I don't think the war, if it is to defend non-Muslims against the imposition of the belief-system known as Islam, is "predominantly about women." Women could be treated less barbarically in Islam, while the inculcated hostility, and aggression, toward all Infidels could remain. "Dr. Germ" in Baghdad was treated more-or-less as an equal, a proud member of the weapons work force. Shirin Ebadi won her misplaced Nobel (see the article about her at www.secularislam.org)for working to help women in the Islamic Republic; she has repeatedly shown that she 1) refuses to connect the suppression of women with texts in Qur'an and hadith and 2) can "fight for women's rights" and still be implacable on the subject of the United States, Israel, and other Infidels. You won't see her owning up, any time soon, to the forced conversion of Armenians and Jews in Safavid Persia (under Shah Abbas); you won't find her even hinting at what happened, in their own country, to the Zoroastrians -- right up to the present day (see the studies and memoirs of the Englishwoman Mary Boyce; some may be online).

Infidels should worry most about what's in it for them. It may be that the suppression of women, as characteristic of Islam, may help to persuade some otherwise indifferent or quasi-apologist Infidels that something is wrong with Islam, and then to investigate further -- or it may be that sentimentalism about "it's not the religion, it's just a cultural problem" (which Ebadi and even some of the Afghani women like to pretend) will actually delay the full understanding of Islamic tenets, and what they mean, not for Muslim women (yes, they have my sympathy, but let us not lose sight of the main problem -- the manichaeism of Islam (Muslims Good; Infidels Bad), the requirement that Islam be spread, by all means; the requirement that having conquered the lands of the Infidels, all non-Muslims must either be killed, converted, or subject to a status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity. There is not a chapter in Islamic history, in time and space, if thoroughly studied, that does not produce evidence of precisely that.

As Hugh said,

"It may be that the suppression of women, as characteristic of Islam, may help to persuade some otherwise indifferent or quasi-apologist Infidels that something is wrong with Islam, and then to investigate further..."

When I read the article about the honor killing, I thought "Aha, here is something I can show my friends who just can't seem to get their minds around why this 'religion'/cult is so bad.

Sometimes people need to see something so graphic that they can justify being 'against' it, because for many, being 'against' a religion is very difficult. They buy into the 'we all worship the same God' ....which is totally false.

I was very moved by MR. Glazov's piece and am inspired to continue the resistance.

Goddam... when the original "Souad" article was aired, I hadn't yet found this site. I managed to find the original and lordhavemercy.... what a sad tale. A she says she is STILL a muslim... what can she possibly be thinking?

I am a liberal, my heart bleeds to read these sad, sad tales. And there are thousands upon thousands of them. There's some good links at www.secularislam.org .... And just consider this: if Muslims will do THIS to their own precious flesh and blood, imagine what they do to their enemies.

Good point Hugh... glad to agree with you yet again. I have read a lot about the Zoroastrians. The damage Islam did to Persia is incomprehensible is severity and scope. Ali Sina has a site at faithfreedom.org, Robert Spencer has mentioned him on this site. I think Ali is fromr Iran, he seems to talk a lot about Iran.

In the old jwatch article on Souad, there was a comment by Gary, that we should copy the story of Souad and send it to every feminist we know, and of course "none of them will write back."

Gary, you forgot, you're supposed to call them "Feminazis." Better yet, instead of talking such absurdity, why don't you make it your business to befriend at least one feminist and convince her or him to join us in the anti-jihad campaign?

Problem with pointing out things like "honour" killings and FGM to people as evidence that Islam treats women despicably is that the apologists always come back with "Oh, that's not an Islamic thing, it's not sanctioned by Islam or the Qur'an", and off they go confident in their belief that Islam is wonderful and peaceful and la di dah. I've run across this argument many times.

I dispute it by saying that Islam accommodates and shelters this sort of despicable behaviour, accepting it and even encouraging it in many countries. So it may as well be considered Islamic. If nobody of any note or in power in the Muslim hierarchy actively discourages it, as far as I'm concerned it's a sanctioned Islamic practise. It's a convenient method of subjugating women, which is what Islam is all about.

It's this attitude of just shrugging their shoulders and saying "it's not Islamic" that absolves them of any responsibility to do something about it. Typical attitude of Muslims about anything and everything really. They're never at fault, never have to do any critical self-analysis, everything is perfect.

Amnesty used to play this video every saterday morning of this pakistani young woman who was burned to death by her father.
Now that Kahn a muslim woman, has taken the helm of the organization, it has gone from exposing the horrors of Islam to condemning the efforts of the west to free and liberate people from the horrors of the islamic cult.
Do not give a dime to Amnesty, they have lost their validity as a charitable cause.

But Hugh, Dr Germ lived in a secular country, Iraq. Saddam Hussein was only nominally Muslim. As evil as he was, he allowed women to progress, and women were better off in Iraq, than in Saudi Arabia. This is nothing to do with Islam.

Iraq was not a "secular" country but a country that wore its Islam slightly less prominently than did other Muslim countries. Save for Kemalist Turkey, with its always-needing-to-be-defended secularism based on the reforms of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), there are no secular Muslim countries.

Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist. Ba'athist ideology, a nice blend of fascism and communism, with just a smidgin of Nazi ideology to add flavor, owes its origins to Christian Arabs (notably, Michel Aflaq). The ideology was simply an alternative to straight-out Islam, and it was an attempt to provide such an alternative so that Christians in the Middle East could also participate in political life and not be shut out. Naturally Ba'athism appealed to those in Syria and Iraq for two reasons. First, both Syria and Iraq had relatively prominent, at least compared to other Arab states, Christian populations that had not been completely wiped out or exiled. Second, both countries were ruled by elites that, if religion were to be stressed as the only factor, would not have been able to rule. In Syria, the Alawites, who because of their worshp of Mary (Mariam) are not considered full-fledged Muslims by other Muslims, have been a military caste ever since the French favored them; Ba'athism suits their interests, since the real Muslims would, in a country without the strong alternative of Ba'athism, simply slaughter them.

In Iraq it is the same. The Sunni Arabs could only stay in power through Ba'athism, for if they had gone with Islam, straight up, then the majority Shi'a would have prevailed.

But Saddam Hussein's secularism was skin deep. He was no Ataturk. He named all his battles with the Iranians after ancient victories, by the Muslim Arabs, over the Sassanid Persians. He similarly called his campaign against the Kurds al-Anfal, after a Qur'anic sura. He put Qur'anic verses on the Iraqi flag. He commissioned a spectacularly calligraphed Qur'an, using his own blood, reputedly, as the ink.

To confound Ba'athism with real secularism is a mistake, just as it is a mistake to contrast, as totally different phenomena, pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. The first is merely, when closely analyzed, a subset of the second.

My main point remains. Too much attention by Infidels to the supposed mitigation of mistreatment of females under Islam is perhaps misplaced. The real focus should be on the tenets pertaining directly to Infidels. It is entirely possible to give women more rights, and for those Muslim women to simply participate, in a more effective and deadly fashion (Dr. Germ was my example) in aggression against Infidels.

Our eyes should be always on the main ball - that of the Muslim manichean division of the world between Muslims (Good) and non-Muslims (Bad).