Mock camps have turned the eyes of Washington University toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the larger clash between the West and the expanding Islamic sphere. In the name of dialogue, this column is a plea to both budding feminists and our African American community to look beyond the sanitized version of Islam and better appreciate the scourge of Shari ‘a that, much to the Iranian mullahs delight, is spreading gangrene over Africa and the world.
Nigeria, like all nations that adopt Islamic law, and the mutilation of shop-lifters and stonings that come with it, has imported an Islamic phenomenon: honor killing. If the heartland of this activity, the Islamic nations of the Middle East, is any indication, Nigerian women are doomed. For example, the Washington Post has reported that, in Pakistan, “at least eight women, five of them minors, are [raped] every day,” with over two-thirds of those being “gang” rape. Curiously, honor killing is always directed not at the rapist, but at the victim. Muslim men, to regain their family “honor,” feel it’s incumbent upon them to kill their sister, mother, or cousin on grounds that rape constitutes “adultery.”
The Jerusalem Post reported that in 2002 “at least 31 Palestinian women were murdered by family members -for the crime of being raped or molested.” Sadly, most victims are children under 18 who have been raped by family members that later found it necessary to kill. Even worse, the same report tells of a girl in Ramallah who was strangled by her mother for “staying away from home for a few days.”
However, Palestinians are not unique in their cultural misogyny. European nations with growing Muslim populations have increasingly witnessed similar violence. This month in London, Rafaqat Hussain stabbed his cousin 22 times at her wedding because his family “didn’t approve” of her choice of husband. In London a week earlier, Abdalla Yones “repeatedly” stabbed his daughter before slitting her throat because she had decided to pursue a relationship with a Lebanese teacher. When his cowardly insanity defense failed he loudly admitted his true motivation.
Many may protest this as nothing more than freakish behavior by a decided minority. Five-thousand dead women a year, according to the BBC, might disagree. So too would the Jordanian government; twice their parliament has voted down measures to increase sentences against honor killers. The rationale? Increased sentences over three years would “encourage vice and destroy social values” and be a violation of “religious traditions.” Only the most rabid PC Thought Policeman would defend a government that, in the face of last month’s dual decapitation of sisters at the hands of their axe-wielding brothers for marrying “without permission,” refuses on religious grounds to protect its women.
Maybe if men were held to such high standards there could be some justice. Yet in a sick twist of fate, women are being oppressed precisely because of male weakness. According to the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, “women must not wear lipstick or perfume… because it may drive Muslim men into an uncontrollable frenzy of molestation and rape.” To be sure, this represents a Freudian explanation of the most barbaric sort. Touria Tiouli, a 39-year- old French woman might agree. While in Dubai “she was raped by three men who offered her a lift home.” While none of the men have been charged, her visa was revoked and she was imprisoned for “both adultery and making a false rape accusation.”
In Islamabad, Mohammed Nawaz, “angered over his daughter’s decision to marry a Christian boy and his son’s relationship with a Christian girl, shot and killed his wife, four children and two other relatives.” Nine days earlier an Iranian man beheaded his 7-year- old daughter when he suspected that she had been raped by her uncle; an autopsy later proved otherwise. Sait Kina, a Turkish man, after stabbing his daughter 15 times in August 2001, forced his younger daughter to “clean up the mess.”
From Pakistani fathers carrying assault rifles to Egyptian mothers preemptively killing themselves in fear of their husbands, Muslim women’s quality of life is horrific. The next time you hear a rant about a Palestinian state or a liberated Iraq, understand such blanket calls ignore the direct impact state-sponsored Islam has on the lives of innocent girls and defenseless wives.