moderate on walsall to interpretations of islam that are. more for egalitarian views regarding women in their societies i want to talk a bit about libya because this is a topic that's very close to you libya's toppled leader moammar qaddafi did a lot for emancipation in libya whatever you like him or not but he unrolled women and universities and the army gave them rights to divorce and so on so is the new libyan state going to keep this legacy or anything related to him is subject to destruction well first i would like to make a point. whatever women have been women have cheve it has nothing to do with the get their few percy we need to this tangle this presumption that these rights have been given by giveth and we've seen this argument and discourse going on in many of the arab spring so-called arab spring

countries that they've seen these women's rights that the were giving in certain time during these regimes as the first lady's policies of the case in egypt or as in the case of libya they see it as a byproduct of the so we need to disband all this first these are. rights that women have game over time and they have to they have to maintain them so while in most middle eastern countries the role of women is limited in syria and kurdistan for instance women are represented equally on all government levels that's the law discrimination is for britain is it because they're in kurdistan isn't built on islamic law it's just a secular state which respects religion. well that's another problem what do we mean by islamic law and who defines it and

who has implemented it so far we need to develop a discourse that goes beyond this dichotomy of secular and islamist. and to create a space where you have woman fight for women's rights but at the same time their faith and i am sure that in the syrian kurds kurds kurdish. case. their secularism is not anti religion so. the problematic that we have in our societies when you pose the word the term secularism became problematic and became and became. coined with atheism and to religion so the struggle is how to reconsider. both words walls the walled off shared

a ya or islam islamic values and i mean by that islamic values and i would not necessarily i see it as islamic strict rulings for me sharia is a dynamic process and i think women need to be trained to one to stand. tradition and two to two to end the not pally of patriarchal. scholars all freight of the religious to still. so let's talk a bit about your perception of sharia and how that changed because you've said this sharia law islamic law isn't set in stone it's based on intraparty ation and is evolving all the time but for us looking at the state of women's rights in places which based their low on the sharia their position in society is and following at all it's not going anywhere is it even possible to maintain sharia and achievements a patient for women. yeah i hear you and this is exactly the case

in revolution there libya a lot of people are are saying that we want to implement the sharia law and by that they also see that is islamic law and they want to implement it so they see it as a set of laws and they want to. know all the five all the laws that we had from before that out of more progressive. claiming that they are contradictory to sharia now this is their claim so i perfectly understand and hear you when you say this was the case in other countries as well yes other countries like saudi arabia in the name of sharia law they have prevented woman from driving cars but we see like in in

other countries we have like fifty eight majority dominant muslim countries and all in all other countries muslim woman drive so what we want this is the discourse that we are posing here is we want to end this monopoly off interpret islam in misawa genest way we want to say no this is not islam this is not even sharia because sharia is a dynamic process and this is so we go back to and review history and history of the development of. the schools legal thought in islam and see how it developed and see how the process sharia itself needs to be contextualized i see this as taking the of the debates a woman as being. as islam being. inherently.

misawa genus religion to another realm where we we have alternative. discourses to the dominant monic massage of this discourse on islam today so that's why we we ask for more revisiting of history more revisiting of. schools of thought schools of thought including fuck and so no one claims a monopoly of that's so that's why in a way there is an opportunity to to to build a new feminist a new again literary an interpretation of islam and shadi our. secular countries with significant muslim minorities are also struggling to find a good way to live with them france for example is banning not just full face veils

there is also talk of banning their regular head scarves like the one you are wearing right now or. are the french right to enforce their vision of secularity in their own country. what the french actually are doing is the other coin the other face of the same coin forcing on woman a dress code i think the dress code should be women's right in forcing women to put it on and in forcing women to take it off is this is but the c. . act of massaging me so what. france is claiming to do in name of secularism could be contested by other secularist as we have seen and said no this is not actually secularism that this is a distorted understanding of secularism this is actually forcing

a state religion on people yet it is so you think you know what for instance for instance if we take example of turkey or inter-connected to emancipate women the only way they could do it is too bad legally now it's lifted but it does seem like sometimes that breaking traditions with force is the. word for women's rights in an islamic country because it worked in turkey and they all example we have. well i don't think i have to disagree with you and again i think that banning and forcing on women what to do is basically against what i believe in in terms of equality and dignity and freedom of choice so the rights. to dress and undress is basically

a right that is should not be taken away from woman we still have this reminiscence in our societies today that there is this kind of a feminist who do not. accept woman wearing the scarf. among them who do not consider them as progressive and off as liberal enough because they they still are a key to their face. and their tradition so i think what we need to do is to to create a platform where we can rican sinai and allow woman. who. maintain in their face and who still struggling with massage unease in their cultures this is the kind of discourse that we need to see and what

we could call it a post-colonial discourse post-colonial feminist discourse and not the typical. discourse so how we'll have to take a short break right now hold your thought there when we're back we'll continue talking to zahra long d.l.a. be an advocate for women's rights co-founder of libyan women's platform for peace discussing the changing role of women in islam stay tuned.

yes. this is a real new zone today we discuss decision to end cia operations in syria russia and the u.s. are working together but most players in this proxy complex are not happy about this and some surprising but expected developments in ukraine.

this with the with me but i can no those get a little bit because it was. my somalia but i you. know both of us but i guess we're kind of this side of this you. know pretty a dump a lot and just you know she refuses to see. where they boo you go get em it's just a good area for immigrants it's hit and miss we never really know for sure but this is been a active area. that you so i. know well when i started no i.

never met in front of. the. gun. slinger. let it. go or back with zahara long he had the kit for

a women's rights leader of the libyan women's platform for peace. discussing the struggle to redefine islam as a religion of equality is a how welcome back now judaism and christianity are also religions that use holy texts with shouldn't misogynist messages however we see nowadays priests female rabbis in reform versions of these religions can be reformed like that to a point where we can see a woman spiritual leader. history of islam we had women leaders and actually the history of reform movements in islam was like in the case of the one hubby. movement it is it is a row for mr movement but it was puritanical and so. it should introduce misawa genius interpretations of islam so it's quite. the opposite in the history of

christianity and judaism so what we need today is to revive and bring back the liberal voices that were there throughout the thirteenth centuries we had women scholars we had women sheriff's we had women fuck women leaders we need to revisit. history with the with the gender lens and we find all these things so i must. warn. us from using this a call of reformation of islam and because of what we wish for because of the history of reformation or reformist movements in islam were basically puritanical movements and they have introduced views. to the muslim world so we need to transform it to the other side the other way now there's recently

been a scandal surrounding a veiled was slim woman who took part in a photo shoot for playboy and another woman is modeling for h. and m. in the job now for many in the muslim world this kind of behavior is unacceptable but for some this is a way to show the west that muslim women aren't all that different so how do you feel how do you see it. i can see the point of view of both and i have been saying we need to reconcile both points of view because these a woman are not living in a typically muslim majority countries so there could be do you think it's ok to do a little too if i need to or a girl goes for an h. and m. poster what do you think a lot of power i have as a woman who is for woman's rights but also as a religious woman. i think i. said that i entertain and understand then

to hear both points of view those who think this is. an accepted according to their understanding of islamic tradition and those who thinks that we need to break . to break of the dog and really represent islam. because we don't live in a tradition of traditional muslim societies this is a global age and so i can the here and understand these what i can say newish to. off representing them woman in global media well let's talk a bit about politics why do you think every place that the arab spring has touched them we're seeing conservative religious forces taking over i mean you had a vision for post revolution libya but after the revolution the fighting didn't stop and continue with more ferocity what went wrong whose task was it to make sure

the transition to democracy happened it's not simply because what is happening is not a transition to do much of authoritarianism or from war or conflict to democracy actually what we're seeing is a transition from dictatorship to failed states and so that tells us that the template driven policies by the international community on how to andle. what they call transitions is. this something that we've long about basically we have the so-called democratic two kurds. that you have to introduce in post conflict and it's still the ne needs a lot of unpacking who's in conflict or a post conflict sometimes it's between you are in conflict. conflict so the democratic toolkit which basically you have to have elections you have to have your

own constitution you have to have a multi-party system and a free media. these four elements or they have proven to be a recipe of division and fragmentation and polarization in society and they did not work and did not bring democracy and actually it has caused after five years people to to question the. democracy that the five years after the libyan revolution you regret calling for days a rage the movement that helped topple khadafi you say it's time to call for comparing compassion and mercy that sounds commendable but people who will do the fighting against those who resist change and those people need rage to win where would any revolution be without that. exactly and i keep on i always call myself. a reflective or

a meditating revolutionary i know that part of me in two thousand and eleven was really angry and was passionate but my point is that with passion and anger or rage alone you cannot build societies yes you can you can revolt against the dictator but what about the day after i think we as libyan people did not give much thought about that and so the rage of passion of the revolution does not build nations and certainly does not build states and the other part of it is that the international community in the name of responsibility to protect which intervened and created this model of the libyan model the life model intervention has made drastic mistakes in libya in not having a political strategy for the day after after get so it's internally and

externally i think we messier because i'm thinking it's kind of strange that after the libyan support it there are militias for a violent overthrow of khadafi there are now decrying the militias continued violence and power grabbing after the revolution don't you see that as a bit naïve i think i don't think it's naive i think it's up to this moment. i think if one is against militarization if one is against unchecked militarization if one is against. the arms. you can from the very beginning to the end we had voices that were saying ok you are now arming the revolution. aries but how are we going and specially in the case of libya so the war off liberation or the revolution was took only six months not

to like the syrian case so. it could have been easy to decide on these revolutionaries but this was not the case so there were voices from the beginning who were thinking about ok we are now arming civilians to get rid of gaddafi and to protect civilians yeah but what on the other. arenas their life that people who risk their lives people who killed they want reward why would they seek power that's just a rule of the game that's the way it goes. that's from the point of view of yes warlords definitely and the from the point of view of a certain kind of revolutionaries but that's not kind of it's not the point of view of local communities which i try to represent we want to see the

perpetrators of war crimes held accountable we want to see and end to the. and keep in the i don't think it's possible to have a successful transition in libya to democracy if we do not address the root causes and the root cause is basically unchecked militarization of how you're citing all those examples of what went wrong inside libya after the revolution and you've sad that you know libyans weren't smart enough to seeing what was going to happen the day after the revolution but what about those who helped overthrow the regime from the outside the nato bombing campaign late to the regime change in libya it was what they called a late model intervention and no other regime was put in place why was the west in such a rush in libya why did it leave the country without helping it rebuilt. yeah i definitely

hear you and if this is a sound question and i think libya has set. a bad example and the precedent for the light intervention that that said does not mean that they're the international community should not intervene because we've seen what happened in bosnia and kosovo or in rwanda and that's cause. in the international hundred sponsibility we have is how little you know yet whose responsibility is it because the british and the french and americans didn't plan on what to do after qaddafi was gone but then again like we've talked about neither did the libyans who are protesting against him should every last one has a west or should should libyans do something about it themselves no no i actually this is why i started with the internal factor and failure and then i mentioned the external factor but the external factor we cannot. minimize it because it

has intervened and it has created the failed states so there should have been collaborative effort. with libyans to deal with. this on them and demobilization and the rehab of the rebels but that was not the case that was not on the table what we had the lights model intervention is basically an ad hoc strategy that we have we have a political mission a u.n. political mission that's up to this moment to the fifth year they only extend its mandate for another three months every three months or a six month they extend it so we don't have a comprehensive long term strategy of what are you going to do with libya you know it's rather an ad hoc strategy. no thinking of what to do and so that's why it's creating a lot of mess and destabilizing the whole region. and again you need to

have a look at. have. libyan ownership of how they want to believe that they state and nation because i think you cannot build. you have you cannot have state building in libya without having nation building and the question of legitimacy and the question of to address the question of legitimacy to address the question of national identity all these questions after four decades of dictatorship and the loss of identity and with five or five years off military anarchy a lot of things happen and needs to be addressed so what you we need to work on social cohesion nation building. in paddling with state building so the question of back again local. libyan local ownership is important so has thank you very much

for this insight and for this interview or talking to the how long you director of libyan woman's platform for peace and advocate for gender equality in islam talking about the future a women's rights in islamic countries after the wave of the arab spring revolutions that's it for this edition of sophie and call see you next. the rejected. one of the president should. want to reach.

out to the right to be his wife before three of the more people. i'm interested always in the lives of our. city. here's what people have been saying about rejected a knighthood to us exactly just pull along awesome the only show i go out of my way to launch it was the really packed a punch to sleep yeah it is the john oliver of party america is doing the same we are apparently better than the things that i see people you've never heard of love went back to the night my president of the world bank so hates it but he doesn't really mean it seriously he sent us an email. they all. said.

yes to all this is how the. it's a very rough road to write a story it's rough climates and you have to fight to be able to reflect. it was.

you know i don't want to see it but a body in the. old. a

leaked memo suggests that brussels is preparing retaliation if washington pushes ahead with new anti russia sanctions that could hurt european businesses that says an e.u. delegation holds top food u.s. lawmakers. iraq's vice president says that baghdad needs russian political and military presence in the country to restore balance to the rich. u.k. straight secretary accuses the b.b.c. of bias coverage of the break process and of ignoring positive stories about leaving the european union. i cannot. recall a single time in recent times.