But of course, he was misunderstood! Isn’t it astounding how complex this all is, how difficult it is for these poor men to make their points clear! From the Copenhagen Post, with thanks to Filtrat:
A group of forty women with immigrant backgrounds reported a Muslim preacher and his religious community to the police on Tuesday, for advocating threatening and discriminating treatment of Muslim women.
The preacher, imam Raed Hleihel, infuriated the nation during a Friday prayer session in February, when he insisted that Muslim girls should cover themselves from head to toe, and that women who use perfume and go to the hairdressers would go to hell.
The women used the opportunity on the International Women’s Day on Tuesday to report the imam and the religious community where he preached to the police.
The women said Hleihel encouraged Muslim men to look down on women, consider them their property, keep them under constant control, and treat them like slaves.
The spokesman for the congregation involved, the Copenhagen’s Islamic Religious Community, Kasem Said Ahmad, said the 40 women had misunderstood Hleihels comments.
‘Every imam has the right to define how women should be protected,’ Ahmad said. ‘We would like to invite the 40 women to a meeting with Raed Hleihel, so that he can explain what he stands for, so that the misunderstanding can be corrected.’
In his sermon, Hleihel told men at the congregation to go home and make sure their wives and daughters draped every inch of their bodies with clothing.
When news broke of the sermon, integration consultants and politicians rallied to denounce it as `medieval’ and `bigoted.’
That may be, but it is in full accord with Islamic tradition. Here is a salient hadith:
Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin [Mother of the Believers]:
Asma, daughter of AbuBakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma’, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands. (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 32, Number 4092)