Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders screened his short film “Fitna” at the Capitol in late February. Muslimah Media Watch commented on the fact that Muslim feminists Irshad Manji and Daisy Khan spoke on this issue on CNN:
We have two Muslim women on CNN, commenting on something that is not the headscarf! We have two Muslim women speaking about politics (still very much a man’s domain). Regardless of whether or not we agree with them, we have two educated, professional, successful Muslim women expressing their own opinions. Regardless of what we may think of either of them, we have two Muslim women publicly talking about their faith.
[…]This video is rather groundbreaking for a major American network because it shows Muslim women as regular Americans with an opinion about issues in the American media. It sends a powerful message: Muslim women are sought out to speak about issues that affect Muslims. As a community, we need to promote and encourage each other––men and women––to take an active presence in the public sphere, even if we do not necessarily agree with each other.
Manji and Khan are being represented as credible spokespersons on matters concerning the Muslim community; this is most obviously a success for women, especially because the issue at hand is not specifically a feminist one, but the Muslim community as a whole clearly benefits when women are represented as being engaged in matters that effect [sic] Muslims. The fact that Manji and Khan also spoke about freedom of speech and human rights, issues that affect everyone no matter their religion or gender, is a slap in the face to critics who are so fixated on what they deem to be the oppressive state of women in Islam.
Read the full post here, and see a previous here & there on Geert Wilders here.