A critifcal look at the article ( Yes, I read it all)
The first paragraph lost me.
The position of women in the West is truly grievous. Is it? The system demands that their bodies are exploited for advertising purposes. Is it the system? Or just people's desires that make it profitable to use such advertising? And besides exciting the greed and lust of others, they themselves are under constant presssure to spend and acquire ever more in the way of possessions and luxuries for the home. Are they? Women in the West do not have any free will or motivations outside of some pop cultural image according to the article. I wonder if the people that write this actually live in the West, among the people that they're writing about.
This article again creates a split, black and white picture: Western civilization is immoral and materialistic . Islamic civilization is good, moral and spiritual. Is it really? Do the societies of the Muslim world really live up to these ideals? Are these countries that better off socially then the 'decadent, materialistic' West? Are women, who apparently are nothing more than 'sex objects' in the West, better off in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran? Is an Islamic society better for women? All indications point at no. Rape and oppression still go on in these countries. Need I mention the rape of opposition protesters by the Iranian authorities in jails? Western society is far from perfect, but it sure as hell is better than what Islam has shown to offer. I'd pick the former any day, and you can call me 'anti-Islamic' if it makes it easier to label me, than consider what I have to say. What the article says about the feminists is true, at least for some of them, that are radical enough. How different is the attitude of Qur'anic civilization towards women! The mercy that is Islam recognizes the manner in which they have been created and ensures through Islamic dress and other requirements that they are able to carry out their duties with their children and in the home protected and in perfect dignity. According to this, women seem to have only one role in such a society, child bearers exiled to the home. Islamic dress is in complete accord with their natures and gives them the protection and ease of mind that that nature requires. And they find that indeed 'the woman's place is in the home,' that it is not a prison-sentence but on the contrary is a most gratifying duty and service of the greatest responsibility since it entails the bringing-up of thesucceeding generation. Islamic dress is a safeguard for this vitally important role, indicating to its importance and protecting women from any kind of indignity and exploitation. So women want nothing other than to have their hair covered, by 'nature' and to wear clothes that completely cover every orifice of their bodies. Again, I've read these arguments hundreds of times by Muslims and it seems that to them, there is no middle ground between this: and this: Is this logical to me? No. However, what becomes apparent to the many 'new' Muslim women is that to expose their bodies at all to men outside their families is to both exploit themselves and to be exploited. This again jumps to the assumption that women wear the clothes that they do just for the sake of men. What of those that do it just for its own sake? Why is 'exploitation' used in every second sentence when talking about Western women? The approach of this article is typical to the usual dualism that religous Muslims apply to the world. The article continues on the same tangent: "To act as a means of exciting the lust, desire, and greed of strangers is to be exploited and for women to take pleasure in thus doing is to exploit and to degrade themselves. It is not freedom but once again to enslave themselves to their own individual desires and the desires of others." Again, there's only two possibilites apparently available to women: Dressing freely -> exploitation by men OR Dressing conservatively and according to Islamic standards -> happy life and lots of children. Is this really all that is available? It in fact means abandoning their own desires and recognizing that they are not beings with 'rights', but creatures with duties, like all the beings in the universe, and that happiness and freedom are only to be found in the performance of those duties. I think its thinking like this by which the religious men in Islam have legislated women out of ANY rights, as they are unable to play an active role in their own lives. 'Duties', who defines those duties? It certainly isn't a female ulama. Women are forced into a circumscribed role, and kept in it through tradition. Modesty is a virtue for sure, but its not something that someone else decides and forces on women. It has to be understoof and chosen freely, unlike how Islam and Islamic countries do. Freedom lies in Islam, therefore, which is that belief and which protects and safeguards those who recognize and adhere to it. This map from Freedomhouse.org can help anyone try and estimate the correlation between 'Islam' and practical, everyday, respect of human rights and freedom of the individual:
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