The New York Times backhandedly notices that Leftist feminists have failed utterly to speak up for the rights of women in the Islamic world, and that only "conservatives" are doing so. "The Feminist Hawks," by Virginia Heffernan for the New York Times, August 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Hawkish sites that have taken up feminism include Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine. On a recent day, the home page of the last featured reports of female prisoners being raped in Iran; prepubescent girls getting married in Gaza; and a possible honor killing by an immigrant in New York. This material is expected to help seal Horowitz’s general case for the war on terror, though he has not yet changed the name of his cause to, say, the war on misogyny.
Well, two out of three ain't bad for the Times. It can't be bothered, after all, to look too closely at those awful "conservatives" and see what they're really about. But despite her error about the third site, Virginia Heffernan is quite right about Jihad Watch and my colleague David Horowitz: we have taken feminists to task more than once not only for their failure to stand up for Muslim women, but for their active excuse-making for the oppression of those women.
See, for example, my article in FrontPage, "Feminists Betray Muslim Women," on how the feminist writer Laura Briggs justifies the oppression of Muslim women.
See also "Two Women Stoned: Feminists Mum," by David Horowitz, Janet Levy and me; "A Response to Feminists on the Violent Oppression of Women in Islam," by David Horowitz and me; and my article "The Conservative Vanguard of the Feminist Movement" in National Review.
Other articles I've written in FrontPage on issues revolving around women's rights in Islam include "Covering Up the Plight of Muslim Women"; "There Must Be Violence Against Women"; "Muhammad Mended His Own Clothes!"; Open Season on Muslim Women"; "Women Are Treated Better in Islam?."
Also there are my articles in Human Events, "Unveiled Women and 'Uncovered Meat'"; "Media Ignore Abuses of Women in Islam."
I also coauthored the monograph "The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam" (available as a pdf here) with my friend Phyllis Chesler, who weighs in on the Times's ridiculous piece here.
In any case, it is very much a war on misogyny, and I am happy to take up the Times's snark and declare that war, here and now. It's a war against those who think they have a divine right to beat women (cf. Qur'an 4:34), and to devalue their testimony as if they're deficient intellectually (cf. Qur'an 2:282), and to treat them as commodities, even allowing for sex with slave girls (cf. Qur'an 4:3).
Is it "hawkish" to stand against such things? Then I am proud to be a hawk.
"Is it "hawkish" to stand against such things? Then I am proud to be a hawk."
I would rather be the hawk, than the pidgen.
Yup. The hawks speak up while the Left has turned completely ostrich on the subject of abuse of women under islam..
One more example of the Center-Right taking the moral initiative.
Isn't it interesting how the great "moralist" Jimmy Carter, lectured the world on human rights from his high horse, and in the process only succeeded in exacerbating the then-pervasive human rights violations occurring throughout Latin America by squandering US influence there (several US allies rejected all US aid rather than publicly knuckle under to Carter's heavy-handed demands).
Then, lo and behold, Ronald Reagan was elected and knuckle-dragging conservative that he was, used an effective combination of quiet diplomacy and subtle persuasion which resulted in almost the entirety of Latin America transitioning to democracy under his watch.
To this day, Carter is given credit for Reagan's accomplishments. One wonders at what point NOW and other feminist groups will take credit for that glorious day in the dim future of Darul Islam when Muslim women have finally attained real equality.
Ironically, any careful reader of JihadWatch will realize that JW isn't an advocate of "the use of force." It's an advocate of the use of brain -- to realize that Islamic misogyny and supremacism are the enemy, and that we must frame our entire outlook that way. The use of force is but one tool -- a scarce resource with limited applicability -- in fighting this enemy.
I suspect the silence from the sisterhood is a definite reaction to the fundamental reason that honor killings take place.
When all of the rhetoric is parsed away, the truth is ugly beyond belief. Fathers and brothers kill, because of the perceived shame it will bring them as individuals or as a family.
In truth, it’s the perpetrators who feel they have a ‘right’ to dispose of the item which would cause them shame or loss of status in their community. At that time, the female becomes an object, not a person who they must destroy in able to maintain their pride.
Frankly, when all of the feminist blather is peeled away from the subject, late term abortions take place for much the same reason. The fetus, in most cases is inconvenient and must be removed. It could interfere with a career, could cause embarrassment, or loss of status due to an unwanted pregnancy.
The feminist movement has thus far been able to avoid direct accusations of hypocrisy when they champion the pro-choice movement in one breath and protest the involvement in Iraq the next.
However, having to confront a fundamental basic truth, that in many cases, abortion is the same as ‘honor’ killing, I suspect the silence will remain.
"use of brain"--love that line! Heck yes, that's what we want, use of brain!!!!
The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, long-time Senator from New York and an old-fashion liberal, made the observation that one of the great failings of modern liberalism is its inability to recognize and deal with real evil. You see this everywhere today in the modern liberal world. Among the feminists, with the guy in the White House, in academia, the media and, most recently, among certain Scottish authorities. A truer statement about modern liberalism by an old-type liberal like Moynihan I have rarely ever come across.
Robert, I seriously love you.
The supposedly "hawkish" neocon Little Green Footballs has been batting for the rabidly racist, sadistic, genocidal Kosovar Albanian KLA terrorists who run the biggest child sex-slave industry in Europe out of "liberated" Kosovo. Even Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, neither exactly the Serbs' friend, issued detailed, backed by hard evidence, mutually supporting reports on May 6 and May 7 2004 respectively stating that NATO aided the Kosovar Albanians in creating the child sex-slave industry in Kosovo that DID NOT EXIST THERE BEFORE the "liberation". Things have only gotten worse since. From the Kosovo hub the Albanian child-rape industry has now extended its tentacles to every corner of Western Europe. MILLIONS of captive little girls have been raped in the Albanian child-rape houses. MILLIONS. And the "Kosovar" Albanians are beginning to duly repay the European and American dhimmies for vanguishing Serbs for them, from supplying explosives for both the 3/11 train bombings in Madrid and the 7/7 train bombings in Londonistan to playing key roles in both Fort Dix and North Carolina jihad plots. The long-anicipated "white al-Qaida" is now emerging, Kosovar Albanians being its core.
This is whom the supposedly "feminising" LGF neocons back: mass child-rapists and anti-European, anti-American jihadists. This is why I keep speaking of the double litmus test of loyalty to both Serbia and Israel. The neoliberals and neocons fail the Serbia test totally. Their lip service to "supporting" Israel and "opposing" "Islamic extremism" should be disregarded, because their actual deeds work toward the opposite ends.
Glory to Zionism. Down with the nn's.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
I had a friend out here in notoriously left-wing California who asked me how I could side with Sean Hannity on *anything*--this was after Hannity had featured a segment on the powerful film "the Stoning of Saroya M." on his show.
Clearly, she was more horrified by the conservative Mr. Hannity than she was by the prospect of women being *stoned to death*.
I asked her where the feminists were on this issue, and she implied that perhaps they had been scared off the issue because it was supported by the likes of Hannity.
This is insane--or cowardice of the worst sort. She also implied that he could not have been sincere, because he is not a "real feminist", and so is just "using" the issue.
Well, for one thing, it is quite possible to be horrified by the specter of stonings, "honor killings", female genital mutilation, and forced child marriages, and still differ with feminists on such issues as the affirmative action or "the glass ceiling".
In addition, women should be heartened that *someone* is standing for them, since the mainstream feminists seam to have abandoned the cause of the most oppressed women in the world, out of some sort of grotesquely misguided political correctness.
Here's an ugly truth that no Feminist will ever admit to:
They not only don't give a damn about women's rights and women beyond the borders of the West Feminists don't give shyte about women of colour either. After having extensive debates with self-professed 'feminists' I've come to the conclusion that they really assume that black, brown, and yellow women feel differently about being beaten, abused, raped, and murdered than their white counterparts.
The ugly truth is that Feminists don't care about women in Africa, L. America, Asia and anywhere else beyond the West.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was booted out of Holland with barely a whimper by Feminists. Lina Joy's case has gone on for years without any support from groups. and there are so many more examples. If not for Pamela Gellar's excellent work, Rifqa Bary's case would barely be on the radar for most people. You'll never hear about Rachel Maddow report on these issues because if a event falls outside the Feminist narrative of the 'white male aggressor vs. white female victim' they don't know how to address it.
Let me also take issue with the article by Ms. Heffernan. She insinuates that the concern for women's rights by people who are 'right-wing' is somehow less sincere than the concerns by Feminists themselves.
What absolute utter fuc%ing crap.
Dear Ms. Heffernan,
the reason for my and many others concern about Islam is with that we have a legitimate concern that the increasing presence of Islam in the West may, just may bring the uglier aspects of Islam with it and as a result make our societies as ugly as those of Islam.
Stop sacrificing these women and men and to your damned politics. You are the anti-thesis of human rights values, no matter how much you claim to be on their side.
People are people, and are not fools. You don’t need to be a 'secular humanist' to recognize evil, murder, killing, abuse, hatred. It stinks and it reeks of evil. All people must choose between truth or hate and killing or willful ignorance.
What will you choose?
I'll leave you with one of the best examples of someone defending women's rights, General Charles Napier who responded this way to Hindu's protesting the British prohibition of Sati:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
The article makes little sense, but the author seems to believe that hawks have some sort of nefarious hidden agenda and that their expressed concern for women's rights in other societies cannot be taken at face value. I'm at a loss to understand why our concern for the plight of women in these countries cannot be honest and sincere. The subtext may be that multicult is the highest good, to which women's rights in other societies must be subordinated---and, I suppose, that hawks are using women's rights to further their opposition to multicult.
Unfortunately I can't watch Sean Hannity's show, as I only get CNN's international version, but when I heard that he had asked some government official who had sworn in the first American Muslim congressman on the unholy Koran, whether he would have sworn in some Nazi on "Mein Kampf", I nearly laughed my head off. The guy is witty and intelligent and perfectly right. That he featured a segment on the powerful film "the Stoning of Saroya M." on his show, only proves that he is concerned about women's rights.
I'm not a feminist, but I stand for women's rights, wherever they're from and whatever their colour. I like Western men and despise the way women are treated in Islamic societies.
Here's what I heard today: a couple who had spend their holidays in Oman, Dubai, the emirates, told me their tour guide, a German woman married to a "moderate" Arab had explained to them that in Arab countries women can go out in the middle of the night without being molested, let alone being raped, because a rapist faces capital punishment in Arab countries. Rubbish! I told them the story from Sultana's book "Princess" of a 13 year old girl who was raped by her brother's friends on a party, the parents were on a holiday and the brother couldn't help her because he was lying stoned on the bathroom floor. The whole story couldn't be covered up, because the girl got pregnant. In court the brother's friends sided with each other, maintained that the girl had been seductive and she got sentenced to death by stoning.
I can only hope that this couple will believe me more than their tour guide, but I have my doubts.
Weren't Robert and Hugh against the whole Iraq operation? How is Jihadwatch a "hawk site"? By virtue of the fact that it doesn't support Islamic supremacy?
James the Fin wrote:
You'll never hear about Rachel Maddow report on these issues because if a event falls outside the Feminist narrative of the 'white male aggressor vs. white female victim' they don't know how to address it.
................
This is very true, James. I saw Rachel Maddow the week before last on Bill Maher's show, Real Time--she was part of the panel.
The issue of the continued horrendous state of women's rights in Afghanistan came up (of course, it came up in the context of what a moron George W. Bush was, but that's another issue).
Maddow had been oddly silent on the subject, so a fellow panel member asked her what she thought about it--she replied that when Sarah Palin had left the governor's office, that fellow Republicans--*her own supporters*--had said it was fine with them if she left politics completely to stay at home with the kids.
If the above seems like a complete non sequitur, that's because it is.
Maddow couldn't bring herself to address some of the most horrific abuses of women's rights anywhere in the world--including blowing up girls' schools, honor killings and forcing women into burkhas--except to imply, in the most absurd way, that Republicans were every bit as bad as the Taliban, because they would support a woman's deciding to make taking care of her family a priority. Madness.
The Christian leaders, including the Pope, should speak out against polygamy. Polygamy is at the heart of the violence and horrible treatment of women as well as the degradation of men.
The extra men who will never marry have historically conquered new land to find wives but now they must kill each other or become suicide bombers, since the culture is too weak militarily. Another negative outcome is inbreeding. Some 45,000 citizens of Saudi Arabia are direct descendants of Ibn Saud and genetic diseases are rampant in Muslim societies.
Mohammed saw men and women as if they were any other large mammal, i.e. the males vie for a harem. He failed to notice a big difference in women and other animals. There is no sex with other female animals unless they are in estrus and can become impregnated, whereas humans got the great gift from God of sex at any time. Muslim men interpret that as meaning they are supposed to take women any chance they get. Thus the large female animals have more rights than a Muslim woman; the right to refuse sex!
When a man has several wives, he must employ physical beatings to arbitrate arguments and keep peace in the household. Thus the woman must be subservient and they plot against each other.
As well, the man has no incentive to treat women ethically because as an animal he is not expected to control sexual urges. This is an insulting view of men that does not happen in Christianity where we are all taught we are made in the image of God.
If you think I'm wrong, the exact same results developed in our own polygamous group in El Dorado. TX and they were not Muslims. They routinely dumped their teenage boys in major cities to get rid of them. The women and children were beaten. Profound genetic diseases began to affect them.
NotAMoralRelativist - your posting above on polygyny (I say polygyny, multiple wives, rather than polygamy, multiple marriages, because the women are not allowed to practise polyandry, multiple husbands) is interesting.
By contrast: societies that attempt and generally manage to practise monogamy, especially if they combine it with a habit of actively welcoming and rearing girl children, are going to end up less violent, since most men will have a reasonable chance of obtaining a wife.
And monogamous societies aren't necessarily societies of wimps: each individual man, in such a society, has a huge stake in its continuing, and will defend his own personal castle - his wife or bride, his children or potential children - with great energy. And he can form common cause with other men in his society (after all, they're not rivals, and it is their sons whom his daughters will marry); so armies of free men, whether at Tours 732 or Vienna 1683 or in Israel 1948-49, are capable of fighting with transcendent courage...and of defeating the testosterone-crazed wouldbe womanstealers.
It should be noted that besides practising polygyny, Islamic societies further reduce their numbers of nubile females by all sorts of anti-woman practices - the general contempt for and abuse of their girl children, the horrifyingly common 'honor' murders of unmarried girls, and FGM where it is practised (girls die under the knife or from infections as a result of the mutilation or from the UTIs and menses retention promoted by the scarring; or they die in childbirth). Men marry prepubescent or barely-pubescent girls and rape them to death; or the girl gets pregnant but dies in her first childbed; so the man promptly takes another wife (who might otherwise have been available for someone else) and then destroys *her* too . I saw this ghastly video clip right here on jihadwatch, of a little girl whose older brothers *sold* her to an old man in the village who had *already* killed off, by active mistreatment, three previous wives.
And you're spot-on about inbreeding. If a polygynous society is prevented, by bold and vigilant monogamous neighbours, from stealing women to make up for its own 'woman deficit', it cannot but lose genetic diversity inexorably over time. Because in each generation a significant number of its male gene lines fail to be perpetuated.