Hundreds of Afghan women support opposition candidate at a rally in Kabul

Kabul, 12 Aug 2009. - Touched with celestial burqas, hijabs or veils of colors, hundreds of Afghan women joined today the campaign of presidential elections in Afghanistan on August 20 in an act of support for opposition candidate Ashraf Ghani and claim their own.
"We deserve good government at last. We will vote for safety and to bring peace Afghanistan. We're tired of fighting and war, "said Efe between the student shy smiles Baseri Farishta, shortly before the start of the ceremony in the capital.
With women in the front seats and some men stationed behind less-Ghani girded his electoral slogan, "New Beginning" and pledged to invest in the "daughters of the country", to be said, the "coming entrepreneurs."
"The regime (of President Hamid Karzai) has had no police or judges or women. Yes I will, and also give them property and health care, "Ghani said to applause from his fans and occasional shouts of" Allah is great ".
The candidate, former finance minister in Karzai's government, came walking walk by the side of a large pink tent installed in the garden of his home, accessible in the center of Kabul but, like many other buildings, or walls.
Intellectual training and experience over a decade at the World Bank, Ghani was considered one of the candidates most likely to embarrass the candidate Karzai, but the latest survey gives only 3 percent of the vote.
However, both Karzai and Ghani among Pashtuns have their main quarry of followers, so that the result of the former can influence the career for re-election of current president, which aims to prevail without runoff.
Karzai's opponents cite the ineffectiveness of government, widespread corruption and tolerance towards the "warlords" as major spots in its work managing these years, a message Ghani, 60, stressed in his speech.
"My goal is to provide an honest government. The Afghan vote an honest person, "remained, after asking the female support and promising new job opportunities for Afghan women, who experience discrimination secular.
After years of strict seclusion under the Taliban regime, Afghan women still face a devastating challenges: literacy rate is only around 21 percent, and in this election there are only two women among 41 candidates.
"Women's participation will be low. In some provinces, there have been few women. And in others, the tribal leader came to collect the voting card for all of them, so the process can be adulterated, "said Efe a spokesman for the Afghan Foundation for a Free and Fair Elections (FEFA), Jandar Spinghar.
The two women candidates, said Spinghar, could not move to campaign to rural areas due the security situation which has deteriorated in recent years, with an increase in Taliban activity in large parts of south and east.
At campaign events, however, candidates present their ideas for development and reconstruction and promise jobs and opportunities like those claims Madadi Nargis, a young student coming Wardak to Kabul from (this) you want to be a doctor.
"We live better than the Taliban, but I think that elections change things. I want to study medicine, but the current situation makes me the way, "says Efe during the act of Ghani.
His desire, she said to applause, depends largely on Afghanistan return to the path of peace after decades of destruction and armed conflict that poisons the future.

Gujarat Muslims look forward six years after the massacre

Ahmedabad (India), February 27, 2008. - In most segregated neighborhoods because of their religion, Muslims in the Indian region of Gujarat in the west, trying to get ahead and forget the killing of just six years ago, in which over a thousand people died.
In the thriving, bustling city of Ahmedabad, the largest in the region, there are hardly any traces of the wave of extremist violence that swept Gujarat, but a few blackened walls and a clear predominance in Hindu areas where there used to live together.
But the procession goes inside. "Before, neighborhoods and other Hindu domination of Muslim domination. But after the events of 2002, this issue, without being entirely an 'apartheid', has deteriorated, "said Somnath Vatsa Efe, a lawyer from Ahmedabad who has defended victims of the killings.
These began as a reaction to fire, according to Hindu extremists, led by Muslims on a train crowded with pilgrims ("karsevaks") on February 27, 2002, an event in which 58 people were killed, including women and children .
Within hours, Muslims in different cities suffered the attacks of radical Hindu groups who raped women, burned houses, damaged mosques, killing all who stood before them.
After these events, thousands of Muslims in Gujarat had to find foster homes, until their own aid associations bought land to build new neighborhoods who have devoted a de facto separation in the region.
One of the new neighborhoods is Juhapura, a crowd of 300,000 people and newly built homes that has been called, without euphemism, as the largest Muslim ghetto in Gujarat, including complaints of neglect of its residents.
"The country did not do anything for them then and today the situation remains worrying Vatsa attorney-tops. To ensure more interaction between Muslims and Hindus government must develop public programs. "
Indian Muslims, about 140 million, up 13.4 percent of the population but hold only 5 percent of government jobs in government institutions and their access to education remains very poor.
Furthermore, the faithful suffer an image problem dating from the time of independence and partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan (1947), when most of the Muslim middle classes chose to move on to Pakistani soil.
Muslims who stayed in India belonged mostly to the lower social strata, less training and more atavistic behavior, which continued to hinder their integration into the new independent company.
Cowards, according to gossip, and loyal to Pakistan Pakistan as Indian-Muslims in India have also had to endure growing accusations of complicity with terrorism after the emergence of fundamentalist discourse and the constant attacks by radical groups the subcontinent.
"Muslims are overwhelmed ... We prefer a nonviolent approach, which has an impact on our community. There are hardly any Muslims in the government and our solution must be education. Especially for women, "said Efe Professor JS Bandukwala, whose house burned during the riots in Gujarat.
These, the worst slaughter of the last decades, put on the lips of many analysts, the words "genocide" and "pogrom", due to inaction by the security forces and the regional government, then and now led by the conservative Narendra Modi.
India is a country built on a secular constitution and a salad of religions and cultures, hence, in the words of journalist Tarun Tejpal, the events in Gujarat was not only a "national shame", but "the biggest slap in the face the idea of India ".
Six years after the "slap", the citizens of the vibrant Ahmedabad pass, buy and sell on the streets working for mixed and indistinct, until, by evening, they return to their neighborhoods turned into Hindus and Muslims.

The jewelers of Pune, on strike against the "burka" for fear of more robberies

New Delhi, December 29, 2006. - Thousands of jewelers in the western Indian city of Pune today closed their shops to ask for police protection before a wave of robberies that took them even threatened to prohibit access to their stores of women dressed in the " burka "Muslim.
The fear of the jewelers the "burka" has no religious basis or feminist, but lies in the fact that in three of the most recent robbery, the thieves entered the premises dressed in the garment covering face and body by integer and is, therefore, useful for criminals.
Covering their identity with the "burqa," the thieves made ​​off with 17,000 euros in three stores in the neighborhood of Raviwar Peth, which concentrates the jewelers of Pune in Maharashtra region of India.
However, the total amount stolen is almost two million in the last six months in the Puna area jewelry, a city of about 4.5 million people have registered eight steals, according to industry sources.
Jewelers, tired of the insecurity, on Wednesday wrote a petition to the Minister of Interior of the region, RR Patil, to allow them to put a restriction on the entry of women with "burkas" in their stores, and decided to close the stores today as a measure of pressure.
According to EFE said the president of the Jewellers Association of Maharashtra region, Fatechand Ranka, more than 5,000 shops in a radius of 150 kilometers threw the locks, waiting for the Government to react to the amount stolen.
"It's OK to allow passage to a veiled woman, but you do not know if a woman or a man until he shows his face," said the newspaper "Hindustan Times" Ravi Aganani jeweler.
Although the Minister of Interior refused yesterday to be aware of the controversy, an initiative to ban the "burqa" drew criticism from the Commission on Minorities of the region, calling it a "dangerous" because it "violates the rights of women ".
"A woman has the right to wear whatever she wants, should have the option of wearing a burqa or jeans. We call on all communities to condemn the decision "of jewelers, said Nasim Siddiqui, director of the Commission, quoted by IANS.
However, the jewelers see it differently: "We have no religious bias-Ranka stated, there is no choice but to safeguard our business interests."
Given the controversy, the jewelers today decided to withdraw its lawsuit against the ban on "burqas" but requested that, at least, the women remove the veil off the security cameras of stores, to record their faces before access the interior of the premises and thus prevent theft.
After threatening to hang on doors of shops signs reading "no burkas", jewelers are willing to negotiate to not "offend the sensibilities of any community," said Ranka, because they are driven by a "no anti-Muslim sentiment" .
"We just want to protect our security," the jeweler, upon leaving a meeting with the police authorities was "satisfactory."
With 138 million practitioners, Muslims make up the largest minority religious (13.4 percent of the population) in India, a predominantly Hindu country.

Indian women, fasting for the welfare of their husbands

New Delhi, October 10, 2006. - The Hindu married today in India celebrate the festival "Karwa chauth" a day of fasting prescriptive which seek to ensure, through their devotion, long life and prosperity for their husbands.
Throughout the day, women just can not eat or drink, but also forbidden to swallow, to show that they are willing to accept sacrifices for their spouse.
"There is no problem to resist, we made ​​it through the love and power of God. In addition, women who fast replacing hunger by going to the salon and wearing their best bracelets and jewelry, "says Gagandeep Kaur Efe.
The Hindu festival based on the belief that activities such as fasting or prayer serve to protect third parties, in this case the Indian husbands, so maybe some will fast with pleasure.
Before dawn, the women get up and eat sweets and traditional foods, according to a strict vegetarian diet, in addition to drinking much liquid as possible, as a Muslim during Ramadan, which is also celebrated these days.
Taking advantage of the "Karwa chauth" Indian wives engaged in shopping and draw hands with "henna" or "mehndi" (in Spanish, henna), an orange substance used to tattoo the most superficial parts of the skin with temporary.
It is taking time as they can to not think about eating, hence, for example, markets are brimming with jewels on days like today.
Gagandeep Kaur mind that, just before sunset the sun, women who fast "sit in a circle to hear the reading of the story that relates the festival, from the lips of a Brahmin priestess."
The legend of "Karwa chauth" tells the story of Queen Veeravati, which induces a brother to eat in a day of fasting by deception, causing the death of her husband, the king.
Distraught, the queen is to the gods Shiva and Parvati and asks them to revive her husband, through which they grant you a promise to keep the fast of 'Karwa chauth "with strict conditions.
After hearing the story, Gagandeep Kaur women go home and dress in their finest jewelry and more colorful sari to await the arrival of her husband and watch beside him, covered by a net to prevent see their faces, the output of the moon.
Once this happens, women should look alternately at the sky and her husband as a symbol of devotion and desire for wealth, good health and longevity, along that husbands are fed and watered their wives with their own hands.
The ceremony ends when they touch the feet of their husbands to show their love.
The "Karwa chauth", especially popular in northern India, is celebrated in the period in which they occur most festivals in this country, when the weather starts to be more bearable.
As for the Christian Christmas, Indians take advantage of the holidays to visit relatives, exchange gifts and eat sweets.
Actually, the "Karwa chauth" becomes the prelude to the most emblematic party of India, the "Diwali", which commemorates the return of Lord Rama after his victory over the devil Ravana and the country full of lights.

Orientalism

The term "Orientalism" refers to the imitation or the example of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, but also makes ref erence to the empathetic attitude towards the region by a writer or any other person . An "Orientalist" may be also the person in charge of academic Oriental Studies.

The meaning of u n turn acquired the controversial work of Edward Said of the same name, published in 1978. Said uses the term to describe two traditions, artistic and academic, hostile and contemptuous views of the East by the West, partly influenced by the era of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Used in this sense, the "Orientalism" includes interpretations of Eastern culture marked by prejudice. Said criticized the academic tradition, custom writers such as Bernard Lewis. In contrast, the term has also been used by other scholars to refer to writers of the old imperialist attitudes favorable to Eastern culture.

Meaning of témino. Orientalism comes from the Latin word "oriens" (East) and also the Greek he'oros' (the direction of the rising sun). East West is the opposite, non-trivial issue in the old order of the known world: Western Europe was considered and the east end of the world was known East. Hence the conception of the Orient, with its Eurocentric varnish, has changed over time: for the Roman Empire "East" referred to the current Middle East. L did not know then as flourishing cultures of the Far East, just as in the Far East was unknown in Europe.

Over time, the meaning of "East" was moving east as western explorers reached new heights. The "wise men" biblical "East" came from the "East", with the probable meaning of Arabia and the Persian Empire. Europe, however, became aware that beyond this, reaching the Pacific coast, whose space was called the Far East. In the West, these changes in meaning over time add to the confusion (historical and geographical) to Oriental studies.

Are however areas where "East" and "oriental" denote definitions and outdated. The "oriental spices" come from regions between the Middle East and Indochina. Travel in the "Orient Express" just come to Istanbul in the east side of Europe.

In Spanish, "oriental" is a term referring to the peoples, cultures and gods of the areas of East and Southeast Asia populated by Mongoloid races.

The arts. Imitation oriental style. One of the meanings of Orientalism is adopting motifs, styles and arguments in art, architecture and design. The "turquerie" as they called that old fashion, began in the fifteenth century and reached the century.

Early use of motives taken from the Indian subcontinent has been sometimes called the "Indian style". In this stream there are many examples in the UK, the main actor of imperialism in the area, as Sezincote Guildhall or house, but also in Potsdam, Stuttgart and Toronto.

The term "chinoiserie", French, includes fashion by Chinese motifs in the decoration of Western art, in successive waves since the seventeenth century, with a special place during the Rococo period. Since the Renaissance, European designers were trying to imitate the technical sophistication of Chinese ceramics, with modest success. The "chinoiserie" (chinería) appears most f orce in countries with active East India Companies, as the United Kingdom, Denmark, Holland and France. In the European imagination was of particular importance china, imitated in the Dutch city of Delft or German Meissen.

Chinese-flavored appeared gardens and recreational areas in the Rococo German palaces and the tiles of the palace of Aranjuez, in Madrid. Tables for tea and Chinese toilets, sober pictures of the furniture Xing start to populate the noblest halls of Europe. There are small pagodas in the chimneys and larger parks.

For art inspired by Japan, the key date is 1860, with the arrival of Japanese woodcut prints and their influence on artists such as Monet or McNeill Whistler.

Representation of the East in art and literature. The representation of the "Moors" or "Turkish" begins in the Middle Ages and continues through the Renaissance and Baroque. The first outlines of orientalism in Western art biblical scenes appear in the first Dutch painting, where some secondary figures, such as Romans or Jews, are dressed in exotic costumes and wearing turbans include the nearby this contemporary. Renaissance Venice shows a particular interest in the Ottoman Empire in painting, with Gentille Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio to the head. At the time, were already more accurate representations, and the men were already white.

In the nineteenth century, increase oriental scenes. In many works repeats the myth of an exotic and decadent East, dominated by corruption. These works focus on the Middle Eastern Islamic cultures. Artists such as Delacroix, Gérôme or Roubtzoff Islam reflected in his paintings, often collect odalisques. Ingres, director of the French Academy of Painting, painted a Turkish bath in which generalized the Eastern eroticism and became socially acceptable in the eyes of France. Although all bodies probably belonged to the same model, had called the play "A brothel in Paris", this would have been controversial. The sensuality and was considered an integral part of the East, and this view persisted in the early twentieth century, as seen in Matisse's nudes. In these works, the "east" is often a mirror of Western culture itself, even as a way to express their faces hidden or illegal.

The use of exotic East and went back into the world of cinema, particularly in some successes of Rudolph Valentino. Later, the rich Arabic became a popular resort, especially during the oil crisis of the 70. In the nineties, that image gave way to a more negative: the terrorist villain common in western movies.

Edward Said, "Orientalism." A central idea is that Edward Said on the Middle Western knowledge is not built on facts but on imagined constructs that see Eastern societies as fundamentally similar and different characteristics shared crucial to the West. There is thus a priori knowledge that sets a opposite East West. Knowledge of the East is built with literary texts and historical data that often have a limited understanding of the facts of the Middle East.

Before Said's book, "Oriental" was used as opposed to "Western". Comparisons between the two entities were often unfavorable to the East, although the term was used by respectable institutions. But the word "Orient" fell into dispute with the birth of the term "Orientalism". Following ideas of Michel Foucault, Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in the field of thought-both academic and popular-especially with the European vision of the Islamic world. For Said, East and West acted like two sides of the coin, in which East was only a negative complement Western culture. The work of another thinker, Antonio Gramsci, also influenced the perception of Said. In particular, Said used the concept of hegemony to analyze the pervasiveness of Orientalist constructs and representations among Western scholars.

Said limited his academic discussion to the study of Middle East culture and history of Africa and Asia, but also said that Orientalism is a significant dimension of modern political and intellectual culture. His perspective of the late nineteenth century, when the departments in the area had left the colonial paradigm. Still, this paradigm continued in works such as Bernard Lewis as late as 1977. The idea of an East is key to define the West. Therefore, the study of Greco-Persian wars affect the comparison between the democratic tradition of Athens and the Persian Empire's authoritarian system, but as a way to extrapolate to a more general comparison between Greeks and Persians, and also between East and West, between Europe and Asia, without reference to the many Greek cities also were governed by authoritarian regimes.

Said tries to unravel the power relations colonizer - colonized latent in the texts of writers and academics in Europe. His work has implications beyond the Middle East, particularly on attitudes towards China or India. "Orientalism" is one of the foundational texts of postcolonial studies. Later, Said developed and modified his ideas in the 1993 book "Culture and Imperialism."

Many scholars now use Said's work to try to alleviate Western ideological bases, often taken for granted without critical discussion. Some have come to maintain the idea that the West's self was constructed from the difference with others. If Europe is left of Christianity as non-Byzantium, modern Europe from the end of the late sixteenth century defined itself as the "not-Turkey."

Said sets out some definitions of "Orientalism" in the introduction to his work. Some have been more influential than others.

• "A way of approaching East based on the special place it occupies in the Middle Western European experience.
• "A style of thought based on ontological or epistemological distinction made ​​between" East "and" West. "
• "Western style for dominating, restructuring and show his authority over the Orient".
• "Orientalism is particularly valuable as a sign of power on the East Atlantic-European rather than true speech of the East ".
• "Distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic texts, academic, economic, sociological, historical and philological.

In his preface to the 2003 edition, Said made ​​a warning against "falsely unifying rubrics that invent collective identities" with terms such as America, the West and Islam, "leading to what he considers a" clash of civilizations "prefabricated .

Positions contrary to Said. Critics Said's theory, as the historian Bernard Lewis, argue that the review contains errors conceptual, methodological and factual. Said ignores many genuine contributions to the study of Eastern cultures made ​​by Westerners during the Enlightenment and the Victorian era. Said's theory does not explain why the French and English studied Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, long before that will control the Middle East. And he was criticized for having ignored the contributions of Italian scholars, Dutch, and especially Germans. For Lewis, the intellectuals of these countries are more important in European Orientalism than the French or the English, despite the disconnect between the studies and their colonial presence. And Said's theory, says Lewis, does not explain why studies failed Orientalists advance the causes of imperialism.

"What purpose served imperial deciphering the ancient Egyptian, for example, and the restoration of knowledge and pride Egyptians for its old and forgotten past" (B. Lewis).

Lewis argued that Orientalism is born of humanism. A different ideology of imperialism, and sometimes opposed to it. The Orientalist study of Islam born of rejection of religious dogma, and served to spur awareness of alternative cultures. Lewis calls "intellectual protectionism" the argument that only those beyond a culture can usefully discuss its components.

Said Lewis responds to the arguments by saying that this should be placed in context. One of the main arguments is that Orientalism Said was used as an instrument of the Empire, and the author claims that criticism of Lewis is not disinterested, but part of the neo-imperialist positions of Lewis, sometimes masked.

Lewis is aligned with schools of thought that promote neocon vision for U.S. policy in the Middle East. Most intellectuals are lined with Said, which is criticized by supporters of Lewis as a bias that has led to funding cuts in those academic departments. The website www.campuswatch.org , for example, encourages students to report the prejudices of their teachers.

Bryan Turner criticizes the work of Said saying that there are multiple ways and traditions of Orientalism. So Said criticizes attempts to place them all under the same light. Other critics point out that, despite the fantasies and distortions, the notion of "East" as a negative mirror of the West is not usually because the view changes according to different cultures. In any case, it is a logical necessity that other cultures are identified as "different". And there are some who maintain that Said criticizes the "essentialism" of Orientalists in categorizing the East, but he falls into the stereotype of the characteristics of the West.

The West viewed from the east. In contrast, many of the concepts associated with the derogatory "Orientalism" short-western but with a reverse direction, in the epilogue of "Chapter of the Western Regions" of Hou Hanshu. This is the official history of the Han Dynasty (25-221 years). The book is compiled by Fan Ye (d. 445) and succinctly expresses the Han opinion "Western" culture Hu, in the current western China.

Los occidentales Hu están lejos

Viven en una zona exterior.

Los productos de su país son preciosos

Pero su carácter es corrupto y frívolo.

No siguen los ritos de China

Han tiene los libros canónicos.

No obedecen el camino de los dioses.

¡Qué lamentable!

¡Qué obstinado!

Aunque esta cita se refiere al oeste de China , no faltan las representaciones estereotipadas de los occidentales en trabajos de los artistas indios, japoneses y chinos. Pero, como contraste, algunos artistas orientales adoptaron estilos de occidente. El pintor indio Ravi Varma pintó obras indistinguibles de algunas imágenes orientalistas occidentales. A finales del siglo XX, muchos motivos culturales occidentales e imágenes comenzaron a aparecer en la cultura y el arte asiáticos, sobre todo en Japón . Las frases y palabras inglesas ocupan un lugar prominente en la cultura popular y la publicidad de Japón. Muchos caracteres, temas y figuras mitológicas del “anime” japonés se derivan de variadas tradiciones culturales occidentales.

Recientemente, el término “ Occidentalismo ” ha sido acuñado para referirse a la visión negativa de Occidente presente en ocasiones en las actuales sociedades orientales.