WASHINGTON — A coalition of Muslim and Jewish advocacy groups called Wednesday for the House of Representatives to pass the Violence Against Women Act after months of delay, saying the U.S. should be a leader in protecting women in the face of violence against women by some Islamic extremists.
Representatives of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and Jewish Women International said Speaker of the House John Boehner should call a vote on the reauthorization VAWA immediately, citing support for the bill across party lines. VAWA was originally passed in 1994, after then-Sen. Joe Biden spearheaded it, in an effort to ensure protections for women against domestic abuse.
“(Our organizations) came together to learn and to share and to really raise our voices for this bill,” Deborah Rosenbloom of Jewish Women International said. “This is a place that everybody can agree on. If we’re going to end violence against women we need to do it across all communities.”
There is little data available about the prevalence of domestic violence in the Muslim-American community, according to Hoda Elshishtawy of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. However, several high-profile incidents of violence against Muslim women have gained public attention.
In 2008, a Dallas man who was Muslim fled after police accused him of murdering his two daughters in an “honor killing” because they were dating nonMuslim men. A similar 2003 case in Great Britain, in which the parents were found guilty of killing their daughter in an “honor killing” in 2012, gained international headlines.
The shooting of Pakistani teenage women’s rights advocate Malala Yousafzai by extremists aligned with the Taliban in 2012 also brought international attention and outrage to the plight of women in some predominantly Muslim countries.
“Pushing for this bill to be reauthorized is incredibly important for us here in America… because of those stories that we do see internationally,” Elshishtawy said. “We can be leaders on this here.”
The bill must be reauthorized every five years, and an extension was not passed in 2012. It faced some opposition from Republicans because of newly added provisions that extend the bill’s protections to same-sex couples, Native Americans living on reservations and undocumented immigrants.
Earlier this month the Senate passed the new version of VAWA 78-22, but Boehner has not announced plans for a vote on the bill in the House. The House previously passed its own reauthorization of the bill that did not include the new provisions.
Rosenbloom said the provisions in question are important to the bill’s effectiveness and are based on feedback from law enforcement and advocates working with abused women.
“When women are empowered, then your whole society is empowered,” Elshishtawy said. “And that’s one of the reasons that we’re really being vocal on VAWA.”
Ahmed Bhadelia, a legislative assistant to Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., joined the faith organizations in denouncing the delay in passing the bill’s reauthorization. If the bill is passed, President Barack Obama has said he would sign it.
“It’s shocking… that we haven’t done anything here in the House,” Bhadelia said. “We haven’t had even a vote on it. That’s very frustrating.”
The interfaith coalition of VAWA advocates was intended to send a message to Congress about the importance of acting on the bill, Rosenbloom said.
“It’s a central tenet of all of our faiths to protect the most vulnerable among us,” Rosenbloom said. “When we speak together it’s very powerful for Congress to hear, especially when it is an interfaith group.”
