Reflections
We at Muslim Women Studies have a mission, beyond our academic ambitions, or beyond a conventional 'feminist agenda': Our priority is to live the meaning and the plight of our age, and to try and leave our imprint on our world: foremost by consciousness raising about the realities around us: and trying to provide the channels for involvement on behalf of those whose circumstances leave them little chance for 'representation', let alone participation... This is the kind of 'activism' that we feel to be worthy of our toil:
From Tadjikstani children to Bosnian families stranded in their 'safe havens', the promise of a new world order brought with it untold suffering and anguish to Muslims worldwide. The beginning of the last decade of the century was destined to shape the order of things to come in the new millenium.
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| Muslim women and children began the new millenium bearing the scars of the refugee experience. It is this more than anything else that seems to set the agenda for Muslim women studies: | |
| Visiting Sarajevo was an experience: It is here in the
old quarter, the heart of the historic city, that one sees the churches
alongside the synagogue and the mosque-madrasas, all within paces of
each other... There are also the pigeons that are to be found everywhere,
adding to the serenity of an otherwise bustling place... Despite the
new foundling of a 'peace' five years later, one could not help but
wonder at what the future may hold for the surviving generation of a
traumatized era... More than anything else, it was my visit with the orphaned
children in March of this year, that provided one of the most touching
moments in my short stop over... A jolly bunch of lovely
damsels, who
despite the undisguised wounds carried within their frail bodies and
tender hearts, still tokened a glimmer of hope... It was here, from
the window of this modest little home that I caught a glimpse of one of
the loveliest horizons I had seen in a long time: a perfect rainbow!
The images remain impressed in the heart: It will take several more trips for an amateur like myself to be able to take to the camera's eye... and to record it all for you, too, our friends who come to visit our site...
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