"Saudis hold 'women in the workplace' forum -- with no women present"

That's TOO funny - except that it sadly illustrates yet again the very problem we have with these guys.

Posted by: Eastview at May 11, 2008 5:00 PM

Dr. al-Fassi isn't aware of the Dorian invasion from the Kurgan battle-axe cultures that brought patrist desert tribal culture to the Greeks. In fact, the culture at Petra, like that of Saudi Arabia at the time, was matrist rather than patriarchal, and patrist elements in Greek culture overlay the native culture there, resulting in the extremely sexist culture (very akin to the way it is in Saudi Arabia now for women).

In fact, Dr. Al-Fassi is correct that the Greeks spread extreme patrism across the entire Hellenic world and pass it along to the Greeks. Arabia, off the beaten track, held onto its Bronze Age egalitarian oecumene culture longer than the rest.

The reason all this unraveled — and where virtually all of the predatory expansionism on to which Islam was overlaid — came from the incredible ecological shift that happened around 4000 BCE when all of North Africa, Saudi Arabia and the steppes of Central Asia SUDDENLY went from being as lush as Virginia to the deadzone desert you see now. That happened in les than 200 years.

Desert tribalist raiders, who then began to treat women as breeding stock for wealth and security, began a series of devastating raids on Old Europe and the Old Middle East in three huge battles called the Kurgan Waves happening hundreds of years apart.

So, Al-Fassi is absolutely correct, and this is why you see Khadija, Muhammad's wife, a widow in charge of her own considerable wealth and completely independent of male control, as an example of pre-Islamic Arabia. Women owned property. Women had major influence in their tribes, and leadership or many of them. Allah was the Creator god, one of at least 400 tribal gods of the pre-Islamic period, and father to three daughter who were considered to be GODDESSES.

Cultures which exhibit strong female concepts in their divinities are NEVER as vicious toward women as those who do not. And that includes the iconography of the Virgin Mary, and to the degree to which she is adored (and that varies widely in Christian churches)is the degree to which various Christian denominations tend to treat women well, though it can be said that the barring of women from the priesthood is an anti-religious act in and of itself and should be corrected in Christianity. In fact, people worried about the waning demographics in Christianity might do well to consider making a huge egalitarian move right now as it would ensure the triumph of Christianity on demographic terms.

Thus, I would argue that Dr. Al-Fassi's assignment of origin of the problem of the loss of rights of women in the Late Bronze Age to Greece is because she does not have access to the work of Dr. James DeMeo, which makes it clear that it was the Dorian invasion of Greece that brought with it a patrism unknown to the Greeks before that time. So it clearly did not start there.

There is a little band of us trying to get Dr. Al-Fassi copies of several books, but we don't know if we will be able to get them past Saudi censors as they contain art that is not going to be to their liking.

HOWEVER, were Al-Fassi — who is banned from teaching in Saudi Arabia — in possession of Dr. De Meo's work, it is our feeling that she would most certainly not have stopped at Greco-Roman influence but would have gone even further back, to the real source: the ecological collapse, complete destruction of culture, mass human trauma, and resultant barbaric desert tribalist culture that eventually overtook all of Arabia as it turned from a kind of land of milk and honey to the vast wasteland ... and cultural wasteland it is today.

The problem here is that the mores you see in Islam certainly did not start there, and Bernard Lewis is correct when he said that whatever spiritual impulse there was in Islam was almost completely destroyed by desert tribalist warlords within 50 years of Muhammad's death. Only now things were much worse, because they had the supposed imprimatur of God to add to their raiding culture. And in order to completely wipe out any crumbs the Prophet tossed women during his day and what other freedoms women had, the warlords had to create the hadith and invoke abrogation — and it is no accident that the shari'a is 90% hadith, not Qur'an. Savvy?

Patrism began in the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia — a contiguous desert area that De Meo calls "Saharasia" It spread to Europe, Arabia, the Mediterranean, and east Asia by invasion and conquest. The "formula" followed is the same one followed by spreading Islamic armies. Patrism spread even across the Pacific as in 4000 BCE sea levels were 180-200 feet lower than they are now, and some ice bridges in the northern Pacific still stood.

One wave of patrism was carried by Hellenic and Roman culture. Another was carried by Christianity between 200 AD (when the last of the women priests were booted out) and the Renaissance. But the most violent and worst forms were carried by the Islamic armies, as now.

What we are looking at right now is the Fourth Kurgan Wave under its the most violent form it that has been known in history.

Please see further:

Biaggi, Cristina, editor. The Rule of Mars. Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends (KIT), 2005.

DeMeo, James. Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social
Violence in the Deserts of the Old World: Revised Second Edition, with New Evidence. Ashland,
Oregon: Natural Energy Works, 2006.

______, "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c. 4000 BCE: Evidence for a Worldwide,
Climate-Linked Geographical Pattern in Human Behavior." Kyoto Review 23: 19-38, Spring
1990

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987.

Fiero, Gloria. The Humanistic Tradition. Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Frank, Andre. "On Gender Relations and History." The Centrality of Central Asia. Amsterdam: Free
University Press, 1992. Digital online article at

Gimbutas, Marija. All works.

"International Dialogue on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights: Final Report." ARC International.
Geneva: ARC International, 2004. Digital version: net/dialoguereport.pdf>

Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995.

Olsen, Barbara. "Women, Children and the Family in the Late Aegean Bronze Age: Differences in
Minoan and Mycenaean Construction of Gender." World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 3, Intimate
Relations, February 1998, p. 380-392. Accessed 28 March 2008, 07:31:17. Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-
8243%28199802%2929%3A3%3C380%3AWCATFI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23

Salzman, Carl Philip. Culture and Conflict in the Middle East. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at May 11, 2008 5:22 PM

Dr. al-Fassi isn't aware of the Dorian invasion from the Kurgan battle-axe cultures that brought patrist desert tribal culture to the Greeks. In fact, the culture at Petra, like that of Saudi Arabia at the time, was matrist rather than patriarchal, and patrist elements in Greek culture overlay the native culture there, resulting in the extremely sexist culture (very akin to the way it is in Saudi Arabia now for women).

In fact, Dr. Al-Fassi is correct that the Greeks spread extreme patrism across the entire Hellenic world and pass it along to the Greeks. Arabia, off the beaten track, held onto its Bronze Age egalitarian oecumene culture longer than the rest.

The reason all this unraveled — and where virtually all of the predatory expansionism on to which Islam was overlaid — came from the incredible ecological shift that happened around 4000 BCE when all of North Africa, Saudi Arabia and the steppes of Central Asia SUDDENLY went from being as lush as Virginia to the deadzone desert you see now. That happened in les than 200 years.

Desert tribalist raiders, who then began to treat women as breeding stock for wealth and security, began a series of devastating raids on Old Europe and the Old Middle East in three huge battles called the Kurgan Waves happening hundreds of years apart.

So, Al-Fassi is absolutely correct, and this is why you see Khadija, Muhammad's wife, a widow in charge of her own considerable wealth and completely independent of male control, as an example of pre-Islamic Arabia. Women owned property. Women had major influence in their tribes, and leadership or many of them. Allah was the Creator god, one of at least 400 tribal gods of the pre-Islamic period, and father to three daughter who were considered to be GODDESSES.

Cultures which exhibit strong female concepts in their divinities are NEVER as vicious toward women as those who do not. And that includes the iconography of the Virgin Mary, and to the degree to which she is adored (and that varies widely in Christian churches)is the degree to which various Christian denominations tend to treat women well, though it can be said that the barring of women from the priesthood is an anti-religious act in and of itself and should be corrected in Christianity. In fact, people worried about the waning demographics in Christianity might do well to consider making a huge egalitarian move right now as it would ensure the triumph of Christianity on demographic terms.

Thus, I would argue that Dr. Al-Fassi's assignment of origin of the problem of the loss of rights of women in the Late Bronze Age to Greece is because she does not have access to the work of Dr. James DeMeo, which makes it clear that it was the Dorian invasion of Greece that brought with it a patrism unknown to the Greeks before that time. So it clearly did not start there.

There is a little band of us trying to get Dr. Al-Fassi copies of several books, but we don't know if we will be able to get them past Saudi censors as they contain art that is not going to be to their liking.

HOWEVER, were Al-Fassi — who is banned from teaching in Saudi Arabia — in possession of Dr. De Meo's work, it is our feeling that she would most certainly not have stopped at Greco-Roman influence but would have gone even further back, to the real source: the ecological collapse, complete destruction of culture, mass human trauma, and resultant barbaric desert tribalist culture that eventually overtook all of Arabia as it turned from a kind of land of milk and honey to the vast wasteland ... and cultural wasteland it is today.

The problem here is that the mores you see in Islam certainly did not start there, and Bernard Lewis is correct when he said that whatever spiritual impulse there was in Islam was almost completely destroyed by desert tribalist warlords within 50 years of Muhammad's death. Only now things were much worse, because they had the supposed imprimatur of God to add to their raiding culture. And in order to completely wipe out any crumbs the Prophet tossed women during his day and what other freedoms women had, the warlords had to create the hadith and invoke abrogation — and it is no accident that the shari'a is 90% hadith, not Qur'an. Savvy?

Patrism began in the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia — a contiguous desert area that De Meo calls "Saharasia" It spread to Europe, Arabia, the Mediterranean, and east Asia by invasion and conquest. The "formula" followed is the same one followed by spreading Islamic armies. Patrism spread even across the Pacific as in 4000 BCE sea levels were 180-200 feet lower than they are now, and some ice bridges in the northern Pacific still stood.

One wave of patrism was carried by Hellenic and Roman culture. Another was carried by Christianity between 200 AD (when the last of the women priests were booted out) and the Renaissance. But the most violent and worst forms were carried by the Islamic armies, as now.

What we are looking at right now is the Fourth Kurgan Wave under its the most violent form it that has been known in history.

Please see further:

Biaggi, Cristina, editor. The Rule of Mars. Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends (KIT), 2005.

DeMeo, James. Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social
Violence in the Deserts of the Old World: Revised Second Edition, with New Evidence. Ashland,
Oregon: Natural Energy Works, 2006.

______, "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c. 4000 BCE: Evidence for a Worldwide,
Climate-Linked Geographical Pattern in Human Behavior." Kyoto Review 23: 19-38, Spring
1990

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987.

Fiero, Gloria. The Humanistic Tradition. Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Frank, Andre. "On Gender Relations and History." The Centrality of Central Asia. Amsterdam: Free
University Press, 1992. Digital online article at

Gimbutas, Marija. All works.

"International Dialogue on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights: Final Report." ARC International.
Geneva: ARC International, 2004. Digital version: net/dialoguereport.pdf>

Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995.

Olsen, Barbara. "Women, Children and the Family in the Late Aegean Bronze Age: Differences in
Minoan and Mycenaean Construction of Gender." World Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 3, Intimate
Relations, February 1998, p. 380-392. Accessed 28 March 2008, 07:31:17. Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-
8243%28199802%2929%3A3%3C380%3AWCATFI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23

Salzman, Carl Philip. Culture and Conflict in the Middle East. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at May 11, 2008 5:30 PM

As per the unjustified comment that Islamic tradition has roots in Greco-Roman traditions, it seems to me that many women arguably seek solace that the men inside of the culture in which they live are sincere and yet victimized by other foundries of law. This bizarre and cornucopian twist upon colonialist theory whereby the effects of another culture are pre-emptive of the good intentions of the 'normal', in this case Arab culture, ignores the historical technological capacity of societies and teleologically circumvents and subverts these problems and the efforts concerned with them to religious fundamentalism. Over and over again women try to work on the capacities of others to resolve the problems of sexism rather than enable their own abilities individually or else fortify their strengths as women collectively. It is desperate, and divisive, and paternalistic in essence.

Posted by: ZenOphelia at May 11, 2008 6:54 PM

Sorry for the double post, folks. My links screwed up my attempt to post, and I didn't understand what was going on.

Please see also:

Contesting the spiritual space: Patriarchy, Nureaucracy, and the gendering of women's religious orders

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2001 by Mills, Albert J, Ryan, Catherine

And one more note:

Al-Fassi isn't exactly wrong that the two primary forces in establishing patriarchy were NOT Arabian. In fact, they were not Arabian. They were Greek and Hebrew.

In Greek culture of the Socrates-Plato-Aristotle period, women were confined to home from cradle to grave, and the saying went: "The best women are the ones who are never seen." It was every bit as incarcerative for women as Saudi Arabia is now. Every bit.

In fact, Plato had an epiphany that women probably were as intelligent as men, a rebellion that lasted only as long as it took for Aristotle to attack it and bring it right back down again.

Early Hebrew culture was even more strict about women in some respects, though Hebrew culture hung onto the Canaanite mythology of the goddess known as the Queen of Heaven through much of the period in which the Hebrews waged wars to establish Yahweh as the One God and declare monotheism over the peoples of the area.

HOWEVER, it is a very significant miss that Al-Fassi doesn't get the connection to the waves and waves and waves of warriors that came out of the deserts — even into Arabia while it wasn't completely desertified — bring a bankrupt and destroyed cultural oblivion with them. I have some compassion for these people, because the cultural studies about what happens to people in severe drought is the worst kind of devastation imaginable. If you look at Darfur now, and you multiply that by 100,000 in intensity, and 7,000 for duration, and you figure in that the entire normal social bonding for male-female and father-son is totally destoyed. The mother-baby bond is the the last to go, but eventually, when the mother can no longer feed the child, and at the point she is near death herself, she will abandon it. Nothing, nothing screws up human beings and healthy cultures like massive death from drought.

HOWEVER, ALSO, Fassi is either ignorant of or skirting the issue that after desertification took place, the raiding that went on to the moister hinterlands went on from two core areas:

The Arabian Core
The Central Asian Core

And so it is NOT true that Arabia LEARNED it from the Greeks. Others learned it from the Greeks -- but the Arabians in oases learned it from desert raiders and then spread it all over North Africa when the Persian-Greek wars had left both protagonists financially bankrupt and vulnerable.

So ... there are major corrections here.

But in terms of Al-Fassi herself, she is a marvelous scholar and very limited in what she can get her hands on, and what she can say.

And she is married to a man so incredibly enlightened and supportive of all this that I think all of us in the West, where it's easy to say anything, owe both of them TREMENDOUS RESPECT.

And ... do not expect the Islamic feminists to take the tack we would take. They can't.

But what does seem to work is that they do what they do ... and we keep up worldwide human rights pressure. They are the boots on the ground. We are the Knight of the Mirrors.

It's going to take both.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at May 11, 2008 11:11 PM

"Fassi says women in Nabataea…enjoyed more freedom than in Saudi Arabia today because clerics have misunderstood the origins of Islamic law. She also suggests some Saudi restrictions on women may have their origins in Greco-Roman traditions."--from the article.

Ah, more misunderstanders of Islam, more deflection of blame away from Islam...these are the sorts of apologetic claims that the Saudis pay Esposito and co to write. More buffing and polishing of Islam's image.

We don't need to hear more of these apologetics. Instead, Non-Muslims need to pay more attention to ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, and others, who have much more frank criticisms of the problems for women in Islam. The problems for women in Islam are laid down in the (1) Qur'an and are elaborated in more detail in the (2) Hadith and (3) Sira, i.e., the three primary sources upon which Islamic law was (and is still) based. There is no escaping this fact. It must be acknowledged, not dodged or deflected.

We do not have unlimited amounts of time to waste watching reformists Muslims try to remake their religion into...who knows what. It is a distracting sideshow which, when well-publicized, gives non-Muslims the mistaken impression that Islam is much more varied than it really is and that the views of people like Fassi are somehow representative of mainstream Muslim opinion. There is no time to entertain these fanciful and expensive projects. If Muslim states want to fund such projects, let them. We need to support non-Muslim and ex-Muslims critics of Islam. Ex-Muslims, in particular, need our support.

Posted by: Kinana of Khaybar at May 12, 2008 2:51 AM

If she is right, then we are the better Muslims than tha Wahabbites.

Wow!

Posted by: FreeSpeech at May 12, 2008 5:31 AM

Kinana, Al-Fassi isn't an apologist for Islam. She is so outspoken a feminist that she isn't allowed to teach in Saudi Arabia, despite being one of its most respected professors. She was banned from King Fahd university because of her feminist activities, and is one of SA's strongest feminists. She does not wear a face veil, and has her picture taken without it. Her husband along with her, and her kids.

She's far braver than Hirsi Ali with her $2,000,000 a year commando detail, sipping lattes in the best bistros in the hot capitals of the world. Al-Fassi hasn't opted to leave the places that are real trouble about this, but is sticking it out INSIDE the war zone.

If she has made a mistake, and that's what I believe it is, I think we can still realize how heroic the effort is. She's just got pieces of it wrong.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at May 12, 2008 8:09 AM

Old hyroglific (sp?) drawings of ancient Middle East show women working in the public, a few held public office, and hardly seen were any that were covered or veiled.

Posted by: alaskan1000 at May 12, 2008 1:13 PM

"She also suggests some Saudi restrictions on women may have their origins in Greco-Roman traditions."

Yep, must of been all that nude statuary................

Posted by: tanstaafl at May 12, 2008 2:47 PM

Saudis hold "women in the workplace" forum -- with no women present

I propose that we hold a "muslims in the workplace" forum -- with no muslims present!

If they complain, as they surely will, we can point out that we are simply following the example of Saudi Arabia, that great example of how to do things the muslim way.

Posted by: PersonOfTheBook at May 12, 2008 3:11 PM

That was a very interesting historical survey by Morgaan. However, a few further considerations are in order. Certain Greek city states such as Athens were rather oppressive toward women; however this never remotely approached that under Islam. Monogamy was the legal rule and while there was, of course, hanky panky going on between masters and slaves, there was no institutionalization of mass concubinage; no caravans of thousands of female captives destined for harems. In addition, in certain Greek states, notably Sparta, women held a respected place, were often granted authority and were even expected to exercise outdoors alongside the men so as to keep fit for producing healthy warriors.

The position of women improved in Hellenistic and Roman times. The Roman system of marriage evolved into one appraoching a contract between equals. In certain provinces of the Empire such as Egypt, women were able to enter many of the professions and engage in business. The position of women did slowly deteriorate under the impetus of Christianity; but even here in the early days many Christian groups allowed women both opportunity and authority. (See Pagels - The Gnostic Gospels). Monogamy was required under Christianity and the sexual abuse of slaves was in defiance of doctrine. The coming of Islam, of course, severely degraded the position of women in the one time Roman provinces with many destined for rape, concubinage and the harem.

Furthermore, women in Central Asia were generally held in high regard before the coming of Islam. The Sarmatians had women fighting alongside men in battle and among some tribes a virgin was required to slay an enemy before being allowed to marry. The strength of that attitude among the tribes of the Steppes was so strong that one Turkish tribe, the Dugallidari had women military auxiliaries even after their nominal conversion to Islam.

Posted by: RBLA at May 12, 2008 6:14 PM

Morgaan (M),

M: "Kinana, Al-Fassi isn't an apologist for Islam. She is so outspoken a feminist that she isn't allowed to teach in Saudi Arabia, despite being one of its most respected professors. She was banned from King Fahd university because of her feminist activities, and is one of SA's strongest feminists. She does not wear a face veil, and has her picture taken without it. Her husband along with her, and her kids."

Plenty of Muslim women who are scholars or women’s rights advocates claim that discrimination against women in Muslim-dominated societies does not reflect “true Islam” (i.e., does not reflect their own personal opinions of what Islam is). My claim that she has stated some Islam apologetics does not necessarily contradict the other claims you make. I do not deny that she may be working for Muslim women’s rights, and so on, but from what I see here she is exhibiting in her expressions some of the tell-tale signs of Islamic apologia. As brave as she is, she is nevertheless speaking directly under the Saudi sword, and hence what she says must be seen in that light. She can only go so far.

M: “She's far braver than Hirsi Ali with her $2,000,000 a year commando detail, sipping lattes in the best bistros in the hot capitals of the world."

The expense of Hirsi Ali’s protection is not Hirsi Ali's fault. She, like anyone else, should have the right to criticize Islam publicly without having her words compromised by the threat of violent reaction. I attribute fault primarily to (a) the Muslim individuals who threaten to carry out the classic Islamic apostasy and blasphemy penalties by killing her and (b) the largely pro-Islamic Western governments which allow those Muslims the opportunity to threaten her, with only rare and inadequate actions taken to deal with those who threaten.

Hirsi Ali is not the only beneficiary of the protection. The fact that Hirsi Ali is still alive and criticizing Islam in public is a tremendous educational benefit to all who believe that this freedom is worth defending. She’s getting the message out there about the problems in Islam at this critical time. Because the mainstream media still avoids criticism of Islam per se while repeating the lines of the apologists, we need prominent influential individuals like Hirsi Ali to present critical views. The jihadists are pursuing her precisely because she is doing damage to their cause.

In addition, Hirsi Ali's tax-payer funded protection was reportedly removed, so funds are now be solicited from the general publics for this purpose. From Sam Harris' website:

"Urgent Appeal: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali"

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the most prominent advocate of free speech and women’s rights in the Muslim world, and for this she must live under perpetual armed guard, even in the West. Unfortunately, on October 1st 2007, the Dutch government officially rescinded its promise to protect her. Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s friends, colleagues and admirers must come to her aid."

http://www.samharris.org/

M: “Al-Fassi hasn't opted to leave the places that are real trouble about this, but is sticking it out INSIDE the war zone.”

What al-Fassi is saying is risky in Saudi Arabia, but it would not be risky here in the West. What Hirsi Ali and other Islam critics are saying is risky here in the West. The West has become a war zone in terms of the threat of being killed for criticizing Islam and in terms of various other forms of threatened punishment to Islam critics. The West is a major battleground of Islam’s demographic jihad, propaganda jihad, litigation jihad, and so on. We (Westerners) must be concerned about what is going on elsewhere but we must be concerned first and foremost with what is happening in our countries. If the West falls to Islam within the next several decades, who will be there to defend people’s freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, equality, and so on? In this respect, the West is currently the world’s lifeguard, so to speak. It is a very overworked, vacillating lifeguard who is trying to do too much for too many and who is in danger of being pulled under. So, while I do believe we should be making some interventions in the Islamic world, we need to get our own house in order first before we take on the world.

M: “If she has made a mistake, and that's what I believe it is, I think we can still realize how heroic the effort is. She's just got pieces of it wrong.”

I don’t deny her bravery, but, whenever I get the chance, I respond to anything that looks like Islam apologetics.

The time-scale over which Islamic reform might occur in some Islamic countries is a major problem, as al-Fassi suggests...

"...and why she [Fassi] is cautiously hopeful change is coming, but slowly. "It's not coming smoothly. Every time they are coming forward, they are going backward … some more steps.""

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/interviews/alfassi.html

That time scale is probably longer than what the rapidly self-Islamizing West currently needs.

Posted by: Kinana of Khaybar at May 13, 2008 2:06 AM

saudi men are arrogant swine.

Posted by: callmeinfidel at May 13, 2008 7:56 PM

"The Sarmatians had women fighting alongside men in battle and among some tribes a virgin was required to slay an enemy before being allowed to marry."
Posted by: RBLA

Very interesting piece of cultural history. Good Lord! Can you imagine if Western women possessing such courage and acting on their own behalf were to take on Islam?

Posted by: Eastview at May 13, 2008 10:57 PM