How Islam Subjugates Women
Phyllis Chesler interviewed by Infidel Task Force. An excerpt:
Gender apartheid--and I am mainly talking about Islamic gender apartheid--consists of all those practices which condemn girls and women to a separate and subordinate sub-existence and which turn boys and men into the permanent guardians of their female relatives' chastity. Because of polygamy, boys and men are condemned to compete with siblings and half-siblings for a wealthy and polygamous father's attention and inheritance; and condemned to lead lives in which men are extremely uncomfortable with women, whom they have been taught to view as only sex objects and breeders. Any other emotion might fill a man with shame.Islamic gender apartheid is also characterized by normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, arranged marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage, and sometimes, female genital mutilation. In addition, women are honor murdered if they resist such practices. Imagine growing up female in such a setting: You know that your family-of-origin intimates and protectors might become your executioners based on idle rumor or fact.
Male homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia is also, therefore, rampant in the Islamic world but is hotly denied. Fifty years ago, I saw men openly holding hands on the streets of Kabul, some wearing lipstick and rouge, some with flowers behind their ears--both armed with ancient rifles. Liberatory, Western-style homosexuality is also officially persecuted. Islamic homosexuality, which includes child rape and prison-style sex, is a given that is never mentioned.
Today, at its most extreme, Islamic gender apartheid is characterized by acid attacks and the public stonings to death, hangings, and beheading of women in Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia--countries in which girls and women who are raped or who report being raped are often accused of adultery and sometimes jailed and executed. Islamic gender apartheid is also characterized by the honor murders of girls and women who want to choose their own husbands, or who have dared to resist total subordination. Women, both veiled and unveiled, are routinely harassed by men in extreme ways on the streets in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, and in North Africa.
Islamic gender apartheid in an Islamist era is the most anti-woman system known to humanity. Feminists should be crying out from the rooftops against it. Some are. I am.
Unlike most academics and feminists, I am not a multicultural relativist. I believe in universal human rights, one standard for all. I have chosen to speak out about the criminal misogyny both among Muslims and among Islamists. For doing so, I have been demonized as an Islamophobe and a racist. And, by the way, I have long condemned and actively opposed misogyny in the West. I have been doing so as of 1967. I am not now just targeting Islamic misogyny because it is Islamic but rather because it is criminally misogynist.
In my view, western academic feminists, including gay liberationists, have deserted their own vision of gender equality and human rights by refusing to take a stand. They fear that doing so will be seen as a new form of "colonialism" or "racism." That concern - that of their own reputations - trumps any concern they should have had for Arab and Muslim women's rights and human rights. In my opinion, this is a new form of racism.
The Quran and Hadith on women. In short, "At best, Islam elevates the status of a woman to somewhere between that of a camel and a man."
Chesler also writes about the most recent U.S. honor murder, Jessica Mokdad, 20, killed by her stepdad:
Why was she killed? Because, according to the police, her stepfather's believed she was "not adhering to Muslim customs." And, because her biological father was "letting her be a little more Americanized than what (the defendant) wanted."What's different about this case is that Jessica fled to the safety of her biological father's home in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Thus, her own father was supporting her as was her paternal grandmother, in whose home she was when Alfetlawi found her and shot her with a 9mm handgun.
...Why is the mainstream media silent about this outrage? Why are Muslim-American organizations silent?
Why are Muslim women's organizations also silent? Please speak out. Why is her mother, Wendy, silent? Was she complicit in this decision as were the mothers of Toronto's Aqsa Parvez and the mother of the Said sisters in Dallas?
Why are womens groups silent? Most of them dont give a fuck about minority women to start with, and they arent really about women lib either.
Womens groups are just another entiy seeking to control women - they admire how well muslims do it.
Dont believe me? Look at their silence on all the dead muslim girls.
Then look at their reactions to men who look at women who volentarily dress to show skin - they want to pass 'visual rape' laws where a woman not being looked at can accuse a man looking at a hotter chick of illegal eye fucking.
They start to speak out against muslim oppression of women just as soon as they figure out how they can co-opt the process for their benifit
lujlp at May 6, 2011 9:05 AM
Every time I read something like this, I think of the girls' school in (IIRC) Egypt that caught fire, and the sharia police would not let the girls escape from the building because they weren't "properly dressed". A lot of the things that feminists imagine about Western patriarchy are literally true in Islamic countries. There are a few feminists speaking out about it (and bravo for the ones who are), but not nearly enough. The way that doctrinaire Islam treats women is simply horrible. No ifs, ands, or buts.
I would also like to expand on something that Chesler touched on. This Islamic system might sounds like a great deal for men. However, under any system of polygamy, most men actually make out very poorly -- they have no hope of ever finding a mate, because most of the women have been sucked up in polygamous marriages. A handful of alpha males, apparatchiks and suck-ups do well, at the expense of the many. This also applies economically; a few men are fabulously wealthy, while most have no wealth and no hope of acquiring any.
Cousin Dave at May 6, 2011 9:11 AM
It's one thing to whine bitterly about white men who'll take the whining with stoicism.
It's quite another when the object of the whine is inclined to chop your head off.
I R A Darth Aggie at May 6, 2011 9:11 AM
And if you point all this out in Denmark, it's a "hate crime."
lsomber at May 6, 2011 9:13 AM
Something else to think about when it comes to men in Islamic socities...
In some Islamic countries, women must have their faces totally covered (except for eyes) around any male, aged 8 and above, aside from their husband. So there are all these men out there who by the age of 11 couldn't pick their own mother out of a line up. I'm not a huge fan of Freud, but not being able to recognize your own mother's face as a child has to mess with your head.
No wonder they're all so screwed up when it comes to women.
UW Girl at May 6, 2011 9:28 AM
Why are Muslim women's organizations also silent? Please speak out. Why is her mother, Wendy, silent? Was she complicit in this decision as were the mothers of Toronto's Aqsa Parvez and the mother of the Said sisters in Dallas?
The thing I've noticed repeatedly in these scenarios is that the mother/aunt/insert female relative here has been either a conspirator, or actively lured the girl to her death. First off, I cannot imagine doing such a horrible thing, but second, how in the hell do you fix something that is that broken? I mean, if they are that far gone, what can possibly be done to fix a society that condones and accepts it's own murder? Does that make sense?
I don't see any logical, or humane response to someone who lures their own child, or by their own inaction, allows their child to be murdered. I would kill, or die before I'd let someone harm my girls. Self defense has been bred out of these women, and replaced with...a death wish?
Kat at May 6, 2011 10:21 AM
naw, Cat... I think it's just plain old fear. Those female relatives are beholden to their men in a way that they can't escape from, without death themselves... so they become detached from the idea that their daughter/female family is human, since that person is acting outside of the system.
Interestingly I read a thing yesterday about how girls in India are often neglected/aborted, because of that culteral interest in having sons. China is the same way... as if somehow you don't hurt your sons by not having daughters.
But in islam one of the prime movers in this is the polygamy. It introduces an artificial scarcity in wives that tilts the whole system, while some few men get an artificial abundance.
It's all F-d up. So it astonishes me when feminista's make excuses for it. Maybe they only do that becuause it's far away and doesn't effect them.
SwissArmyD at May 6, 2011 12:07 PM
Fear may have been the prime motivator in the begining, but it does not explain the Palistinian mother that straps a bomb to their daughter/son and then sings their praises when they kill innocents. It does not explain the mother that lures her daughter to her death at her father's hands, and then does nothing to stop/change the situation.
We value our children. We (western civ, I know we have our asshats, but I am speaking in generalities here) work hard and fight for the next generation, male and female, to have a better life. It is anethema to us to ever deliberately kill, maim, mutilate or enslave our children for any purpose.
Please tell me how we can reconcile that with the philosophy displayed here?
Kat at May 6, 2011 12:30 PM
"So there are all these men out there who by the age of 11 couldn't pick their own mother out of a line up. "
UW, that's a great point. I never thought of that. It is creepy, isn't it? It would definitely tend to de-personalize the mother in the child's eyes.
"China is the same way... as if somehow you don't hurt your sons by not having daughters."
The motivation in China is the one-child law. In a lot of China, it's still the case that children are expected to provide for elderly parents. The parents think about that when they decide to have their one child: will a son or a daughter be more likely to be able to earn enough money to provide for them? So girls get aborted. It's going to really screw up the country when all these boys reach adulthood and they can't find a mate.
Cousin Dave at May 6, 2011 5:22 PM
It's going to really screw up the country when all these boys reach adulthood and they can't find a mate.
Posted by: Cousin Dave
Its going to start a war, hopefully it wont spill beyond their borders
lujlp at May 6, 2011 7:21 PM
I don't know how to make the point any clearer, but I'll try, It's not just the men that believe, and are affected by, this mentality. If you tell someone often enough, forcefully enough, and without any other influences, they will believe that they are less than human, deserving of beatings and stonings and gods only know what else that we haven't heard about. Women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are the exception, they are very few, and very far between.
Because of this, the entire approach needs to be thought out to take this into consideration. This isn't the '60's, these are not the Civil Rights marches of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. How we ultimately approach this should be guided by the few brave souls who broke the *mental* shackles as well as the physical and found freedom in the West.
Forget the feminots, they are useless. This is going to have to come from someone much closer to the situation.
Kat at May 6, 2011 8:34 PM
Kat, I believe the quote from Meir is "There will be peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us."
The feminist groups that don't want to deal with this remind me of the idiots in groups like Queers for Palestine; you want to grab them and ask "Do you KNOW what the PA does to people like you? Don't you care?"
Firehand at May 8, 2011 11:15 AM
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