The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

It is an utter disgrace that more people the world over - including and especially human rights and women's organizations - are not speaking out loudly against the hideous, violent treatment of women within Islam. This abuse has been going on for centuries, and little has changed over the past decades since the non-Muslim world began to take notice of Islam. In fact, Muslim apologists - including non-Muslim defenders - are very vocal in DENYING that women are abused and oppressed within Islam, an assertion that is patently false and mendacious. All of the apologies and apologetics in the world will not make these facts of violence against women go away, and day in and day out women and girls are treated abysmally in the Muslim world, simply because of their female gender - and because the wanton abuse of women is endorsed by the Islamic holy book, the Quran/Koran, as well as various commentaries thereon, such as the Hadiths, to the evident exultation of misogynists worldwide.

The silence of the non-Muslim world in not criticizing Islam and its proponents especially in regard to the vicious, widespread and ongoing oppression and abuse of women and girls is deafening - and shameful.

Please read the booklet linked hereto by Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler, and pass it along to all those who love life and justice. We need many more voices like these hard-working individuals who are risking their necks to expose the harsh realities behind Islam.

The bottom line is that MILLIONS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS ARE SUFFERING EVERY DAY WITHIN ISLAM, and not doing anything about constitutes a tacit endorsement of such suffering.

The Violent Oppression of Women

By Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 05, 2007

The booklet that you are about to read details some of the principal ways in which women suffer in the Islamic world - often with religious and cultural sanction. Many of these crimes against women, such as wife-beating, are ordained by the Qur'an itself; others, such as female genital mutilation and honor killing, are praised by Islamic clerics and hallowed by Islamic culture. That feminists in the West remain silent about this deeply ingrained and institutionalized mistreatment of women, and even ally with groups that have devoted themselves to the spread of Islamic law that justifies this mistreatment, is one of the unconscionable scandals of our time.

This article is a segment of a series being run as part of our nation-wide campus effort, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which will be held on 200 university and college campuses on October 22-26. Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to focus on all the victims of Islamo-Fascist Jihad -- as well as to counter the lies of the academic Left, which seeks to deny the evil, and even the very existence, of our enemy in this terror war. In this way, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week hopes to educate American students and to enable them to rally to defend their country.

In terms of the booklet of our subject today, its cover is a still photograph that epitomizes Islamic oppression of women, and it has come to also epitomize the Western feminist non-response to it. The picture comes from a Dutch film called De Steen (The Stone), directed by Mahnaz Tamizi, and features the actress Smadar Monsinos. The Stone dramatizes the barbaric treatment of women in Islamic countries. It accurately depicts the reality of Islamic Sharia law regarding adultery: when a couple is caught in adultery, the man is jailed while the woman is stoned to death.

It is a telling indication of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Left that it has fastened upon our use of this picture to try to discredit Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, since the photo does not depict an actual event - as if women weren't being stoned to death under Sharia law in Iran and some other Muslim countries today. In reality, eight women are currently in prison in Iran awaiting death by stoning for the crime of adultery. A mother was sentenced to be stoned to death in Iran for adultery just last week. It is typical of the Left to try to cast opprobrium not upon those responsible for these harsh realities, but upon us who are trying to draw attention to them in the name of human rights.

It may have seemed inconceivable that feminists and their allies would defend those who bury women in the earth and kill them by throwing large stones at them, but that is the ultimate thrust of the Left's outcry against our use of this picture and against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week in general. Such are the ironies of our troubled age.

In this booklet are realities that should be of paramount concern not just for feminists in the West and their allies on the Left, but of all those who are concerned with the universality of human rights and the dignity of every human being.

Final note from Acharya: I don't usually engage in the politics of "right v. left," but I have to say that, in the case of Islam, the lefty liberals have driven me and many others straight into the Neocon camp. For those who are bothered by the "staged stoning" of the pic above, please see this disturbing video of a real stoning - albeit of MEN, who likewise suffer horribly under the sadistic fascism called Islam.

The rest of the images here are unfortunately quite real, including the blood pool from a victim of female genital mutilation, the hanging of an Iranian woman from a crane, and the Iranian victim of a severe beating because she was not properly covered up (reproduced here with permission from Dr. Homa Darabi). I hesitate to post here some of the worst images, including that of the genital area of a victim of female genital mutilation.