Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Silent Plight of Muslim Girls

If there is any area on which modern day liberalism is not willing to compromise its beliefs in order to appease the worst excesses of radical Islam, I have yet to find it. The staunchest defenders of human rights are oddly silent about the most eggregious human rights violations facing Muslims, mainly women and children. To the extent that ANY of them speak about barbaric practices such as female genital mutilation...it is usually to defend such practices.


One of the most grissly recent stories to fit this model is the tale of Yasser Abdul Said who murdered his daughters Amina and Sarah for offending his honor. No stories on DailyKos or DemocraticUnderground. And in a search on yahoo, google, and even ask.com, the first 40 stories are all from right wing blogs, usually linking either to JihadWatch and Robert Spencer, or to Phyllis Chesler. This is a case of TRUE theocratic religious zealots murdering their daughters for impure sexuality (real or imagined) and for religious reasons...yet, there is silence.


As Chesler reports:


[B]ased on extensive interviews that I have done with the female relatives of the murdered Texas teenagers, it is clear that:


a) Amina and Sarah were expected to wear headscarves. Their failure to do so, their “hidden” lives as normal American teenagers, doomed them.


b) Amina and Sarah were expected to enter into arranged marriages against their will to much older Egyptian men whom they had never met. Their refusal to do so doomed them.


c) Amina and Sarah were expected to keep quiet about the horrific sexual, physical, and psychological abuse which was heaped upon them by their father, mother, and brother. Their failure to do so doomed them.


d) Amina and Sarah were not supposed to have “boyfriends.” At the very least, their friends, both male and female, were not supposed to be Christians. The fact that they were friendly with Christian male teenagers doomed them.


e) Amina and Sarah were supposed to learn to hate America and to choose Shari’a law. Their failure to do so doomed them.


These are only some of the “rules” that Amina and Sarah were expected to obey. One of my informants has quoted their brother Islam, who often stalked his sisters, as saying: “They knew the rules. They broke them.” Islam is saying that it is their fault that his father had to kill them.


Thus, whenever you see a woman in a face veil, headscarf, or burqa, it is very likely that these rules also apply to her.


Western feminists, who leap to defend the poor and downtrodden female from having to unfairly look at ultrasounds of their unborn fetus, report to their parents that they need to travel across state lines to have an abortion at the age of 12, or have a 15 cent an hour wage difference from their male counterparts...are shockingly silent about the execution of two beautiful young women by their zealot father for not conforming to his expectations of their lives.


The charge of racism to anyone who brings up such issues is not only irresponsible...it is silly. How is it racist to try and defend women and children of color or minority faith? All those who would defend "the Muslim community against such slander" is defend behaviors that lead to the deaths of young women the world over in such "honor killings". It's just a shame that some would rather play victim politics than save lives. That those who would defend western women from the rather minor inconvenience of a wage disparity would not stand up for their sisters who are being executed by a very real patriarchy is a terrible dereliction of duty. And that some would actually defend a patriarchy responsible for such attrocities is disgusting and pathetic.

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