Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

The Medina Democracy 185
of Western individualism against the law of the group, which rules
the East and legitimates its despotisms. This double obscenity is all
the more difficult to deal with because since acquiring independence
the Muslim states have stamped their fragile existence with the
paradox of ambiguity: Islam will be the state religion; and the state,
by installing parliaments elected by universal suffrage, will recognize
that sovereignty has come down from Heaven to the low place
where dwell the shaky free wills of the undernourished people of
the urban shanty-towns. From now on, the Muslim state can only
sustain itself by enacting its drama on two fundamentally contradictory
stages - caliphal and parliamentary. And from this comes the
increase in veils and the unrestrained multiplication of barriers.
Since the end of colonization and the coming of independence, a
second stage has been set up alongside the traditional caliphal arena,
where the people are marked with the negative stamp of 'amma,
bearer of disorder. This is the parliamentary stage, where the people
are endowed with reason and enjoy all rights, including the right to
designate the supreme head of state - all of which can end up in
so-called aberrations like the election of a Muslim woman.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights constitutes
an out-and-out violation of the hijab and its logic: 'All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience.' Article 19 constitutes a total
break with the conception of a bloodthirsty, unruly 'amma: 'Everyone
has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.' This is the definition of fitna - disorder on
the caliphal stage, which is based on the obedience of the 'amma
and the silence/masking of women. Fitna is the election of Benazir
Bhutto to the position of head of government; fitna is the victory
of a woman elected by the vote of the Pakistani 'amma in 1410 of
the Hejira (1988) to the post of supreme political leader, an act
which closes that huge parenthesis of 15 centuries of despotism, of
mulk, to borrow a term from Ibn Khaldun, who trembled for his
life yesterday as they all do today.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified
by almost all the Muslim states after World War II, thus destroyed
the unity of the political field and split it between two scenes,
perhaps contradictory but both necessary. Necessary because the
Muslims no longer control the march of empires, the rhythm of the
stars, and the measure of time as they did in the time of Harun al-