What a guy: Libyan leader invites 500 Italian female escorts to villa and lectures them on Islam

by: Salaam

Mon Nov 16, 2009 at 10:42:59 AM EST

Role models? Gaddafi brought his contingent of female bodyguards to the event.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi invited hundreds of attractive Italian "hostesses" to a villa in Rome last night for an evening at which he urged them to convert to Islam and told them Christianity was based on a fraud, Italian reports said today.

The Libyan leader is in Italy to attend a United Nations summit on world food security. Reports said that Colonel Gaddafi's aides phoned an agency which provides elegantly dressed young women to act as hospitality staff at events.

The agency was asked to send 500 women to the residence of Hafed Gaddur, the Libyan ambassador in Rome, where Colonel Gaddafi is staying, over a series of evenings during the three day summit.

The agency advertised for "500 pleasing girls between 18 and 35 years of age, at least one metre 70 high." The women were asked to dress elegantly but soberly, with both miniskirts and cleavage-revealing decolletage firmly banned.

Those who replied were offered €60 (£53) to attend an evening at the villa for an "exchange of opinions" and to "receive a Libyan gift", which turned out to be a copy of the Koran. They were given nothing to eat or drink, however.

Paola Lo Mele, a journalist with the Italian news agency ANSA who posed as a hostess to enter the villa, said the 200 women who attended yesterday had to pass through metal detectors, before being ushered by white turbanned Libyan staff into a "sumptuous drawing room" with white and red divans arranged in a semi-circle in front of Colonel Gaddafi. He arrived an hour late. He sat next to an interpreter and two of his renowned female guards.

The Libyan leader said it was "untrue that Islam is against women" according to Corriere della Sera. He urged the women to convert to Islam, pointing out that whereas there were four different Gospels, there was only one Koran.

He then observed - to "general incredulity" - that Christ had not died on the Cross and been resurrected, as Christians believe, because the person crucified had been "a look-alike" who was substituted for the real Jesus.

"Convert to Islam. Jesus was sent to the Jews, not for you. Mohammed, on the other hand, was sent for all human beings," he reportedly said. "Whoever goes in a different direction than Mohammed is wrong. God's religion is Islam, and whoever follows a different one, in the end, will lose," Colonel Gaddafi added, according to La Stampa.

He said women must do only "what their physical condition allows them", and spoke about the role that women played during the Second World War. He claimed that in the West women "have often been used as pieces of furniture, changed whenever it pleases men. And this is an injustice." He then invited the women to travel to the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

As the soiree broke up at midnight he handed out copies of the Koran, his own Green Book on the Libyan revolution, and a pamphlet entitled How to be a Muslim.

Story here.

Libya: Bad behavior toward women in public 'risks damaging the country's development'

by: Salaam

Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 19:29:17 PM EST

Clothing in a Tripoli store last year. Said the photographer Sebastià Giralt: "I was shocked by the gay colors (and the daring) of the women's clothing sold everywhere, a great contrast with the dark cloths that almost all women wear in the street...so that is like "underwear" clothing, just visible in private life."

More Libyan women are venturing from home in search of work but they complain of antiquated male attitudes that decades of gender equality reforms have failed to dislodge.

Muammar Qhaddafi's 1969 Islamic Socialist revolution began a gradual improvement in the legal rights of women, who once could not walk the streets without a headscarf and the presence of a male relative.

Female illiteracy has fallen over the years and today's women can seek careers where their mothers could only hope to be housewives. Polygamy is restricted and child marriage banned.

But the streets of Tripoli remain a male preserve where women are often subjected to verbal abuse and harassment.

Single women in western dress say they are taken for prostitutes and avoid taxis after dark for fear of being molested.

Yolanda Zaptia, a foreigner married to a Libyan, said Libyan men must get used to seeing more women in public and behave better or risk damaging the country's development.

"The authorities need to confirm that this male behavior is unacceptable," she wrote in the Tripoli Post newspaper. "If Libya wants to increase the number of women making an active contribution to the economy they must be better protected."

Story here.

North Africa a bright spot for women's rights: 'Just witnessed a decade of substantial reform'

by: Salaam

Sat Aug 16, 2008 at 15:44:03 PM EDT

She is not alone. In 2007, Tunisia was ranked the highest in North Africa by a "gender gap" index compiled by the World Economic Forum, headquartered in Switzerland. Examining women's school enrollment, access to jobs, earnings and other indicators around the world, the index also ranked women's status in Tunisia as the second highest among all Arab countries. However, on a global scale Tunisia was still near the bottom, ranking 102 out of 128 countries surveyed. Algeria came in at 108, Egypt at 120 and Morocco at 122.

A number of sub-Saharan countries did notably better in terms of women's rights and social position, with Ghana ranked at 63 and Kenya at 83. While North African countries appear to be doing poorly in relation to the rest of Africa, they have in fact witnessed a decade of substantial reform, achieving some progress in improving the status of women.

Story here.

h/t Muslimah Media Watch