In National Review this morning I discuss how David Horowitz and I came to be the leaders of the feminist movement.
Feminist Katha Pollitt of The Nation blog boldly heralded last month “A Campaign to Stop Stoning” to protest the ongoing practice of stoning in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and in particular the sentencing of two sisters, Zohreh and Azar Kabiri, who were recently sentenced to be stoned to death for “adultery.”
Indeed, it is a remarkable initiative. And to whom should the credit go for this landmark shift in feminist gaze from the perceived ills of American society, to the oppression of women in the Islamic world? Perhaps, to an article published by frontpagemag.com just four days before Pollitt unveiled her protest of stoning: “Two Women Stoned: Feminists Mum,” by David Horowitz, Janet Levy, and me.
Of course, the Horowitz Freedom Center didn’t become the ideological vanguard of the American feminist movement overnight. The controversy began last October with the Center’s first Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, during which we protested the silence of feminists over the oppression of women in Islam on campuses all over the country,. The week included organized sit-ins at a dozen Women’s Studies Departments to protest the absence of courses and department-sponsored events confronting the issue, and brought national discussion and debate to the matter. Pollitt responded by attacking David Horowitz in The Nation, quoting Columbia University anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod’s assertion that “the Islamofascist Awareness people aren’t interested in what’s actually going on in the Muslim world. They just use the woman question as an easy way to target Muslims.”
Read it all, over at NRO.