In my experience, some feminists are far quicker to talk about misogyny or abuse when it's removed to another culture/religion
That certainly hasn't been my experience. The Guardian (among other progressive rags) said sweet FA during the 15 years that as many as 1400 girls as young as 12 yo, were systematically tortured and gang raped by Muslim men there. Despite it's high-profile/paid feminist writers, their pull out sections dedicated to Women / Society and all despite all of their Pious posturing, it was actually the right-wing 'Times' who actually sparked the inquiry into what was happening in Rotherham. Take MN, a thread was started recently about yet another of these Muslim rape gangs recently uncovered in Calderdale Yorkshire. I think it attracted 3 posts. Mention Ched Evans or Brock Turner's names though and you'll be inundated with outrage, bile, condemnation. Even people saying how much they hope they get raped themselves in jail!!! Or start a thread about a sexist remark made by a man at work today, or allege there are sexist lyrics in a decades old pop song and you'll get pages and pages of posts, letters written to MP's and petitions will be organised.
I feel really uncomfortable with these threads because they veer towards the 'these pre-medieval cultures/religions with their forced marriages, abuse, FGM and other barbaric stuff the backwards bastards' which is playing into the hands of the far right.
I know you care and are well meaning, that comes through very clearly in your posts. I would ask you though to consider the position of MP Ann Cryer, who said she had feared being called “racist” when, in 2002, she exposed a sex-abuse scandal involving Pakistani men in her constituency of Keighley, West Yorkshire. “The politically correct Left just saw it as racism”, she said. Also Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, also revealed that even now some of his colleagues disapproved of his efforts to uncover child abuse by Muslim gangs, because some were “obsessing about multiculturalism”. The responsibility for the sex abuse/robbery attacks carried out by organised gangs of Muslim men in Cologne last NYE has been put on woman's shoulders. The issues are far too important for us to worry about what labels might be thrown at us by the PC left. Or worry about whether we are playing into the hands of racists.
Yes it happens but it disregards the strong, free -thinking men and women in these communities.. Undoubtedly there people exist. However : in the 1930's the majority of German people were peaceful, decent, moderates. Completely disinclined to go to war, commit genocide and bring about fascism. But sadly It was Hitler's Nazi's that drove the agenda, the result – tens of millions dead and the Jewsih holocaust. So the peaceful majority were irrelevant. On 9/11 2001, there were 2.3 million Arab - Muslims in the US, it took just 19 of them, to slaughter almost 3,000 people that day. So for all this talk coming from peaceful, moderate Muslims who are in no way to blame. We have to remember the peace-loving Muslim majority have been made irrelevant by their silence.Like the Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, etc, many have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. We owe it to ourselves to pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics, the rapists and misogynists who threaten us and our way of life. An analogy could be made about the English football hooligans in France a week or 2 ago. There were thousands of fans that were loud but essentially peaceful, out to enjoy themselves, the beer and the football. Sadly it was the minority, the moronic hooligans who will be remembered. Perhaps I missed it, but I would have liked to have seen more anger, condemnation and dissociation of the peaceful fans from this destructive, idiotic minority of thugs who caused so much damage and mayhem. Again the only group that set the agenda is the minority. The question is what can be done, not let's forget and stay silent about it, because they aren't all the same!
And I've worked with 'white British' communities who believe the way you dress, the way you act and the things you have done somehow explain/excuse misogyny or male on female violence Of course there are, but these views are not state and religiously sanctioned as they are in Islam. Also we have human rights laws to protect women from male on female violence.
Feminism is needed everywhere. I think it's needed in the Muslim community but everywhere else too. It's easier to 'other' a group and focus on that because then we don't need to question our attitudes or the attitudes of people we love You can't possibly be suggesting that women in liberal, secular, democratic Western societies, where gender equality is enshrined in law, are in the same level of need as women in Islamic counties? I'll remind you that in Islamic countries, women are forced to cover themselves up and therefore remove their identity from the public sphere or face beatings. as they might offend or 'confuse' men. In the Islamic world, rape is the woman's crime and punishable by men.
In Islamic societies women and men are both told by Imams that if she gets beaten to a pulp by a man she had it coming for not being obedient enough. Islamic attitudes to woman, gay people, freethinkers is appallingly oppressive and its delusional of you to suggest that we here in the West are just as in need of liberation from this.
Finally and I'm sorry for this painfully long post but I am deeply concerned about the influence of Sharia law here in the UK. I reject it and condemn it totally. Not because it's "other" or because I've internalised "Orientalalism" or whatever other codswallop term the so called "Progressives" might come out with. I reject Sharia law as it is barbaric. It is deeply and profoundly misogynistic, homophobic and repressive, for men as well as women and has no place in a liberal, secular society. If you share my concerns check - www.shariawatch.org.uk/