@5128gap
I am with you with preferring people of principles compared to opportunists, but again, the principles guiding gender or religious extremists are geared against women.
And regarding your attitude to faith, I think you extrapolate based on our secular and liberal western identity and worldview. But that’s not how they think or view the world. Western civilisation is not perfect but it went through a few radical evolutions that make us who we are today:
Reformation brought us the right to criticise religious institutions and freedom of faith.
The French Revolution, the enlightenment, the human rights declaration, brought the essential notions that all are equal in front of the law, irregardless of their social status, origin, family, etc. and that the law and the state shall supersede religion, and that individuals have the right to think and speak freely.
Suffragettes and women’s rights fought to extend these rights and liberties to women, granting them equality, autonomy, and independence from men.
That is what makes Western societies secular and improved women’s situation. No country in the Muslim world has gone through similar (bar Turkey).
For them, Islam is not just a spirituality, a personal journey, it’s still a political and social vision that dictates that everything must bend to its rule and domination, above law, state, other affiliation or differing view.
And this type of conservative, aggressive Muslim practice that is prevalent these days is not even a traditional or an historical one. To get to the throne in Saudi Arabia, the royal family made a pact with the Wahhabists in the start of the 20th century. Their vision is way more conservative, strict and supremacist than what Islam used to be. And with the help of oil income since the 70s, they spent a lot of money funding mosques and radical imams all over the world, slowly taking over most Muslim countries and migrant communities and imposing their extremist views.
Most Muslim people are not that radical, but they re not allowed to criticise their religion or any fanatic who says they speak in the name of the religion, they are not even allowed to leave the religion to be able to criticise it (Google apostasy). So, you cannot expect for Islam to internally evolve, take on constructive criticism, or accept to progressively blend itself with the other faiths, or to accept the supremacy of a state or a legal system.
That s the problem. It’s not a phobia, it’s not racism, it’s an incompatibility based on obscurantism. I am all for freedom of expression, but that doesn’t mean accepting that people want to go back to the Middle Ages and say « that’s great, you do you ». 1/ because obscurantism is a step back, always 2/ because they don’t want to live their lives and let me live mine, their goal is to impose their obscurantism on everyone. Especially these pesky women.