Observations on Muslim clerics

The battle-cry of women's liberation was hijacked this month by Muslim fundamentalists to disguise an agenda that denies choice to women.

A conference on the hijab, held at City Hall in London on 12 July and hosted by London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, took place under the title: "A woman's right to choose". How ironic it was that the keynote speaker, the Muslim scholar Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, does not believe that women are entitled to any choice over whether or not to adopt the hijab.

Writing on the Islam Online website, al-Qaradawi says: "It is obligatory on Muslim women to wear hijab [that is, to cover the whole body except the face, hands and feet, according to some schools of jurisprudence]. A Muslim husband is to order his wife to wear hijab. Muslim wives are to obey their husbands."

In other words, wearing the hijab is not a matter of choice, but of religious obligation and female obedience. Not a single speaker at the conference, not even Livingstone, defended the right of women not to wear the hijab. The views of liberal Muslim women who oppose the hijab as a symbol of male domination were unheard. The conference was, in reality, clerical misogyny masquerading as a right-to-choose campaign. A Guardian headline labelled those who sought to expose al-Qaradawi's sexism and homophobia "uninformed critics".

Al-Qaradawi is the chief scholar on the Islam Online website, which issues religious edicts (fatwas) on contemporary moral issues and answers ethical questions posed by Muslims seeking theological guidance. He heads a panel whose role is to ensure that nothing appears on the site that "violates the fixed principles of Islamic law". It might therefore be reasonable to assume that he has authorised the site's content.

In answer to the question "Are raped women punished in Islam?", the panel replies: "The raped woman must have shown some sort of good conduct. [Islam] addresses women to maintain their modesty. So, for a rape victim to be absolved from guilt, she must not be the one that opens her dignity for deflowering."

This seems to be suggesting that rape victims cannot be absolved of guilt if they have behaved or dressed immodestly. Such women provoke rape. They bring it upon themselves. They are to blame for their sexual violation. The implication is that these women have sinned against Islamic law and thus merit punishment, together with the rapist. No Anglican bishop who suggested that rape was the victim's fault would be invited to City Hall. Yet al-Qaradawi was the mayor of London's "honoured guest".

Al-Qaradawi's scholarly panel has also approved an Islam Online endorsement of wife-beating - provided it is done "lightly" and with the "hands" rather than with sticks. This has not deterred Livingstone from inviting him to return to the city for a further Greater London Authority-hosted conference in October. Perhaps the mayor was persuaded by the godly scholar's insistence to the Guardian that wife-beating was neither "obligatory nor desirable". Phew, that's a relief. But what a pity al-Qaradawi has not also said this on the website he supervises.

The same goes for his ostensible back-tracking on the execution of homosexuals. Islam Online denounces gay people as "perverted" and "abominable". It says that the punishment for homosexuality is "burning" or "stoning" to death. Speaking to the Guardian, however, al-Qaradawi presented what seems to be a more tolerant view, arguing that although same-sex relationships are forbidden by Islam, individual Muslims have "no right to punish homosexuals or mistreat them". Any punishment is, he says, a matter for the state. This is, alas, an implicit endorsement of the six Islamic states that impose the death penalty for homosexuality.

On 3 July Livingstone was a star guest at London's gay Pride Parade. Now he hugs and fetes defenders of the state-sponsored murder of gay people.

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