See also this worthwhile piece via Arts & Letters Daily; one only wishes the author would acknowledge that almost every episode of European "survival" that he describes was a massacre or a bloodbath.

Sorry, Crid, don't find it worthwhile. Agree with this commenter:

amateur hour (1)Bowen writes and reasons like a half-educated propagandist.

(2)Bernard Lewis is no "conservative pundit". For decades, working out of Princeton, he was the foremost expert on Islam in the U.S.

(3)The quiet Muslims in infidel lands are "unperfected Muslims". Soon to be, when the demographics and politics are right, outflanked by their righteous brothers and brought into the fold. Not my idea. Simply read what Muslim religious leaders say.

(4)Christ died for his beliefs. Muhammed made everyone else die for his. From these beginnings, with many twists and turns,we have the two civilizations, Western and Muslim, which they spawned, with all the inherent contradictions.

(5)There is no Golden Rule in Islam. Which undermines the whole humanist mind set the author uses as his drawing board.

(6)Bowen should throw out his keyboard and find some other venue by which to pursue his amateur interests.

I saw a photo the other day of an Arab man taking photos of 6 burka clad (head to toe in black) women at Disneyworld. It just struck me as funny.

You got it!

Re that article cited above, when a writer comes out with something like this;

"an analysis with which the not-terribly-liberal Economist concurred. "

...about the Economist(!),the flagship publication of classicla liberlaism, you know he is just completely out of his depth.

"First, the Cairo University class of 1978, with every woman bare-headed; second, the Cairo University class of 2004, hijabed to the hilt."

Cairo. An older Egyptian woman once said in an intgerview And where did all these veils come from? No one used to wear veils in the old days! I think it was after all these disastrous wars with the Israelis, it was after we started losing wars."

Her point was that this hyper-religiosity was a defense mechanism against a feeling of defeat. Someone else made the same point about Catholicism in Ireland - it used to be pretty free and easy before Cromwell's atrocities. After that it became more and more hairshirt.

Her point was that this hyper-religiosity was a defense mechanism against a feeling of defeat.

Tamim Ansary makes the same point in his book,Destiny Disrupted.

Muslims were on victorious in campaign after campaign. They ruled their part of the world and dominated their neighbors. Then cam the Mongols. Like everyone else against the Mongols, the Muslims were outmatched and defeated.

With that defeat came bad times. Kingdoms crumbled, crops failed, disease broke out. Muslim preachers claimed it was because they had turned away from the old ways and urged a return to fundamentalism.

This is a fascinating topic.

When Egypt's Nassar attacked Israel in 1967, he first gave a rabid lecture to a wild crowd--including many college-aged women, who looked as chic and beautiful as Italians! I have seen the b/w films.

And now, even in Indonesia, women are covering up.
Indonesia is an interesting case. Before Westernization, Indonesian women would likely wear sarongs around the waist, and that's it.
Then (similar to Thailand) someone told the women this was shameful, and they started to cover their upper bodies. Usually, Westerners, especially Western women, regard this stage of covering up as appropriate.

Indonesians now have gone the next step, and are covering up their necks, arms and hair too.
The beautiful rocket-coned breasts so loved by WWII vets are, literally, history all through SE Asia and the Pacific.

Usually, South American women did not cover up above the waist before Westernization, either.
BTW, you can see pictures in old Thai newspapers showing the "wrong" way to dress, which included the sarong-only style of dress.

It does raise the question: Why is the current Islamic fad for covering up wrong, if the Western fad of covering up female upper bodies is "right?"

I suspect Amy Alkon is, like 99.9 pecent of women, a creature of convention. The modern Alkon would no more consider going topless to a restaurant than an Islamic woman would consider showing her hair in a local gasoline station.
Is one right or wrong?
No. Both adhere to convention.

This is distinct from my view that Islam, as practised today, is a negative force in most of the world. Secularism is the best answer always.

But dress is a matter of convention--or, we could say that women in Asa and South America are horribly repressed as they can no longer dress appropriately to their cimates, and have been brainwashed into thinking it is shameful to expose the female breast in public, the way their grandmothers did routinely.

Which brings up the question: Why did Bush eliminate the secular Saddam and replace him with a Shiite state?

"Which brings up the question: Why did Bush eliminate the secular Saddam and replace him with a Shiite state?" Check all that apply:

* Bush is fundamentally not very smart, and did not understand what would happen after Saddam was deposed

* Bush was the puppet of others who made lots of money off of the Iraq war

* Bush wanted to show up his father

* Bush actually believed that Iraq had WMD, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary

If you check all four, you earn a gold star.

> don't find it worthwhile

How dare you, Amy— how dare you.

OK, you're right, but these are all good arguments to study. We're going to be cycling through them many, many times in the years ahead. But I think you're kind of arguing like Loojy does, telling the true believers what they're faith is supposed to be like:

> The quiet Muslims in infidel lands
> are "unperfected Muslims"

&

> Simply read what Muslim religious
> leaders say.

Well, leaders of whom? Did you ever try (conversationally) to hold a Catholic responsible for the rantings of Jeremiah Wright or Jerry Falwell? How afraid are you truly, of Pat Robertson? Do you think, as I do, that his persuasion covers specific sectors of American character where education and sophistication have no great history? Listen, send any high schooler to even a middling college; get him to lecture, get him laid and get him drunk (preferably in that order), and his soul is lost to Robertson forever.

There's shit in the bible that's very nearly as odious as what's in the Koran (the latter being cribbed from the former), but you don't worry about it, because Christianity has been properly fractured in the United States. Maybe Islam can enjoy that same status.

I have arguments with other points you listed, but I'll be quiet about it, hoping to give the subtle impression that I have answers for ALL of them but am just too darned busy.

> 'They blow up so fast, don't they?

And yet not fast enough.

> Is one right or wrong?
> No. Both adhere to convention.

This is the same infantile nihilism, preening smugly in a turtleneck sweater and with a cigarette held backwards, seen here earlier this morning: "You and I do not have the same culture on any level."

It would be more fun for everyone if people who like to argue that way on blogs would just go to their TVs and watch Lucy reruns. Stack your wrists on your knees as you watch; say nothing. When the show's over, fix yourself a sandwich and change the channel, but stay away from the internet....

I feel bad about using the word "sophistication" two comments earlier... I meant to include a whole thing about how the religious traditions which Robertson (et al.) exploit are found with cohort patterns of ignorance and poverty. On its own, sophistication isn't really good for much. Islam may well be practiced by some wealthy people, but it needs violent hoards of impoverished & illiterate faithful teeming in nearby slums to maintain its power. Take away hunger and isolation, and Islam is over.

America understands this better than (ahem) some other continents.

Smoking backwards, in the finest European intellectual tradition.

"Islam . . . needs violent hoards of impoverished & illiterate faithful teeming in nearby slums to maintain its power."

So does the American two-party system, to a less extreme extent. The Republicans promote poverty by keeping the minimum wage as low as possible, and the Democrats hand out welfare to bribe the poor to remain poor.

> So does the American two-party system

Get a haircut.

I think Jim & BOTU & Ax are reading from this script.

Damn you Crid. I was going to reference Caddyshack.

They're like the varmint Cong.

Alkon, all young women try to express their individuality--but only through conventional means. Sheesh, every woman in Los Angeles believes she is "different" as expressed through tatoos, hairdos, neat shoes, dresses found on sale, etc.

But I have yet to walk into a restauarant or bar and see a couple topless women (non-performers) at the bar. Women in the West adhere to convention.

Alkon, from the photos I see, you are conventionally dressed, with a flourish or two. Big whoop.

I could show up at work (in the old days) boldly not wearing a tie, and I did occasionally. Big whoop.

I always condered (in the old days) what would happen to a guy who was really good at his white-collar job, but insisted on wearing an thin red silk headband to work. It would be unconventional. He would not get promoted, and maybe ultimately fired. All due to a thin red strip of cloth around his forehead.

I was discussing why Islamic women cover up. It is convention. Just as you do. Convention. Just as before women did not, all over the "undeveloped" world. Convention.

Alkon, when you show up at some event and discuss your book topless, then tell me how unconventional you are. Also, tell me in advance.

One possible explanation for this phenomenon: Islamism has become more popular because in much of the Arab world, other political ideologies (such as socialism, Pan-Arabism & anti-semitism) have failed so badly.

Some people just refuse to get it, and you know who you are. So read this very slowly: "Convention", as you call it, is not enforced at the point of a sword in a free society. Under that system, people have free choice to follow "conventions" or not, and the consequences for not doing so do not include violence at the hands of fundamentalists. In Muslim society, violence against, even murder of, the person not following "convention" is a very real possibility. Thus, your analogy is ridiculous. Go find a better one, one that takes into account reality as it exists in both free and Muslim societies.

Yup. I have a friend from Jordan. She said that fifteen years ago, most of the women you'd see on the streets in Jordan and Egypt would be wearing western dress and have uncovered heads. Now most are in headscarves and traditional dress. My friend lives in the U.S. now, by the way, and wants to stay.

I went to Egypt about a year ago and saw only a handful of (non-tourist) women in what might be termed western dress, and those few who were had their legs, arms and shoulders well covered. And although I was dressed in shapeless clothes that covered my legs, arms and neck, I was never sexually harassed so much in my life. I can't imagine what would have happened if I'd worn snug jeans and shown my elbows.

cpabroker-

Well, try walking around Los Angeles topless (females only).

I think you will, in fact, get arrested. Sheesh, a female can't even sunbath topless at the beach!

I concur that no, no one will stick a sword into you in America for walking around topless, but it will not be tolerated, nonetheless.

If what Islam does to woman today, in terms of dress, is repressive, then what Western society did to women of Asia and South America was also repressive. The original cultures endorsed toplessness (and public bathing for that matter).

You cannot have it both ways--that Islam women are repressed, but oh no, not the women of Thailand (a hot humid climate) who now wear bras and shirts where once they wore only sarongs.

My point is, every society has dress conventions, and those conventions evolve. The bottom-revealing hot pants I can remember of the 1970s would be considered in bad taste today--and women enforce their conventions fiercely and cattily. The see-through shirt was popular for a while, but no woman would dare wear one today. Are such women repressed?

I think so.

That said, I dislike Islam as practiced. Especially curious is Islam's dislike of dogs, particularly black dogs. If you want to freak out Muslims, show your tits and walk big black dogs around. They regard dogs as unclean, and black dogs as Satanic.

Alkon: A nudie book session might boost sales. Think of the publicity. No one cares about manners...but honking big tits at Vromans? Now, that is a story!

It pains me to say it, but for once BOTU is actually trying to make an entirely reasonable point.

Are muslim women more repressed than those in the West? Yes, clearly. Western women are not normally stoned for getting raped. However - clothing conventions are indeed enforced, not only by peer pressure but also by the law. Amy may choose not to do a public book-signing while topless, but the fact remains: she also would not be allowed to do so. The punishment would not be stoning, but it would still involve the police, and very likely a night in jail.

Grant BOTU this small point, and then go back to bashing on him...

Silliness. You wanna give credit for saying things that are oh-so literally true rather than meaningful. Yeah, sure; people around the globe are judged by their clothing. This is not illuminating in the context of Steyn's piece.

And it's precisely this obsession with childish wordplay that's left the feminist movement with no armaments, or even perspective, for the horrors that Islam brings to women specifically. And it brings a lot, and I'd give links but it's really late.

It's not convention when you can get stoned and beheaded by Muslim fanatics in Indonesia for not wearing a burka. BOTU - you suck.

Well, the question of "why did Western women start covering their breasts?" is worth considering, but I suspect that the answer is mostly practical. Women lose a lot of body heat through their chests. Europe is cold in the winter, and much of it isn't all that warm even in the summer. You'll note that most of those societies where women did/do routinely go topless are in tropical climates.

As for the Muslims... well, there have been plenty of places and times where women have been pressured to dress more conservatively. Even in today's relatively permissive times, you can still find plenty of women who generally cover their arms and legs and wear clothing that doesn't reveal their figures much. And head coverings for women -- scarves and hats -- were not all that uncommon in my grandmother's generation. However, where Islam really steps over the line is where it demands that women cover their faces. Face recognition is a fundamental characteristic of the human brain, and nearly all societies place a heavy reliance on it. I'm not aware of any successful civilization where face covering was ever encouraged or even permitted for anything other then ceremonial functions. Seeing a person with no visible face is highly disturbing to the brain, at a very primitive level.

The women in the photos from the link weren't covering their faces, they were wearing the headscarf.