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WMC Exclusive: Muslim Women, Taking The Lead

For Pinar Ilkkaracan, coming to New York from Istanbul to receive a prestigious human rights award last month was a welcome respite. “You are constantly struggling,” she said of her efforts on behalf of Turkish women and women in Muslim societies around the world. “You can never say ‘I’ve achieved something’ because the moment you have, you must struggle to keep it.”

The Gruber Foundation honored Ilkkaracan as the 2007 recipient of its International Women’s Rights Prize. There are few incentives for her work to advance the status and reproductive rights of women, she said, “except for the change that you are trying to implement. It’s almost inhuman under these conditions to keep your energy and motivation. That’s why such a recognition of women’s work around the world is very important.”

Ilkkaracan won the $500,000 award along with two organizations she co-founded: Women for Women’s Human Rights-New Ways (WWHR) and its international offshoot, the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR). Established in 1993, WWHR has played a central role in such legal reforms in Turkey as creating a protection order against domestic violence, recognizing women’s equal rights in marriage and safeguarding women’s sexual rights by criminalizing sexual violence, including workplace harassment. Last year, Turkish TV aired WWHR’s film, “The Purple Series,” the first television documentary on women’s human rights in Turkey.

“The first time I had a rebellious feeling was with my parents, when I was trying to get that freedom at fifteen or sixteen,” explained Ilkkaracan. “But it wasn’t until my twenties that I began realizing that it wasn’t my parents; it was the larger society. It’s the patriarchy that affects all women around the world irrespective of their class or education, and that was the point at which I decided to change things.”

And she followed through on that commitment, not hesitating to take on controversial causes. As an outgrowth of a WWHR-New Ways conference, Ilkkaracan and others organized CSBR in 2001 as the first solidarity network in Muslim societies striving for sexual, bodily and reproductive rights. Working collectively with 38 groups in 14 countries, the network holds workshops and trainings on sexuality and sexual rights, lobbies for legal reforms, produces research and publications and advocates at the UN level for these basic human rights. Joining Ilkkaracan, three Muslim activist women from various corners of the world presented a symposium, “Women Taking the Lead in Muslim Societies,” at the NYU School of Law following the award ceremony. While the panelists—Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement; Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International; and Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning and 2004 Gruber Women’s Rights Prize Laureate—agreed that there was much work to be done in the Muslim world, they emphasized that current conditions were not a result of the Islamic religion.

Daisy Khan, whose non-profit organization works to develop an American Muslim identity and build bridges between the Muslim community and the general public, shared her own personal tale of struggling with multiple identities as an American whose family is from Kashmir. After 9/11, she was forced to cope with a brand new identity: that of the Muslim woman. Encouraged to speak on panels representing half a billion Muslim women, Khan says she began studying the realities of these women and soon discovered that they were as diverse as can be.

“From a Quaranic point of view, women have equal entitlements to their male counterparts,” said Khan. “We are considered to be citizens of the world, we are social beings, we have access, we are held accountable for our good deeds and bad deeds. And all these entitlements according to God are given to us, but somehow man snatches it away from us. . . . We are saying that we have rights within Islamic law.” As everyone on the panel echoed Khan’s sentiments, Ilkkaracan added her desire to leave a legacy of transforming those human rights into reality. “What would make me happy when I’m dying is succeeding to initiate legal reforms in Turkey and really reaching that point where there’s no discrimination against women period,” she declared.



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