A REFORMATION SO RAPID:

Fresh hope for Islam's 'suffragettes' (IAN MATHER, 10/17/04, Scotland on Sunday)

WHILE universal suffrage has been the norm in the West for decades, in the Middle East it remains a flashpoint between modernisers and Islamic fundamentalists.

But women’s rights in the region will receive a major boost later this month if Kuwait’s parliament decides to grant females the vote, following in the footsteps of the other Gulf states, Bahrain and Qatar, which have already enfranchised women, although neither has yet elected a female member of parliament.

The battle for the female franchise in Kuwait has been going on for decades. The emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, approved the move in 1999 only for parliament to turn it down by two votes after the stormiest debate in its history. Afterwards hundreds of men cheered in the streets.

However, earlier this year Kuwait’s Council of Ministers approved a draft bill to amend the 1962 constitution and give women both the right to vote and to stand for parliament. [...]

Although Kuwait’s 50-seat parliament has a Sunni majority that has traditionally rejected the political rights of women, in June the country’s leading Sunni Islamist group, the Islamic Constitutional Movement, surprised observers by announcing its support for the bill. Liberal and Shi’ite parliamentarians are also likely to support the suffrage bill.

Al-Mughni said: "The government seems to anticipate that women will constitute a moderate, pro-government force in national politics.

"Islamist women’s rights activists see the vote as a means of empowering themselves to create a moral and orderly society in which women and men have different, but not equal, responsibilities. They share with their male counterparts the goal of achieving an Islamic society ruled by religious idioms and norms, in which women, veiled and modest, worship God and fulfil their familial and social duties."

Conservatives accuse the West, and the US in particular, of interfering in domestic politics by pressuring Kuwaiti parliamentarians into accepting women’s political rights.

They too would prefer John Kerry, who promises not to apply such democratic pressure.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 16, 2004 8:45 PM