaring that women caused the tsunami.

To make sure God doesn’t punish them again, the Achenese were told they had to become better Muslims. This has given the Sharia police a type of moral authority that few dare question. Things have become so dogmatic in the region that all musical concerts must take place during the day, so women aren’t strolling the city at night. All movie theatres have been shut down because men and women should not be sitting together in darkness.

The “this is gods punishment”-rhetoric is a familiar one, used by fundamentalists of all kinds. People’s fears and questions - why did this happen to us? why did my brother die, while I lived? will it happen again? - become a political opportunity, and is used to further the agenda.

Natasha Fatah writes in the CBC report:

Most people have difficulty accepting the current Sharia law, but they say the problem isn’t the religious aspect, it is the implementation. Almost everyone says that it will be impossible to remove Sharia from Aceh now, it is too deeply entrenched. The task now has to be to adapt it into something the people can live with.

For centuries Aceh has been called the veranda to Mecca, but the truth is the Acehnese don’t want a Saudi Sharia law, they want the pluralistic and moderate form of religious governance. Something more in line with the norms of an Islam that is uniquely Indonesian. An Islam that would allow men and women to enjoy a cup of coffee at Solong café together.

Aceh was the scene of one of Asias longest running conflicts, which left at least 15 000 people, most of them civilians, dead. The tsunami was actually something which helped galvanize the peace talks between the Indonesian government and the separatist GAM movement.

After suffering from a long-running conflict and surviving a terrible natural disaster, in which lives, homes and livelihoods were lost, the people, and especially the women, of Aceh are now subjects to religious zealots controlling their lives.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has also commented on the “we need to breed”-nonsense that I wrote about yesterday. She also has a video from the Nation that summarizes the article.

And, today in Dagens Nyheter, the latest statistics from SCB (Swedish bureau of statistics), that show that more people are getting married and having children in Sweden than in previous years. Marriages are up 5 percent from 2006 (to the highest number since 1968, if you discount 1989 when a change in law regarding pensions for widows/widowers made many people drive into marriage-ville) and births are up 1.4 percent. In 2006, we had a excess of births over deaths of 15 692. So no, we are not going extinct. Of course, we don’t know how many of those births that are of the “right” babies (you know, blond, blue-eyed and born of God-fearing parents who only had sex to create that baby). But there it is.
If you’re into statistics, SCB has it all in English here.

Kathryn Joyce of The Nation has written a long article called “Missing: the ‘Right’ Babies” about the so called “demographic winter of Europe” - that the “West” is failing to produce enough babies and is in danger of becoming “out-breeded” by the Muslim immigrants and their purportedly numerous offspring. From the article, a quote by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who quit the republican presidential race in the beginning of February:

“Europe is facing a demographic disaster” due to its modernized, secular culture, particularly its “weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for human life and eroded morality.”

This nativist “pro-family” movement is a mess of sexism and nationalism blended with religious extremism. For them, women’s liberation, contraception, gay rights, divorce, abortion, and secular humanism is to blame for the demise of Europe. The movement is spearheaded by American right-wing Christians, but has the backing of politicians and organizations in Europe. Even Muslims are sometimes allowed into the unholy alliance - when it comes to blocking rights for women and gays at the UN, these people are happy to gang up with Iran and Saudi Arabia. But when it comes to babies, they want the right babies - white babies.

But for this to work, women need to dedicate their lives and their wombs to this demographic warfare. And I have a suspicion that the way they want to do this is not by implementing true family-friendly policies: not by ending work place discrimination against women who have children, not by making life easier for single parents, not by improving child care and education, addressing poverty, and ensuring access to equal and affordable health care.

This quote by Paul Mero and Allan Carlson, writers of The Natural Family Manifesto, says it all:

“Above all, we believe in rights that recognize women’s unique gifts of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.”

If they want to get me behind the idea of preserving “Western culture” they will have to include in their definition of this culture all the progress that we have made in the last decades and that makes me happy to live in Sweden: the possibility for women to have careers outside the home or the schoolteacher/nurse option, the advancement in rights for gays and in how non-heterosexuals are viewed in the society, the right to choose one’s own religion or lack thereof, the ability to chose and control the number of children you have, and so on.

But this is not what they wish to preserve. To them, all the things which I see as good and positive developments, are a threat to “our way of life”. In their logic, by allowing freedom for women and freedom of (or from) religion, we are being overrun by people who treat their women miserably and advocates killing all the infidels. Funny how their world views coincide…

(Update: the article is also reprinted over at Alternet; it’s always interesting to read the comments section there.)