Atta’s Rage Rooted in Islam’s Misogyny

MOHAMMED ATTA, the terrorist involved in the September 11 crime against humanity, left behind an illuminating will. He sternly warned against women being present at his funeral – or at his grave at any later date. He also instructed that: "He who washes my body around my genitals should wear gloves so that I am not touched there."

But far from being the testament of an alienated madman, Atta’s will directly reflects the deep-rooted misogyny within Islam itself. And it is misogyny, and all the self-contempt and rage that it nurtures in males, that fertilized the soil in which the pernicious evil of Atta – and of his colleagues -- grew.

In Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, Moroccan scholar Fatna Sabbah documents how the crucial criteria of female "beauty" in Islamic society are silence, immobility, and obedience. Women are supposed to dehumanize themselves in order to be tolerated.

In Islam, males are taught to control desire (shahwa). Women are the incarnation of shahwa. Shahwa comes from the devil. It becomes clear, therefore, why the association of shahwa, the devil and woman is rife throughout Islamic religious literature.

Imam Ibn al-Jawzi taught that female beauty was a manifestation of the devil himself. In his text Dhamm al-hawa, he wrote that the "beauty of women is one of the poisoned arrows of the devil." It is no wonder, therefore, why Islam teaches that hell is largely populated by women. According to a hadith (the record of the sayings of Prophet Muhammad) in Imam Bukhari’s Al-Sahih, the Prophet Muhammad states that, as he stood at the gate of hell, he observed that, "Most of those who entered there were women."

In Islam, sex is allowed only in marriage, but even then it is not viewed as an act between two complementary and equal human beings. It is an act concerning only the orgasmic need of the male. Since this need is prioritized, Islam allows the male to marry four wives at a time. The male can also go through serial marriages, since he is allowed to dissolve a marriage unilaterally at any time by simply saying to his wife: "you are repudiated."

Thus, a man does not have to invest in one woman. The concept of "the couple" is shattered; the individual woman is seen as useless and expendable. The confusion in which Middle Eastern boys grow up, therefore, is a given. With all kinds of siblings born of different women -- who obviously weren’t good enough to be cherished alone –- the boys get their first taste of misogyny and, therefore, self-hate (since they internalize the notion that their own mothers were valueless).

Since it emphasizes the importance of Muslims conquering all non-Muslims, Islam bestows some intriguing sexual incentives. While it is a sin for a male to have sex with an unmarried woman, Allah makes an exemption for the Muslim male who rapes the women of the infidels that he kills. Muhammad did just that.

This explains why any time Islamic warriors defeat another nation, they call the inhabitants kafir (the one who, according to the Qur'an, is ungrateful to the blessings showered by Allah) and rape their women. Pakistani Muslim soldiers raped a quarter of a million Bangali women in 1971 after they massacred 3 million unarmed civilians. This atrocity is not considered a sin in Islam, because the religious leader of the soldiers decreed that Bangladeshis were infidels.

The Islamic temptation to wage violent war against non-Muslims also involves the sexual incentive of the houries (the 72 eternal virgins in paradise that are given to the Muslim warrior who dies in battle). The houri makes earthly women even more redundant. Yet even the individual houri herself is not sacred or special in any way. As Fatna Sabbah notes, she "has no spiritual dimension; she is a thing because she has neither will nor any possibility of development. . . . [she] has no intellect; she does not think. She is a thing that awaits consumption."

In thinking about Atta’s will in this context, his worries become understandable. So does his rage. A male cannot despise women and simultaneously love himself. Misogyny is the ultimate death wish.

Men like Atta and Osama bin Laden detest – and wish to destroy – the world that they see outside their cages. It is a world that delights in the beauty that they have demonized -- outside and inside of themselves.

Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He is the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist.. His father, Yuri Glazov, was a Soviet dissident during the Brezhnev era, who signed the Letter of Twelve, denouncing Soviet human rights abuses. His mother, Marina Glazov, also participated in the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, actively typing and circulating Samizdat - the underground political literature. To avoid imprisonment, Yuri Glazov took his family out of the USSR in 1972 and settled in Canada in 1975, when Jamie was 9. Today Jamie battles socialism from his high-tech warroom in Toronto. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice column for angst-ridden leftists at EnterStageRight.com. E-mail him at jglazov@home.com.

Here another article about woman in the islam:

Women, the Lowest Caste

Islam considers women to be inferior creatures. Muhammad himself once said that he would "never touch the hand of women" because women were viewed as unclean temptresses. In addition to the humiliating dress code, women are thought to be half-human and in need of guidance:

4.34.: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those [women] from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart; and scourge [beat] them. Then, if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great."

The sayings of caliphs, leaders of Islam, were like proclamations of Catholic popes, and their words became the foundation for later Islamic traditions and law. Their misogyny has profoundly influenced Islamic culture. For instance, the second caliph Omar said, "Prevent the women from learning to write! Say no to their capricious ways." He also remarked, "Adopt positions opposite those of women. There is great merit in such opposition."

Ali, Mohammed's cousin and the fourth caliph, said that "The entire woman is evil and what is worse is that it is a necessary evil! ... You should never ask a woman her advice because her advice is worthless. Hide them so that they cannot see other men! ... Do not spend too much time in their company for they will lead you to your downfall! ... Men, never ever obey your women. Never let them advise you on any matter concerning your daily life ... They have three qualities worthy of an unbeliever: they complain of being oppressed when in fact it is they who oppress; they take solemn oaths and at the same time lie; they make a show of refusing the advances of men when in fact they long for them ardently. Let us implore God's help to escape their sorcery."

The Muslim scholar al-Ghazali, living in the eleventh century, wrote that the Muslim woman should

stay at home and get on with her spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbours and only visit them when absolutely necessary ... her sole worry should be her virtue, her home as well as her prayers and her fast ... she should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband's sexual needs at any moment.

al-Ghazali goes on to say that Allah has punished women in eighteen separate ways, including:

menstruation
pregnancy
childbirth
lesser share in inheritances
liability for divorce but inability to initiate divorce
seclusion
exclusion from many religious rituals and ceremonies disqualification for positions as rulers and judges

In addition, the testimony of one woman in an Islamic court is only worth half of the testimony of a man. Some modern Muslim scholars give weight to discredited theories allegedly showing that female cranial capacity is far below that of males. Since the primary function of marriage in Islam is procreation (for the woman) and pleasure (for the man), Muslim women cannot ask for divorce unless their husbands' penises have literally withered away. The Heaven of Islam is full of wide-eyed female virgins ready to fulfill the sexual needs of dead, pious, Muslim men. There are no equivalent male servants for devout Muslim women who have passed on to the next world.

Here are some interesting examples of the treatment of women under Muslim law as reported by Ibn Warraq. In the Pakistan of the late seventies, martial law was imposed and holy days like Ramadan were enforced by armed soldiers. Women were forbidden to compete in sporting events and the zina laws were introduced. "Zina" is a word for illicit sex that includes adultery, fornication, rape, and prostitution, and the zina laws recommended amputation of hands and executions for violators. What this meant in practive was that rape victims were often charged with violating the zina laws.

For instance, a Muslim in Pakistan kidnapped and raped his friend's daughter. Her father brought charges against the rapist but his daughter was thrown in prison for committing zina. Her father successfully bribed the police to release her and when she returned home she was severely beaten for dishonoring her family. In another case, a sixteen-year-old domestic worker named Safia Bibi was raped and impregnated by her landlord and his son. Bibi's father had the two men charged in court, but since the testimony of even one man automatically outweighs the word of one woman, they were not convicted. However, Bibi's pregnancy was evidence of adultery (it is thought that pregnancy can only result from consensual sex) and therefore she was sentenced to three years in prison, fifteen lashes, and a fine of 15,000 rupees. Human rights groups in Pakistan report that a rape occurs every three hours in Pakistan, half of all rape victims are juveniles, and 72 percent of all women in police custody are physically and sexually abused. Most of those women are in prison on charges of violating the zina laws.

Speaking of Pakistan, many people cite the 1988 election of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as an example of a more liberal Islam, since under traditional Islamic law, women cannot act as heads of a Muslim state. However, her government lasted almost two years, at which point she was forced out of office on charges of "corruption" and her husband imprisoned. In a hopeless attempt to cling to power, Bhutto frequently gave in to the demands of the Muslim clerics and theologians and refused to acknowledge the rights of women, whose lot was no better when Bhutto left office. Bhutto has since won and lost national office yet again.

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