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Strange Bedfellows
The Daily Oklahoman
September 6, 1995
EDITORIAL

CONSERVATIVES and Christian family values advocates have an unusual ally at the Beijing World Conference on Women: Islam.

While the Muslim viewpoint on issues is seldom extolled in this space, it is not possible to remain silent on this. Muslims want greater emphasis “on family, spiritual and religious values in determining, evaluating and improving the status of women in society” and other changes in the conference platform, according to a letter from the Muslim World League to Gertrude Mongella, secretary-general of the conference.
Like the American conservatives and Christian groups attending the conference, the Muslims believe that bedfellows should be male-female - and married. Saleha S. Mahmood, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in London, says the 121-page platform draft carries a “hidden agenda” that is anti-male and biased against strengthening traditional families.

The conference, which formally opened this week, is a sham that will cost millions of dollars just so anti-traditionalists can stroke each other and feel good about the progress they are making. But these women, which include Hillary Clinton, do not represent a mainstream viewpoint in either Oklahoma City or Tehran. They only represent themselves.

Feminists will be quick to point out that repression of women is a problem in several of the Islamic societies. That is certainly true.

But if repression is the real problem, why have such a meeting in one of the most oppressive lands on earth? The real feminist criticism of Islam is that even in its most contemporary branches, women fill traditional roles. And, in much of the world, many woman are comfortable with that - a fact which Hillary & Co. refuse to accept.

Millions of women celebrate being wives and mothers and reject the notion that every woman should have a career. Islam upholds the much older notion that the female role in reproduction and in protection and care of children is paramount.

According to a Reuters News Agency dispatch, Egypt’s most influential Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, believes the women’s conference contradicts religion and seeks to destroy the family.

We agree. While women have every right to be more than wives and mothers, those who chose to be solely wives and mothers should be esteemed. The United States should not have sent any delegation to this stupid conference, much less one headed by First Careerist Hillary Clinton.

Her decision to go was the best propaganda stroke Red China has been given in a long time. And China, remember, is the place where women are more repressed than just about anywhere else in the world.