By Paul Weiser
Those in the West who discuss Islam's problems with the modern world frequently allude to its difficulties with the female gender. At the risk of blaming the victim (or merely being accused of it) we must consider a secondary source of these impediments.
Everyone knows traditional Islam grossly mistreats women who fall under its control (whether by birth or catastrophically bad judgement). It restricts their education, denies them legal rights, endorses polygamy and instant divorce, and generally treats female Muslims like slaves if not cattle. The key is that women exercise a mysterious (to the scientifically ungrounded Muslim male from Muhammad on) attraction capable of overcoming all discipline, male-bonded fellowship and law. They must therefore be reviled.
The trouble is, slaves enslave their masters just as the unclean exercise control over the obsessively pure - and slaves and untouchables know it. One of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" cartoons comes to mind, where Lucy (the bully) tells Linus (the proto-nerd) that he must wash his hands again before eating because he touched the dog. Snoopy (the dog) then dances around Lucy, eventually forcing her to run away screaming for fear of "touching the dog" (and rendering herself ritually unclean). Memo to Muhammad: the women know you're scared spitless of them.
The impact of Islam's hatred of women is not merely, or primarily, that it leaves half the population uneducated and the rest to be brought up by uneducated women. It is that the women have their revenge with the occasional belly dance, a bit of jealousy, and destroying every Islamic government by setting the sons against the fathers and each other.
After all, what else have they to do but play chess and contrive palace revolutions? In denying women their lives, Islam denies itself their stabilizing influence and earns their implacable malice.
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