{"id":1861,"date":"2007-01-21T22:05:13","date_gmt":"2007-01-21T22:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2007-01-21T22:05:59","modified_gmt":"2007-01-21T22:05:59","slug":"women-against-fundamentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1861","title":{"rendered":"Women Against Fundamentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To a brilliant meeting yesterday to work towards refounding <a href = \"http:\/\/waf.gn.apc.org\/\">Women Against Fundamentalism<\/a>. As the introduction said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Women Against Fundamentalism is alarmed at the threat to and silencing of trade union, socialist, feminist, anti-racist and other progressive movements &#8211; in the mainstream as well as in Black, migrant and refugee communities &#8211; by the state&#8217;s &#8216;War on Terror&#8217;. It is alarmed, too, by the collusion of elements on the Left with fundamentalist religious leaders who are attempting to undermine rights and freedoms, including in their own communities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The group was founded in the immediate aftermath of the <a href = \"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salman_Rushdie\">Rushdie fatwa<\/a> and worked in the Nineties with groups including <a href = \"http:\/\/www.wluml.org\/english\/index.shtml\">Women Living Under Muslim Laws<\/a> (a still highly active group), the anti-war <a href = \"http:\/\/www.womeninblack.org.uk\/\">Women in Black<\/a>, South Asia Watch (with particular concerns about the rise of Hindu fundamentalism) and Catholics for Free Choice.<\/p>\n<p>It produced an excellent journal &#8211; all the articles are on the website and many are still all too relevant. <\/p>\n<p>Now, the aim will be, as one speaker put it, to &#8220;bring ideas from diverse places to the crossroads where race and sex and class meet&#8221;. The word &#8220;nuanced&#8221; was used a  lot at the meeting &#8211; the need to recognise that struggles against racism can&#8217;t be allowed to empower repressive forces within minority communities. As another speaker put it bluntly: now if you resist fundamentalism you risk being called pro-imperialist.<\/p>\n<p>(If you are interested in getting involved  contact with me &#8211; natalieben AT gmail DOT com and I can pass on contact details.)<\/p>\n<p>And talk did turn quite a bit to blogging and other Net 2.0 things &#8211; luckily I one half of <a href = \"http:\/\/stroppyblog.blogspot.com\/\">Stroppyblog<\/a> was also there &#8211; nice to meet you ! &#8211; so we could share that around&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To a brilliant meeting yesterday to work towards refounding Women Against Fundamentalism. As the introduction said: Women Against Fundamentalism is alarmed at the threat to and silencing of trade union, socialist, feminist, anti-racist and other progressive movements &#8211; in the mainstream as well as in Black, migrant and refugee communities &#8211; by the state&#8217;s &#8216;War [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","author-natalieben"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}