Posted on 11/01/2006 3:50:00 PM PST by MadIvan
All the debate about Muslims and the veil has centred around women. What should they wear and how should they wear it? Perhaps it’s time we looked at what the veil tells us about Muslim men.
The Koran is little help. The verse cited in support of women wearing headscarves or veils is hardly specific: “And say to the believing women to cast down their eyes, and guard their private parts, and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward.” Islamic scholars have argued ever since about what precisely that means.
The presumption, though, is that immodest dress, however defined, will inflame men’s lust. But more extreme Muslim clerics suggest also that if it does, it is the woman who is to blame. Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, the Mufti of Australia, recently preached: “If you take uncovered meat and place it outside . . . and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Unsurprisingly, this has led to a furore in Australia, with moderate Muslims speaking out against the Mufti, who finally agreed to take leave from preaching this week after suffering a minor heart attack. For, coming soon after several particularly nasty cases of gang rape by young Muslim men in Australia, the sheikh’s sermon seemed to be absolving the attackers from responsibility.
In the Sydney case to which he was referring, the 18-year-old victim was raped 25 times by up to 14 men. She hadn’t been walking, skimpily dressed, down a dark alley at 3am. She had been sitting on a train, wearing her best suit for a job interview and reading The Great Gatsby. Yet the rapists still called her a “slut” and an “Aussie pig”.
Of course only a minuscule fraction of Muslim men are rapists; the rest are upright, law-abiding citizens. But the premise of the dress code is still that men’s impulses cannot be controlled unless women hide themselves. Why should not Muslim men start to take more responsibility for their sexual desires, rather than expecting women to dress absurdly modestly, lest the sight of a bare arm or even a lock of hair should lead them to uncontrollable sexual urges?
The Mufti also preached that, in adultery, “Responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement.” Can’t the man be expected to resist the enticement? And what if he entices her?
If it were true that human beings were incapable of reining in their sexual desires, then men should dress modestly, too — otherwise we women would be tempted to jump on men in T-shirts or even those not wearing hats. That is what the Victorians believed: both men and women were covered head to toe for the sake of modesty.
It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.
No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s sermon — when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.
The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For it’s not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.
What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here. For Aishah Azmi, the Dewsbury classroom assistant, to refuse to uncover her face to a class of young children is as culturally insensitive as it would be for me to walk through a Middle Eastern souk in a pair of shorts.
It takes time for cultural change to take its course. I don’t blame Muslim men who were brought up in more traditional countries, such as Pakistan, for holding traditional views about women’s garb. But it is incumbent on the next generation, born and brought up here, to re-examine their parents’ prejudices in the context of this country’s values.
Young British Muslim men, surrounded by respectably dressed non-Muslim women who do not feel it necessary to cover their hair or swathe themselves in shapeless black cloth, ought to realise that such a society can exist without horrific levels of sexual predation. After all, in head-covering Pakistan, according to its Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.
Whose fault is that?
I have developed a real pathological Hatred of these korananimals,
time for some medieval punishment as regards muslims
If that were true Western men would constantly be chewed up with lust. No telling what they would be committing.
Indirectly, Eastern men are being taught they are weaker and not as good as Western men. So what Argus says is in a big sense true. What they suffer from is not lust of Western women but resentment. Its no wonder they are 1200 years behind the times.
Was that supposed to be a rhetorical question, Ivan?
;-)
Regards, Ivan
Not enough bacon in their diet...
Very interesting question, Oyez.
I have never heard any of them, in the 5 years I've been paying attention, ask their "Allah" to give them strength or wisdom, just this "If it's Allah's will" stuff.
I suspect they don't think they need to pursue goodness to be one with the heaven of the Koran, or their virgins.
Thanks for making that point.
"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
Genesis 4:7
The Muslims have rejected God (the real one) and have accepted a cult that tries to deflect the blame for their own sins onto others.
Regards, Ivan
Sometimes I read the question, and the answer is so obvious that it makes me wonder why the question was asked in the first place.
;-)
It is good that the new lurkers can read the facts about these things though.
Thanks for posting.
....These creeps are encouraged by their culture to rape women....
un mitigated drivel
Not feasible in New York.
Not legal in New York, yet if things become bad, feasible.
Deflect the blame for their own sins onto others....that sounds like the perfect religion for John Kerry.
When I was a young teenage girl, with a head full of mush, I used to attend teen dance clubs. I went to one that was full of young arab males. They treated the girls horribly and made all of us very uncomfortable. I never went back and have been wary of arab males ever since.
Until they feel enough pressure to adopt better attitudes toward women, they will never get along in our society.
Are you the cat or the meat?
What a crock. Name a single time in American history when a woman was responsible for rape. And don't give the the line about, "In courts, lawyers blamed..."
It is the job of a lawyer to blame someone besides his client. It was also a factor in determining if a woman had consentual sex and then changed her mind.
But we have never said that a woman showing her ankles should be raped because she was raw meat, and men cats.
"...values regarding modesty..."
Values that proscribe rape and murder for not walking around like a rag-draped zombie in 2006?
Values that ok the murder of a woman by her parents, siblings or anyone else for her manner of dress?
When in our most restrictive period-say the Victorian age, when even the legs of furniture were covered- did anyone declare rape and death upon 'immodest' women? When did our culture take fashion punishment to that level?
Values set a standard of approval, or disapproval ,in a culture. There is NO comparison between how Western cultures react to those who break those rules and the reaction of Islam. When someone in Western cultures tries the ' she deserved it because of her dress' bit, re. attacking a woman, sane people see it for the insane excuse it is.
Islam ,itself, blames the woman and not only exonerates the men, but ENCOURAGES them to do treat a woman like an animal based on her attire!
Shunning and disapproval are lightyears apart from rape and execution!
If you don't see a difference between " Look at that half-naked woman, she looks like a slut dressed like that." and " Look at that woman without a hijab/burkha, rape/kill the slut!" it's frightening as hell.
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