Tentang Irshad Manji

Bila perempuan ingin mendapatkan posisi yang setara dengan laki-laki dan adil, maka salah satu cara yang dapat ditempuh adalah terus berpikir kritis dan menyuarakan pikiran tersebut.

Irshad Manji. Perempuan yang luar biasa. Keberanian dan keteguhannya, sebagai perempuan, untuk menyampaikan suara dan pikirannya patut diacungi jempol. Sebelum saya membaca karyanya, The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, pujian itu sudah saya sampaikan.

Irshad Manji adalah seorang muslim wanita asal Kanada. Ia dikenal sebagai penulis dan aktivis yang cukup keras mengkritik kelompok Islam radikal dan ulama-ulama yang menafsirkan Al Quran secara kaku.

Hadir di dua kota di Indonesia, Jakarta dan Yogyakarta, pada bulan April lalu untuk meluncurkan buku yang sudah diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia. Perempuan keturunan India dan Mesir itu mengajak untuk membuka kembali pintu ijtihad agar umat Islam dapat mengikuti perubahan pada abad ke-21. Tradisi ijtihad menghasilkan Islam yang berpikir dan bermartabat, yang jejak kejayaan hasil ijtihad itu dapat dilihat pada ilmu pengetahuan di Barat. Irshad mencontohkan, universitas seperti yang dikenal sekarang di Barat berdiri pertama kali di Baghdad pada abad kesembilan.

Untuk bersuara lebih lanjut, tunggu sampai saya selesai membaca bukunya dulu :)

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Realising the Dream of R.A. Kartini: Her Sister's Letters from Colonial Java

Edited and Translated by Joost Coté
Xii+397 pages
ills
ISBN 978 90 6718 313 0
Leiden 2008

Realizing the Dream of Kartini: Her sisters letters from colonial Java presents a unique collection of documents reflecting the lives, attitudes and politics of four Javanese women in the early twentieth century. The letters of Raden Ajeng Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist, have been a vital testament to her vision since the first selection of them was published in 1911, seven years after Kartini’s death. Now Joost Coté’s translation of her sisters’ letters reveals for the first time the contributions of Roekmini, Kardinah, Kartinah and Soematri in defining and carrying out Kartini’s ideals. With this collection, Coté aims to situate Kartini’s sisters within the more famous Kartini narrative – and indirectly to situate Kartini herself within a broader narrative.
The letters reveal the emotional lives of these modern women and their concerns for the welfare of their husbands and the success of their children in rapidly changing times. While by no means radical nationalists, and not yet extending their horizons to the possibility of an Indonesian nation, these members of a new middle class nevertheless confidently express their belief in their own national identity.
Realizing the Dream of Kartini is essential reading for scholars of Indonesian history, providing documentary evidence of the culture of modern urban Java in the late colonial era and an insight into the ferment of the Indonesian nationalist movement in which these women and their husbands played representative roles.
Joost J. Coté is a senior lecturer in history at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of On feminism and nationalism; Kartini’s letters to Stella Zeehandelaar and coeditor of Recalling the Indies; Colonial memories and postcolonial identities.
William H. Frederick, author of Visions and Heat: The making of the Indonesian Revolution: “Joost Coté presents what is probably the last of the Kartini-related letters extant a precocious and unique resource. The translations are first class and the editor probably knows more about Kartini and her family than anyone else in the world.”
For further details or to purchase a copy visit the website of the Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian Studies

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Memoirs of a Geisha, a story

Memoirs of a Geisha tells the story of Chiyo Sakamoto, who is sold into a life of servitude by her parents when she is nine years old. Chiyo is taken in by the proprietress of a geisha house where she works to pay off the debt of her purchase and the soiling of a silk kimono, which Chiyo was blackmailed into defacing by the jealous Geisha, Hatsumomo. One day while crying in the street, the young Chiyo is noticed by Chairman Ken Iwamura, who buys her sweets and gives her some money. Inspired by his act of kindness, Chiyo resolves to become a geisha so that she may one day become a part of The Chairman’s life. Chiyo is taken under the wing of Mameha, head of a rival geisha house. Under Mameha’s tutelage, the girl Chiyo, becomes Sayuri, the most famous geisha in all Gion, Kyoto.
Sayuri, through her work as a geisha, is reunited with The Chairman, who she has secretly loved since she was a girl; although she is led to believe he has no memory of who she was before she became geisha. Her prosperous life is cut short by the outbreak of World War Two and while the safety of Sayuri and Mameha is ensured by The Chairman, they must endure a life of hard labour. After the war, Sayuri is reunited with Mameha, and they become geishas once more. Sayuri finally reveals her love to the Chairman, which she has been harbouring for ten years, when he reveals to her he was in fact responsible for sending Mameha to her so that she may fulfil her dreams of becoming a geisha.
Memoirs of a Geisha is an Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning movie adaptation of a novel by Arthur Golden, published in 1997. The novel, told in first-person view, tells the fictional story of a geisha working in Kyoto, Japan, before World War II. The movie produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and directed by Rob Marshall. It was released in the United States on December 9, 2005 by Columbia Pictures, DreamWorks and Spyglass Entertainment. It stars Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Youki Kudoh, and Suzuka Ohgo. Ohgo plays the younger Sayuri in the movie, which was filmed in southern and northern California and in several locations in Kyoto, including the Kiyomizu temple and the Fushimi Inari shrine.

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The Male and Female Brains Work, The 'Stereotype' Argument

Since the late 1980s, there has been an explosion of research into male and female differences and the way both the male and female brains work. For the first time ever, advanced computer brainscanning equipment has allowed us to see the brain operating 'live' and, with that peek into the vast landscape of the human mind, provided us with many of the answers to the questions about male and female differences. The research discussed in this book has been collected from studies in scientific, medical, psychological and sociological studies and it all points clearly to one thing: All things are not equal; men and women are different. For most of the 20th Century those differences were explained away by social conditioning; that is, we are who we are because of our parents' and teachers' attitudes which, in turn, reflected the attitudes of their society. Baby girls were dressed in pink and given dolls to play with; baby boys were dressed in blue and given toy soldiers and football jerseys. Young girls were cuddled and touched while boys were thumped on the back and told not to cry. Until recently, it was believed that when a baby was born its mind was a clean slate on which its teachers could write its choices and preferences. The biological evidence now available, however, shows a somewhat different picture of why we think the way we do. It shows convincingly that it is our hormones and brain wiring that are largely responsible for our attitudes, preferences and behaviour. This means that if boys and girls grew up on a deserted island with no organised society or parents to guide them, girls would still cuddle, touch, make friends and play with dolls, while boys would compete mentally and physically with each other and form groups with a clear hierarchy.

The wiring of our brain in the womb and the effect of hormones will determine how we think and behave.

As you will see, the way our brains are wired and the hormones pulsing through our bodies are the two factors that largely dictate, long before we are born, how we will think and behave. Our instincts are simply our genes determining how our bodies will behave in given sets of circumstances.

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Same Species Different World

Men and women are different. Not better or worse - different. Just about the only thing they have in common is that they belong to the same species. They live in different worlds, with different values and according to quite different sets of rules. Everyone knows this, but very few people, particularly men, are willing to admit it. The truth, however, is most definitely out there. Look at the evidence. Around 50% of marriages end in divorce in Western countries and most serious relationships stop short of becoming long-term. Men and women of every culture, creed and hue constantly argue over their partners' opinions, behaviour, attitudes and beliefs.
Men and women have evolved differently because they had to. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected, women nurtured. As a result, their bodies and brains evolved in completely different ways. As their bodies physically changed to adapt to their specific functions, so did their minds. Men grew taller and stronger than most women, while their brains developed to suit their tasks. Women were mostly content for men to work away as they kept the cave fires burning, and their brains evolved to cope with their function in life. Over millions of years, the brain structures of men and women thus continued to change in different ways. Now, we know the sexes process information differently. They think differently. They believe different things. They have different perceptions, priorities and behaviours. To pretend otherwise, is a recipe for heartache, confusion and disillusionment all your life.

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selamat hari perempuan, selamat berjuang!

8 Maret merupakan Hari Perempuan se dunia. Pertama kali diperingati pada tanggal 11 Maret 1911 di sejumlah negara seperti Jerman, Australia, Denmark dan beberapa negara Eropa lainnya, setelah keluarnya Deklarasi Copenhagen yang menyerukan persatuan kaum perempuan sedunia untuk memperjuangkan persamaan hak perempuan dan anak-anak, untuk pembebasan nasional dan perdamaian. Momentum tersebut terus diperingati tahun demi tahun.

Namun peristiwa peringatan yang paling dikenang sepanjang sejarah Hari Perempuan adalah yang terjadi di Petrograd, Uni Soviet (sekarang St Petersburg, Rusia), yang mencapai puncaknya tanggal 23 Februari (menurut kalender Julian) atau 8 Maret (kalender Gregorian/Masehi). Maka sejak saat itu, hari perempuan sedunia diperingati pada tanggal tersebut.

Lebih dari sejuta perempuan, yang mayoritas bekerja di pabrik-pabrik, turun ke jalan menuntut persamaan hak-hak sipil dan politik, penghapusan diskriminasi, perlakuan kerja yang lebih baik dan gaji yang layak. Usaha para pemilik pabrik menghalangi mereka turun ke jalan dengan mengurung mereka di pabrik-pabrik tidak mematahkan semangat besar untuk mencapai perubahan kondisi kehidupan perempuan yang lebih baik. Mogok kerja dan aksi protes kaum perempuan selama beberapa hari telah menjatuhkan rezim Tsar sebagai sang penguasa yang sangat tidak menghargai perempuan sekaligus mengantarkan Rusia menuju masa transisi zaman feodal menjadi industri.

Dan hingga hari ini, perjuangan ini belumlah usai. Masih banyak hal yang perlu dilakukan kaum perempuan untuk memperjuangkan hak-hak mereka dan anak-anak.

Wahai perempuan, selamat Hari Perempuan. Selamat berjuang!

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