Posted on 01/04/2005 9:04:54 PM PST by Catholic54321
"US Latinas seek answers in Islam," heralds a recent feature article in The Christian Science Monitor (December 27). "Some young US Latinas say Islam offers women more respect," reports the paper's contributor Christine Armario. She quotes a head-scarved immigrant convert as saying that Muslim men "don't look at you like a sex object." According to Ms. Armario's account, "Many of the Latina converts say that their belief that women are treated better in Islam was a significant factor in converting."
The report mentions in passing the skepticism that these conversions sometimes elicit in the Latino community, but then goes on to quote in extenso one Leila Ahmed, "a professor of women's studies and religion at Harvard University," who discounts any doubts as misplaced. "It astounds me, the extent to which people think Afghanistan and the Taliban represent women and Islam," Professor Ahmed is quoted as saying;
"What's really going on, she says, is a reshaping of the relationship between women and Islam. 'We're in the early stages of a major rethinking of Islam that will open Islam for women. [Muslim scholars] are rereading the core texts of Islam—from the Koran to legal texts—in every possible way.' New views of women and Islam may be more prevalent in countries like the US, where women read the Koran themselves and rely less on patriarchal interpretations.
"What is really going on" is nothing of the kind. To start with, no mainstream "Muslim scholar" is allowed to "re-read" the Kuran "in every possible" or any other way. As Allah's direct and unadulterated word, the Kuran cannot be subjected to textual analysis and critical evaluation. (Professor Ahmed is well aware of this, of course, but as a Muslim she is not only justified but also expected to lie to the infidel; they call this practice taqiyya, and have perfected the art over the past 13 centuries.) Muhammad's followers believe that Allah's revelation is complete, untainted by human intervention, and not open to critical "re-reading" when it declares that "Men are in charge of women because Allah has made the one of them excel the other" (Kuran, 4:34). Those Muslims who dare "re-read the Koran," like Sudanese theologian Mahmud Muhammad Taha, risk death. Taha's attempts at "re-reading" made him guilty of apostasy; he was publicly hanged in Khartoum in 1985 at the age of 76. His death confirmed that, like all totalitarian ideologies, Islam has an inherent tendency to the closing of the mind. The spirit of critical inquiry essential to the growth of knowledge has always been and still is completely alien to it.
Professor Ahmed's stated astonishment at "the extent to which people think Afghanistan and the Taliban represent women and Islam" is equally disingenuous. It is contradicted by this official U.S. government account of the contemporary life in one of the most affluent Muslim countries in the world and a presumed ally of the United States:
"The testimony of one man equals that of two women . . . Female parties to court proceedings such as divorce and family law cases generally must deputize male relatives to speak on their behalf . . . Women play no formal role in government and politics and are actively discouraged from doing so . . . The government does not keep statistics on spousal abuse or other forms of violence against women, [which] appear to be common problems. Hospital workers report that many women are admitted for treatment of injuries that apparently result from spousal violence . . . Women are not admitted to a hospital for medical treatment without the consent of a male relative. By law and custom, women may not undertake domestic or foreign travel alone . . . In public a woman is expected to wear an abaya (a black garment that covers the entire body) and to cover her head and face? Daughters receive half the inheritance awarded to their brothers? Women must demonstrate legally specified grounds for divorce, but men may divorce without giving cause? If divorced or widowed, a woman may keep her children until the age of 7 for boys, 9 for girls."
The above is not a quote from a history book describing conditions in medieval Arabia; it comes from the U.S. Department of State, and concerns daily life in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Country Report on Human Rights Practices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for 2000). It also tells us that women must not drive cars, and must not be driven, except by an employee, or husband, or a close relative—and even then must not occupy the front seat. In addition, the Report says, divorced or widowed foreign women are prevented from visiting their children. The authorities monitor any gathering of persons, especially women, and disperse women found in public places, such as restaurants. Women may not accept jobs if there are no adult male relatives present with whom they may reside and who agree to take responsibility for them. Once they do get to work, all contact with male supervisors or client is generally allowed only by telephone or fax machine.
With the exception of the reference to cars, phones, and faxes, all these stipulations are legally and therefore morally impeccable in Islam. Apologetics and propaganda notwithstanding, the original sources—the Kuran and Hadith—provide ample and detailed evidence on Islamic ideology, theory, and subsequent Shari'a practice regarding the role and rights of women. That practice is the norm in most of the Islamic world today. A judge in Pakistan thus sentenced a young woman to death for "adultery" by stoning after she had been raped by her husband's brother (New York Times (May 17, 2002). The woman had accused her brother-in-law of raping her and this was a confession to her "having intercourse outside of marriage," which is punishable by death (4:15).
In the Kuran the men are superior (2:228). "Your wives are as a soil to be cultivated unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will" (2:223). Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more strength than the other, and "the righteous women are devoutly obedient." Those that are not inhabit the nether regions of hell, because "they are not thankful to their husbands" (Sahih of Al-Bukhari, Vol. 7, p. 96). In this life the disobedient wives are to be beaten (4:34). No "re-reading:" is taking place in any authoritative circles: the most respected contemporary body of Islamic scholars, at Cairo's Azhar University, insist that if "the woman is of a cold and stubborn type, the Qur'an bestows on man the right to straighten her out by way of punishment and beating, provided he does not break her bones nor shed blood." Many a wife belongs to "this querulous type," Azhar scholars add, "and requires this sort of punishment to bring her to her senses." The College of Law at the University of Qatar concurs: a husband faced with a rebellious wife "hastens to bring mutual understanding . . . by the scourging which deters (Ahmad Ahmad, The Individual Guarantee in the Islamic Law, p. 63).
Physical violence against wives, far from being a crime, remains divinely ordained and routinely advised in modern Islam. Muslim activists in the West "explain" that the Islamic teaching and practice on beating wives is in line with the latest achievements of clinical psychology. It is positively beneficial to them because "women's rebelliousness (nushuz) is a medical condition" based either on her masochistic delight in being beaten and tortured, or sadistic desire to hurt and dominate her husband. Either way,
"such a woman has no remedy except removing her spikes and destroying her weapon by which she dominates. This weapon of the woman is her femininity. But the other woman who delights in submission and being beaten, then beating is her remedy. So the Qur'anic command: 'banish them to their couches, and beat them' agrees with the latest psychological findings in understanding the rebellious woman. This is one of the scientific miracles of the Qur'an, because it sums up volumes of the science of psychology about rebellious women" (The Australian Minaret, Australian Federation of the Islamic Councils, November 1980, p.10).
One can only feel pity for the young Latinas who convert to Islam partly because they think that Muslim men "don't look at you like a sex object." In fact violence against women and rape as the ultimate form of their sexual objectivization are inherent to Islam, and remain endemic in Islamic societies. Perhaps the most degrading image of women conjured by Muhammad is that of lovely girls in afterlife, submissive slaves ("restrained," i.e. chained) "whom no man has touched," whose sole purpose is to provide physical gratification of men: "In Paradise there is a pavilion made of a single hollow pearl sixty miles wide, in each corner there are wives who will not see those in the other corners; and the believers will visit and enjoy them" (55:70,72,74).
While condemning the pagan Arab practice of burying unwanted newborn girls alive, the Kuran also acknowledges the lesser worth of daughters:
"And when any of them is given the good tidings of a girl, his face is darkened and he chokes inwardly, as he hides him from the people because of the evil of the good tidings that have been given unto him, whether he shall preserve it in humiliation, or trample it into the dust" (16:48, 59).
Adjusted people would value all children equally, regardless of gender, and Allah's preference for sons cannot portend anything good. The boys' special status and codified superiority indicate that their purpose is in the fulfillment of the needs of the father, which explicitly denies an attitude of nurturing towards the child. The Law of Inheritance accordingly dictates that a son gets double the inheritance of a daughter; and in Islamic courts a man's witness is worth twice that of a woman's (2:282). Al-Ghazali, to this day regarded as one of the greatest Muslim scholars of all time, states that Allah has punished women in eighteen ways, including physical functions (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and divinely ordained handicaps: lesser share in inheritances, liability for divorce but inability to initiate divorce, seclusion, exclusion from many religious rituals and ceremonies, and disqualification for positions as rulers and judges.
Islamic marriage does not envisage any consent from the bride if she is still under paternal control: Abu Bakr, Muhammad's friend, thus wed him to his daughter, Aisha, when she was six; the actual consummation of that "marriage" took place when she was nine, and Muhammad 54. Islamic marriage does not produce any community of property between husband and wife, and the wife is permanently dependent on the support of her husband. That support may be withdrawn in case of disobedience.
To the outright divine command of every wife's obedience to her husband, Muhammad has added a few comments of his own. When asked who among women is the best, he replied: "She who gives pleasure to him (husband) when he looks, obeys him when he bids, and who does not oppose him regarding herself and her riches fearing his displeasure" (Mishkat I, p. 216). As for the "rights" of women, even in basic necessities the needs of the husband take precedence: "You shall give her food when you have taken your food, you shall clothe her when you have clothed yourself, you shall not slap her on the face, nor revile (her), nor leave (her) alone, except within the house" (Mishkat I, p. 212).
The husband's sexual needs have to be satisfied immediately and unquestioningly: "When a man calls his wife to his bed, and she does not respond, the One Who is in the heaven is displeased with her until he is pleased with her . . . When a man invites his wife to his bed and she does not come, and he (the husband) spends the night being angry with her, the angels curse her until morning" (Sahih Muslim II, p. 723). This is consistent with the consensus of Islamic scholars that "sexual intercourse is an action, and the woman does not act," and that her pleasure in the sexual act is to give pleasure to her husband.
In our own time, General Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan for many years, had reintroduced discriminatory legislation reducing women's rights to one-half those of men when they sign business contracts. Some women's groups protested that the new law "insulted women and debased their dignity." Dr. Aly Farrukha, Director of Islamic Studies in Chicago, replied: "The issue of a woman's testimony in court is a divine order which necessitates that a woman who is a witness should be accompanied by another woman in order to remind her if she forgets (some details) and to correct her if she makes an error. This verdict does not intend to insult women, but rather to help them" (The League of the Islamic World, February/March, 1985, p. 17).
In addition to all other deficiencies, the woman has no fewer than ten 'awrat, shameful orifices including, or resembling, her external genitals: "Ali reported to the Prophet, saying: 'Women have ten 'awrat. When she gets married, the husband covers one, and when she dies the grave covers the ten" (Kanz-el-'Ummal, Vol. 22, Hadith No. 858). Furthermore, according to a "faultless" hadith, not only does the woman have ten 'awrat, she is seen as one herself: "The woman is 'awrat. When she goes outside (the house), the devil welcomes her" (Ihy'a 'Uloum ed-Din by Ghazali, Beirut, Vol II, Kitab Adab al-Nikah, p. 65). Covering all orifices with a veil is not meant to preserve the chastity of women, but that of men prone to be scandalized by the spectacle. Muhammad accordingly forbade women to talk except by leave of their husbands, to go out except in emergency (and on Bairam), to use the middle of the road, to be greeted, or to greet. The fire-worshipper, the Jew, and the pig are listed alongside the woman as things that corrupt prayer.
The volumes of the Hadith mention violent scenes between Ali and Fatima, Muhammad's daughter. At times he forgot himself to the point of ill-treating this ailing woman, forcing her to take refuge in her father's house. When faced with these delicate situations, whether Ali or Uthman, Fatima or Ruqayya were concerned, he ordered his daughters "to comply with their husbands' moods." He declared, "If I were to order anybody to make a prostration to anybody, I would have ordered a woman to prostrate before her husband" (Mishkat I, p. 210). This adage goes beyond a slave acknowledging her master; it resembles that of creator and creature, and borders on heresy on the Kuran's own terms, since worship belongs to God alone. Nevertheless, a mortal man is elevated to an almost divine plane when the destiny of his wife is at stake: her disobedience to him is unlawful, while her obedience is the key to eternal bliss: "Whosoever female dies while her husband is pleased with her will enter Paradise" (Mishkat I, "Duties of husband and wife," Hadith No. ii, 60). Muhammad also warned women: "Watch how you treat your husband, for he is your Paradise and your Hell."
Small wonder then that, in Muhammad's view, it is a noble sacrifice for men to share his life with women, creatures utterly deficient in mind, religion, and gratitude, and unable to repay the favor. Muhammad's example was followed by the early caliphs. The second, Umar, ordered Muslims to prevent the women from learning to write. Ali, Muhammad's devoted son-in-law and the fourth caliph, said that women are evil: "Men, never ever obey your women. Never let them advise you on any matter concerning your daily life." According to Ali, they have three qualities worthy of an unbeliever: they complain of being oppressed when in fact it is they who oppress; they take solemn oaths and at the same time lie; they make a show of refusing the advances of men when, in fact, they long for them ardently.
In short, the woman is not a worthy and equal companion of man. Her deficiency in intelligence and religion render her unable to engage in discussion of lofty ideas, even if her husband were foolish enough to approve of any such attempt. One of Muhammad's widows, his favorite, A'isha, complained to the caliphs and companions: "You have put us on the same level with a donkey and a dog." Her words were prompted by Muhammad's verdict that if a man's prayer was disrupted by the passing of a donkey, a dog, or a woman in front of him, his prayer was not acceptable, and he had to perform ablution again and repeat his prayer.
In Islam, divorce is undesirable but lawful and easy to obtain. The husband can divorce his wife by simply saying so three times, but a woman cannot divorce her husband unless she has his permission to do so. She can get a judicial dissolution of marriage for neglect, ill-treatment, or positive cruelty (A. Guillaume, Islam, p. 174). A man may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part, or without assigning any cause, and it is valid even if a man is acting under compulsion, if his words are uttered in sport or jest, or by a mere slip of the tongue (T.P. Hughes, Dictionary of Islam). The husband may even say to himself, without announcing his intent to the wife: "If this thing does not happen, my wife is divorced by three"—and if "the thing" comes to pass, the wife finds herself divorced for reasons entirely unknown to her.
In our own time Arab press is full of family tragedies caused by the frivolous treatment of divorce in Islam, and the courts are overloaded with thousands of divorce suits that mean the eviction of children and wives who are helpless and dependent on their former husbands. By contrast, they may not seek divorce but only judicial annulment, on the grounds of the husband's physical sexual deficiency, mutilation, or malfunction prior to marriage; of evident madness and leprosy; impotence, for which a year of probation can be granted by the judge; or a husband's "vow" not to have intercourse with his wife for four months.
No marriage is valid without the payment of a dowry. The significance of its payment—sometimes in the form of a mere token—for the sexual use of the woman is rooted in the Kuran (4:24). This is confirmed by Muhammad's ruling that a man who wanted to divorce his new bride, who turned out not to be a virgin but pregnant from previous adultery, still owed her the dowry: "He separated the two, commanded that the woman be flogged, and said to the man, 'The baby will be your slave'" (Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Nikah"). Since the implications of the sexual rights secured by the payment of dowry extend to children of a previous marriage, the husband has the right to prevent his wife from looking after children, including infants, from her former husband. In any event, man is the privileged party in all cases of custody of the children. Their mother may be awarded temporary custody until the age of seven (for boys) or nine (for girls), provided she is of good character and does not leave the abode of the husband, does not remarry, and preserves sound morals.
"The wife," of course, designates any one of up to four of them (a limitation to which the Prophet himself was not subjected), as the Kuran sanctions polygamy: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four. But if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly [with them], then only one, or [a captive] that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing unjustly" (4:3). Ghazali's justification for polygamy is simple: "Some men have such a compelling sexual desire that one woman is not sufficient to protect them [from adultery]. Such men therefore preferably marry more than one woman and may have up to four wives."
If they want to get rid of them, the Kuran does not present a problem: "If you wish to exchange one wife for another and you have given unto one of them a sum of money, take nothing from it." The rule was practiced by Muhammad's successors and companions. Muhammad's second successor, Umar, married seven women in the course of his life, in addition to having two maid-slaves, Fakhiyya and Lahiyya, as concubines. Uthman was wed to eight women. Once he was widowed, Ali ibn Abi Talib—to whom Muhammad denied permission to marry a second wife beside his own daughter Fatima—married 10 wives and permanently maintained 19 concubines and maid-slaves for a total of 29 women. Muhammad's grandson Hasan ibn Ali, of whom Muhammad said that he is the master of the youth of paradise, during the course of his life married up to 70 women and had at least 31 children. Sometimes he used to divorce two women in a day. Even his father urged the residents of Iraq not to marry their daughters to him because he was a man who constantly divorced his wives, but the Kufa's people continued to marry their daughters to him, hoping that they would bear children descended from the Prophet. "It is no sin for you if you divorce women," the Kuran says, provided the dowry is repaid and suitable parting gifts presented (2:236). Tedium of matrimony or simple carnal desire for another woman necessitated divorcing one to marry the other if the family budget could not accommodate both. The revered companions and the rightly guided caliphs provided the example.
If multi-matrimonial bliss provides insufficient diversity, Muslim men are free to have sex with their slave girls to their heart's content. According to Bukhari, Muhammad sometimes had sex with all his wives in one night, and at that time he had nine wives, and he once said of himself that he had been given the power of forty men (Sahih of Al-Bukhari, vol. 7, Hadith No. 142. Also vol. 1, Hadith No.268). Nevertheless, he enjoyed the obligatory services of his Coptic slave Mary better than the charms and favors of all his wives.
Modern Islamic scholars argue for the practice of polygamy on scriptural grounds as well as for practical reasons. Sheikh Taysir Al-Tamimi, former acting head of the Palestinian Authority's Shari'a Judicial System, had this to say, "To those who demand equality and whine about women's rights: By permitting polygamy, Islam protects the woman's humanity and emotions, secures her right to marry, and gain honor and esteem, instead of becoming a professional paramour lacking in rights, whose children are thrown onto the garbage heap" (Al-Quds, March 8, 2001). Qatari Sheikh Walid bin Hadi set out the different rationales for polygamy—barrenness, demographic inequality, preventing adultery, and increasing the birth rate—but, as he explained, in the final analysis every man has his own reasons: "The Prophet said: Do not ask a husband why he beats his wife . . . Do not ask a husband why he takes a second wife" (Al-Rai (Qatar), January 5, 2002, quoted by www.memri.com). Dr. Muhammad Al-Masir, a cleric from Egypt's Al-Azhar University, defends polygamy in the name of women's rights: "In the days of the Prophet, not even one woman remained without a husband—not a spinster, nor a widow, nor a divorcee . . . I ask our women and daughters not to be egotistical" (This remark seems to presume the needs of a society engaged in eternal jihad, both in terms of caring for widows and for keeping as many women as possible in the production of future fighting men).
"The wife" could also be a concubine, or legally paid prostitute. The institution of temporary, contractual marriage—degrading to women no less than to the institution of "marriage"—was proclaimed lawful by Muhammad "for three nights" or more. It could be contracted for money, or a dress. The "husband" could desert the "wife," leaving her without any rights or obligations vis-à-vis any possible offspring. The soldiers of Islam in the field welcomed the revelation:
"We used to participate in holy battles led by Allah's Apostle and we had no wives with us. At that time, he allowed us to marry women with a temporary contract and recited to us this verse, 'Oh you who believe, make not unlawful the good things which Allah has made lawful for you'" (5:87).
By approving polygamy or temporary "marriage," Islam denies the value of true marriage, based on exclusive, devoted love and rooted in the natural (and scriptural) notion of family. Monogamy alone gives recognition, status, and value to a woman, as well as to the husband and their offspring. In a polygamist society there is no centralized family nucleus. There are many children, and every group of children rotates not around the father but around the mother. When a Muslim man takes another woman, she does not live with the former wife and her husband but in another house or tent, and there she raises her children. The husband may visit her once a week or once a month. If she is out of favor, her children will seldom meet, let alone play with, their father. In the polygamist society, the father is perceived as an absence. Instead of the father figure essential to normal development, there is a void, from Ishmael to Muhammad to Bin Laden, who was one of fifteen children by one of his father's ten wives.
Islamic dogma, tradition, and practice are the foundation of a coherent and consistent outlook that has generated its own reality, visible in each and every traditionally Muslim country and in the transplanted centers of the Islamic diaspora in the West. Khaled Fouad Allam of the University of Trieste calls that "schizophrenia of the contemporary Muslim society, with signs of modernization in externals, with women doctors and lawyers, and, at the same time, deep-rooted structures that seek to apply Islamic law to civil rights in Muslim countries." The latter are self-congratulatory about Islam's treatment of women, even in their pitch to the West, claiming that "the Islamic system has achieved the right mixture of freedom and security that women seek and that is in the interest of the society as a whole":
"The regulations for the protection of women which were revealed in the seventh century can be easily verified by anyone in the twentieth century . . . [and] contain certain fundamental truths which will benefit whoever applies them. The present time of widespread rethinking of the role and rights of women is perhaps the appropriate time to look with fresh eyes at the Islamic point of view, which has contributed to the formation of stable societies in both sophisticated and underdeveloped peoples in vast areas of the world over the past fourteen centuries, which has retained the continuity of its principles, and from which the Western world may have something to learn" (www.jamaat.org/islam/WomanIslam.html).
For one-half of all Muslims living in those "stable societies," a tenth of the humanity, in early puberty Purdah falls and "the rest of her life was going to be spent in that void where time was without meaning" (V.S. Naipaul, Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, N.Y., Random House, 1998). For those unwilling to submit, the punishment may be death, even if they are of royal blood: that was the fate of a Saudi princess and her boyfriend. Both were executed for adultery when they returned to their native land from Britain, where they had a romantic liaison as students. (When ATV in Britain and PBS in the US were about to air a documentary based on this tragedy, "Death of a Princess," the British Foreign Office, the State Department, the Saudi royal family, and the oil interests jointly exerted pressure to cancel the show (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/us)).
The relegation of women to such an inferior position deprives Islamic societies of the talents and energies of half its people. As Bernard Lewis has warned, it also entrusts the other half's crucial early years of upbringing to undereducated and downtrodden mothers. The idea of "love" is removed from those men's understanding of sexuality, which is too often reduced to hurting others by violence. Gross mutilation of little girls, known as clitorectomy and rampant in Muslim Africa, and to a lesser extent in Arabia, is the direct result of a culture that deems female orgasm as indecent and threatening, because it implies mutuality. It reflects a gigantic rupture that Islam develops between men and women, where no harmony, affection, or equality is allowed to exist:
"In relationships between men, meanwhile, affection, solidarity, and empathy are left out of the picture. They threaten the hyper-masculine order. It is excruciating to imagine the sexual confusion, humiliation, and repression that evolve in the mindsets of males in this culture. But it is no surprise that many of these males find their only avenue for gratification in the act of humiliating the foreign "enemy," whose masculinity must be violated at all costs as theirs once was. Violating the masculinity of the enemy necessitates the dishing out of severe violence against him. In the recent terrorist strikes, therefore, violence against Americans served as a much-needed release of the terrorists' bottled-up sexual rage. Moreover, it served as a desperate and pathological testament of the re-masculinization of their emasculated selves" (J. Glazov, "The Sexual Rage Behind Islamic Terror," www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/glazov/glazov10-04-01.htm).
Mass murderers are often found to have histories of sexual abuse as children; Muslim terrorists are no exception. Unlike their lone Western counterparts, however, the abuse of which they are the victims is systemic, and inherent to their societies. They are victimized by virtue of growing up and living in a dysfunctional culture of sexual repression and misogyny, where "love" is reduced to violent domination and its rejection reflects a deep-seated fear of individuality.
The treatment of women might be expected to disqualify Islam from the contemporary post-Christian establishment's point of view, to which The Christian Science Monitor belongs, but this has not happened. There is a reason for this. It is the failure of Islam to recognize, let alone support, the wife as her husband's closest and inseparable lover and partner, his life-long companion. Islam challenges Christian marriage in principle and in practice, and Muslim teaching on marriage and the family, though conservative about "patriarchy," undermines the traditional Western concept of matrimony. Paradoxically, Islam thus comes close to the contemporary, post-Christian ideology that relativizes "marriage" and "family."
By subjecting themselves to Islam in ever growing numbers, Amero-Indian women ("Latinas") are proving their assimilability into the post-Christian, post-civilized milieu to which they have migrated. Their souls would have been in a much better shape had they remained in their native villages. It is for their sake, too, that the ongoing migratory deluge across our southern border should be first halted and then reversed.
[Muslim scholars] are rereading the core texts of Islam—from the Koran to legal texts—in every possible way.'
Hmmm, must be learning from U.S. judges as they reread and reinterpret the Constitution.
Well, I can think of some feminists who need a good spanking, but the more one reads about the Islamic vision of life and the afterlife, the closer it looks to a place Satan would offer to his loyal (male) adherents.
Unless they're accused of adultery. Then there's no defense regardless....
well that was an uplifting read :(
I hope this gives some freepers pause to think next time they issue a blanket condemnation of feminism, forgetting that not all types of feminism are about killing babies and lesbianism (happens way too often on this site). True feminism is sorely needed in many places around the world, as this article demonstrates.
That's why women have to be covered up all the time in public in Muslim countries. Muslim men would otherwise lapse into a state of sexual hysteria at the site of the forbidden flesh, becoming animals with no will of their own, who's only impulse is fornication. OK, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. :)
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