by Jerome du Bois
In Arabic, the word fitna means both civil disorder and beautiful woman.
. . . it is a culture in which shame and honor play decisive roles and in which the debasement of women is paramount. -- Phyllis Chesler paraphrasing Dr. Nancy Kobrin
We had a recent dustup in the comments for Islam is Anathema Now. It was pretty tiresome and depressing. I called people names. And they me. This is no apology; I reaffirm here every damn word. You can go read the thread, but I've already gleaned what I consider the most important shakeout: those guys -- yes, they're all men, four of them -- can barely bring themselves to write the words "woman" or "women," much less discuss adult Muslim males' prepubescent fear of women.
I kept saying that it's about women -- my whole objection to Islam is because of its thoroughgoing, deep-seated, and structurally necessary misogyny, which is stultifying the lives and minds, and murdering the souls, of hundreds of millions of people, male and female. And these guys kept avoiding or minimizing half the human species. I pointed the most vicious of these commenters, a psychotwist named Justin, to my wife Catherine King's "Sheela's Burka," which had been right over there on the sidebar for most of this debate. Part of his reply:
I had a look at your "Sheela's Burka" piece. What's your point? Have I ever denied there to be sexism in the middle east?
First, it isn't my piece, turkey, Catherine King made it. Says right there. It's a tell that you avoid even the mention of her. It also says right there, in boldface, what the point is: Islam stinks. Islam stinks because of the way it treats women -- like filth. "Sexism" is a bandaid word to apply to a life of slavery, humiliation, and mutilation.
(Justin cannot reply here. As I have already told him, I will delete any comments he makes. Unfair? Yes. Don't like it? Boo-hoo. Go yell at me on your own blog, if you can figure out how to start one. I'll be here. Ping me. Am I rude? Somebody's feelings are hurt? Gosh, haven't you noticed? These are mortal stakes. Heads are rolling. Watch yours or get out of the way.)
It's also notable, at least to me, that "Sheela's Burka," prominent and provocative and right there when one logs on, drew no fire whatsoever. No mention from any readers. Here are these angry guys huffing and puffing about Edward Said's moss-backed and paranoid Orientalism, attacking me in the comments, and all the while Sheela's rebuking them. But . . . What Sheela? Where?
Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, in "Behind Mubarak," exhibited similar myopia right after 9/11, when he went around Cairo interviewing various prominent religious figures. From his first paragraph:
. . . On Friday, September 21, [2001] I arrived at the [Mustafa Mahmoud] mosque just the first worshippers were making their way there, and the egalitarianism that is one of the great virtues of the Muslim prayer service was evident: they were dark-skinned and light, rich and poor; one man drove up in a blue Jaguar; others, wearing grease-stained galabiyas and crude sandals, came on foot, or by donkey cart. (Women, as is customary, prayed apart, in another, smaller hall.)
As K said to J in Men in Black: "Anything about that seem unyoooosual to you?" (Egalitarianism, for those unfamiliar with the term, means "a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic rights and privileges.")
Mr. Goldberg mentions women once more in his article -- he doesn't interview a single one -- referring to Muslim objections to Western open sexuality. Otherwise, women were literally parenthetical to his article.
(His article appears in the new, essential anthology edited by the peerless Ron Rosenbaum, Those Who Forget The Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism.)
Daniel Pipes, last month in Frontpage magazine online:
The entire Muslim social structure can be understood as containing female sexuality. It goes to great lengths to separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. This explains such customs as the covering of women’s faces and the separation of women’s residential quarters (the harem) [in the past]. Many other institutions serve to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a male’s permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce.
Sexual apprehensions constitute a key reason for Islam’s trauma in the modern era.
Men throughout history developed terrifying visions about women, such as the femme fatale, the vagina dentata, Sheela, and Amazons. In societies of law, where boys have regular contact with women -- mothers, sisters, classmates -- and access to information -- they outgrow such terror. Muslim men, isolated, separate, and kept ignorant because their elders have had balls like raisins for centuries, have refined fear of women into a pervasive social terror of an unpredictable and persistent demon. They cannot just be equal people, side by side, face to face, working life out. A woman can't just be a human being. No, the men must act out their psychopathic drama.
The Sheik's New Clothes: the Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Suicide Terrorism, forthcoming from Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Yoram Schweitzer, will shed much-needed light on this overwhelming fear.
Muslim women don't get a pass from me, by the way. You like the way it is, stay there, sister. To the others: You allow it to happen. Stand up. You may die. They died on Omaha Beach, they died in Okinawa, and they're dying in Baghdad. This is the way the world changes sometimes.
I know from testimonies of women in the Western world: when you are backed into a corner, and he's advancing with the lighter and lighter fluid, there's no place to go but forward, fists, teeth, legs, and feet, until you prevail or you die. Or you sit there, whimper, and burn. What are you going to do?
I know one thing: Muslim women won't get any help from hmohsen, Todd, Justin, or Burnett. (Don't bother commenting, guys. You had plenty of opportunity to speak up for women unequivocally, which is the only important thing you could have said.) And those last three aren't even Muslims. Even if, for example, the mutawwai'n burned fifteen more Saudi schoolgirls to death, what do you think they'd say after the usual platitudes -- hey, it's their society, it's neither better nor worse, just different.
Dhimmis, living life on their knees.
Posted by Jerome at June 26, 2004 06:45 PM | TrackBack