Posted by
stace on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 2:40:44 PM
As a woman who hates hot weather, I often wonder how Islamic women can wear coverings like burkas, chadors, etc. Many of them are required to wear black coverings in a very warm region, and, of course, black absorbs heat. The official reason for wearing such coverings is that women's exposed skin arouses men's sexual frustrations and causes them to sin. If a man were to rape a woman, it is her fault for arousing him by being "indecent." Of course, being a Christian woman, I have to ask the question: why should women be responsible for men's sinful feelings, or worse, their sinful actions? Why are men not responsible for their own sins and their ensuing actions? I would like to ask an Islamic woman who wears a covering to explain to me just how she is responsible for a man's sins and why he is not.
Christianity is better in this regard. Each person is responsible for the sins of their own hearts and for their own sinful actions. Each person must ask forgiveness from a loving God. I am not responsible for some man's lust because I am wearing capris today. No, I'm just trying to stay cool on a fairly warm day in Texas. Christian men can handle this fact without going out and raping somebody. They understand that they are responsible to God and humanity to not act on any animal impulses that may arise in their minds. Western law is predicated on the assumption that men are, indeed, responsible for raping women. Women can actually find justice in the western law traditions. Muslim men, because they are not expected to be responsible for their actions, are not morally responsible for raping a woman. So the woman gets stoned, instead.
If this isn't misogynistic, I don't know what is. But are these Muslim women going to find any support from the feminist community? Of course not; feminists are too worried they might offend someone's culture or they are too stupid to understand that Islamic misogyny has been around for about 1500 years. They see it as a recent "backlash" against women due to evil global capitalism creating a disempowered underclass. Never mind that the only countries in the Middle East that are not kingdoms or dictatorships are Jewish Israel and post-Hussein Iraq. In Afghanistan, another fledgling democracy, women's futures are getting better since girls and women can now go to school.
Feminists, though, see no difference between Islam and Christianity. I quote an ignorant feminist:
It is not coincidental, for example, that fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity both impose restrictions on women. Isn't it interesting that the religious values of keeping women in the home, restricting their movements outside the home, forbidding them birth control, etc., also happen to keep women from competing with men in the workplace?
I know of no Christian woman of any kind who cannot go to school in this capitalist country or who has to ask her husband or other male relative to go with her to Wal-mart, like many Islamic women have to in their home countries. Nor do I know of any Christian woman here who is forced to wear head-to-toe coverings in 90 degree, suffocating heat so as to keep men from raping them, because men can never be held responsible for their lusts. The difference is that, here, in this horrible capitalist country, feminists are safe. It's ok to attack Christianity. Christian men (and women, by the way) won't stone them, or forcibly rape them like Muslim men might, in the name of Allah. Feminists can sit in their ivory towers and dish out any vitriol against Christianity they want with impunity, without fearing for their lives. They are too cowardly to risk their cushy positions to actually try to help women who truly are overpowered by men and the religion they have created.