The Comments boards here on JWN have hosted some really great discussions. They also, sadly, host some really nasty, commercially generated spam, much of it pornographic, that I’m constantly trying to control, ban, push back, fight, and reduce. Sorry to all readers about my shortcomings in that rergard.
… And then, there’s “Michael Patton”, a person who comes onto my Comments boards here, accuses me of being an “Islamo-fascist slut” and in addition lets fly with strings of deeply ignorant, xenophobic accusations and innuendoes that make the Comments boards feel very hostile indeed…
By the way Helena, the only country in the Middle East where Arab women can vote is in Israel.
Excuse me, Michael? Don’t look now but your ignorance is definitely showing.
Tell us about your travels. Can you see out of your veil? How many women have you interviewed?
Can women there drive? Are their welts from being beaten by their husbands visible? Has female genital mutilation reached 50% in Iran yet?
Tell us Ms. Cobban, do people do anything in the Muslim world other than chant “death to America, Death to Israel?” How many suicide bomb factories have you visited? Did you provide your monthly donation to Hamas and Hezbollah yet?
… As our ambassador of hate, I’m sure you’ll waste no time in visiting the Mullahs.
Yeah, well, I did have a really interesting time listening to one mullah, as recounted in the preceding post. But I guess once you get it into your head that one entire class of people– “mullahs”, “muslims”, “Ay-rabs”, or whatever– are all bad, then you really can’t even get your head around the really fascinating differences there are within these groups of people.
(Classing all members of a target group together as being equally despicable is also the first, worst step toward the generation of hate… Think how it would be if any of us said, “All Rabbis are bad.” Why is “mullahs” as a class any different from that?)
So I’m sorry, Michael, that in spite of all the reproaches that other commenters have launched your way, you didn’t clean up your act but just kept on spewing out the hate. Adios. Go spew the hate elsewhere, if you must.
I don’t hate you. I’m truly sorry for you. You seem so consumed by hate that it has eroded all your critical faculties, your ability to look at any of the available evidence — female genital mutilation? in Iran? where on earth did that come from?– and your abilty to reason with any clarity at all.
I hope the condition gets better soon.
But why upgrade his comments to a post? I had thankfully missed him so far.
Sorry you had to endure a troll. Best to ignore them (and ban them of course) rather than feed them with any attention at all.
Women vote in Lebanon and Egypt, for certain, and Palestine as well. There’s a billboard in SF that says “What country in the Middle East allows Arab women to vote? Israel”. Made me sputter. At least the headline doesn’t claim it’s the ONLY country, which is a lie.
In my experience, this whole Arab-women-are-oppressed meme is more about insecure people trying to prove that Arabs are dirt than about legitimate feminist criticism.
Trolls like this commonly crop up on Muslim blogs – we had one called “Flanstein” who kept putting the most vile stuff on my and other Muslims’ blogs (and he did call one woman a slut). My policy on this sort consists of three words: delete, delete, delete.
I wonder if I could channel a bit of this fervour into the support of my misguided but prodigiously talented friend Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi (aka Ian Dallas) who has asked for our aid in defeating the malignant Blunkett & Co:
http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com
… “the dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on” (anonymous)
I am a fan of your blog but like to read about important issues not nuts who spew garbage. If it can’t be blocked, we know how to skip over those posts. Keep up your work.
Women vote in Lebanon and Egypt, for certain, and Palestine as well.
As far as I know, the only country where women can’t vote (other than countries where there are no elections at all) is Kuwait. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria each have at least one female cabinet minister in their current governments. (One might describe Israel as “the only country in the Levant where an Arab woman has never served in the cabinet,” but that wouldn’t exactly be fair either.)
I believe that Israel was the first country in which Arab women could vote (according to this timeline, Lebanon was second in 1952), but that’s of purely historical interest at this point. If I wanted to make a case for Israel in terms of Arab women’s rights, I’d focus on the availability of family courts, the existence of laws against gender and racial discrimination, and higher rates of employment and university education (resulting from more advanced urbanization and breakdown of village mores).
In my experience, this whole Arab-women-are-oppressed meme is more about insecure people trying to prove that Arabs are dirt than about legitimate feminist criticism.
Not that there aren’t issues with how women are treated in Arab countries, though, and not that there aren’t feminists in those countries working to change things.
Iraqi women have voted for decades. Not only that, equal rights and freedoms for women were written into the constitution years ago.
Iraq has always been one of the best places in the Middle East for women. Thanks to George Bush and his bloody “liberation” all that is changing.
Shirin: was there religious freedom in Saddam’s Iraq, or only freedom for secular women? Could you wear a headscarf and go to school or college, or the civil service, for example?
“Yusuf”, come on! are you kidding?! Do a little research before you come around pretending to have an Arabic name and asking questions about something every Arab knows.
Yes, there was religious freedom in Iraq from before there was a state of Iraq. One of the oldest active churches in the world is in Mosul. It was never attacked in any way until American bombs damaged it in 1991. It was hit again by the Americans in 2003. I don’t know what has happened to it since.
Jews have always worshipped freely in Iraq – after all, they were in Mesopotamia long before Islam existed as a religion. Until Bush’s “liberation” women have always been free to wear hijab or not as they chose. All that has changed, thanks to George Bush, and now even a headscarf is not enough in many parts of the country. For the first time ever we are seeing some Iraqi women covering their entire bodies including their faces as they do in Saudi Arabia – a sight that was virtually unheard of before Bush declared himself Emperor – excuse me, liberator.
One of the many, many “unforseen consequences” of Bush’s “liberation” of Iraq is the loss of religious freedom.
“Unforseen” consequences? Are you sure?
Yes, I am very sure the Bush administration did not intend to turn Iraq from a socially progressive secular republic into an Islamic republic ruled by the most extreme elements in the country.
Iraq hasn’t been socially progressive since 1979 at least, unless you mean in comparison to Saudi Arabia, Bush’s favorite Arab country.
Shirin: how many Arabs do you know called Smith? I am not an Arab and do not claim to be. I am English and I converted to Islam.
I was not talking about the religious freedom of non-Muslims anyway. I was talking about such freedom for Muslims, given that “socially progressive secular republics” like Tunisia and Turkey have a long history of being hostile to Muslims.
I apologize for my offhand response.I’ve encountered individuals like Patton so often I don’t know how to react to those I mostly agree with.
The Bush Administration collectively could not have been so stupid as not to have anticipated this catastrophe.I’m no expert, but what is happening is almost exactly what I feared would happen if we invaded.And their first preference as a new Iraqi leader, Chalabi, confirmed all of the paranoid thoughts that have been turning over in my mind since Khomeini released the US hostages as Reagan was taking the oath of office, and the Israelis stepped-up their weapons sales to Iran.
When Colin Powell invoked his Pottery Barn rule, “If you break it, you own it”, I have a feeling Cheney’s reaction was, “So, It’s a win-win proposition” and Rumsfeld said, “Sounds like a plan.”
They want to redraw the maps of the “former Ottoman territories” with even more lines than were there before, and if it takes civil war in addition to a US invasion to do so, they don’t really care.We can’t let the Arabs get their act together before they run out of oil, can we? They think they’re writing the last act in a three act drama with Churchill and Kissinger as co-authors.
Yusuf, I apologize for my impolite reaction to your question and to your name. I guess I was very surprised that anyone could think women in Iraq were not allowed to wear whatever they like, including hijab, so I made some false assumptions about your intentions. There have been so many, many photos and so much film and video footage over the last 15 years or so showing women in various types and degrees of hijab that I could not imagine anyone would not have noticed that Iraqi women are often covered. In fact, one thing that has distressed me a lot since 1990 is how selectively the U.S. press has shown only women wearing hijab, thus falsely making it appear all women there cover.
There has never at any time been any effort at all by the state to restrict Iraqi women’s dress in any way.
Either there is freedom of religion for all or there is no freedom of religion. The freedom of worship and expression and the representation accorded to religious minorities is a critical indicator.
I am having a great deal of difficulty understanding what you mean when you assert that “socially progressive secular republics” such as Tunisia and Turkey are hostile toward Muslims. This would seem to fly in the face of both reality and common sense. Perhaps you can explain what you mean by this?
Awake, I am afraid I have a considerable edge over you when it comes to knowledge of Iraqi society, so you will forgive me if I do not give a lot of credence to your remarks. In particular your remark comparing Iraqi society to that of Saudi Arabia reveals just how little you do know.
I am sorry, Awake, but for someone who is intimately familiar with Iraq, with most of the personnel involved, and who has followed in agonizing detail the American behavior in regard to Iraq your last post seems incoherent.
To choose just one example, it is difficult to understand how they could have calculated that their choice of the very, very secular Ahmad Chalabi would lead to the empowerment of the most extreme Islamic elements in the country.
I am having a great deal of difficulty understanding what you mean when you assert that “socially progressive secular republics” such as Tunisia and Turkey are hostile toward Muslims. This would seem to fly in the face of both reality and common sense. Perhaps you can explain what you mean by this?
What I mean is that they deny women an education and civil service employment if they insist on wearing hijab. Some of these countries also harrass men who grow their beards and wear traditional religious clothing like the turban, unless they are poor and dirty (something I know about from talking to men in Egypt; the latter I saw for myself in poor districts like Gamaliyya).
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