New York City: On Wednesday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation reaffirmed that women's rights are equivalent to Islamic rights and urged the Taliban to honor their commitments to respect women's rights by revoking their ban on women attending secondary and higher education.
Officials and leaders of international organizations urged Western media outlets to address negative stereotypes in their coverage of Muslim women while speaking at the UN headquarters in New York during a daylong "Women in Islam" conference commemorating International Women's Day. An Emirati official made a clear connection between Islamophobia and religious extremism in the meantime.
After the conference, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, whose nation currently holds the rotating chair of the OIC, said that the "common thread" in everyone's message today covered the unfortunate situation in Afghanistan. "Everyone expressed their displeasure and disappointment that women in Afghanistan have not only been deprived of their rights but the interim government has not yet lived up to its promises to allow access to education," he said.
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The Taliban's use of Islam as justification for how they treat women is especially disappointing, he continued.
The first word of the Holy Qur'an is "Read," and all OIC member nations agree that this has nothing to do with Islam and is contrary to the idea of Islam. We will continue to pressure the Afghan interim government to keep its word and give women the right to an education, according to Bhutto Zardari.
Marwan Ali Noman Aldobhany, the Yemeni deputy permanent representative to the UN, compared the Taliban's behavior to that of the Houthi militia in Yemen, which is backed by Iran, saying that both organizations deprive women of their political, economic, and social rights.
He claimed that there are severe restrictions on the movement of women between cities and that gender segregation is pervasive in schools and all other institutions controlled by the Houthis.
Aldobhany claimed that these militias kidnap hundreds of Yemeni women, imprison them in covert facilities, and then accuse them of crimes. Because of their political activity, "they torture them, sexually assault them, and use them as slave labor."
He urged UN members to condemn these actions, saying they have "no connection to Islam."
The prime minister's special representative for preventing sexual violence in conflict, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who serves as the UK's minister of state for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the UN at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said at the conference that "societies prosper, nations progress when women are at the heart of progress.
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He bemoaned the "untold challenges" that women and girls face throughout the world and referred to the "stark" financial cost of their exclusion from political, economic, educational, and social spaces.
The cost to our global society is more difficult to quantify but is nonetheless troubling. This cost should worry us all in our work around the world, he continued.
Lord Ahmad urged all nations to unite in demanding that the Taliban recognize the rights of women and to ask them, "What are you doing? It's not Islam,
Noaura Al-Kaabi, minister of state for the Emiratis, claimed that many women and girls experience discrimination, have decisions made for them, and are routinely excluded just because they are female.
She asserted that this is a problem that affects people of all races, ethnicities, and religions. It is a worldwide epidemic.
Al-Kaabi claimed that misrepresentation, distortion, and misperception of Islam worsen gender discrimination against Muslim women.
She went on to say that extremism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same coin.
Extremism, according to Al-Kaabi, "distorts Islam as a justification for anti-woman and anti-girl discrimination practices and policies. In a cunning attempt to demonize and "otherize" Islam and Muslims, "Islamophobia instrumentalizes the status of women and Islam."
She denounced the Taliban's abuses of Afghan women's and girls' rights and urged UN member states to oppose any attempts to validate the misrepresentation of Islam that serves as justification for widespread discrimination.
In an effort to dispel stereotypes about Muslim women, May Jasem Mohammed Al-Baghly, Kuwait's minister of social affairs and community development and minister of state for women and children's affairs, called for action. She also noted that in Islam, men and women are viewed as being on an equal footing.
She quoted the Qur'an when she said, "We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.
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The second-largest host of refugees in the world, Wafa Bani Mustafa, the minister of social development for Jordan, stated that her nation places special emphasis on female refugees and "guarantees them a dignified life on the basis of the humanist messages of Islam and the moral values of all Jordanians."
According to Mustafa, Jordan has taken steps to strengthen its Shariah-based legal system, particularly with regard to civil affairs. He also noted that Jordanian women enjoy all necessary legal protections in marriage, divorce, and education.
Amal Hamad, the Palestinian minister for women's affairs, described the ways in which the Israeli occupation harms Palestinian women and emphasized the efforts made by the Palestinian government to combat gender-based discrimination, including the adoption of financial inclusion measures to ensure women can become financially independent.
According to Qatar's assistant foreign minister Lolwah Al-Khader, women are referred to in the Qur'an as "the twin halves of men."
The woman's issue, she continued, "should be addressed beyond politics, (because) what we are witnessing today is the transformation of women's issues from a legitimate concern to a contentious political issue."
Al-Khader pointed out that the problems women face are essentially universal.
"Women deal with gender-based violence, gender-based discrimination, a gender-based glass ceiling, and much more on a daily basis," she said.
Muslim women's issues are made worse by the fact that they are "constantly politicized at every juncture," she continued.
Sadly, as we observe the state of the world today, we note the unchecked rise of Islamophobia as a phenomenon and discourse, which has culminated over the past few decades to become ingrained in popular national narratives.
"Muslim women are particularly affected by such escalations because they are more susceptible to prejudice and hate crimes and frequently suffer a double punishment for being both women and Muslims—and even worse, if they are members of ethnic minorities."
Despite the efforts of Islamophobic campaigns, Mohammed Al-Hassan, Oman's permanent representative to the UN, stated that the message of Islam continues to be an enduringly monotheistic message that upholds the dignity of all people, "whether men or women.
He declared, "The situation in Afghanistan is not representative of Islam or Muslims generally, and we reject any association between the situation in Afghanistan and the perception of Islam.