Nothing better illustrates the inadequacy of the “progressive” paradigm than its inability to deal with the realities, both past and present, of Islam.
In June of 2016 the Washington Post published an article by Dr. Asifa Quraishi-Landes, associate professor of law at the U. of Wisconsin, entitled “Five Myths about Sharia Law.” On the one hand she insists Sharia Law is not synonymous with Islamic Law, clearly attempting to distance herself from some of its truly barbaric aspects, while then suggesting that on a wide range of issues it can fairly be described as Feminist. As evidence she states proudly that Muslim scholars have repeatedly defended a Woman’s right to orgasm during sex with her Husband! Powerful evidence indeed!
In the very same year Sally Kohn of CNN declared that many “progressive” Muslims support Sharia, while suggesting that its reputation as anti-feminist was the result of an ugly “right-wing” campaign of “fear-mongering.” She was taken to task by Canada’s Raheel Raza who declared Kohn was naively supporting a regime that was relentlessly homophobic and misogynist.
Upon mere cursory investigation one discovers that in Arabic “Sharia” literally translates as Islamic Law, and moreover that scholars for centuries have taken it to mean such. The conundrum for us is that in the decades and centuries after Mohamed’s death both the Hadith and Sharia evolved as extensions of the Prophet’s teachings while contemporary apologists of a “progressive” bent [i.e., Raza] argue that each of the above in many ways perverts those teachings. I am no Islamic scholar and am hardly in a position to pontificate on such issues. But is it unfair to simply judge Islam on the merits of its real-world policies and pursuits, both past and present? Does its history in any way support Obama’s oft repeated contention that it is a Religion of Peace; or the assertion by Quraishi-Landes that it could fairly be described as Feminist? Or would one have to be so ideologically biased as to be almost insane to make such assertions?
A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center revealed that over 75% of the Muslim populations of Indonesia, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan thought Sharia ought to be the Law of their respective nations, that number peaking in Afghanistan which polled at 99%. The result would entail regimes given to executing homosexuals and apostates while imprisoning women who failed to wear their head scarves in public. In the 39 countries surveyed over 345 million Muslims saw honor killings as an appropriate response to indiscretions committed by females. A 2016 poll conducted in Britain showed that 39% of its Muslim population supported the stoning of women caught in adultery while approximately 100,000 of them saw terrorist attacks and suicide bombings on civilian sites as legitimate forms of political dissent. Does Britain’s non-Muslim population have a right to be concerned or are their concerns merely, as I have read repeatedly, the product of ugly, racist, alt-Right propaganda?
A person who makes me proud to be human, one of the most amazing women on the planet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues it is absurd to take the Quran as the literal word of God, that Islam has been militaristic from its very inception, that Jihad is an integral aspect of its agenda and that its relegation of females to the status of Male property is a self-evident fact.
The option of polygamy in the crassly patriarchal world of Sixth and Seventh Century Arabia was of course available only to Men. Mohamed attempted to curb the male inclination to pursue an endless parade of concubines by limiting his followers to but four wives. Yet he is reputed to have taken as many as thirteen himself!
Are you aware that had Turkey’s Muslim army not been turned back after a prolonged siege of Vienna in 1683, all of Europe would no doubt have succumbed to Islamic rule?
Quranic Verse 4.34 asserts that Men have the right to beat their wives when they are disobedient. Q 2.282 famously declares that in legal proceedings the testimony of a Man is worth twice that of a Woman inasmuch as females are clearly morally and intellectually inferior! Millions of young Muslim girls each year are subjected to genital mutilations so as to secure their virginity for their future Male overlords. Yet the mindless/spineless Left refuses to be unduly critical of Islam, indeed is distinctly ambiguous in its reaction to Hirsi Ali, those radical feminists who ought to see her as a heroine of the first order hampered by their truly idiotic informing paradigm, a construct which simplistically endorses all those outside the White, Patriarchal, Western Hegemony, while showing little interest whatsoever in the moral/intellectual status of those it would defend. Preposterous!
If Hirsi Ali were a White woman she would no doubt be condemned by those on the Left as a racist. But as she is a Black Somali who speaks a Truth utterly inconsistent with their specious world-view, she represents a dire threat to every sentimental lie they so passionately cherish. If you are not familiar with her life’s journey, you must become so. There is no more courageous or liberated woman on the planet, her well being for the past ten years imperiled by an Islamic Fatwa. Yet she is generally ignored by radical feminists because she calls into question the very basis of their “progressive” dementia.