Posted on 04/03/2005 12:03:55 PM PDT by quidnunc
A quarter-century ago, author Bat Ye'or set out to debunk the myth that Jews and other non-Muslim minorities enjoyed a golden age of freedom while living in countries under the sway of Islam.
Her ground-breaking book, Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, shined a spotlight on the plight of those who found themselves under Muslim rule. But after several other works that also focused on the concept of the dhimmi — the word used by Muslims to describe those who lived as their legal inferiors — the author has expanded her focus.
For Ye'or (a pen name), the question is no longer one of correcting the historical record about supposed golden ages of interfaith relations. Writing at a time of resurgent Islamic fundamentalism that embraces the concept of jihad, she sees the dhimmis as no longer just the marginalized non-Muslims living in Arab countries. Her main concern today is how contemporary Europe is itself being transformed into a dhimmi nation.
The result of her work on this question is a new book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, and those who wonder about the future of what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is fond of calling "old Europe" would do well to consult this dense, scholarly work.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
I wonder if I should start selling "THIS IS A GUN-FREE HOME" signs to the Europeans? That and some Peace Signs, and they'll be fine, I'm touchy-feely sure.
Fortunately, it's no longer the 1820s. Would that the Islamists were aware of that fact.
Look, the Moslem world isn't as backward as most folks imagine. After all, Saudi Arabia, the last holdout, did abolish slavery in the 1950s. The US, in contrast, abolished slavery in the 1860s, only 90 years before.
Hope you didn't miss it!
In America, until well into the 19th century, women had property rights very similar to those of women today under Islamic law. An unmarried, divorced or widowed woman could own property. She could even manage it herself, although doing so was often awkward, more for social reasons than legal ones.
A married woman was legally subsumed in her husband, as the two became "one flesh." The ownership of property she brought into the marriage might remain hers legally, if a marriage contract so specified, but almost always its management was legally up to her husband.
In America at the time, just as in Islam today, women were often brutalized or frightened into giving up their property rights. Or the legal system often did a poor job of protecting them. Didn't mean they did not have the rights, just that they were not infrequently ignored.
Historically speaking, there is little odd about property rights for women under Islam. What is unusual are the restrictions on their personal freedom of movement.
Yes, when it comes to "movement", today's women in the stricter Islamic societies find themselves in roughly the same predicament common in Western Europe in the late 1300s and early 1400s, or in Southern Europe as recently as 1960.
The logical problem is thus: what good does it do to say that they had rights, if the rights were ignored? It's meaningless. At least we, fortunately, have moved beyond that. And I would disagree with you that women were brutalized or frightened into giving up their rights too often in the America of the 1820s, as a close study of court records shows. Divorcing wives received child support and spousal support as well as fair property settlements. Such things were astonishingly common in an age which we think of as being pre-divorce. Women even in the eighteenth century were the successful proprietresses of their own businesses. You may be thinking of English law, which continued to be pretty unenlightened on the subject of women's property rights for much longer.
Divorce in the period you mention was rare, limited pretty much to the upper classes and generally granted only when one of the parties had engaged in really egregious behavior, in which case it is not surprising that the wife was awarded such settlements as an expression of society's disapproval of the husband's actions.
FWIW, Islamic law also generally requires a property settlement for a divorced wife, although the husband always retains custody of the children.
Perhaps the most appalling aspect of Islamic law for women is the ease and informality of divorce for the husband and its impossibility for the wife. American law has, I believe, always treated the genders the same in this regard, at least in theory.
I say "in theory" because a great many men will be glad to tell you at length about how the deck is stacked against them in divorce court. A good example of how "fair and equal" laws are not always applied fairly and equally in practice.
Actually, no. I was amazed, when reading the court records of nineteenth-century midwestern America, to find out just how often divorce took place. I always believed, as I think most people do, that people back then hardly ever got divorced. That was true in England, where women usually lost custody if there was a divorce. But the midwest of America was astonishingly open about such things, and the frequency of divorce was really pretty high. Grounds were similar to those seen today. There is nothing new under the sun.
You have any statistics? I'm interested. Can't effectively debate you on this topic because my previous posts have been based on general impressions, not actual research. However, I am aware that western states were generally much more egalitarian in their awarding of rights to women.
I also thought it was very interesting that so many of the early pioneers of Texas, and presumably other frontiers, were married but had abandoned their wives back in the States. Which didn't stop them marrying again without the formality of a divorce.
By the way, I haven't really been thinking of this as a debate, more as a discussion with each of us having some different information to contribute to advancing our mutual understanding of the topic.
Look, this same sort of dispute came up when we had our discussions of the special cameras to catch red-light runners. There were people in here who were positively certain they should be allowed to run redlights since it was a Natural Right (and every other argument).
The point is that to stay on topic a reference to who may drive vehicles on the public roads probably isn't going to work.
That is, if you wish to stay on topic. You saw how readily I could take the thread off on something else. Lots of folks here can do that.
In Kentucky you had to be able to outshoot your spouse.
I'll tell you, some of these court records from 1862 are hilarious. They sound exactly like an episode of Jerry Springer. "You be a ho, bitch!" "You skank, you tellin' me I a ho? You a ho! You leave my babydaddy alone, skank!" etc. etc.
Interesting answers. You mentioned my point about where rights come from but did not address it. You did not address dhimmitude, the rights of 'the inferior' citizens in ME culture at all, or even the broader topic of the Arabization of Europe. You then patted yourself on the back mistakenly for being able to draw the conversation off topic, although I stuck to it and brought it back.
In doing all of this you further made my point of the lengths that people would go to to justify things. The funny thing is that you never really added anything to the conversation one way or the other. At first I thought you were simply trying to play devil's advocate, but I guess not.
This was a great mystery for years until my sister-in-law realized that coming at the end of the meeting it obviously meant "So Dismissed", just that the clerk couldn't spell!
All you had to do was put your thumbprint in the membership book at the local mosque and that was it. Now that didn't make you free since you still lived in a dictatorship (as have most of humanity for most of history), but they quit bothering you about the special taxes.
With respect to the Arabization of Europe, they could do worse, and have.
Thanks for your graciousness. Too often those with specialized knowledge around here use it to beat up those with a more generalized background who dare to comment on their specialty.
I believe my comments on the prevalence of divorce in the 19th century are generally accepted, which of course does not mean they're accurate.
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