A Muslim woman in east London, Oct. 6 (AFP File Photo)

I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures--until I was captured by the Taliban. In September 2001, just 15 days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, I snuck into Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa, intending to write a newspaper account of life under the repressive regime. Instead, I was discovered, arrested and detained for 10 days. I spat and swore at my captors; they called me a “bad“ woman but let me go after I promised to read the Koran and study Islam. (Frankly, I’m not sure who was happier when I was freed--they or I.)
Back home in London, I kept my word about studying Islam--and was amazed by what I discovered. I’d been expecting Koran chapters on how to beat your wife and oppress your daughters; instead, I found passages promoting the liberation of women. Two-and-a-half years after my capture, I converted to Islam, provoking a mixture of astonishment, disappointment and encouragement among friends and relatives.
Now, it is with disgust and dismay that I watch here in Britain as former foreign secretary Jack Straw describes the Muslim nikab--a face veil that reveals only the eyes--as an unwelcome barrier to integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair and even Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi leaping to his defense.
Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that most Western male politicians and journalists who lament the oppression of women in the Islamic world have no idea what they are talking about. They go on about veils, child brides, female circumcision, honor killings and forced marriages, and they wrongly blame Islam for all this--their arrogance surpassed only by their ignorance.
These cultural issues and customs have nothing to do with Islam. A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman’s gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute.
When Islam offers women so much, why are Western men so obsessed with Muslim women’s attire? Even British government ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid have made disparaging remarks about the nikab--and they hail from across the Scottish border, where men wear skirts.
When I converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf, the repercussions were enormous. All I did was cover my head and hair--but I instantly became a second-class citizen. I knew I’d hear from the odd Islamophobe, but I didn’t expect so much open hostility from strangers. Cabs passed me by at night, their “for hire“ lights glowing. One cabbie, after dropping off a white passenger right in front of me, glared at me when I rapped on his window, then drove off. Another said, “Don’t leave a bomb in the back seat“ and asked, “Where’s bin Laden hiding?“
Yes, it is a religious obligation for Muslim women to dress modestly, but the majority of Muslim women I know like wearing the hijab, which leaves the face uncovered, though a few prefer the nikab. It is a personal statement: My dress tells you that I am a Muslim and that I expect to be treated respectfully, much as a Wall Street banker would say that a business suit defines him as an executive to be taken seriously. And, especially among converts to the faith like me, the attention of men who confront women with inappropriate, leering behavior is not tolerable.
I was a Western feminist for many years, but I’ve discovered that Muslim feminists are more radical than their secular counterparts.
We hate those ghastly beauty pageants, and tried to stop laughing in 2003 when judges of the Miss Earth competition hailed the emergence of a bikini-clad Miss Afghanistan, Vida Samadzai, as a giant leap for women’s liberation. They even gave Samadzai a special award for “representing the victory of women’s rights.“
Some young Muslim feminists consider the hijab and the nikab political symbols, too, a way of rejecting Western excesses such as binge drinking, casual sex and drug use. What is more liberating: being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety--not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.
I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh when Italy’s Prodi joined the debate last week by declaring that it is “common sense“ not to wear the nikab because it makes social relations “more difficult.“ Nonsense. If this is the case, then why are cellphones, landlines, e-mail, text messaging and fax machines in daily use? And no one switches off the radio because they can’t see the presenter’s face.
Under Islam, I am respected. It tells me that I have a right to an education and that it is my duty to seek out knowledge, regardless of whether I am single or married. Nowhere in the framework of Islam are we told that women must wash, clean or cook for men. As for how Muslim men are allowed to beat their wives--it’s simply not true. Critics of Islam will quote random Koranic verses or hadith, but usually out of context. If a man does raise a finger against his wife, he is not allowed to leave a mark on her body, which is the Koran’s way of saying, “Don’t beat your wife, stupid.“
It is not just Muslim men who must reevaluate the place and treatment of women. According to a recent National Domestic Violence Hotline survey, 4 million American women experience a serious assault by a partner during an average 12-month period. More than three women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends every day--that is nearly 5,500 since 9/11.
Violent men don’t come from any particular religious or cultural category; one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to the hotline survey. This is a global problem that transcends religion, wealth, class, race and culture.
But it is also true that in the West, men still believe that they are superior to women, despite protests to the contrary. They still receive better pay for equal work--whether in the mailroom or the boardroom--and women are still treated as sexualized commodities whose power and influence flow directly from their appearance.
And for those who are still trying to claim that Islam oppresses women, recall this 1992 statement from the Rev. Pat Robertson, offering his views on empowered women: Feminism is a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.“
Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not.
Yvonne Ridley
OUTLOOKINDIA.COM

The International Labor Organization estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually.

Just before 5 a.m., with the sky still dark over Lake Volta, Mark Kwadwo was rousted from his spot on the damp dirt floor. It was time for work.
Shivering in the predawn chill, he helped paddle a canoe a kilometer out from shore. For five more hours, as his co-workers yanked up a fishing net, inch by inch, Mark bailed water to keep the canoe from swamping.
He had last eaten the day before. His broken wooden paddle was so heavy he could barely lift it. But he raptly followed each command from Kwadwo Takyi, the powerfully built 31-year-old in the back of the canoe who freely deals out beatings.
Mark Kwadwo is 6 years old. About 14 kilograms, or 30 pounds, dressed in a pair of blue and red underpants and a Little Mermaid T-shirt, he looks more like an oversized toddler than a boat hand. He is too young to understand why he has ended up in this fishing village, a two-day trek from his home.
But the three older boys who work with him know why. Like Mark, they are indentured servants, leased by their parents to Takyi for as little as $20 a year.
Takyi’s boys--conscripts in a miniature labor camp, deprived of schooling, basic necessities and freedom--are part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets. The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.
By no means is the child trafficking trade uniquely African. Children are forced to race camels in the Middle East, weave carpets in India and fill brothels all over the developing world.
The International Labor Organization, a UN agency, estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually. Studies show they are most vulnerable in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Africa’s children, the world’s poorest, account for roughly one-sixth of the trade, according to the labor organization. Data are scarce, but they suggest victimization of African children on a huge scale.
In an analysis in February, Unicef said child trafficking is growing in West and Central Africa, driven by huge profits and partly controlled by organized networks that transport children both within and among countries.
“We know it is a huge problem in Africa,“ said Pamela Shifman, a child- protection officer at the New York headquarters of Unicef. “A lot of it is visible. You see the kids being exploited. You watch it happen. Somebody brought the kids to the place where they are. Somebody exploited their vulnerability.“
John Miller, the director of the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said the term trafficking failed to convey the brutality of what was occurring. “A child does not consent,“ he said. “The loss of choice, the deception, the use of frauds, the keeping of someone at work with little or no pay, the threats if they leave--it is slavery.“
Some West African families see it more as a survival strategy. In a region where nearly two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1 a day, the compensation for the temporary loss of a child keeps the rest of the family from going hungry. Some parents argue that their children are better off learning a trade than starving at home.
NYTIMES.COM

There is no doubt that the city-state of Singapore represents a remarkable success story that has placed the country among the developed nations.
Since its independence in the mid-1960s, it has swiftly moved ahead of all neighbouring countries in almost all fields, turning itself into Asia’s second-richest country in terms of per capita income. Much of this was attributed to its pragmatic leadership, firm administration and the solid determination of its people.
It was not surprising, therefore, to see Third World leaders occasionally promising their peoples the Singaporean model in a bid for popularity, support or political mandate.
One does not need much evidence to prove Singapore’s economic miracle and its remarkable achievements throughout the past 40 years, as the issue is unarguable. The jump in foreign investments flowing into the country from $5.4 billion in the 1960s to more than $109 billion last year, alone proves this.
However, global political and economic changes in the 1990s and the following years have brought unprecedented challenges for Singapore.
The rise of China and India as economic giants has negatively affected its position as a leading attracter of foreign investments and a prominent Asian manufacturer and exporter, something that led the country’s gross domestic product growth to slump from 8 to 4 per cent and unemployment rate to rise from 2 to nearly 4 per cent.
With their varied natural resources, low labour costs, varying business opportunities and tempting incentives, the two Asian giants have left little for Singapore to do.
For the latter, economic competition with China and India was out of the question due to its lack of natural resources, limited area of less than 700 square kilometres, high labour wages and limited domestic market owning to its small population of only four million compared with 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion in the cases of China and India respectively.
Competing successfully Realising this reality, Singapore has been developing a new role for itself in the current millennium. This includes acting as a bridge between China and India on the one hand, and as a bridge between the latter and other countries in the West and Southeast Asia on the other.
It has been reported that the country’s first prime minister and the architect of its economic miracle Lee Kuan Yew, who is currently senior minister of the Singaporean Prime Minister’s Office, strongly supports such a role.
Lee had urged Singaporean firms as early as the 1970s to strongly establish themselves in China so they could successfully compete with other foreign investors and control maximum business opportunities.
In line with its new role, Singapore decided to reduce reliance on manufacturing in favour of higher-value added activities. It emphasised the need to shift to a knowledge-based economy where fine education and training and specific services needed in China, India and other emerging powers would be available.
The government’s strategy in recent years to attract more foreign students and trainees and to have institutions that can train them in certain specialised areas for careers in government and first-class private companies must be viewed in this regard.
Observers are almost sure that the city-state can meet the challenge and present the world with another success story. This is based on several factors including Singapore’s strong rule of law, Western economic and managerial practices, effective corruption-free administration and top-class infrastructure.
In addition, and as far as playing the role of bridging the two Asian giants and assisting them in certain areas is concerned, Singapore is geographically close to both and its people are familiar with the Chinese and Indian cultures, given the fact that 77 per cent of them are of Chinese origin and 8 per cent are of Indian origin.
GULF-NEWS.COM

Against all odds, we are living in a time of plenty. Neither the aftershocks of Sept. 11 nor a tripling in oil prices has prevented the world’s economy from growing faster in the last five years than in any five-year period in recorded economic history. Given recent economic performance and the pricing-in by world markets of an optimistic outlook, one might have expected this to be a moment of particularly great enthusiasm and widespread support for free markets and for global integration.
Yet, in many corners of the globe, there is growing disillusion with the market system and global integration. From the failure to complete the Doha round of global trade talks to pervasive Wal-Mart bashing, we see a degree of anxiety about the market system that is unmatched since the fall of the Berlin Wall and probably well before.
Why is there such disillusionment? No doubt particular factors in individual countries enter into the equation. Some anti-globalization sentiment stems from opposition to the Bush administration’s foreign policy misadventures. But there is a much more fundamental and troubling source of resistance: the growing recognition that the vast global middle is not sharing the benefits of the current period of economic growth--that, in fact, its share of the pie is not growing and may even be shrinking.
Two groups have found themselves in the right place at the right time to benefit from globalization and technological change. First, those in low-income countries, principally in Asia and especially in China, that are able to plug into the global system. Low wages combined with the accessibility of technology and capital via financial markets have fueled an economic explosion.
Second, it has been a golden age for those who already own valuable assets. Owners of scarce commodities have seen their returns rise prodigiously. Those who own or operate businesses that can take advantage of globalization to rely on less expensive labor and to sell to larger markets than ever before have seen their incomes rise far faster than incomes generally.
Everyone else has not fared nearly as well. Low-cost labor--ordinary, middle-class workers and their employers, whether they live in the American Midwest, Germany’s Ruhr Valley, Latin America or Eastern Europe--are left out. This is the essential reason why median family incomes lag far below productivity growth in the United States, why average family incomes in Mexico have barely grown in the 13 years since NAFTA passed and why middle-income countries without natural resources struggle to define an area of comparative advantage.
It is this vast group--which lacks the capital to benefit from globalization and cannot imagine competing on cost with Chinese workers--that is desperately seeking either reassurance about the shrinking world or a change in course. And yet, without its support, it is very doubtful that the existing global economic order can be maintained. The twin arguments that globalization is inevitable and protectionism is counterproductive for almost everyone have the great virtue of being correct--but they do not provide much consolation for the losers.
Economists rightly emphasize that trade, like other forms of progress, makes everyone richer by enabling people to buy goods at lower prices. But this opportunity offers small solace to those who fear that their jobs will vanish. Nor can education be a complete answer at a time when skilled computer programmers in India are paid less than $2,000 a month. More can be done to strengthen protections for displaced workers. But such an approach is inevitably reactive and defensive.
LATIMES.COM