I’m getting a headache from the tsunami of blogs, articles and tweets concerning the abuse of women in Canada and the USA. Misogyny! Yet when it comes to the abuse of women in the vast majority of countries in the world, flogging, disfigurement, stoning,hanging in the public square, rape, laws turning 9 year old girls into brides -pedophilia anywhere else in the world-the silence is deafening.
I remember the reaction to the release of the Honor Diaries. The film was made to reveal the cultures that force women into marriage, ascribe to honor killings, (being killed for the sake of the “honour” of the family) and female genital mutilation. These behaviours are often found in Muslim countries. The revelations made by the women in the film were attacked even though these women had first had firsthand experience with this type of abuse. Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at the College of Staten Island spent five months as a young bride imprisoned in a Muslim compound. Hirsi Ali, executive producer has written and spoken extensively about the abuse of women under Islamic rule and was been raked over the coals, especially by that liberal bastion-Brandeis.
The film was banned in Detroit. What happened to free speech in America? And it received negative feedback-accusations of Islamophobia.
Feminist LindaSarsour, civic engagement coordinator for the National Network for Arab American Communities in an interview with Al Jazeera said “even though some of the film’s featured activists may be well-intentioned,” the documentary equated violence again women with Islam. She added “We don’t need Islamophobes to talk to us and tell the stories of oppressed and abused Muslim women, it’s just disingenuous.” It would be disingenuous if the women in the movie had no personal experience. But it is disingenuous that one equates the revelation of abuse amongst Muslim women with an attack on Islam.
The depth of silence by today’s so-called feminists is breath-taking. Where are Judith Butler, Lisa Duggan, Naomi Klein and Judy Rebick? It took a long time for women in the West to obtain equal rights yet we are in a place and time when feminists can speak up and yet they have turned their backs on their sisters, the vast majority of whom are not the privileged white.
According to 192nd meeting of The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) “Any woman that exercises her will is haram(categorically forbidden), absolutely haraam, and is conspiring against Islam and the Ummah, whereas those women who are totally subservient can reach the status of being makrooh (really disliked). Such is the generosity of our ideology and such is the endeavour of Muslim men like us who are the true torchbearers of gender equality.” (emphasis mine)
National Post columnist Robert Fulford reported that Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving? doesn’t think the veil oppresses women any more than “the tyranny of fashion” in the West, that these women don’t need to be saved, their situation satisfies them.He wrote she implied that emancipation, equality and rights are particular interests of the West, not so significant elsewhere.
The feminist cultural relativists in the West have taken this to heart. They are silent on the abuses these women face while they attack those who speak on behalf of traditional family life like Phyllis Schlafly.
It seems speaking up on behalf of women who happen to be Muslim has become politically incorrect; a sign of intolerance in the West. It’s time to take a look at the danger of tolerance, which Canadian author Howard Rotberg called “Tolerism” in a book by the same name. Although he was talking about the undermining of Western culture by extreme tolerance, one can say that extreme tolerance is exacerbating the abuse of women around the world.
Dr. Chesler told me last April, “Tolerating the intolerance, embracing intolerance as a politically correct choice will lead to the death of many women globally and eventually to the death of all that is best about Western civilization.”
We have been inundated with pictures of misogyny in Pakistan, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei, Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia. Yet we continue todeny the weakest amongst us, women and girls, the right to be heard and protected. We are allowing our tolerance to tolerate the harshest misogyny.
