JUDY BACHRACH: LIVE THE LIFE OF A WOMAN IN A MUSLIM LAND

I already knew a great deal of what Judy Bachrach describes in the Summer 2009 issue of World Affairs (HT: NRO Corner), but it was still poignant to be reminded of the treatment women receive in Muslim lands.  It's a substantial article, and the few excerpts I offer below, represent only a taste.  Read the whole article for yourself.  Excerpts:

 . . . In Turkey, a nation often cited as “moderate,” wife beating is so common that 69 percent of all female health workers polled (and almost 85 percent of all male health workers) said that violence against women was in certain instances excusable. In April, a new epidemiological study in the European Journal of Public Health revealed that one out of every five homicides

in Pakistan is the result of a so-called honor killing. And in Mauritania, the age-old practice of force-feeding young girls—a life-threatening process that is intended to make them round and therefore “marriageable”—has seen a renaissance. Girls as young as five are herded into “fattening farms.” Those who resist are tortured. . .

The Koran is fairly specific about the value of a woman. An Islamic man may accumulate up to  four of her kind in marriage—and may divorce any or all of these wives swiftly and without offering a syllable of justification. In court a woman’s testimony is worth exactly half of that of a man. In matters of inheritance among siblings, the Koran insists that “the male [must get] twice the share of the female.” And finally—although of all the passages this is the one that provokes the most controversy—there are many Muslims who conclude that the Koran permits a man to beat his wife. . .

It is no small irony these days that those fortunate countries where women have fought, passionately and at great cost, for equal rights—Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, for instance—have become home to certain Muslim immigrants who continue to violate the rights of women, abetted frequently by both the silence of the authorities and an abashed press. Why this silence? One of the least savory consequences of a colonial past is guilt: an insidious remorse that transmutes itself into a persistent reluctance to criticize publicly those who have now themselves taken on the role of oppressor—even against those who happen to oppress, openly and without shame, within the borders of liberal nations. “You hear people talking about the need to ‘respect’ other cultures. You want me to respect this awful behavior?” Eltahawy says.    [More. . ]