Posted on 11/01/2006 3:50:00 PM PST by MadIvan
All the debate about Muslims and the veil has centred around women. What should they wear and how should they wear it? Perhaps it’s time we looked at what the veil tells us about Muslim men.
The Koran is little help. The verse cited in support of women wearing headscarves or veils is hardly specific: “And say to the believing women to cast down their eyes, and guard their private parts, and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward.” Islamic scholars have argued ever since about what precisely that means.
The presumption, though, is that immodest dress, however defined, will inflame men’s lust. But more extreme Muslim clerics suggest also that if it does, it is the woman who is to blame. Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, the Mufti of Australia, recently preached: “If you take uncovered meat and place it outside . . . and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Unsurprisingly, this has led to a furore in Australia, with moderate Muslims speaking out against the Mufti, who finally agreed to take leave from preaching this week after suffering a minor heart attack. For, coming soon after several particularly nasty cases of gang rape by young Muslim men in Australia, the sheikh’s sermon seemed to be absolving the attackers from responsibility.
In the Sydney case to which he was referring, the 18-year-old victim was raped 25 times by up to 14 men. She hadn’t been walking, skimpily dressed, down a dark alley at 3am. She had been sitting on a train, wearing her best suit for a job interview and reading The Great Gatsby. Yet the rapists still called her a “slut” and an “Aussie pig”.
Of course only a minuscule fraction of Muslim men are rapists; the rest are upright, law-abiding citizens. But the premise of the dress code is still that men’s impulses cannot be controlled unless women hide themselves. Why should not Muslim men start to take more responsibility for their sexual desires, rather than expecting women to dress absurdly modestly, lest the sight of a bare arm or even a lock of hair should lead them to uncontrollable sexual urges?
The Mufti also preached that, in adultery, “Responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement.” Can’t the man be expected to resist the enticement? And what if he entices her?
If it were true that human beings were incapable of reining in their sexual desires, then men should dress modestly, too — otherwise we women would be tempted to jump on men in T-shirts or even those not wearing hats. That is what the Victorians believed: both men and women were covered head to toe for the sake of modesty.
It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.
No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s sermon — when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.
The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For it’s not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.
What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here. For Aishah Azmi, the Dewsbury classroom assistant, to refuse to uncover her face to a class of young children is as culturally insensitive as it would be for me to walk through a Middle Eastern souk in a pair of shorts.
It takes time for cultural change to take its course. I don’t blame Muslim men who were brought up in more traditional countries, such as Pakistan, for holding traditional views about women’s garb. But it is incumbent on the next generation, born and brought up here, to re-examine their parents’ prejudices in the context of this country’s values.
Young British Muslim men, surrounded by respectably dressed non-Muslim women who do not feel it necessary to cover their hair or swathe themselves in shapeless black cloth, ought to realise that such a society can exist without horrific levels of sexual predation. After all, in head-covering Pakistan, according to its Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.
Whose fault is that?
Good....then I shall enjoy debating you.
....although I think we may be surprised about some of the conclusions we arrive at; I'm guessing that they will be quite similar.
This article made me wonder what the rates of rape are in Paris. We hear about the car burning and the attacks on the police and other public service officers, but nothing about attacks on women.
Time for a new weapon... The names Colt or Winchester comes to mind...
Time for a new weapon... The names Colt or Winchester comes to mind...
I don't have to act "Christ-like" because I'm not Christian. I'm more of a non-religious, agnostic-scientific-animist-polytheist, thus freeing me from the whole "turn the other cheek" thing.
I believe in beating the enemy into absolute submission, dictating terms of surrender, and then, and only then I can befriend the defeated foe.
Nice try on the guilt trip, though.
Shame on you. You heathen.
How bout this then:
Knock it off all of you. You aren't acting very Boyscout-like.
Here are a few related articles:
Sexual assault is rampant in France's crumbling housing projects. Now a gang-rape victim has broken the silence. Will society confront the crisis?
Since 1999, rapes within the banlieue have increased by 15% to 20% every year.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2002/1202/crime/bellil.htm
The 18 male accused are said to have shared the girl around for a series of forced sex acts carried out in public toilets or the basements of blocks of flats.
Sociologists say such gang rapes are relatively common among gangs of immigrant teenagers from rundown suburbs around Paris.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200209/s677752.htm
France in shock over gang rape
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/europe/1456204.stm
In November we reported how Fadel Amara's charity organised a march for a young Muslim woman, 19-year old Chahrazad Belayni, who was deliberately set on fire by a Muslim male whose sexual advances she had rejected, on November 13. The Moroccan girl was set on fire in the street, received burns over 60% of her body, and, according to the Times today, she still remains in a coma.
The Times also reported that on Friday (31 March), a trial detailed another similar attack from a Parisian suburb. Jamal Derrar is accused of burning to death a 17 year old girl, Sohane Benziane in 2002, in Vitry-Sur-Seine. She broke his order to stay away from "his territory", and the trial heard that he poured petrol over the girl's head, before he pulled out a cigarette lighter. He flicked it alight and extinguished it several times to reduce her to tears before he immolated her.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/001868.html
Rack all knowning Freeper
HEY IVAN I think what Islam is I hear this on Law and order bunch of men who are scare of women
Its a sin to fail to pick food debris from their teeth after they eat, but it OK to rape.
As soon as I find anything about that, I'll post it.
Regards, Ivan
The thing is, they do not choose modesty.
In many cases if they do not dress in this way at the very least they will draw the condemnation of their families and their neighbours.
They are forced to dress this way in order to escape such problems.
Hold me back!! ;^)
(Fixed it for both of ya! ;^)
Like this one?
NIV Judges 4:14-21
15. At Barak's advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot.
16. But Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.
17. Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there were friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite.
18. Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, "Come, my lord, come right in. Don't be afraid." So he entered her tent, and she put a covering over him.
19. "I'm thirsty," he said. "Please give me some water." She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.
20. "Stand in the doorway of the tent," he told her. "If someone comes by and asks you, `Is anyone here?' say `No.'"
21. But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.
LOL!
I've always found one-handed sex to be less than completely satisfying.
And rape is not about sex anyway, it's about violence and power. these men are taught that they are made to have power--vast, unchecked power--over women, and that the power becomes absolute if she is "immodest" in any way.
Every woman in the West should be able to get concealed carry. Y'all are going to need it if things keep going the way they are.
In Islam, everyone except martyrs does time in Hell before reaching paradise, and getting into paradise eventually depends solely on belief in the Pillars. So, you get cooked no matter how good you are, you get into paradise no matter how bad you are, and you only get to skip the big burn if you die battling infidels. Not much of an incentive to be good...
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