It was the incident with the 15 girls that gave birth to this excellent blog:

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

If you click on "Read Comments" at the bottom of the article, you'll see that some readers are more outraged at the author's clear-headed condemnation of Islamic gender apartheid than at the gender apartheid itself.

Suppose Ms Bachrach had visited South Africa 25 years ago and then written about her impressions of how blacks were treated there. Would progressive types be falling over themselves shouting "you have no right to judge! We had colonialism! And segregation! And slavery! Looking down on Afrikaners because of apartheid is bigotry & ignorance!"

The Saudi form of Islam angers some other Muslims, witness yesterday's suicide bombing of one of the royals.
During the pilgrimage season the religious police are frustrated by African and Asian Muslim women who will not abide by the rules and are perfectly willing to tell them so.

Amy thanks for posting this. I wish more women would read this and understand what they are getting into with these men. The State Department used to have this information posted on its website, but was forced to take it down after 9/11.

I workout daily at an all women's gym and see plenty of Muslim women come in... I am not so much bothered by them b/c how can they be expected to shake off the culture they were born into given the response of their families. It would take an extraordinary amount of courage to leave that lifestyle.

However, the Western women I see piss me off to no end. We have a couple of young (20ish) women for whom being married to a Muslim man has given them a sort of arrogance... similar to those who become slaves to the Green Movement. They are convinced that they are WAY more enlightened than you with your parochial, closed minded beliefs. You couldn't begin to convince these girls, who should know better than to walk around covered up, that they are being foolish and willfully blind about their "new" faith. Why a woman born in freedom would willfully put on a rag on her head is beyond me. One girl just gave birth to the prettiest baby girl and couldn't feel happy for either her or her child.

Frankly, it saddens me and proves to me that we have done a terrible job educating our children about how rare are the freedoms that women in the US have. And lest I set off a war here, I am going to blame the shriller members of the feminist movement... they focus on false oppression and leave the real problems alone. I guess Emily's List can't raise enough money worring about the real oppression of foreign women and has to settle for making up stuff here.

I couldn't finish reading this. These people are monsters.

"We have a couple of young (20ish) women for whom being married to a Muslim man has given them a sort of arrogance... "

I've seen this too!!! Even when I would smile at them in passing, I got the down the nose look. Weird.

Oh the day we find a viable alternitive to oil, or theirs dry up. Then we can wall the goat fuckers off from the rest of the world and let them kill each other.

PS Mohomad sucks off dogs in hell, the dogs got tired of fucking his ass and moved on to his face

This reminds me of a recent article, God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World.

From the article:

The notion that modernity and religion are at odds is a generalisation from the experience of some parts of Europe. Europe is now largely post-Christian and the majority no longer follows any conventional creed, but things are otherwise in much of the rest of the world, and notably so in the US, which, during most of its history, has been intensely religious and self-consciously modern.

European Enlightenment thinkers have tended to see the US as the exception that proves the rule – an unexplained lag in a universal trend towards secularisation.

Against this view, Micklethwait and Wool­dridge show that modernisation and an increase in religiosity go together in much of the world.

Actually, they don't.

Any religion that insists on treating women like chattel is incompatible with the modern world.

Religions that have evolved to treat women decently would be considered heresies by believers of even 100 years ago.

The only good Christian is a bad Christian. Virtually all Christians are bad Christians.

The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim.
Far too much of Islam consists of bad good Muslims.

Good analogy, Martin. Very disturbing article that should be taken very seriously.

In a similar vein, we have some pretty shameful stuff to account for going on over here right now too:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully--left-young-woman-die.html

I'd have to ask first of all why that would be the standard to choose? The isolation of women in most societies is a cultural response that endures from the days when it wasn't just a question of sexual purity...but out and out safety. Carrying off the womenfolk of a people not only enriched the captors but would essentially destroy the victim society. I'll grant you addressing those cultural & religious holdovers from more dangerous times is something worth addressing. But why is that to be the measure of a society?

One could just as easily choose the treatment of the elderly, or the sick & infirm, or small children, or the degree of concern shown between neighbors for one another's wellbeing.

If your sole intended judgement is to judge the modernity of the culture, then judging the treatment of women might be reasonable. But then what scoring system of sorts do we use? Is polygamy something that would detract from the "score", what about employment levels or percentages represented in various fields? How do we rate ourselves, should we lower our own "score" for infantalizing women legally, treating domestic violence complaints as seriously as we would the temper tantrum of an angry ten year old when those complaints are filed against women?

I'm not arguing that Islamic societies are worth defending atall in almost any regard, quite frankly I agree with Miss Alkon & find the religion generally vile.

My point ladies & gentlemen, is that choosing the treatment of women as the yardstick by which a civilization is to be judged, is a decision that has its own flaws, not the least of which is that it unjustly "sanctifies" women in the polar opposite way that Islam does. Being critical of the head side of the coin does nothing to make the tail side any better.

If you wish to judge a society, then judge it by the standard of: The greatest good for the greatest number. (Note: Islam fails at that too)

sheepmommy...we can expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing (American women marrying Muslim men)

Women, generally speaking, are sexually attracted to winners and have no time for losers. This is one main reason why after every war there are lots of women ready to sleep with the conquerors.

As Western civilization continues to lose self-confidence, women will find themselves more and more attracted to representatives of a culture which is aggressively self-confident. This motivation is added to other ones..the usual female attraction to the exotic and mysterious, and the desire of most elite-college graduates to do things that will be shocking to their parents and to Americans in general.

What? You mean that after 40 years of feminists trying their best to (psychologically) emasculate men, women don't find the resulting castrati attractive? Oh, well. Looks like it might be too late to do anything about it now.

My best measure of a society is how well it protects the weakest and most vulnerable of the human beings living within it.

So, how are we treating our unborn babies? Well, women's supposed "independence" is being bought with the blood of over a million dead little human beings per year. No place is so deadly for an American baby as its mother's womb.

Millions upon millions die so that women's existence (and men's, too) can be made more comfortable and convenient.

Makes you -- proud?

You know, if BOTH parties used birth control, we'd have fewer abortions. (I don't know if sex ed courses typically include the advice "use two artificial methods each and every time," but they should.) While individual men can only protect themselves, with male contraception, against an unwanted abortion by a wife/girlfriend, it's clearly only sensible. When are men going to start campaigning for better contraceptives for themselves? Outside of online gossip, I don't see them doing it. As a well-known columnist said in 1998: "Is male-controlled contraception at the top of the list of demands of any men’s rights group?" (The subject was actually unwanted children, not unwanted abortions, but still.)

I say we put cotracepties in the booze, and I think we should add them to all foriegn aid supplies as well