by Jimmy Carter
The forum issued the “Atlanta Declaration,” which called on all governments to align national security policies with human rights principles such as the absolute prohibition of torture, access to due process of law, fair trials for any person deprived of liberty, and adherence to the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian laws. I wrote a book, Our Endangered Values, about this set of challenges and delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 that focused on the urgent task of restoring America’s position as a champion of human rights and democratic ideals. In our forums we included women activists, as the Center considers women’s rights issues a key component of all our programs rather than a separate concern. Women suffer most during and after war and have a central role to play in advancing peace and preventing the radicalization of young people during times of conflict.
During the 2003 forum, one of Afghanistan’s greatest leaders, Dr. Sima Samar, the nation’s first female doctor and government minister, expressed her view that by waging war “in the name of democracy and human and women’s rights,” the international coalition might embolden the extremists. She insisted that progress was possible only through supporting credible and legitimate Afghan democratic forces and initiatives and that an excessive military approach would undermine these objectives. Over the next several years, Dr. Samar expressed growing alarm at the increase in civilian deaths, intrusive and deadly night raids, assassination by drones, and indefinite detention of Afghans in facilities that mirrored conditions at Bagram prison or Guantánamo Bay. Sadly many of the same issues we discussed in 2003 persist. Later I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which I described in detail how the United States was currently violating at least ten of the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 2007 we convened our Human Rights Defenders Forum on the theme of “Faith and Freedom,” in which we explored how religious leaders and communities can become stronger in their advocacy of human rights. We found reluctance among some secular human rights organizations to examine intersections with religion. The history of oppression on religious grounds is well known and is a matter of sensitivity among advocates who rely on global agreements that are seen as transcending religion, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also encountered resistance among some religious persons and leaders because of their perception that the human rights concept focuses on the individual instead of collective well-being. We also were quietly informed that many religious people and institutions automatically associate the human rights framework with the promotion of homosexual and abortion rights, so they were reluctant to become too closely associated with the movement.
Despite these impediments, the conference was very successful, and we began exploring ways that religion can be a powerful force for equality and universal human dignity. This exploration led us to the conclusion that there is no greater challenge than the full embrace of women’s equal rights by religious leaders, institutions, and believers alike. We found also that we could hardly address the deprivations of women’s rights without also confronting an even larger challenge posed by a growing acceptance of violence. These two forums, held ten years apart, brought us to the same conclusion: that a new commitment to universal human rights and to end unnecessary violence is desperately needed if humanity is to escape the cycle of war, poverty, and oppression.
During this series of forums and our other work at The Carter Center, we became increasingly aware that one of the most crucial issues is the pervasive violation of the rights of women and girls, and in 2011 this was the subject of our assembly. Many of the participants were from Islamic countries, and they recommended that we move one of our subsequent venues to a predominantly Muslim community.
I wanted to understand more fully the attitude of internationally admired and prominent men toward women in an Islamic society, and that led me to the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, the 1988 Nobel Laureate in literature. I remembered that when Anwar Sadat was widely condemned throughout the Islamic world after signing the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Mahfouz was a prominent defender of Sadat’s decision. Like Sadat, Mahfouz was attacked by an assassin and severely wounded in 1994; he died twelve years later. I obtained his book Life’s Wisdom from the Works of the Nobel Laureate, which was described by the editor as a “distilled collection of quotations from this great author’s works.” I found that they provided a fascinating if disturbing array of comments from the perspective of a man I knew as a progressive and thoughtful Islamic intellectual:
Girls today no longer have the ability to get along with people. Where are the ladies of yesteryear?
Only men can ruin women, and not every man is capable of being a guardian for them.
Marriage is the ultimate surrender in life’s losing battle.
The virtue of marriage is that it takes care of one’s lust and so purifies the body.
Marriage is just a big deception. After a few months as tasty as olive oil, your bride turns into a dose of castor oil.
Women’s lack of ideology or philosophy proves that ideology and philosophy hinder real, vital activity. A woman is only concerned with creation and all things connected, she is a beautiful creator, and creation is the center of her life. All other activities are of man’s making and are necessary for domination, not creation!
Just as one can find a deviant housewife, there’s an honorable working woman.
The love of a woman is like political theater: there is no doubt about the loftiness of its goal, but you wonder about the integrity of it.
A woman without children is like wine without the power to intoxicate, like a rose without scent, or like worship without strong faith behind it.
I was relieved to read this lonely quotation toward the end of this presentation of his work:
Women’s liberation is not limited to equal rights and duties: it also implies their full participation in the political and economic as well as social and cultural spheres.
These comments by a world-renowned Islamic scholar indicate that even within a modern and ostensibly secular society there is a tendency to ridicule and derogate women and their role in the family and the general society.
Equality between women and men in the Quran is clear. But I have a suggestion for men: they need to support women in the issue of equality by sometimes just being silent.
SHEIKH OMAR AHMED TIJANI NIASS, SPIRITUAL LEADER OF THE TIJANI SUFI ORDER OF ISLAM
We monitored very closely the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011 in a popular uprising, and our Center closely witnessed the subsequent elections for a parliament, a president, and the formulation of a new constitution. I had first met Dr. Mohamed Morsi in 2011 when he was head of the engineering department at Zagazig University near Cairo. Neither of us had any idea that he would be the first democratically elected president. During the subsequent months he assured me that the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty would be honored and that any modifications desired by the Egyptians would be negotiated peacefully with Israel. Another issue on which we reached agreement was the rights of women. Dr. Morsi told me that he was working with a panel established by the grand imam of Al-Azhar on a statement that would spell out policies on the status of women and girls in an Islamic society. The grand imam was president of Al-Azhar University, which had 120,000 students, and was the spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims.
I met with Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb on my subsequent visits to Egypt and found him to be quite moderate concerning the basic freedoms of society and dedicated to formulating a public statement concerning the gender issue. After our private discussions he always invited about a dozen leaders of the various Christian denominations in Cairo for more broad-ranging topics. The Christian leaders were not involved in drafting the Al-Azhar statement on the rights of women but likely would be guided by the stated policies of Muslims, who comprise 90 percent of the nation’s population. Because of the sensitivity of women’s rights in many Islam
ic countries and because of promised support by President Morsi, the grand imam, and the pope of the Coptic Church, we made plans to hold our annual Human Rights Defenders Forum in Egypt in June 2013 and were assured by government authorities of their approval and support.
The Egyptian military establishment seemed to grant authority to the new government, but they had ruled Egypt for almost sixty years and all the members of the Supreme Court had been appointed by former president Mubarak. These justices declared the carefully monitored and successful election of parliamentary members to be invalid, and the police force was strangely ineffective in maintaining order on the streets. Very little foreign aid flowed into Egypt except for military purposes. Under these circumstances, President Morsi proved an ineffective leader and turned increasingly to his own Muslim Brotherhood associates for support and guidance. After massive popular demonstrations by opposition forces Morsi was overthrown and imprisoned by military coup in July 2013, with total authority reverting to the military.
Meanwhile, the threat of street demonstrations had required us to change the location of our Human Rights Defenders Forum from Cairo to The Carter Center. We contacted everyone on our guest list and invited them to come to Atlanta, and almost all of them were able to do so. The subject was “Mobilizing Faith for Women,” and the world’s major religions and geographical regions were represented. The participants included religious leaders who were Protestant, Catholic, and Coptic Christians, Sunni, Shia, and Sufi Muslims, conservative and progressive Jews, Baha’i, tribal traditionalists, and other activists who focused the work of their organizations on rape, slavery, child marriage, genital cutting, economic and social deprivation, and other sexual abuses.
Before our session I read Half the Sky, a remarkable book by Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, its title derived from a statement by Chairman Mao Zedong: “Women hold up half the sky.” The authors interviewed hundreds of courageous women and girls who were suffering from persecution because of their gender and who were willing to describe their plight. Often they were struggling, at the risk of death, for their human rights. Nick has traveled with us at times to observe our Center’s efforts to promote peace and freedom and to control the many diseases that take their heaviest toll among women and children. He and Sheryl have done as much to promote women’s rights as anyone I know.
We learned at our conference that it is easier for Christians to deviate from certain Bible scriptures with which they disagree or consider not applicable to modern society than for Muslims to disregard similar passages in the Koran. However, in both Christian and Islamic societies, secular customs vary widely in the treatment of women.
From the participants in our conference we derived as much information as possible about different religions and geographical areas concerning the status of women and girls. The delegates from Egypt represented the grand imam, the Coptic pope, the Library of Alexandria, and women activists. Although the final version of the Al-Azhar Declaration on Women’s Rights was not issued because of the political turmoil, we were given a working draft that was quite encouraging. A quote from the preamble sets the tone:
The Islamic point of view regarding the position of women, their rights and duties towards themselves, their families and their societies, stems from the values which represent legal principles and general rules out of which rulings and arrangements directed to both men and women are born. These represent an equal and comprehensive view of mankind of both genders, with the aim of achieving happiness and stability to the individual, the family and society.
. . . Contemporary women’s positions need to be safeguarded, hence the need for this document. For proper positioning represents the most important element of reforming society and purifying it from wrong practices as well as recent social customs that are not based on clear textual evidence or proper jurisprudence, and which bring injustice and pain to men and women, though their toll falls more heavily on women.
After a reminder that “the Council of Senior Religious Scholars launches this document free of any outside pressures or transient political leanings,” there is this statement:
It comes from a perspective that respects Islamic heritage. Both its principles and branches work to maintain and renovate this heritage according to its own values and logic, while reminding all that these values and rulings represent a leap in the liberation of women in classical Islamic times, on a world scale, when Arab traditions in this field were backward and religious thinking in the medieval European period questioned whether a woman was human or something else! These values and practical principles were implemented in the golden age of Islamic civilization; thus the Muslim woman enjoyed financial independence a thousand years before her peers in the West, and her right to inheritance, suitable employment and unlimited education. In fact, many Imams studied with renowned women scholars themselves. Similarly a woman enjoyed the right to choose a husband, look after the affairs of her family, demand khul (annulment of marriage) or separation in the event of damage or need. This is the reason why Muslim societies did not witness familial struggles or women’s social revolutions that other societies suffered from.
I have found the grand imam to be remarkably immune to “transient political leanings” and have high expectations for a reasonable and spiritually inspired text when the final document is published. Its balanced position on the rights of Muslim men and women will have a beneficial effect on those spiritual and secular leaders who are seeking to apply the teachings of the Koran in modern times. However, although the grand imam is the spiritual leader of more than 80 percent of all Muslims, political leaders in predominantly Islamic nations are not bound by his statements or declarations on societal relationships.
While Egyptian women are ready to seek change in society, the culture is still not ready to view them as equals. We must change this by challenging students and religious leaders to re-think and re-read the Koran for gender justice. As a Muslim, I believe that Islam came with a feminist revolution in Arabia. But what we have right now is a very patriarchal, traditional understanding of Islam, and this understanding is widespread. Religious leaders must support women’s rights and gender justice in Egypt by leading their followers back to the true essence of religion: the equality and democratic nature at the heart of Islam. Despite these restraints, women are active in the streets of Egypt, in Upper Egypt in the rural areas. They are defending their voices to be heard, and they reject marginalization.
DR. RIHAM BAHI, SCHOLAR OF ISLAMIC AND SECULAR FEMINISM AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AT THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF CAIRO
When Rosalynn and I founded The Carter Center in 1982 we had an office on the campus of Emory University. I was teaching and giving lectures regularly, planning and raising funds for a presidential library, and receiving some visitors who sought appointments with me to discuss issues left over from my White House years. One of these requests came from a Coptic priest in America, and I was surprised when about two dozen priests crowded into my office, all in their sober black robes and hoods. They explained that their pope, Shenouda III, was under house arrest in a desert monastery in Egypt and that the worldwide functions of their faith were severely handicapped because all official actions were legitimate only if the directives were from their cathedral, which he was forbidden to visit.
I promised to help and soon learned that the detention order was supported by President Mubarak. I had known him well as the handpicked vice president and personal emissary of President Sadat. I called Mubarak and told him that I was speaking for the Copts as a fellow Christian. The pope was released from captivity in January 1985. I became interested in their ancient beliefs and customs, and on subsequent visits to the Middle East I have attempted to meet with their leaders and to understand their special problems as a minority group in an overwhelmingly Islamic region.
Two of the Coptic participants in our Defenders conference were women, one a psychiatrist and the other a university professor. They gave me a doctrina
l booklet entitled Women. It summarized the premise that women are equal to men in all religious and secular affairs—except when it comes to leadership roles in the Church. This has helped me understand the policies of Roman Catholic and other, more orthodox Christians that prohibit a woman from being ordained as a priest or deacon. I do not agree with this distinction, but I include key excerpts here because so many of my fellow Christians hold this belief and because the text includes some intriguing comments.
Overwhelmingly the treatise disagrees with sexual discrimination derived from the Bible. It explains biblical teachings of sexual equality and also outlines economic history to show the waxing and waning of a woman’s role in family life. It begins by stating:
Man is created twice: The first creation: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) The second creation described by Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:5, 6) The first creation is physical and there is a clear distinction between the male and female sexes, but with no partiality, for both express the image of God. The second creation has no distinction between male and female, for it is a purely spiritual creation. “There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)