Let us extend, on this day that marks the courage, the social commitment, the strength and inviolable dignity of the women of this world, our revolutionary greetings to our sisters everywhere.
Let us remember, on this day of pride and determination, the decisive role women have played -and are playing- in the recent revolutionary events in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Palestine, Mauritania, Morocco.
Let us remember the great and eminent female leaders in the history of Islam. Let us remember that is was women who were the first to follow the call of the prophet (s.a.w.s.) for the creation of a society built on the foundation of truth, justice and social equality for all. Let us remember that it were our mothers and sisters who made the triumph of this social concept possible.
Let us then remember the heroines and countless female martyrs of the 20th century's revolutionary socialist movement and of the worldwide struggle for women's liberation.
And let us reiterate today a slogan we have coined in the days of the Egyptian Uprising which was the clarion call for the 21st century's Arab and wordlwide social revolution, a call that is true in a context far wider than Egypt herself: Al Masr Oum al Dunya. An-Niswan umahat al Masr.
The revolution of our century, indeed, is a revolution that must have the vision and the liberation of women at its core, for the liberation of the woman is the liberation of the human race.
Our sisters who today are still finding themselves prisoners of a system based on repression and degradation, of a system in which the exploitation of one class by the other corresponds to the exploitation of one people by the other and, finally and consequently, to the exploitation of one gender by the other, represent a vast, limitless submerged potential that is the key to everything the future of our culture and nation is about.
We are urging them to wake up to the awareness of the boundless universe that lies within them. We are calling them to be guided, in their thoughts and actions, by this awareness, which will lead them to the realisation that the liberator of the woman is the woman alone.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our Saudi sisters who have risen against the degradation to which their lives are subjected under the rule of the reactionary misogynistic abomination which is the House of Sa'ud.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters in Afghanistan who are forced to lead a power-consuming struggle on two fronts: against extremist enemies within and, simultaneously, against one of the most aggressive foreign invasions modern history has known.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters who are subject to abusive marriages, violence and crime within their own communities.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters worldwide who are the victims of wages-inequality and gender discrimination.
To throw off all these shackles that paralyse the human creative potential and ties men and women to the yoke of a system built on inequality, dominance, repression and conquest requires militant and organised resistance, as well as the preparedness to question everything we have been taught to accept as unquestionable truths.
The mind that comprehends the phenomena of the world surrounding it, understanding that there is movement even in the stones, the mind that has learnt to see in its mirror the pure, inalienable reflection of the DIVINE,
will not be afraid to trust itself.
It is not the nature of women and men that creates a contradiction between them but their relationship with one another within the social and economic realities of the system by which their lives are determined.
The true natures of women and men are complementary. Together, they form the two components of an inseparable oneness, and that oneness is the mirror of tawhid. The alienation of this holistic existence (the water that nourishes the rivers of Al Jannah) leads to a distortion in the perception of both, and thus to a society permeated with distortions. A society in which the intellectual leaders of Islam have been able to propagate tenets as alien to the Islamic concept as the exclusion of women, on whose shoulders our society was built, from this very society's key positions, or the acceptance of tyrannic rule for the sake of "social stability"; a society in which those who claim to represent Islam have disowned the greatest Muslim intellectual the 20th century has produced and whose invaluable research work has once again opened us the gates to the core of the Islamic system of thought, its history and proper context: Dr. Fatima Mernissi.
The raison d'etre of any given stage of history on its path toward surmounting itself, however, lies in its preparing the ground for the next stage to be reached. It is the question and the quest for its answer that drives the wheel of time.
Let us quote, in conclusion of this brief address, the words of Maulana Jalalad-din Al Balkhi:
The manner and bearing of the prophets,
Our secret origins,
All these are preserved in a woman
Who lives within us
Though she is hiding
From what we have
Become.
To this we add: May every eye that seeks the truth of which its vision has sprung be opened and may every heart that has seen the light and chooses to remain in darkness be disowned by the very breast in which it beats!
Forward to a century that shall see women and men liberated! Forward to a century that shall see our hearts, our minds and our inner knowledge reborn!
APIC (APICONG)
Let us remember, on this day of pride and determination, the decisive role women have played -and are playing- in the recent revolutionary events in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Palestine, Mauritania, Morocco.
Let us remember the great and eminent female leaders in the history of Islam. Let us remember that is was women who were the first to follow the call of the prophet (s.a.w.s.) for the creation of a society built on the foundation of truth, justice and social equality for all. Let us remember that it were our mothers and sisters who made the triumph of this social concept possible.
Let us then remember the heroines and countless female martyrs of the 20th century's revolutionary socialist movement and of the worldwide struggle for women's liberation.
And let us reiterate today a slogan we have coined in the days of the Egyptian Uprising which was the clarion call for the 21st century's Arab and wordlwide social revolution, a call that is true in a context far wider than Egypt herself: Al Masr Oum al Dunya. An-Niswan umahat al Masr.
The revolution of our century, indeed, is a revolution that must have the vision and the liberation of women at its core, for the liberation of the woman is the liberation of the human race.
Our sisters who today are still finding themselves prisoners of a system based on repression and degradation, of a system in which the exploitation of one class by the other corresponds to the exploitation of one people by the other and, finally and consequently, to the exploitation of one gender by the other, represent a vast, limitless submerged potential that is the key to everything the future of our culture and nation is about.
We are urging them to wake up to the awareness of the boundless universe that lies within them. We are calling them to be guided, in their thoughts and actions, by this awareness, which will lead them to the realisation that the liberator of the woman is the woman alone.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our Saudi sisters who have risen against the degradation to which their lives are subjected under the rule of the reactionary misogynistic abomination which is the House of Sa'ud.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters in Afghanistan who are forced to lead a power-consuming struggle on two fronts: against extremist enemies within and, simultaneously, against one of the most aggressive foreign invasions modern history has known.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters who are subject to abusive marriages, violence and crime within their own communities.
We wish to extend our solidarity to our sisters worldwide who are the victims of wages-inequality and gender discrimination.
To throw off all these shackles that paralyse the human creative potential and ties men and women to the yoke of a system built on inequality, dominance, repression and conquest requires militant and organised resistance, as well as the preparedness to question everything we have been taught to accept as unquestionable truths.
The mind that comprehends the phenomena of the world surrounding it, understanding that there is movement even in the stones, the mind that has learnt to see in its mirror the pure, inalienable reflection of the DIVINE,
will not be afraid to trust itself.
It is not the nature of women and men that creates a contradiction between them but their relationship with one another within the social and economic realities of the system by which their lives are determined.
The true natures of women and men are complementary. Together, they form the two components of an inseparable oneness, and that oneness is the mirror of tawhid. The alienation of this holistic existence (the water that nourishes the rivers of Al Jannah) leads to a distortion in the perception of both, and thus to a society permeated with distortions. A society in which the intellectual leaders of Islam have been able to propagate tenets as alien to the Islamic concept as the exclusion of women, on whose shoulders our society was built, from this very society's key positions, or the acceptance of tyrannic rule for the sake of "social stability"; a society in which those who claim to represent Islam have disowned the greatest Muslim intellectual the 20th century has produced and whose invaluable research work has once again opened us the gates to the core of the Islamic system of thought, its history and proper context: Dr. Fatima Mernissi.
The raison d'etre of any given stage of history on its path toward surmounting itself, however, lies in its preparing the ground for the next stage to be reached. It is the question and the quest for its answer that drives the wheel of time.
Let us quote, in conclusion of this brief address, the words of Maulana Jalalad-din Al Balkhi:
The manner and bearing of the prophets,
Our secret origins,
All these are preserved in a woman
Who lives within us
Though she is hiding
From what we have
Become.
To this we add: May every eye that seeks the truth of which its vision has sprung be opened and may every heart that has seen the light and chooses to remain in darkness be disowned by the very breast in which it beats!
Forward to a century that shall see women and men liberated! Forward to a century that shall see our hearts, our minds and our inner knowledge reborn!
APIC (APICONG)
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