Via Mona Eltahawy on Twitter – a Saudi writer urges Tweeps to sexually harass women to make them go the hell back home where they belong.
A Saudi writer has urged his Twitter followers to sexually molest women hired to work as cashiers in big grocery stores, the latest backlash from conservatives who want to roll back limited social and economic reforms launched in the world’s leading oil exporter.
Abdullah Mohamed al-Dawood, who writes self-help books including one called The Joy of Life, has stirred fierce debate this week via the internet microblogging service with the use of the hashtag #harass-female-cashiers, to press for Saudi women to be forced to stay at home to protect their chastity.
That’s great, isn’t it? Assault them so that they will stay home to avoid being assaulted. The alternative of course would be to not assault them, which would have the same effect and would allow women to leave home and do things and be useful – but apparently Abdullah Mohamed al-Dawood didn’t think of that.
It’s quite similar to what I get told. (But much worse. Yes I know. It’s much worse. But the logic is the same and the motivation is the same and they both suck. Ok?) If you don’t like being harassed you should just stop writing. Well, that would be one way of dealing with it, but it would mean stopping writing, and I don’t fucking want to. It’s possible that Saudi women, like me, want to choose for themselves whether they go out or stay home, rather than being forced into it by people who torment them.
#harass-female-cashiers #harass-female-bloggers #harass-female-writers
First: #harass-female-cashiers. How blatant do you have to be before Twitter stops evaluating market share? This isn’t free speech, it’s a direct incitement to criminal action (Yes yes, it’s Saudia Arabia, I’m pretty sure they don’t have laws against this, but it should engender some backlash in countries that do.)
Second, from the link:
What the ever-loving fuck? I’m sure I’m missing context, or some such other thing.
And finally:
I highly recommend you continue writing. Said recommendation is worth very little, as you obviously intend to continue doing so. 🙂
Convenient link substantiating the quoted material, which was not provided in linked article. Twitter, like other social media networks, should assume some responsibility for this shit.
Could one of the ‘Islam is no worse than any other religion’ apologists who haunt FTB please provide a comparable example to this latest flourish of jaw-dropping Islamic misogyny?
And by “comparable” I mean something actually comparable in scope and effect. Just throwing out an example is not good enough you need to analyse it and make an argument for substantive similarity (in order to validate your oft-repeated claim that Islam is not uniquely problematic in any fashion).
I will point out to you ahead of time that women have worked public service jobs akin to a modern cashier for centuries in Western and East Asian cultures, so you have a tall order finding evidence to justify an equivalency.
@ Rebekah: I didn’t see much point in getting involved in the other thread, but you must be aware that even in our ever-so-enlightened-Christian-nation we’ve had issues more recent than the crusades. Since you decided to just jump in to a new thread with a continuation of the old, I’ll just express my disdain for your obvious blind spots with a smattering of helpful thoughts. 😛
To expand on that, have you heard of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of the 1970s? You know, that Christian nation that wouldn’t allow women to access financial resources in their own name quite recently? Oh sure, it’s not horribly violent, so it doesn’t count!
I’m sure you’ll come back and argue that this wasn’t explicitly religious and Islam really is the Worst. Thing. Evar. Anyway. To which I’m just going to ask: have you heard the phrase “legitimate rape”? The Hyde Amendment? The attack on Planned Parenthood in the name of Jebus? The Arizona 20-week law? The entire fucking state of North Dakota? Though to be fair, they do have a great public banking system.
At what point do elected and appointed officials assaulting the rights of women in the name of Jesus register on your personal “harm from religion” scale? Why is it necessary to wait for people to die horribly* before you’ll acknowledge that your vendetta against Islam doesn’t appear quite rational?
Oh wait, right. It’s not done in the open, it’s just done via the Magdalene laundries, the child kidnapping scandals, the back-alley abortions, the suicides from child abuse, and well, do we really need to continue this list? As long as it isn’t so fucking reported on, it doesn’t count, right?
For fuck’s sake. I’m starting to think you would only be satisfied with wholesale murder in the name of Christ here and now before you’ll get down off your high horse of “Islam: The Religion Whose Adherents Must Be Denigrated At Every Turn”.
Now, I do feel I should say that of course Islam is bad. It’s also a religion. But then, I had no need to repeat myself. And of course we’re hearing a great deal about Islam these days. And of course the atrocities committed in Islam’s name must be condemned.
In the end, however: fuck you. Christians do immense harm too. They just do it legally, and with minimal press exposure. I know of many women in Kentucky who would love to tell you just how much harm those goddamn asshole Christians do. It’s just not reported.
Funny, that. I wonder why? Maybe it’s non-Muslim religion?
* Oh wait, they do die horribly! But they’re not important, so they don’t get reported on much, do they?
P.S. Where the fuck are you from that you can’t see the harm that Christians do in the United States, but know so much about what Muslims do?
I have a feeling that last comment was a bit intemperate. Ophelia Benson, if this type of comment isn’t welcomed here, I apologize profusely and would have no problem with you “censoring” it. 🙂
Harassment is a tool to keep women in their place, just as rape and sexual assault are. “In their place” meaning NOT in the public square, NOT in business, NOT in politics, NOT anywhere that matters for setting the course of future human endeavors. The only difference between this guy and dudes in Western countries is his honesty.
@PatrickG
Your post exemplifies that intellectually lazy, often incoherent rage on behalf of Islam that we see manifest in leftwing Islam apologists:
So where exactly is this cartoonish strawman arguing Christianity has no problem with misogyny? It is certainly not found in my comments. Christianity has and continues to harm the progress to women’s equality as do many adherents of Judaism. I am simply saying that harm is not comparable to Islam to a present when the evidence is analysed. That observation causes a politicsed rage in people like you.
And Q.E.D. for all your fuming and raging at me, you do not actually present the requested example of Christian misogyny, despite some fairly ugly examples thereof, that is as extreme as denying women public employment, a denial which religious conservatives are willing to enforce by an open campaign of harassment. Of course Saudi Arabia is a nation where girls were forced back into a burning building by the religious police for the sake of “modesty” in recent memory, so you never stood a chance of a comparable Christian crime.
Of course such facts do upset you mightily:
You clearly struggle mightily with the concept of a valid equivalency. For two things to be of equal harm, they need to actually be of equal harm. The a priori conclusion that Islam and Christianity are as bad as one another is just an orthodoxy maintained for political reasons. Muslim terrorists are literally committing “wholesale murder” in Allah’s name with a certain regularity in a wide global pattern centuries. Christians are not, much to your chagrin.
Even the most overt contemporary example of explicitly Christian terrorism, abortion violence, has as I noted on the other thread, claimed six lives in forty years. Six lives too many, but to even compare that to the tens if not hundreds of thousands of victims of Islamic terror over the same period is an utter farce. Other popular ‘Christian terrorists’ like the post-1921 IRA and Timothy McVeigh were not even Christian by their own explicit account, but facts never stopped a religion apologist.
Your further show off your paternalistic need to shield Muslims (i.e. “adherents”) by aggressively shouting down criticism of their religion as some form of ‘bigotry’. Is there any other ideology you shield from critique so fiercely simply for the sake of its allegedly vulnerable adherents? Islam is the second largest religion in world with a billion sincere believers behind it, capable of mobilising worldwide outrage over a cartoon in an obscure Danish newspaper, yet you treat them like some Amazonian tribe in danger of being snuffed out at any moment by my wicked Western criticism.
But I am sure you will return to the comforting teat of the false equivalency. The far left long ago decided that Western guilt was axiomatic and obviously no Islamic crime will ever shock the likes of you or Sally STrange out of that worldview. We simply must be as a bad, evidence be damned.
@SallyStrange
If “[t]he only difference between this guy and dudes in Western countries is his honesty” then why have women been free to work in public occupations (not prestigious or well-paying, but public nonetheless) for centuries in the “Christian’ West, whereas in the cradle of Islam women are strictly regulated in terms of leaving home at all? In fact can you name any non-Muslim society ever in history that restricted women as much as Arabian culture, the root culture of Islam?
While you are right that there are similar desires to keep us in our place as women rooted in Abrahamic patriarchy, it is ludicrous and insulting to the suffering of contemporary Muslim women for a Western woman like you to arrogantly claim a literally equivalent situation. Ophelia carefully worded her comparison to the harassment she faces to avoid that mistake. You obviously feel no compunction in that regard.
I have an easier solution. How about if Al-Dickhead wears a veil covering his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at what offends him.
@ Rebekah the Jew:
The goal is the same: keep women in their place, their place being out of politics, out of business, out of academia, out of the public sphere.
The tools are the same: sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape.
Nowhere did I claim a “literal equivalent” to the situation of a woman living in, say, Saudi Arabia.
Do you always make things up to attribute to your interlocutors to make it easier to pretend to have a point? Oppression Olympics is boring. There are points of similarity and points of difference. I noted the points of similarity. You want to focus on the differences? Go ahead but don’t lie about what I said.
Rebekah: How would you respond to a suggestion that the only reason “Islam is worse” is because there are actual Islamic theocracies (in practice, even in some states where they are not such by law), while by and large, we’ve worked hard to part church and state in the West?
In other words, yes, Islam as practiced in theocratic countries is worse than Christianity as it is practiced in secular countries. But the reason for this has more to do with the secularization than any merit to be had in Christianity. Muslims in the U.S.–especially second- and third-generation–tend to be fairly mainstream and moderate in their views.
This suggests that the problem is not ‘Islam per se”, but rather the states where religion has been given any sort of legislative power. (Note that women also have it much worse in, say, El Salvador than they do in the U.S., largely because of the Catholic Church’s influence.)
WOW, that’s possibly the craziest thing I’ve read all week — some asshole starting a campaign of harassment to force women to stop working as cashiers. al-Dawood is literally such a wingnut that female cashiers threaten his manhood. I guess when your government is a theocracy that forbids women from driving cars, it’s very easy to become a right wing nutter.
Freemage has it right, Rebekah. Neither Christianity nor Judaism is responsible for the relative freedom of women in Western Europe, Israel, the States, Canada, NZ, Australia, and [at least legally] South Africa. Rather, the reason for that freedom is the Enlightenment.
Also, you didn’t ask for a country or society in which women are in the same situation as the women in Saudi. You asked for an action functionally equivalent for calling for the harassment of women cashiers in the hopes that such cashiers would give up on public life and stay home.
Now, I give Judaism more credit than Christianity in creating the culture of questioning that led to women’s current freedoms in the countries referenced above. We have a long history of encouraging questioning and debate, of tikkun olam. But when we ask why on other nights we eating sitting, but tonight reclining, the answer is already written. It’s not like we’re inherently open to new answers.
Which brings me to my examples.
http://jezebel.com/5871293/orthodox-israelis-spit-on-whorish-8+year+old-girl-for-going-to-school
also covered here:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/world/middleeast/israeli-girl-at-center-of-tension-over-religious-extremism.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1369847678-cgus+uLxvYeygQqbg+q0AQ
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/nyregion/shadowy-squads-enforce-modesty-in-hasidic-brooklyn.html?_r=0
You may or may not wish to argue that these jerks are less effective or less influential than al Dawood, but you haven’t
a) established the effectiveness or influence of Dawood and his call
or
b) even asked for such a comparison: you asked for an equivalent action. Telling one’s followers to spit on, injure, and call whorish an 8 year old girl on the way to school, in the hopes that she give up school and retreat from public life into the home is, yes, equivalent to telling one’s followers to sexually harass women cashiers in the hopes that such women cashiers give up on their jobs and retreat from public life into the home.
To sum up: use Freemage as your guide. To compare theocratic islamic states to secular Christian and Jewish states is inappropriate because you’re introducing a new variable: government. Why not compare Nigerian Christianity to Nigerian Islam? South Sudanese Christianity to Sudanese Islam? Then you’d have a better idea of which **religion** is better, and not just whether secularism is better than theocracy.
But I bet
a) you don’t have the expertise to make such comparisons
and
b) it never really occurred to you that it might be news in the States when some guy says, “harass Saudi women!” but it doesn’t make the news when the 12 guys next to him call him an ass and the local paper writes an editorial saying that sexual harassment isn’t something for which one should advocate [aka selection bias, availability bias, & confirmation bias all rolled into one]
and
c) it never really occurred to you to separate the religions from the governments of countries where they are practiced
and
d) it never really occurred to you that “Western” Christianity is not the only-and-one-true Christianity or that the Christianity of Tunisia might have more in common with historic Christianity than the Christianity of Chicago.
I’m not saying Islam is better than or as good as religion X. I’m saying i don’t know nearly enough about the multitude of Judaisms – much less the multitude of Christianities or Hinduisms or animisms or Buddhisms – to make a comparison with any Islam, much less all Islams.
And I’m also saying that I seriously doubt you have that knowledge.
@ Rebekah:
Since this was not my point, and is a dramatic misreading of my position, I’ll stop laughing long enough to just say you’ve really missed the point.
Very slowly then: I do not defend Islam. Adherents of Islam do horrible things. Islam provides a source of justification for some adherents doing horrible things. I don’t want to shield Islam. I’m not actually trying to defend them.
If you could take your blinkers off for just a moment you would notice that the very first two comments in this thread are by me expressly condemning the actions here, and pulling out additional material for blockquote from the linked source.
Then you came in like a self-righteous rhinoceros to declare — once again — that the chip on your shoulder is totally the biggest. I found that irritating, as was your insistence that unless everybody at every turn drops everything to declare that Islam Is The Worst.
It is not a false equivalency to note that the same processes are at root in other religions, despite your laughable claim in the other thread that because Jesus was a man of peace Christianity is somehow “better”.
So modern-day slavery in the name of religion is Just Fine with you? The forcible separation of mothers and children for adoption by others is Not An Example? The stated goals of some Christian movements to specifically roll back the right of women to work, own property, and control their own bodily autonomy is Not UGLY? You know, those are some of the ones I presented.
Due to your lack of reading comprehension skills, I will very slowly say this. I. Am. Not. Asserting. That. These. Things. Are. Of. Equal. Impact. To. Other. Things. I’m saying they’re still important, and you might want to get off your high horse long enough to recognize that.
Here, I’ll illustrate that with your example: of course none of the things I cite approach the sheer horror of forcing women back in a burning building due to modesty concerns. Of course not. I never claimed that. It’s offensive and insulting to suggest that I did.
Get a grip and learn to read for content.
Also, I can’t help but note the attitude of projection. He’s asking men to sexually harass women… in order to protect their chastity. So the women work, which makes them too sexy, and he wants to protect them from sexuality… by sexually harassing them. Is it some kind of fundamental confusion between the self and the other that makes wingnuts think in this paradoxical way?
@ Atheist:
Interesting point, trying to think through it.
Their chastity isn’t just tied up in being sexy (i.e. present) at work. It’s also tied up in being bound to the home as chattel for reproductive and housecleaning services. And of course, being chaste means not exposing men to dreaded temptation.
Thus, sexual harassment isn’t actually a violation of their chastity, it’s the natural consequence of them not being chastely homebound. He just wants it to be a bit more organized?
Don’t know, best I can do. It seems to have some twisted internal logic to it, but I’m sure I’m missing a great deal.
@freemage
So far so good, why would I dispute that analysis? You are admitting that Islam is in fact worse in reality. That is all I am trying to get people to admit, which is shocking difficult for a 99% secularist/agnostic/atheist commentariat.
However, you continued…
Where did I say Christianity had any “merit”? I recall saying it was still an impediment to women’s equality, but not that it had any virtues of note. I fully realise that the state of the ‘Christian’ West is a product of the Enlightenment, which is why I am a humanist.
People in general seem to struggle mightily with the concept of condemning two different things to two different different degrees. Our polarised political ethos leads to a lot of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend thinking’ which explains a lot of the leftwing defensiveness about Islam.
Sorry but that is a totally unsupported conclusion. Islam has several issues that may explain the deeper roots of religion into the political structure, starting with the fact Mohammed himself wielded both religious and political authority (unlike Jesus, Buddha, etc. , even Moses had Aaron). Then there is the concept of the Caliphate, which has again dominated Islamic views on governance since the earliest period of Islam. Then there is the death penalty for apostasy. I could go on, but the point is Islam has aspects that make it substantively different than Christianity and other religions. Until you examine those in detail a conclusion that it is not “Islam per se” when you otherwise admit the situation in Islamic societies is far worse is not warranted.
I do appreciate your polite, on point response.
@Crip Dyke
Since I never claimed the progress was rooted in Christianity and nothing I said would give you a basis for even the assumption that was my view, you waste a lot of words thrashing that straw(wo)man.
Effective conversation rests on generalisations. You deliberately paralyse yourself with worry about the “multitude” so that you do not actually have to say anything of substance that might offend someone or reach a politically untenable conclusion. One reason i like Ophelia Benson is that she rejects exactly that sort of stultifying postmodernist nonsense.
@PatrickG
Let me remind you that you chose to respond to me when addressed in no way by me. If you see yourself reflected in criticism of “one of the ‘Islam is no worse than any other religion’ apologists who haunt FTB ” then that is completely your decision to take umbrage (or in your case seething rage).
Yet when I show the sheer absurdity, even callousness of that view in the harsh light of evidence, you are first forced to back track and admit “none of the things I cite approach….”
So which is it, is Islam worse and you are raging at me in defence of a false equivalency you do not even hold, or do you hold that worldview, but cannot defend it, so you spit your last breath at me as if I am to blame for your reaction?
@SallyStrange
blockquote
Actually you did:
If the “only difference” is in their relative openness in their motives, then there is logically no room left for difference in their actions, making those actions and the situation they create “literally equivalent”. Of course I realised you were engaged in reckless hyperbole and baited you accordingly. Thus I get the retreat I wanted:
By “Oppression Olympics” of course you mean an intellectually honest, evidence-based analysis from the start instead of knowingly peddling a false equivalency, hoping no one calls you out on it.
It is deeply disturbing how people like you have to be cajoled into acknowledging simple truths.
@ Rebekah:
Or, it could be just that I felt you derailed the entire previous thread and you immediately jumped into this one looking to derail it, too? Mission accomplished, btw!
Well, I disagree. Must make me a religious apologist!
I find it useless to generalize to the point of “Islam” and “Christianity”, since as others have noted, these are not monolithic institutions and differ from place to place. Christians in the San Francisco Bay Area are very different from Christians in Uganda. Muslims in Deerborne, Michigan are quite different from Muslims in Bangladesh.
Bluntly: I’m not willing to accept your premise that because you don’t like nuance and data that we must therefore speak in general terms about billions of people. I reject that framework for reasons that have nothing to do with apologia. It’s bad thinking.
I find the question of ISLAM V CHRISTIANITY: THE CAGE MATCH uninteresting. It doesn’t provide a useful way forward. They both do great harm. In some places one does more harm than the other; in others, the reverse. If you want generalities, they even do harm in different ways.
Is a violent mob worse than Warriors for Christ in the US Military? Is that even a useful question? Where does it take us? What illuminating answer can come from it? Why not just say they’re both awful and work to mitigate the harm without all this nonsense of this “BUT ISLAM IS WORSE WHY WON’T YOU JUST SAY IT”.
Again, I think both religions are fucking awful. However, I have no interest in ranking their awfulness, because it’s useless to do so. Matter of opinion, of course. But it doesn’t make me a religious apologist, or a leftwing victim of political correctness.
You really, really hate Islam. That doesn’t mean you’re an apologetic for horrible things Christians have done. Obviously I’m not going to claim that’s your position.
However, I dislike people minimizing the harm done by other religions. And frankly, that’s what I think you’re doing. You’re far more focused on making people agree that ISLAM IS TEH WORSTEST than you are on the actual horrible things happening in the name of multiple religions.
But I won’t call you a Christian apologist for it.
P.S. If that was me spitting my last breath in fury… ha! It’s true, I’m an intemperate blog commenter, but then, that’s a personal style, not something you in particular provoked. You can search for my posts on other topics and you’ll see I’m a ranty/ragey person in general.
Back to the actual subject: I’m not good with that tweeting thing. How many followers does he have? How much action is this hashtag getting?
Sorry for asking for others to do the work… I r no skillzed.
Riding on the underground in NYC a few days ago, I saw two fully dressed and headscarfed women (Muslims for sure I’d say, Watson) with their respective smatphones out and tapping away. Only Allah might know what they were into, since there were no males (relatives or otherwise) with them.
I wonder what Mr al-Dawood would have to say about that situation.
Let’s argue in good faith, so to speak.
Christianity has the death penalty for apostasy. Judaism has the death penalty for non-virgin brides. The difference is in the ability to carry out such penalties between countries such as Iran and countries such as Nigeria and countries such as Belgium. It’s even different between urban South Africa & rural South Africa. This is why I say if you want to compare Christianity to Islam, it would be helpful if you compared the two **within a country** rather than comparing the US (which is not a religion) to Saudi (which, again, is not a religion) in terms of laws and who gets what governmental punishment when.
You want to compare religions or you want to compare governments – so far you’ve been very slippery about which comparison you want to make.
Moreover, **saying I don’t have enough information is not the same thing as saying I’m unwilling to make a judgement given enough information**.
No. Stop assigning attributes to me for which you have no evidence. Indeed, if you read anything I’ve written on this blog network, you’d know that I frequently say things of substance and that I’m certain will offend at least some persons. Frankly, I’m pretty sure I’ve pissed off Ophelia with my strong judgements – not least on dis/ability. Nonetheless, I respect that Ophelia argues well, and she actually generally on this blog sticks to very specific incidents – about which I agree more than 1/2way with her analysis much more than 1/2 of the time. I almost never have the problem with her that she is making evidence free or even evidence-dramatically-insufficient generalizations.
You, on the other hand, are arguing that Islam as a religion is a greater force for harm/bad/evil/whatever than any other religion on the planet. What I’ve said is that on this issue, I don’t want to make a generalization for which I have insufficient evidence. So far, you haven’t presented sufficient evidence for me to accept your generalization.
This is not postmodernist nonsense – this is an unwillingness to say that Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is the worst form of cancer when I haven’t studied oncology and when we haven’t even defined what we mean by “worst”. That there are a myriad of cancers out there, none of which I have studied is relevant in exactly the same way that it is relevant to addressing your assertion that I haven’t studied the many forms of Islam, how they compare, and which ones have the most adherents. If I did do such a study, I wouldn’t feel the need to address each instance of cancer in each cancer patient – I’d be perfectly happy to accept statistical evidence if the methodologies were sound as a reasonable basis for generalization.
you don’t present anything of the kind, and do not even assert (at least in this thread) some sort of degree in comparative religion which would at least make your evidence-less assertion more persuasive than some random internet opinion. Why you consider an insistence on evidence to be postmodernist nonsense is entirely beyond me, but if you do consider it nonsense, then I’m certain you’ll be able to justify to yourself any position at all, and this conversation will be entirely unproductive.
Speaking of which, when you asked for a specific example of Judaism being used in a way that is as bad as al-Dawood’s use of Islam above, I pointed you to the Beit Shemesh spitting-on-schoolgirls-while-throwing-injurious-items-like-rocks-and-bricks-at-them incident and to people who try to enforce horrifically repressive ideas about modesty and ritual purity in NY, both based on Judaism.
I note with disappointment that you do not even attempt to address whether or not telling one’s followers to attack schoolgirls to get them to give up school is comparable to telling one’s followers to attack women cashiers to get them to give up jobs.
@PatrickG – May 29, 2013 at 1:26 pm (UTC -7)
I searched the hash-tag and I only see people who’re angry at al-Dawood. If you follow the links it appears to go to this guy: @aldawood1 , but I can’t read what he’s writing because it is all in Arabic. Attempting to talk with him would probably be useless, not only because he may not understand English tweets, but also because apparently his level of wingnuttery is above Ted Nugent’s.
@PatrickG:
Sure you do. That is why you vehemently responded to my challenge, which again was not personally addressed to you in any manner, with three lengthy posts…because you find it totally “uninteresting”.
And remember my challenge only exists because many people here insist on peddling that false equivalency again and again. See SallyStrange, QED.
What does it say about you that you fume at me as “self-righteous” and ‘having a chip on my shoulder’ for merely expecting people to be truthful? There is nothing “useless” about acknowledging the truth.
Despite my explicitly acknowledging the harm Christianity is doing? You are utterly infatuated with that strawman and clearly no evidence will sway you.
This is about pervasive intellectual dishonesty from Islam apologists here who are so defensive about Islam that they cannot even listen to a liberal Muslim critique Islam without a cacophony of denialism, shouts of ‘Islamophobia’, etc. You saw the ‘inner struggle’ thread by your own admission and know exactly to what I am referring. “atheist” was chastising Maryam Namazie about “Islamophobia” that same day. Maybe save your anger for the likes of him or Pen, who is so bloody paternalistic, that s/he apparently thinks a liberal Muslim is too stupid to distinguish between U.S. foreign policy and Islamic doctrine (see comment No. 6 on the ‘inner struggle’ thread)?
Yes, this ISLAM IS TEH WORSTEST EVAR thing really is quite boring. The countries with the worst situations for women tend to be Islamic, but things suck for women in so many varied ways throughout the world that this is not really very helpful information. I personally don’t have the time or the interest to parse through the literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to determine which one is objectively the most sexist. If you do then go for it. And no, Rebekah, saying “These men have the same goals and use the same tools as these men” does NOT mean that the women dealing with each respective group of men are in the same situation. That’s just fucking stupid. Stop being dumb.
@ atheist: Thanks for using your TwitterPower. Hopefully the asshat in question doesn’t actually have much of a following. Still deserves to be called out, of course, but nice to see he’s getting a lot of pushback.
@ rebecca: You know, if you don’t like my rhetorical style, that’s fine. I’m frequently displeased with it myself. However, you really should note that your entry in this thread was asking what harms of similar scope. To quote you:
I provided you with the Magdalene laundries (involuntary servitude), the systematic attack at the highest levels of American government against reproductive rights (Hyde Amendment, defunding Planned Parenthood), and the fact that within the last 50 years, women weren’t allowed financial resources outside of their husband’s control. In America.
Note that all of these are highly misogynistic. Jaw-droppingly misogynistic. If you want to contend any of those examples, well, that says more about you than me, I think.
Uh, seriously? You made a request for examples comparable to this display of misogyny, and then you shifted the goalposts. For the record, I argue that all of those examples are absolutely comparable to an asshat on Twitter calling for sexual harassment. You know, precisely what you asked for.
Quoting the same response a bit further down, emphasis mine:
You’re right, facts like this do upset me mightily. But not because I’m a religious apologist. Because people died, and they died horribly, and for a horrible reason. And here you are using it as a rhetorical point to suggest I in any way minimize the awful harm Islam does — no, to assert that I fucking excuse it due to religious apologia — just because I won’t submit to your childish need for people to look at the world through your blinkered viewpoint.
Fuck you, and fuck off. I’m done engaging with your twisted version of logic. Grow the fuck up.
@ SallyStrange: Since we’re in rigid ideological lockstep here, can’t you let me know on our secret backchannel that you’re preparing a quick response I should refresh to see? I swear you do this every (infrequent) time I start commenting.
Yep.
Butbutbut Sally- you said the only difference! Clearly you meant that all men everywhere are made up of the same exact atoms, which themselves are made up of the same exact quarks, and all are co-located in space-time, exhibiting the same mass and metabolic indicators and other characteristics – except honesty!
Reading: it’s hard.
==============
Free gift to Rebekah:
Crommunist wrote from scratch on this very topic today. Have a gander over yonder.
** WARNING, following contains triggers for rape. **
OK, I finally remembered what this reminds me of. Not long ago, another Saudi man made the news for something even worse than al-Dawood. Saudi celebrity cleric Fayhan al-Ghamdi… brace yourself… raped and then killed his own five-year-old daughter, because he doubted she was a virgin.
It is a horrible story about an insane, barbarous act. But what reminded me of al-Ghamdi, is that al-Dawood uses almost the same kind of projection. al-Ghamdi thought his own daughter might be sexually unclean… so he raped her. (There is a sexually unclean one in this picture, but it’s not the daughter!) That is the crazy weapons-grade projection that reminds me of al-Dawood, who feels that female cashiers are sexually unclean… so he calls for them to be sexually harassed.
Apparently the Saudis have some seriously crazy issues around sex, and female purity? Americans have dangerous sex panics, but this is kinda on a whole new level.
@SallyStrange
And that is where the conversation should be able to start and stop.
You and your Islam apologist mates here can prevaricate and spit venom at at me all you like, but it will not change the fact that you are the one who refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge a truth you in fact recognise until basically shamed into doing so. So much for freethought.
The only thing that can counter my deep shame of Islam apologia is cute bunnies.
Aahhhh, that’s better.
Translation: Let’s not talk about WHY that happens to be the case, because that might get in the way of me exercising my bigotry without being interrupted by pesky facts!