Tunisian women’s rights plan rattles Muslim traditionalists

In this Sept. 7, 2017 photo, pharmacists Mokhtar Agrebi, left, and Latifa Trabelsi work in their drugstore in Tunis. (AP)
Updated 14 September 2017
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Tunisian women’s rights plan rattles Muslim traditionalists

TUNIS: Some denounce it as a violation of Islamic law, others embrace it as revolutionary: An initiative by Tunisia’s president to make inheritance and marriage rules fairer to women is reverberating around the Muslim world, and risks dividing his country.
The 90-year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, argues that Tunisia needs to fight discrimination and modernize. He is gambling that he could shepherd through such changes because his secular party is in a coalition with an Islamist one, and because his overwhelmingly Muslim country has a history of relatively progressive views toward women.
In a speech last month, Essebsi proposed allowing women the same inheritance rights as men, instead of the current system based on Islamic Shariah law that generally grants daughters only half the inheritance given to sons.
The president also suggested allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslims; currently Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslims but not the other way around. He announced the creation of a commission led by a woman lawyer and rights activist aimed at drafting revised rules.
Just raising the call for changes is a dramatic move. Mainstream Muslim clerics almost universally consider the rules on marriage to be equally unquestionable in Shariah.
Most Muslim-majority countries in the Mideast and Asia enforce the rules since they use Shariah as the basis for personal status and family law. Some worry that such changes could stir up extremist anger in a country that has already suffered deadly attacks.
The president argues that existing practice violates Tunisia’s constitution, adopted in 2014 in the wake of the Arab Spring revolution, and that he wants Tunisia to reach “total, actual equality between men and women citizens in a progressive way,” as called for in the charter.
He said wants to fight discrimination in a country where half of engineers are women, as are a majority of medical, agricultural and textile workers and those with higher education.
The first president of independent Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, championed a landmark social code in 1956 that set a standard for the region by banning polygamy and granting new rights to women unheard of in the Arab world at the time. But even he didn’t dare push for equal inheritance.
The chief editor of daily Le Maghreb, Zied Krichene, expressed hope that Essebsi’s initiative would bring a “second revolution.”
But in Egypt, the world’s foremost seat of religious learning for Sunni Muslims, Al-Azhar, swiftly rejected the proposals.
“Calls for the equality of men and women in inheritance do an injustice to women, don’t do women any good and clash with Shariah,” Abbas Shoman, Al-Azhar’s second most senior cleric, said in a statement.
In defense of the ban on non-Muslim men marrying Muslim women, Shoman said that while Muslim men were likely to respect the beliefs of their non-Muslim spouses and freedom to worship, non-Muslim men were unlikely to do the same for their non-Muslim wives.
But the proposals sparked a heated debate on social media networks among Egyptians. Supporters of Essebsi’s initiative said Al-Azhar was showing its true colors as a bastion of religious militancy.
Muslim parents who see the inheritance laws as unjust often resort to putting assets in their daughters’ names during their lifetimes. In Lebanon, some Sunni men convert to Shiism to take advantage of what they see as the minority sect’s more equal treatment of women when it comes to inheritance. Tunisia is overwhelmingly Sunni.
Moroccan academic Nouzha Guessous welcomed the Tunisian proposal as “a beautiful bright spot in the grim political and social skies in Morocco and elsewhere in the Muslim world.” Writing in the Moroccan magazine L’Economiste, she said the Tunisian president could “go down in history ... as an enlightened Muslim leader characterized by a political conscience and attuned to the changes in society.”
She expressed hope Tunisia could set a precedent across the Muslim world.
“As a proud, full-fledged Moroccan woman, I must admit that today, yes, I would have liked to be Tunisian,” she wrote.
There are some Muslim theologians who argue that the one-half inheritance for women is not absolute in the Quran and that it is open for reinterpretation to fit the Quran’s requirements for justice and equality.
Still, the mainstream view is deeply entrenched. In Tunisia, the country’s leading imams and theologians issued a statement denouncing the president’s proposals as a “flagrant violation of the precepts” of Islam.
Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahdha hasn’t taken an official line yet, but party No. 2 and former prime minister Hamadi Jebali warned against anything that would “threaten social peace” and said the president’s ideas aren’t taking into consideration the feelings of all Tunisians, just a liberal segment of the population.
“Either the chief of state doesn’t know that a text codified by the Quran cannot be subject to interpretation, or it is a political calculation,” he said on his Facebook page.
Several analysts suggest the president is trying to win back support from women who supported him widely in 2014 elections for his modernizing program, but then grew disillusioned after he allied with the Islamist party.
Tunisian professor Mohamed Hédi Zaiem said the proposals give a new impetus to moderate Islam.
“The only moderate Islam is that which recognizes the need and the right not only to interpretation but also to evolution,” he said, calling the battle for renewing religious discourse “the mother of all battles.”
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Associated Press writer Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.


Israel says it will re-open crossing into Gaza as pressure builds to get more aid in

Updated 12 sec ago
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Israel says it will re-open crossing into Gaza as pressure builds to get more aid in

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Friday it was planning to reopen the Kissufim crossing into central Gaza to increase the flow of aid into the southern end of the Gaza Strip.
The move comes amid growing international pressure on Israel to get more aid into Gaza, where aid agencies have warned of a gathering humanitarian crisis in the north of the enclave, where Israeli troops have been conducting a major operation for more than a month.
The new crossing would be opened following engineering work over recent weeks by army engineers to build inspection points and paved roads, the army said.
Last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote to Israeli officials demanding concrete measures to address the worsening situation in the Palestinian enclave.
The letter, which was posted to the Internet by a reporter from Axios, gave the Israeli government 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Among the demands included in the letter was for the opening of a fifth crossing into Gaza.

Sudan army govt accuses paramilitaries of causing 120 civilian deaths in 2 days

Updated 6 min 33 sec ago
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Sudan army govt accuses paramilitaries of causing 120 civilian deaths in 2 days

  • The Janjaweed militia (paramilitaries) committed a new massacre in the town of Hilaliya

PORT SUDAN: The Sudanese foreign ministry accused paramilitaries late Thursday of causing at least 120 civilian deaths over two days in Al-Jazira state, reportedly in attacks involving gunfire, food poisoning and lack of medical care.
“The Janjaweed militia (paramilitaries) committed a new massacre in the town of Hilaliya in Al-Jazira state over the past two days, resulting in 120 martyrs so far, killed either by gunfire or due to food poisoning and lack of medical care affecting hundreds of civilians,” the ministry of the army-backed government said in a statement obtained by AFP.


Yemen’s Houthi militants shoot down what they say was a US drone as American military investigates

Updated 08 November 2024
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Yemen’s Houthi militants shoot down what they say was a US drone as American military investigates

  • The US military acknowledged the videos circulating online showing what appeared to be a flaming aircraft dropping out of the sky
  • The Houthis claimed to have downed an American MQ-9 Reaper drone

DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthi militants shot down what they described as an American drone early Friday, potentially the latest downing of a US spy drone as the militants continue their attacks on the Red Sea corridor.
The US military acknowledged the videos circulating online showing what appeared to be a flaming aircraft dropping out of the sky and a field of burning debris in what those off-camera described as an area of Yemen’s Al-Jawf province. The military said it was investigating the incident, declining to elaborate further.
It wasn’t immediately clear what kind of aircraft was shot down in the low-quality night video. The Houthis, in a later statement, claimed to have downed an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
The Houthis have surface-to-air missiles — such as the Iranian missile known as the 358 — capable of downing aircraft. Iran denies arming the militants, though Tehran-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in sea shipments heading to Yemen for the Shiite Houthi militants despite a United Nations arms embargo.
The Houthis have been a key component of Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” during the Mideast wars that includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups.
Since Houthis seized the country’s north and its capital of Sanaa in 2014, the militants have shot down MQ-9 Reaper drones in Yemen in 2017, 2019, 2023 and 2024. The US military has declined to offer a total figure for the number of drones it has lost during that time.
Reapers, which cost around $30 million apiece, can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) and have an endurance of up to 24 hours before needing to land. The aircraft have been flown by both the US military and the CIA over Yemen for years.
The Houthis have targeted more than 90 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have also included Western military vessels.
The militants maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran. The tempo of the Houthi sea attacks also has waxed and waned over the months.
In October, the US military unleashed B-2 stealth bombers to target underground bunkers used by the Houthis.


Israeli defense minister officially steps down

Updated 08 November 2024
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Israeli defense minister officially steps down

  • Israel has been rocked by Gallant’s dismissal, with the news setting off mass protests across the country
  • Israel Katz, his replacement, currently serves as foreign minister and is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister
Israel has been rocked by Gallant’s dismissal, with the news setting off mass protests across the country
Israel Katz, his replacement, currently serves as foreign minister and is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister

TEL AVIV: Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant officially stepped down Friday in a ceremony that replaced him with Israel Katz, the former foreign minister, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Gallant earlier this week.
Israel has been rocked by Gallant’s dismissal, with the news setting off mass protests across the country. Many in Israel view Gallant as the sole moderate voice in a far-right government, and see his removal as a sign that the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has lost interest in returning hostages still held in Gaza.
Israel Katz, his replacement, currently serves as foreign minister and is a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.
Also Friday, the Israeli military body handling aid to Gaza, COGAT, said it is preparing to open a new aid crossing into Gaza as the deadline for a US deadline to increase desperately-needed aid into the war-ravaged territory approaches. But the body did not say when the crossing will open nor if aid will be delivered to north of Gaza, where the UN and aid groups say the humanitarian situation is most dire.
The United Nations humanitarian office says Israel’s monthlong offensive in northern Gaza is preventing the estimated 75,000 to 95,000 Palestinians in the north from receiving essential items for their survival.
On Thursday, the Israeli military says it will allow 300 truckloads of humanitarian aid supplied by the United Arab Emirates to enter the Gaza Strip in the coming days. That’s less than the 350 trucks per day that the United States said it wants to see enter the war-ravaged territory.
The Israel-Hamas war began after militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict erupted, more than 3,100 people have been killed and some 13,800 wounded in Lebanon, the health ministry reported.

Turkiye, Greece must work together to resolve host of issues, Turkish minister says

Updated 08 November 2024
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Turkiye, Greece must work together to resolve host of issues, Turkish minister says

  • Issues between NATO allies Turkiye and Greece are not limited to disagreements over maritime boundaries and jurisdiction in the eastern Mediterranean

ANKARA: Issues between NATO allies Turkiye and Greece are not limited to disagreements over maritime boundaries and jurisdiction in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Friday, adding the historic rivals must work together to resolve them.
Speaking at a press conference in Athens alongside his Greek counterpart, Fidan also repeated Ankara’s view that a federation model to resolve the dispute over the ethnically-split island of Cyprus was no longer viable, calling for a two-state solution.
He also said Turkiye wanted to deepen cooperation with Greece on irregular migration and counter-terrorism, while increasing cooperation on tourism and cultural affairs.