Thursday, March 06, 2014

Chime For Change, Fight For Freedom

In a previous article (here), we mentioned that Chime For Change is helping to marginalize, discredit, and disempower orthodox Islam without attacking Islam directly. It's an organization dedicated to empowering women globally. The official byline is: "Chime for Change promotes education, health and justice for girls and women everywhere." So, of course, what they end up exposing and working to change most of the time is the application or promotion of Sharia law around the world. They never say it like that, and that's probably a good thing because it can penetrate our overly-sensitive society without any resistance or stigma.

A good target to aim at when talking with your friends and family is to get them to sign up for Chime for Change's free updates here. It always helps to have a specific target in your conversations — something you're persuading toward. It makes you more persuasive. And a small expression of commitment (like signing up for free updates) makes people more committed to the cause (read more about that here). Taking the small action of subscribing will influence your friend's feelings toward our cause because of the principle of commitment and consistency.

Recent updates at Chime for Change included the following articles:
Getting Away With Sexual Abuse in Jordan
I Am Nirbhaya (about a movement in India to stop rapes)
Kashmiri Women Claim Their Rights
Acid Attack Survivor Wins Millions on Quiz Show
Rising Up Against FGM in Kenya

The organization and the stories are not anti-Muslim. They are pro-women's rights. But, of course, without ever focusing on it, the things they focus on inevitably run up against the biggest barrier to the positive goals: Sharia law. Even though the stories are not focused exclusively on Sharia or Islam, but are focused on women's rights around the world, what the organization is mostly fighting against is orthodox Islam.

We urge you to get involved with this organization. Share their articles with your friends and family. Encourage them, at the very least, to sign up for the updates. Help nudge your friends and family to make this small commitment to the principle of women's rights. It could very well grow into an explicit commitment to stop the spread of Sharia. But even if it doesn't, any actions taken to give women rights will weaken Sharia's ability to spread.

Chime for Change has a lot of celebrity involvement, including Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, and Salma Hayek, which always helps appeal to a certain segment of the population, giving it a very mainstream (rather than fringe) appeal. Let's use this organization to get more of our fellow citizens involved in the cause of freedom.

1 comment:

Citizen Warrior said...

This is one of those things that ought to happen anyway: Women should be able to get justice and education everywhere on earth. It is a nice bonus that achieving that will also disempower orthodox Islam at the same time. It would be impossible to achieve one without the other.