It’s not often that I sort of agree with Laurie Penny. It’s not often that I say that the words of an outspoken socialist are sort of correct, she is, but probably in a way that she didn’t mean.
In a tweet seen by the blogger David Thompson, Laurie Penny stated that there is ‘a war on women’s bodies’ and there are more important things than ‘fanny shaving’.
There IS a war on women and women’s bodies but it is not being carried out by the ‘capitalists’ or ‘the Man’ or a shadowy cabal of conservative Christians, or any one of the standard Left wing political targets that she normally goes for, this war on women is being carried out by the men who control the Islamic world.
Penny was right about the fact that women are oppressed but isn’t speaking out about where this oppression is coming from.
The conservative Front Page Mag has a report (see pdf link here and below) by the anti Jihadist Robert Spencer and the highly respected feminist Phylis Chesler, on the position of women in the Islamic world, and it doesn’t make comforting reading.
The report, published by the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, details some of the horrors that women who have the misfortune to be born into or live in bearded savage Islamic cultures. It also goes into the growing phenomena of Islamic rapists attacking women.
The report in its introduction says:
“DID YOU KNOW THAT:
• A Muslim man in Iran cut off his 7-year-old daughter’s head
because he suspected she had been raped by her uncle?1
• Many little Muslim girls have their genitals cut out – without anesthesia – in order to destroy their sexuality and
make them “pure”? 2
• Daughter and wife-beating are routine in the Muslim world.
Over 90 percent of Pakistani wives, for instance, have been
struck, beaten, or abused sexually – for offenses like cooking
an unsatisfactory meal, or for failing to give birth to a male
child?3
• In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine years old, and in
an Afghan refugee camp virtually all the girls over second
grade were married?4
• Women who are raped in Muslim countries often end up
being punished while the rapist gets off free?5
• All a man has to do to divorce his wife is say, “I divorce
you” three times – and then she is a single woman without
support and without her children, who are usually taken by
the father?6
These facts show that the war we’re fighting isn’t just about
bombs and hijacked airliners. It’s also about the oppression of 6 7
women — often in horrific ways. Nor is this oppression an incidental byproduct of terrorism. The Islamic law – Sharia – that
terrorists are fighting to impose upon the world mandates institutionalized discrimination against women. Islamic gender
apartheid goes far beyond second class citizenship. It is intended to crush and subordinate women.”
This highly detailed and well researched report outlines all the various ways that women are oppressed in Islam, from being killed because they were raped, forced marriage, genital mutilation and sexual and domestic slavery.
I’d definitely recommend reading the report, it makes not only sobering reading but is excellent ammunition for use against Islamic apologists or lefty fellow travellers.
It galls me to say it but Penny, you got it right this time, it’s just that the groups you may think are the enemy of women’s freedom are not, it is the hateful gender apartheid of Islam that is women’s enemy at this time.
Fanny shaving should not be the feminist story of the day, it should be those women, not always in ‘far away countries of which we know little’, who are beaten, raped, mutilated, oppressed and murdered. Penny is right in a way, it is a scandal that so much feminist time and effort appears to be spent on ‘first world problems’, when others of the sisterhood are crying out for assistance and justice.
Links
Pamphlet on oppression of women in the Islamic world.
http://frontpagemag.com/upload/pamphlets/ViolentOpp.pdf
David Thompson’s site with the post where I got the Laurie Penny quote.
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2012/10/still-more-agonies-of-the-left.html#more
