UCLA professor to address Islamic State’s abuse of women in lecture

A UCLA professor will be speaking Thursday about women who are being trafficked and enslaved by the Islamic State group.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, will speak at the event, which is called “ISIS and the Enslavement and Trafficking of Women.”

The Islamic State group is an Islamic extremist group that has been gaining increasing control over territory in the Middle East. There have been reports of the group forcingwomen into slavery and prostitution.

Merima Tricic, a third-year world arts and cultures, religious studies and political science student, said she coordinated the event to open up a conversation about the Islamic State group and how it relates to Islam.

She said she reached out to multiple campus organizations and to Abou El Fadl after coming up with the idea for the event.

“This event addresses misconceptions about Islam and ISIS,” Tricic said. “People often think that Muslims are responsible for ISIS or that ISIS is a representation of Islam.”

Tricic said she reached out to Abou El Fadl because he is an expert in Islamic law.

Abou El Fadl will be talking about how the Islamic State group’s practices of trafficking and enslaving women conflict with the teachings of Islam, Tricic said.

“I organized this event because there was a lot of Islamophobia on campus and I wanted to use this to address campus climate,” Tricic said. “Women who wear the scarf are sometimes told that they look like a terrorist or to go back to their country.”

Tricic said she hopes the event educates students about what she thinks are the broad and harmful effects of the Islamic State group’s actions on all women.

The event will be in Room 1347 of the law school at 6 p.m.

Compiled by Kat Bocanegra Speed, Bruin contributor.

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7 Comments

  1. Why is there no BDS movement against ISIS?

    ISIS makes a huge amounts of money selling oil from facilities that once belonged to Iraq. Many countries and large corporations are benefiting from the cheap oil and they’re actually funding ISIS. ISIS has murdered more men, women, children in three months than all the Israelis and Palestinians that have died over the entire 70 year history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

    Meanwhile, Arabs, women, homosexuals – just about every minority you can think of – all have far more rights in Israel than any other country in the region. And yet there is a movement to boycott Israel and not ISIS.

    Why is there a BDS movement against Israel and not ISIS?

    I would like to hear an answer to this question at the lecture.

    1. Don’t hold your breath. Fadl has a long track record of blaming everything on Israel, the West and Islamophobia.

  2. “I organized this event because there was a lot of Islamophobia on campus and I wanted to use this to address campus climate,” Tricic said. “Women who wear the scarf are sometimes told that they look like a terrorist or to go back to their country.”

    Wait a minute. If the reporting is accurate, Merima Tricic organized this event — an event about Middle Eastern women being forced into slavery and prostitution — primarily to address how UCLA students treat her and other women who wear hijabs on campus. (Tricic doesn’t mention wearing a hijab, but a quick search reveals that she has written a number of articles about doing so.) Tricic doesn’t even say anything about the women themselves in this article, apart from how the actions of ISIS harm “all women.”

    I sincerely hope that the reporting in this article was just careless. Otherwise, this is the most self-centered thing I’ve ever read in the Daily Bruin.

    1. WOW! Excellent post. You’re absolutely right: THE HEADLINE IS DEFINITELY MISLEADING.

      She writes:

      “Tricic said… ‘I organized this event because there was a lot of Islamophobia on campus and I wanted to use this to address campus climate ‘ … she hopes the event educates students about what she thinks are the broad and harmful effects of the Islamic State group’s actions on all women.”

      So this lecture will NOT be about the “Islamic State’s abuse of women.” According to what this article states, this lecture will actually discuss how ISIS’s behavior lead to “islamophobia” and how “islamophobia” negatively impacts Muslim women.

      This is the second article I’ve seen in the Daily Bruin in less than 2 weeks. Check out this similar article (propaganda) and what I posted beneath it:

      http://165.227.25.233/2015/04/03/aram-ghoogasian-gender-discrimination-toward-usac-leadership-still-prevalent/

      This may go way beyond one person’s self-centered lecture .This seems to be an organized “push-back” against the amount of attention antisemitism has recently received on the UCLA campus.

      Prior to the Rachel Beyda incident, I don’t recall reading any articles about this subject in the Daily Bruin. Now, only a few weeks after an incident of discrimination against a Jewish women went viral, we see two articles – almost back-to-back – discussing the same issue: Discrimination against Muslim women.

      Coincidence? I sincerely doubt it.

      Perhaps the editors of the Daily Bruin should investigate these post and see if these authors are connected in any way. There are groups on campus who would intentionally organize propaganda campaigns like this. I suspect the Daily Bruin is being used as a propaganda platform to minimize the antisemitism issue currently prevalent in UCLA discussions. If such a campaign is taking place, I hope the editors of the Daily Bruin aren’t complicit in it.

      And just for the record, here are the facts: the FBI statistics show that African Americans, Gays and Jews are all at least four times more likely to be a victims of a hate crimes than Muslims in the USA. In Europe, the antisemitism figures are much worse.

  3. If this was last night, sorry I missed it. I would have like to hear Fadl explain Sura 4 verse 24 of the Koran.

    “And forbidden to you are wedded wives of other people except those who have fallen in your hands (as prisoners of war) . . ….”

    That was from the Median period, when Mohammad was spreading Islam through war.

    Can it not be argued that ISIS is practicing the true dictates of the Koran?

    1. You’re absolutely right.

      I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and debate religion with a Muslim fundamentalist. Don’t even try to tell these guys that they aren’t practicing “true” Islam. They know more about Islam than most of us will ever know about any subject we study. These guys have very clear explanations for everything they do and they can trace it all back to passages in the Quran and Hadith.

      They’re not dummies and they’re not victims of poverty. There were 11 hi-jackers on 9-11. 7 had college degrees and 4 had PHD’s.

      These guys are smart and thoroughly indoctrinated in their religion.

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