"The Trouble is the West"

[Monkeytrousers]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.link

So basically what I am saying is that feminism should take up this debate and forget non-issues like pay inequity in the boardroom ()

i think from a feminist point of view it is worrying. Obviously all religions have had their problems with women's rights. But women have fought hard to secure their rights in Western religions. The whole 'submit to the will of God'idea, rather than having dialogue with God is potentially problematic. But again perhaps I don't know enough about it.

I quite agree that Shariah law (at least as it is applied in states like Iran, Saudi, Nigeria and so on) is just vile, and has an awful effect on the women who live there. I just don't think that it is likely to be instituted in the UK in any of our (or our children's) lifetimes. However, I do think that it is a legitimate campaigning target for feminists.

'Honour' killing is, again, abhorrent - but is not exclusive to Islam.

Male violence against women occurs in all cultures, all of the time. We live in a society in which rapists can be around 95 per cent confident that they will never be punished, no matter how many times they use extreme levels of violence against women. Some people from other cultures might reasonably say that we have a problem with institutional misogyny.

Also, I really don't think that Yugoslavia stands up as a comparison. It was a tremendously fragile society held together by a totalitarian regime, and - like many of the states in Eastern Europe - it was always going to struggle to maintain its nationhood in the post-Soviet era. My post about Western European nations was referring to nations this side of the Danube, I guess.

Its funny how my position has changed so much on this since last year, when I defended moderate Islam, but knew I was sidestepping the feminist issues when doing that, based on the fact that I was ignorant of many things so didn?t want to judge based on that ignorance. I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt.

I still want to be cautious, as the ?divide and concur? strategy is something political extremists of every creed are adept at, but also think that the statistics on the systematic subjugation of women in Islamic cultures are too great to ignore.

Male violence does occur in all societies, but is restricted in law in many - this is not the case in Islamic societies - women are the possessions of their husbands - often bartered (even if they submit to this) and live a life of restriction, in particular with regards to birth control. Many are illiterate, even in diasphoric communities where indigenous females enjoy a right to education. The more communities are closeted, the more women and children are closeted within them, and without any choice; arguably the totem of contemporary feminism?

Western feminism has ignored these women for too long I think. And also it will take a movement like feminist, one cemented in political stuggle and (even though direct action does occur) one formally opposed to war like, non political action. Women could be the voice of reason in the midst of all this stag rutting?

only read op but islam as far as i can see is sexist extremism given the green light

Yugoslavia might be a bad example ? I dunno. When all out war occurs though, the shit hits the fan, is the point I wanted to make.

And I think the discussion we are having on the abortion threat aptly demonstrates that we do not have a problem with institutional misogyny at all! The government, by supporting this bill, is showing quite the opposite, IMHO.

Sorry, it's monkeyt btw

doh, abortion thread not threat!

Getting way OT now, but the institutional misogyny point was because of something I read about Catherine McKinnon (?sp), US anti-porn campaigner. She argues that because our legal system is almost exclusively the product of male thinking, in the case of crimes like rape, in which you have only the instigator and the victim but rarely any other witnesses, the presumption of innocence means that the rapist will walk free in most cases. Her argument was that a legal system that had grown out of a female-dominated culture would almost certainly approach rape cases in a different way.

The question of feminism and Islam is an interesting one I think. There are lots of feminist Muslims who say that they reject Western feminism because it tends to be secular, and to prize sexual disinhibition. As a western feminist, for example, I can't come to terms with veiling - I understand the arguments for it (from a safety/modesty point of view), but I just disagree with them. However, if the goal is to get women in Muslim societies to be more free, Muslim feminists might have more success than Western feminists.

I suppose, for me, the question is: what works? How might these woman-hating societies be reformed? This was the main reason that I supported the invasion of Afghanistan - I thought that anything that got rid of the Taliban would be worth it.

That is really interesting, as I am just referencing McKinnon in an essay on this very point, if with a slightly different context (too late to get into tonight!)

I think the argument from 'misogyny' is tricky - I actually don't think most men 'hate' women, but via ideology (and/or religion) the control of women and their fertility can be framed in terms of 'distrusing' women - men can never be 100% sure of their paternity where women can always be sure of their maternity when it comes to kids - hence women need to be watched and controlled to make a man surer, iyswim?

The veil and other things enshrined in Islam, are developed to perform these in sevice to men. Any freedom of women is challenged because women as inately 'untrustworthy' is drummed in from a very early age by the mullah's.

I don't think women are privy to what is preached in the mosque - other than by hearsay - anyone?

Yugoslavia worked pretty well and was a form of socialism that encourage free enterprise. Religion was not recognised but not really repressed, certainly by the 70's people were practising their religions freely. The problems were deep, historical ethnic issues - resentments that had been initiated centuries before, all to do with land ownership. Bosnia was an appalling tragedy and the initiators were most definitely the Serbs [Army and govt] Kosovo was a little more complicated. people in the former Yugoslavia that I talk to do not think it is unthinkable that in years to come a similar stand off situation could occur in the West.

I just got her book 'The Caged Virgin' this morning. There is an extract here

I wonder how many Muslim women would actually be allowed to read this openly?

I do see your point MT, but I suppose I've been infected by cultural relativism to an extent - if a sharp, articulate Muslim woman says that it is her choice to wear the veil, and that she feels empowered by doing so, then who am I to tell her that she is repressed? I think that for a lot of well-educated, politicized Muslim women in the West, the veil has become a symbol of non-compliance with what they perceive to be an anti-Islamic society. These women will not respond well to conventional Western feminists insisting that they are wrong, and that their religion is inherently chauvinist (although I personally think that all religions are inherently chauvinist, or at least the big monotheistic religions).

Of course, Muslim women in the Middle East, or in tribal societies, are deeply repressed - but again, I think that that has as much to do with the nature of those societies as it has to do with their religions. Women living in poverty are repressed throughout the developing world.

Have you read McKinnon? Is there anything you'd recommend to a beginner?

I think you are right - but I also think that these women would understand that their choice is another woman's obligation or 'fard'. Wearing Hijab is an obligation for instance, not a choice at all, though many moderate female muslims can choose, most cannot and are punished if they try to assert any choice in the matter.

The moderates wearing veil's for political reasons are actually legitimising the forced exploitation of women who are forced to wear the veil, cover up and remain indoors.

yes, I think it's also important to remember that while an educated western woman may freely choose to wear the veil (and I fully support her right to do so), this is not always the case - Cassandra makes an important point.

I think it's really dangerous to assume that Western institutions and culture are so embedded that with a certain combination of conditions and people, they couldn't be swept away like any other seemingly permanent systems. I just typed out the firsts couple of paragraphs of Alan Bullock's biog of Hitler and for some reason it didn't post it so I can't be arsed to post it again, but basically what he was saying, was that the world into which Hitler was born looked incredibly stable and permanent. The Hapsburgs had ruled central Europe for centuries, they'd outlasted Napoleon, the French Revolution, the Ottoman attacks, the 1860's uprisings etc., and looked as if they were there forever. Any system can be brought down with the right combination of conditions and people.

Yes, accept the point that for a lot of women, the veil is not a choice. I suppose my beef with Hirsi Ali (although I'd like to reiterate that I admire her a lot as well) is that she extrapolates wildly - she seems to base her arguments on deeply conservative Islam only.

I don't believe that Western European society is impregnable and could never be brought down, but I don't believe that fundamentalist Islam is a strong enough force to achieve such a thing. And, of course, the thing about Hitler is that he was defeated, and Enlightenment values won out. (I do like that Bullock biography though.)

I think she thinks all Islam is conservative; if it isn't, it isn't Islam. And that those who say they are moderate yet do not speak out against fundamentalism, as just as much to blame as the fundamentalists.

But saying that, you have to be very brave to speak out - but it is more possible in the West than in Islamic states, where you would be imprisoned or killed.

It's a dilemma - and why there has been a massive and recent spurt of rationalist athiest books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkns and Chris Hitchens, to name three. They are all apparently rational responses to the realness of the threat.

There was a programme on Channel 4 recently about converts from Islam to Christianity in the UK who fear for their lives. I know that there is a cultural cross-over, but it seems inadequate to say that the tricky bits are 'cultural'.

Yes, but it is hard to tease apart what is cultural and what is religious.

Female circumsision is always cited as being cultural by those wanting to defend Islam, yet for many it is also the justification for their right to perform it on young girls - often by the women around them, grandmothers, mothers...who went through the same processes and so perpetuate it

religion and culture are hugely entwined. esp in fundamentalist religious states, but everywhere else too.

have to admit, i have real trouble 'getting' religion at all and i tend to agree with PW's point about all of them being a touch on the misogynistic side.

i read Hirsi Alis book. what a woman. was v interesting, and surprising too.