Those burkas look like beekeeper suits.

I wonder: do they charge extra for redheads?

Asking for a friend...

One of the few things crazier than the lack of civil rights for women in the Middle East, is setting yourself on fire over it.

I'm at odds with a culture that sees either of these things as acceptable.

It's a trick: both pictures contain Gaga!

"They will be discouraged from entering legislative, judicial, or whatever careers which may require decision-making, as women lack the intellectual ability and discerning judgment required for these careers."

To pour some fuel on the fire...

The age of social justice programs in the USA started with women's suffrage. It's not like men vote to compel giving their money away.

Coincidence, right?

Question: which gender is more likely to engage in sunk-cost fallacies to stay with an unsuitable partner?

There ARE gender differences; they just don't extend to the removal of human rights.

This woman-hating culture is coming. It has already arrived in Germany and other parts of Europe.

Does anyone want their daughter afraid to go out of her house unless she is wearing a burka ?

Contemporary Muslims like to counter that Arabs treated women as camels prior to Muhammad.This is somewhat questionable, given that Muhammad's first wife was a wealthy woman who owned property and ran a successful business prior to ever meeting him.

Homa Darabi was a talented physician who took her own life by setting herself on fire in a public protest against the oppression of women in Islamic Iran. She did this after a 16-year-old girl was shot to death for wearing lipstick.

I've heard some say that there will be a women's rights / suffrage movement arise in Muslim countries before long.

I tend to disagree.

Suffragettes in this country and in Europe were discouraged from advocating for giving women legal rights and the vote by social ostracization and opprobrium. Sometimes fire hoses were used. They were not stoned to death or shot for wearing lipstick.

Only if the West stands strong defending its culture in contrast to this oppression is there hope for Muslim women to be freed.

Those who denigrate Western civilization as oppressive or imperialist fail to understand the importance of Western civilization has played and will continue to play in the advancement of human civilization.

Stop studying grievance studies in college and start studying Greek and Roman civilization - and get down on your knees and thank whatever deity you prefer that you were born in the West.

Conan: "Stop studying grievance studies in college and start studying Greek and Roman civilization - and get down on your knees and thank whatever deity you prefer that you were born in the West."

Yep, I'm currently reading about the battle of Marathon, where the Greeks (mainly Athenians) defended against the encroaching Persian Empire.

A lot of what happened in ancient Greece after that victory, such as Democracy, might not have happened if the Greeks had become just another long forgotten ancient civilization that was conquered by the Persians. After all, we don't hear much about the Hittites, the Assyrians, etc.

But, we do hear/read about, and owe a lot of our modern culture via history to the ancient Greeks, oh and that other group who managed to remain unvanquished - the Hebrews!

This is where 'da cleric stated his business plan for right-thinking Muslims.

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/2011/05/31/raped-and-ransacked-in-the-muslim-world/

Does anyone want their daughter afraid to go out of her house unless she is wearing a burka ?

I dont know, to quote the sentiment of many feminists who have said innocent men can benefit from the experience of spending decades in prion for rapes they never committed, perhaps its time western women got a real taste of patriarchy

I dont know, to quote the sentiment of many feminists who have said innocent men can benefit from the experience of spending decades in prion for rapes they never committed

I missed that memo.

Wanna know why Radical Feminists LOVE the Burka? Because it's the perfect way to hide cellulite.

Plus, a comparison between traditional vs non traditional clothing:

http://i.imgur.com/rOOtfBE.jpg

I missed that memo.

Catharine MacKinnon is alleged to have said something along the lines of "a false accusation of rape is good for a young man". But I can't find that now, so I'm not sure. But I do remember hearing about that in 1993 or so.

It falls in line with the current mania over "rape culture" on college campuses. It seems that it is better to brand 99 innocents as rapists than to let 1 guilty man go free.

And yet, their beloved president wants to import refugees who bring with them an actual Rape Culture with them. Curious, that.

them an actual Rape Culture with them

like William Jefferson B-J Clinton?

Catherine Comins, Assistant Dean of Student Life at Vassar, from Time Magazine:

"Comins argues that men who are unjustly accused can sometimes gain from the experience. 'They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. 'How do I see women?' 'If I didn't violate her, could I have?' 'Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?' Those are good questions.'"

Vicious man-hate in the service of "equality", anyone?

Amy dear, regarding Islam, please chill just a little. Allow please for the fact that the Islam you're being so vocal about isn't monolithic; it's one end of a broad gradient, just like Christianity or Judaism.

Think of the gradient, for instance, from liberal Espicopalians to those hardline Evangelicals who see it their duty to kill people at abortion clinics or picket servicemen's funerals. They both use the same Bible, don't they? Just very different interpretations.

Much the same goes for Islam, if you look a little more closely; Islam too has its gradient from the violent uncompromising Middle Eastern Salafists causing so much trouble at the moment right through to the laid-back and generally peaceful version common in Indonesia, which at roughly 250 million people, is the largest Muslim population of all.

Naturally the extremists get all the column inches but please recognise there really are a great many more ordinary Muslims who want nothing more than a peaceful life for themselves and their children.

What they actually need, and certainly don't get anywhere in the Middle East, is halfway decent day-to-day government of the sort that you and I take for granted here in the Western world.

And that, in turn, is not unconnected with some rather arrogant decisions made by our own forefathers at Versailles in 1919, plus the CIA and MI6 over the years, and more recently, by a certain gung-ho US President.

And when sounding off about the Koran, (a pretty awful manifesto, I'll agree) you like to might balance it with a closer look at the Old Testament, and perhaps even take a peek at the present-day Orthodox Jewish attitude to women. Religious misogyny isn't confined to Islam.

Amy, you're writing from the most powerful and dynamic nation on earth; radical Islam can make a serious nuisance of itself, true, but there's not the tiniest ghost of chance that the caliphate is about to sweep into LA anytime soon, put you in a burqua and make you get rid of your dog.

So please, allow that the adherents of Islam aren't monolithic and aren't all terminally nasty; when you're sounding off about their religion, be fair and at least make the distinction.

After all, as fellow atheists, you and I would most certainly object to being lumped in by an outsider with those far-out Evangelicals just because we're both white Westerners, wouldn't we?

What they actually need, and certainly don't get anywhere in the Middle East, is halfway decent day-to-day government of the sort that you and I take for granted here in the Western world.

And that, in turn, is not unconnected with some rather arrogant decisions made by our own forefathers at Versailles in 1919, plus the CIA and MI6 over the years, and more recently, by a certain gung-ho US President.

Posted by: baz43 at February 8, 2016 4:02 PM

Hard to implement a functioning day-to-day government when your indigenous religious nuts demand complete adherence to Sharia - especially when they have the support of a majority of the population.

And that "gung-ho US President" actually implemented a functioning government which was later abandoned by a less gung-ho US President. Iraq was actually calm, until President Maliki found his US military support ripped away and decided to replace his Sunni ministers with Shia ministers to guard against the time-worn Iraqi method of changing governments, assassination. That imbalance of power left the local Sunni fearing that the same sort of reprisals they use to visit upon the Shia in the good old days would be visited upon them and sent them into the arms of ISIS and other militant groups for protection.

The Ottoman Empire was actually partitioned by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and later re-partitioned by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 - after Kemal Ataturk rejected Sevres and led a revolution to establish the Republic of Turkey.

The Versailles conference covered the treaty with Germany at the end of World War I.

In the subsequent attempts to construct nation-states in the Middle East, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration caused considerable complications, along with the 1925 Saudi conquest of the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz, which gave the extremist Wahabbi sect control of the holy places.

However, the near-100-year failure of the Arabs to form stable nation-states or to peacefully coexist with the rest of the world is on them, not our great grandfathers.

Think of the gradient, for instance, from liberal [Episcopalians] to those hardline Evangelicals who see it their duty to kill people at abortion clinics or picket servicemen's funerals. They both use the same Bible, don't they? Just very different interpretations. ~ Posted by: baz43 at February 8, 2016 4:02 PM

It's the middle (moderate) interpretation that matters most. And the middle interpretation of the Q'uran is much more violent than the middle interpretation of the Bible. Those killer Evangelicals you equate to killer Muslims are generally and widely condemned by mainstream Christians. The majority of Muslims in the Middle East are silent (some are joyful) when buildings, planes, or pizzerias are blown up and innocents killed by jihadists.

The Middle East is an illiterate and violent part of the world. It's time we realized that and stopped making excuses for the people throwing gays off building and stoning rape victims.

Sykes-Picot was negotiated 100 years ago. Lausanne was 92 years ago. ISIS is beheading people (including fellow Muslims) today. The lack of civil progress is not because the Kermit Roosevelt overthrew an Iranian socialist in 1953 (62 years ago). The CIA did the same thing in Chile twenty years later and they've recovered.

Korea was an impoverished mess ruled by a military dictatorship in 1950. Now, it's an economic powerhouse and a democratic country. Palestine is still a toilet. And Palestine was given more rebuilding money in one year than Korea got in ten.

And when sounding off about the Koran, (a pretty awful manifesto, I'll agree) you like to might balance it with a closer look at the Old Testament, and perhaps even take a peek at the present-day Orthodox Jewish attitude to women. Religious misogyny isn't confined to Islam. ~ Posted by: baz43 at February 8, 2016 4:02 PM

Unfortunately not.

However, when people living in a fundamentalist (or Orthodox) community in the West seek to escape, the law is usually on their side.

In Islam, it is not because that fundamentalism they are escaping is the law.

"... radical Islam can make a serious nuisance of itself but ..."

So baz43 what they change (morph) on the way over in the boat?

Doesn't seem to be happening in Europe (or in their home countries) but I'm sure it's all some sort of misunderstanding.

"Naturally the extremists get all the column inches but please recognise there really are a great many more ordinary Muslims who want nothing more than a peaceful life for themselves and their children."

So the WTC didn't come down after all. That's a relief.

Your peaceful Muslims are irrelevent.

And it would be taqiyyah to claim the USA is not threatened. Sorry. Want to make an impression here, be seen calling for human rights to prevail.

Conventional Christian doctrine holds that most of the Old Testament is rendered moot by the New Testament. Reform Judaism has the same general principle (unfortunately I don't know enough about Judaism to point to the specifics). There is no New Testament for the Koran, and for 1,000 years it has resisted all attempts to create one.

I like the part where Jesus said:

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill," (Matt. 5:17).

Among others ...

baz43: Much the same goes for Islam, if you look a little more closely; Islam too has its gradient from the violent uncompromising Middle Eastern Salafists causing so much trouble at the moment right through to the laid-back and generally peaceful version common in Indonesia, which at roughly 250 million people, is the largest Muslim population of all.

baz, you're absolutely right: Islam isn't monolithic. And you're also right that Amy tends to portray it that way.

However...

You mention the "generally peaceful version common in Indonesia." True, compared to places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and groups like the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS, Indonesians are relatively moderate and generally peaceful. But even in this relatively moderate and generally peaceful state, 16 percent of Muslims believe that Muslims who renounce Islam should be killed.

Let me repeat that: in Indonesia, 16 percent of Muslims feel that a Muslim who rejects Islam should be killed.

This came from a 2014 NY Times column by Nick Kristof -- The Diversity of Islam -- in which, like you, he was explaining how Islam is not monolithic.

Third, the Islamic world contains multitudes: It is vast and varied. Yes, almost four out of five Afghans favor the death penalty for apostasy, but most Muslims say that that is nuts. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, only 16 percent of Muslims favor such a penalty. In Albania, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, only 2 percent or fewer Muslims favor it, according to the Pew survey.

Something is wrong here. Profoundly wrong. Something is profoundly wrong with a religion when, in a country which has the most members in the world and which is "moderate" and "peaceful", 16 percent of the adherents believe you have no right to live if you choose to not follow their religion.

Killing people -- or feeling they should be killed -- for renouncing the religion they are "supposed" to follow and believe in, is one of the most completely fucked-up things there is.

There is something rotten in Islam. And Muslims seem unwilling or unable (or both) to address it.

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill," (Matt. 5:17).

Gog, yes Jesus said that (or supposedly said that), but there's debate over what he meant, with some Christians believing that all the rules in the Torah still apply, while others -- those who subscribe to the conventional Christian doctrine Cousin Dave mentioned -- feel that those rules don't apply.

Furthermore, as Cousin Dave pointed out, there is no Qur'anic New Testament. The Qur'an is all "Old Testament", all the time.

There is also a fundamental difference in the "heroes" that both religions worship. Aside from the one alleged incident where Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the Temple, there aren't tales of him acting violent or even calling for violence. Muhammed, on the other hand, was different. He was a warrior. He led armies. He killed people (or had his people kill people.) This wasn't the only thing he was, but he was a warrior.

So, yes, Christians have in the past acted -- and, on occasion, sometimes now act -- violently. But when they do this, they are acting counter to the actions and words of their holy dude. When Muslims -- ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Harma, al Shabaab, etc. -- act violently, they can point to their holy dude and say "Hey, we're just doing what he did."

Mohammed built upon Christianity and Judaism, so the Koran was the _new_ New Testament. Unfortunately, it was a reversion to the vicious union of secular and religious authority in the worst parts of the Old Testament.

Nor is Islam lacking an equivalent to the Reformation - it's happening right now, but the reformers are fanatics such as ISIS. The great Protestant reformers were fanatics and often quite unpleasant personalities who stirred up troubles in which millions died, but they were constrained by scripture. The Koran and Hadith seem to enable excesses rather than constrain them.

The Koran and Hadith seem to enable excesses rather than constrain them.

When Islamic extremists commit violence, I'm sure there are many mullahs and Islamic scholars who protest that this isn't allowed in Islam. But I don't know exactly what they're basing this on. I'm sure the extremists could point to verses in the Qur'an as a basis for what they're doing. Who's right? Did Muhammed clearly renounce violence? It seems likely he didn't. Maybe he just retired to a beach house on the Red Sea and when his followers knocked on his door there and asked him if was OK to continue chopping and slicing heads off infidels, he just shrugged, said "Whatever" and shuffled back into the house.

I'm sure there are many mullahs and Islamic scholars who protest that this isn't allowed in Islam. But I don't know exactly what they're basing this on. I'm sure the extremists could point to verses in the Qur'an as a basis for what they're doing. ~ Posted by: JD at February 10, 2016 7:40 PM

the Qur'an, like most religious texts, leaves a lot of gray areas. In an attempt to clear up the gray areas, Muslim scholars looked at the life of Mohammed through remembered recollections of his thoughts on various subjects, his ruling proclamations, and his actions. If he hated broccoli, broccoli must be bad. the thinking was that since Mohammed was the person God chose to deliver his teachings, Mohammed must be the kind of person God wants us to be and we should emulate him. These remembrances were assembled into the hadiths.

Since the hadiths are based on remembrances from 4 decades after Mohammed's death, Islamic scholars generally divide the haditsh into three categories: Likely True, Possibly True, Definitely False.

Groups like ISIS cherry pick the hadiths for passages that support whatever action they want to take and justify that action using the cherry-picked passage(s).

The hadiths are not considered God's teachings, but the views of a man who pleased God to the point that God appointed him His messenger.

So, if Mohammed got pissed off and cursed Jews one day, the hadiths curse Jews - and, as a result, Islam curses Jews.

The closest Christian parallel would likely be the canonical writings of Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas which were incorporated into he Church's dogma.