People really seem to struggle to realise how different they are. Hamas is not ISIS, that should be obvious to anyone with cursory knowledge on the history of the region. Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar’Allah are not going to, nor have the capacity to, gut gay people and women who don’t wear a niqab or hijab. They are not Salafists, for the love of Christ.

The only reason people compare these wildly different groups, is because they all (at least claim to) adhere to Islamic principles. If you think for even a second, you’d realise how ridiculous this is. It’s like comparing the CDU to the KKK or even the Spanish Falange because they’re all Christian, in some way or another.

It’s plain ridiculous, though the liberal (and conservative) types never seem to get it.

  • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    This is a losing game because like “freedom” in the West for normal people “feminism” is in practice a treat-based ideology. Now you can heap Islamophobia on top of that.

    Hezbollah is the best out of all these groups to women. They allow women to participate in all parts of society. They have women-led politcal steering committees setting political positions based on Islamic feminism. Hezbollah has a unique risk because their primary benefactor Iran has a much more conservative political position on the issue.

    However Islamic feminism is a tenuous balancing act. Like any other religion it Islam is not coherent or consistent in its texts and oral traditions. Coherence and consistency is made based on social views on choosing what passages to elevate and what passages to deprecate. As such Islamic feminism often has very rough edges and looks different based on different political contexts.

    Hamas is lower than Hezbollah here but still not comparable to the Taliban or ISIS. The status of women in Hamas and by its governing principles are not equivalent to Hezbollah or the PLO. Hamas has been changing slowly by allowing more women into leadership and changing some of its views since 2021.

    You are absolutely wrong about Ansar’Allah. Ansar’Allah is not as organized as the Taliban but ultimately has the similar views and worse practices. Ansar’Allah does gendered child soldiers. Boys as young as 7 become soldiers. Girls as young as 13 become liaisons in the gendered traditional militaristic sense they do “women’s work”. They do intelligence, logistics, support, and involuntary sex work. Like female military liaisons in other traditionalist armies including in the West they are extremely vulnerable to abuse and are effectively prizes and play things for the officer class. Ansar’Allah has some women’s units but there is actually disagreement about militarization of women both official (as soldiers) and unofficial (as liaisons) within Ansar’Allah on “social cohesion” grounds. The Zainabiyyat batallion (women’s battalion) also sources the must vulnerable women in Yemeni society so the poor or groups like the Muhamasheen. The Zainabiyyat batallion’s general is a man and it’s not really a fighting force, it’s a policing / occupation / intelligence force. Zainabinyyat has been accused of being given the duty to create the intelligence networks as a compromise and preventative measure but I haven’t seen strong confirmation of that, nor have I seen any strong evidence that if it’s happening that outcomes are changing for women and girls forced into these networks.