Abu Dhir has already written about the remarkable “Inside MCA” website– an extensive expose of corruption inside the main Muslim civic group in the San Francisco Bay Area. The website ably documents the vote-rigging and intimidation by MCA’s leadership. But what really outraged me was one picture showing how Islamists in the community officially excluded women from leadership positions on the MCA board:
Those articles come from the MCA Constitution (the full text of which “Inside MCA” editor Dr. Aladin Nassar conveniently provides). The Muslim Brothers who wrote the MCA Constitution and later amended it in 1995 are super clear in their misogyny: “All members of the Board of Trustees shall be men.”
Where does this go on? In remote Afghanistan under the Taliban? In rural Saudi Arabia? Nope, in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most progressive places in the world.
What can I say. It’s painful. It’s depressing… And it’s clarifying. Islamist doctrine is clear on women’s inferior role. We are not the equals of men, but rather incomplete beings in need of chaperoning. We can’t be leaders; we have to obey. In a perverse way, you have to give credit to the Islamist men who founded MCA for not hiding their misogynistic views.
Dr. Aladin reveals that the Constitution wasn’t merely words, but set a pattern of conduct:
“MCA Board members discriminate against women. An internal MCA investigation of the Granada Islamic School (GIS) Board, a service institution of the MCA, confirmed the board members’ discrimination but quickly covered it up before it leaked to the public. The Judiciary Investigation Report was never published, witness testimonies recorded on audio tapes vanished, and whole thing was covered up as if it never happened!!”
Aladin’s expose on “Inside MCA” publicly shamed the MCA leadership into finally amending the Constitution to remove the line. As he notes:
“The question is: is this a genuine change for the better or is it just a cosmetic façade to avoid the public embarrassment?”
We know the answer to that question. MCA’s Islamist male leadership maintains its power by corrupt bylaws, vote-rigging, and voter suppression practices. The few women let onto the board are most likely own wives, daughters, and sisters – or others unlikely to challenge make domination because they accept the doctrine of female inferiority.
But what am I supposed to say to my daughter about this? As part of a next generation of American Muslims, she is being forced to choose between 21st Century gender equality and the medieval values of the Islamists who control our community institutions. The gap is so wide that it creates unhealthy dilemmas: Should she submit to the Islamists’ view? Or should she stay true to her belief in equality? And if she chooses the latter, does that mean dropping out of the organized Muslim community?
Some American Muslim women figure out how to twist themselves into a compromise, though I am not impressed with their gymnastics. I call it “misogymnastics.” But I don’t want my daughter to have to contort herself.
I have a dream that my daughter and other American Muslim girls grow up not only to sit on mosque boards, but for them to control the boards – so they can imprint their values on our community – decisively and irreversibly.
Just imagine it: A women-controlled large mosque in a major American city. But this dream is impossible to realize as long as Islamists hold so much power over American Muslim communal life.