Muslim Journalist Challenges Sharia, Gets Accused of ‘Hate’
Mona Eltahawy’s piece in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy criticized a series of practices that are justified in Islamic law, including child marriage, wife-beating, and female genital mutilation. Counter-jihadist activists and writers have been calling attention to these human rights abuses for years, but Eltahawy’s piece was singular in that she is a Muslim journalist.
Muslims for the most part (with some notable exceptions) don’t criticize Muslim practices, particularly those that are rooted in Islam, and mainstream media journalists do so even less often. But the reaction to Eltahawy’s article among her fellow Muslim women is even more striking than her article itself.
If the mainstream media narrative about “extremists” making up only a tiny minority of Muslims, the vast majority of which are “moderate,” were true, Eltahawy’s article should have won applause from Muslim spokesmen in the U.S., and particularly Muslim women. But instead, Harvard professor Leila Ahmed confronted Eltahawy on MSNBC:
Mona, I appreciate what you do. I would love it if — I understand if you want to get your message across. It’s an important message. But if possible [you should not] give fuel, fodder to people who simply hate Arabs and Muslims in this climate of our day.
Eltahawy appeared surprised to be accused of fueling hate — the same accusation that jihadists and Islamic supremacists have leveled against counter-jihadists for years. And she answered it in exactly the same way counter-jihadists have innumerable times:
That’s the whole point. It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad. And as a writer, it’s my job to poke the painful places.
But Leila Ahmed was not alone in not wanting Eltahawy to call any attention whatsoever to those “painful places.” Another prominent Muslim woman in America, Dalia Mogahed, took to the pages of the Washington Post to denounce Eltahawy’s article. Mogahed is the executive director and senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and has served Barack Obama as an adviser in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is an open advocate of Sharia, so it is perhaps not surprising that she also took a dim view of Eltahawy’s poking of the painful places.
Mogahed invoked unnamed “critics” who, she said, “question not the crimes Eltahawy describes but the causes she assigns, namely Islam and Arab culture’s inherent ‘hate’ for women, alleging that her analysis is not only pedestrian but panders to prejudice. The real danger however is that Eltahawy’s narrative harms the very cause she claims to champion. Conflating women’s rights advocacy with Arab inferiority or Islam-bashing doesn’t empower the champions of change, it aids their enemies.”
“Islam-bashing”? Eltahawy’s article actually makes only glancing mentions of Islam. She criticizes the Egyptian criminal code for saying that “if a woman has been beaten by her husband ‘with good intentions’ no punitive damages can be obtained,” but never mentions that wife-beating is actually sanctioned in the Qur’an (4:34). She notes that “demonstrations in support of child marriage outstrip those against it, fueled by clerical declarations that opponents of state-sanctioned pedophilia are apostates because the Prophet Mohammed, according to them, married his second wife, Aisha, when she was a child.” But she ignores or is unaware of the fact that the assertion that Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when he was in his fifties and she was nine is not just a minority view among some crank clerics, but is abundantly attested in the hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable, Sahih Bukhari.





Eltahawy mentions Islamophobia, Perry the racism against blacks, Ahed Arab hatred.
As far as I am concerned, until they knock that stuff off, they’re on their own. Because there is not a doubt in my mind who they mean – and that’s me. That’s the so-called “nuance” they’re addicted to, the back story.
I don’t have an unreasonable fear of Muslims, nor do Americans, I don’t oppress black folks, nor do Americans, I don’t hate Arabs, nor do Americans. There is no proof Americans feel that way or do those things. I have long since grown tired of Americans being the whipping boys of every expression of failure in the world.
In the linked articles Fisher lumps in this: “British, and French made Arabs treat women the way they do” with the Ottoman “centuries,” but that former, in terms of “centuries,” never happened. Fisher shifts the focus to sub-Saharan Africa as if anyone cares when not actually discussing sub-Saharan Africa. Mogahed mentions “American advocacy that begins with casting Arabs as inferior and uncivilized.” It is not I but reality itself that makes such distinctions, and anyone who’s ever been in the region knows they are no fantasy made up by smug Americans.
This is why people like me despise these politically correct people – they do not understand success and argue like failures. While stauchly asserting they are equal, everything is ultimately somebody else’s fault and somebody else made them do it. Equal is as equal does – it’s not a theory, but an event one can point to. It doesn’t need oceans of help – that’s a contradiction of the idea.
Ideas are ideas are ideas be they religiious or political. If it is not allowed to say anything against Islam then nazis and KKK people have the right of branding their critics as naziphobes and KKK-phobes. In the name of what Islam should have special rights?
You’d better watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U0QRR3ELxw
Eltahawy talking to J Street – she says the Arab Spring wasn’t about Israel and then can’t shut up about Israel and the Arab Spring – she says Israel and America supported the dictatorships that necessitated the Arab Spring. “It’s time to march for the freedom and dignity of our Palestinian sisters and brothers, and we will. It’s something everybody in the region is thinking about.”
While they’re NOT thinking about it?
Fine, she’s talking about a non-violent approach, but if you also look at Eltahawy’s talk on CNN with Alan Dershowitz 6 days before Mubarak fell, Dershowitz was prophetic about the Islamists in Egypt and Eltahawy now rails against the “hate” against women because Islamist’s were voted into Egypt’s Parliament and elsewhere. She thought Israel was the problem in the West Bank but she’s being forced to wake up to another reality.
Eltahawy appears on Bill Maher, Democracy Now, but is suddenly used as a tool by people like Pamela Geller because Geller knows Eltahawy has had to eat her words and once again come whining to the West because her greatest talent is getting her arms broken in the wonderful “non-violent” Egyptian revolution. Nasser didn’t go on talk shows, he seized the day.
Give people an inch and they take a mile. The Muslim Brotherhood may be intolerant morons but they’re not about to pull men like Eric Holder up only to see him not be happy with that and start calling the people who pulled him up a bunch of eternal racists and work against them. The MB isn’t dumb enough to write a new Constitution so they can sit around and listen to stories about a company hiring 18 women and an Indian to satisfy racial quotas as the most qualified are kicked to the curb. The MB isn’t dumb enough to elect to the Presidency what amounts to a man from a minority anti-Arab Christian cult who sues districts so more Christians can be brought in.
In short, the Islamists aren’t stupid enough to empower people like Eltahawy because they are not suicidal. The U.S. isn’t a lesson in enabling equality and everybody’s happy, the U.S. is a paradigm in how to lose your own country to people who hate you but who couldn’t build such a country with 10 privileged racists holding their hands. It’s no surprise to me no Christian, gay or woman can be an Egyptian president. Political correctness, Obama, and the DOJ has them scared out of their wits.
Our ship is sinking into a sea of Third World immigration and Tower of Babel racial and gender advocacy while we twiddle our thumbs, why bitch about Muslims hating that idea? Keep ‘em out of America and send Eltahawy back to Egypt so she can wreck the place.
To me, it’s people hypothesizing about the moral characteristics of an ant farm. Where the workers do their DNA-programed tasks and the Queen does likewise, while doctoral-thesis hopefuls explain each and every nuanced attribute of said ant farm with a hypothetical morally ambiguous but authoritative-sounding dissertation.
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s in the human DNA.
We have a couple of thousand years of proof now. No matter the gilded porticoes at the front gate, the wonderful music, the smiles on all the operatives, people lust for and are power whores. Not all, but many and the only system that has truly worked is the US Constitution when adhered to as it is written.
The founders of this nation knew very well about what power does and the human’s inability to turn their back to it.
In islam, the religion is the power, not the government, unless they share in a symbiotic dysfunctional regime such as (insert muslim nation here). We in the US see what the media will permit us to see but it is probably 1000% worse than what we get a taste of. It is despotic. It is cruel. It is malformed and run by thugs. Thugs like the kings and queens of our own Western past. Thugs like the Medici family. Thugs like the Berbers. Thugs like the Czars.
In more modern but amateurish times, Castro, Mao, Chavez, Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot. But just because islam has 1500 years of experience doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. The Medici corrupted the Catholic Church and killed thousands. But they were just a crime syndicate using the legitimacy of the Papacy for cover.
However, at the base of islam is the blueprint FOR corruption. It advocates lying, stealing, anything to “better the cause of islam”. How can something like that have anything in it that’s good when its own foundation is corrupt?
I say it is impossible. “Temperate islam” is like saying “kind of venomous” snake.
It’s in the human DNA…”King Of The Hill”, if you will.
Yes and we cannot dismiss Obama and his ”friends” promising to kill all the Jews by the end of his second term. There is a term for Obama..but not two..:)
“That’s right: standing up for women’s rights and pointing to a primary root cause of the Muslim mistreatment of women actually harms women. How? Ask George Orwell.” Excellent line Mr. Spencer, really enjoyed that one.
To stay with the Orwell theme. “In time of universal deceit, Telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” And if our journalists and writers do not share the truth, we cannot expect anything to change.
To Call Main Stream Media “Journalists” is like comparing Hitler to Human Rights, what we have in Main stream media is Talking Hacks with an IQ of a Tomato & not to degrade Tomatos- they have disconneted from the real world, the Talking Liars like Rachel, Solidad (what a DUMB Name) Chris Matthews have no idea of the real world, Diane Sawyer asking Mitt about his money & she is making $12 MILLION per year not counting rich Hollywood husband- Bill Maher give a MILLION to Obama? Why had he NOT paid that million to USG in tune with Rich paying more taxes that he alwasys preaches
The Media covering up the Muslims demanding Shara Law in USA- they WONT even discuss it- WHAT is WRONG With them- do they have a Liberal Disease that rots their brains?
Part of the problem of the media is that they believe that Western religion is far more damaging than islam. The reason for this is their western civ teachers in high school and the universities talk about the checkered past of Christianity without highlighting any of the good. And there’s far more good than bad. Yes, Christianity has had some bad moments but overall, it has been a tremendous force for good in the world.
Maybe the media-ites only see the young men on their bikes, for the LDS door-to-door and think they are somehow “dangerous”. Or that Christianity is laden with obligatory slavery to white men. But much of their dislike for Christianity is based on lies and bad information.
They tend to view all religions as being alike. It fits their world-view. Thus, since they “tolerate” Christianity, they must therefore tolerate (nee’, EMBRACE) islam. Or, it has also crossed my mind that they endorse islam because it pisses off the Christians. Not that it has anything to do with taking some moral high ground but that the mere fact that Christians and Jews despise islam gives them a sort of childish schoolyard satisfaction against the imagined bully of their own experience.
Personally, I hate being lectured by a self-important Christian. But I hate that from anybody. And, I’d rather hear a ton of scripture babbled at me by one of them than by some muslim with an axe to grind (pun intended).
Robert Mugabe is “Number One Tourism Director” at the UN, so I guess the whole world has fallen into an Orwellian void.
“That’s the whole point. It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad. And as a writer, it’s my job to poke the painful places.”
Yes, indeed. Face it. The Muslim world has a lousy public relations problem. There are just so many “honor” killings, sexual mutilations, beheadings, stonings, mysoginy, homophobia, and pedophilia (regarding old men marrying little girls) that the world can take before you start getting a bad reputation. And, trust me, the Muslim world didn’t have to work hard at getting this reputation. In fact, they seem proud of it. Well, at least the men are, considering it’s not that bad a religion if you’re a Muslim man. But if you’re a woman, gay, or a member of some other religion (like the Jews), you’re in deep, deep, trouble.
And let’s not even talk about Sharia law. Yes, that’s a big “winner” for the Muslims in the Middle East. Laws that tell a man how many times he’s allowed to beat his wife, how many wives he can have, and when he can kill his own child if he thinks it’s appropriate have no place in a civilized world. And now the Muslims are moaning that we don’t like them, that our comments make them look bad? It is going to take Muslims centuries to undo the harm they have done to people and to the world. That is, of course, assuming they want to undo them at all. My guess is that they do not, which is why they will be hated, mistrusted, and ridiculed for generations to come.
‘Islamic spokesmen excoriated us for “hate.”’
Excoriate away. I loathe Islam, just as I loathe other vile ideologies, like Nazism or Communism.
And, if Islamic “spokesmen” don’t like it…tough.
You and I are on the same page on this one. There has to be some way to take their little “hate” game away from them.
Yes! I hate islam! There! Satisfied? I hate a so-called “religion” that thinks it’s ok to kill women and children just to further the cancer of theirs that is infecting the entire planet.
And No! It’s not racist, either. Islam comes in all differnt colors. Red ones, brown ones, black ones, fat ones, skinny ones (put it to the Oscar Mayer Wienier song) who blow up mini-malls.
Muslims,
Nasty muslims.
What kind of people are these muslims?
Fat ones, skinny ones, ones with funny hats.
Tough ones, sissy ones, ones who are completely bats
are muslims…Nasty muslims…the ones who love to hate.
look for mona to recant her article in the near future, after the death threats against not only her but her family she will most assuredly will receive.
Under sharia, four women and two men were recently sentenced to _death_ in Pakistan _for_ _dancing_
! Robert linked it at Jihad Watch.
No critic can top merely repeating in monotone the latest thing going on under Islamic law with no embellisment whatsoever.
Death. For. Dancing.
As the average Westerner learns more about Islam it becomes more and more apparent that the only appropriate place for Islam is on the ash heap of history.
When Muslims come out against some of the more abhorrent aspects of Islam and sharia such as the barbaric treatment of women one has to wonder why they remain Muslim. Is it because of the death penalty for apostasy? There is clearly NOTHING in Islam worthy of being “reformed” or capable of being “reformed.”
With the growth of alternate media more people are seeing just how destructive to the human spirit Islam is. We can now see an endless parade of articles and videos of Islamic atrocities but very few proposals as to what we should do about Islam. It is like hearing of yet another study showing that cigarette smoking causes cancer.
Some say we can’t do anything because of “freedom of religion”. I suggest that one of the most important things we could do to fight Islam is advocate for legislation that would guarantee “freedom of religion” for Muslims. That is require that Muslims in America be free to leave their religion for another religion or no religion without fear of death or retribution, and impose severe penalties on the mosque that seeks to violate that legislation.
We know all too well what Islam is. It is time to do more than complain about it.
Islam is indistinguishable from statehood where it has power. It IS the state in Islamic countries. It craves being the state in the rest of the world. Catholicism had this aspect whipped out of it over thousand years of religious war in Europe.
Any “religion” with pretensions of state cannot be allowed the same freedoms in America as religions with NO pretensions of state. This distinction needs to be made, our Constitution is NOT made for Islamic people, but for Christian people
Well, if you consider the reformation to have begun with Luther in 1517, and to have ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, then it was more like 130 years.
If you are considering only the internecine Christian wars, Protestant states VS the RCC coalition then yes, about 130 years. Previous to those wars were hundreds of religious wars against “Pagan” states starting with Constantine. Perhaps you are correct in treating just the Protestant/RCC wars in this vein, although most wars lend to genetic decline. One cannot kill off the bold unendingly with no genetic repercussions. The internecine Christian wars obviously left a cultural heritage in Europe as well, their distaste for religion in general.
Talk about the protestant reformation is interesting in its own right but has absolutely no relevance to the discussion on what to do about Islam.
Islam is the polar opposite of Christianity and the Judeo Christian tradition. Talk about reformation in relation to Islam is a useless exercise. As Rivenburg notes, Islam is incompatible with advanced civilization, though I would amend that to civilization,period.
The question is what are we willing to do to contain and push back Islam. As I said above, we need to enact legislation that prohibits Islam from doing what is abhorrent by OUR principles in OUR country. I think that is a good place to start.
Catholicism was never formally organized around the idea anyway. It wanted to be in power sure, but it wasn’t a religious imperative.
leciat
Yeah but the cleric who delivered the ruling, decreed the women be killed first, and then the men ran away….so the women are under house-arrest until the condemned men are hunted down and killed.
And Pro-sharia lies go on & on & on… Makes me wonder if we don’t deserve it.
Struggle for the Rights & Equality of Muslim Women: The Civil Liberties Movement of Our Time
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: DECLARATION OF THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN
WHO WILL BE THE FIRST FEMALE ABRAHRAM LINCOLIN?
Struggles against Nazism and Communism were the life-n-death defining issue for the Greatest Generation for preserving freedom and democracy. Struggle against Islamic supremacy is the life-n-death defining issue for next Great Generation – the generation of our time. Like the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s for establishing the equality of the Black people in America, the battle for restoring the rights, liberty and dignity of Muslim women is new Civil Rights movement of our time.
Islam, since its birth, has deprived its women their rights, dignity and equality and enslaved them to the whims of males. And this pernicious impact of Islam is poised to go beyond the boundary of Islamic societies; Islam, today, is becoming a life-n-death issue for the liberated Western women. All human rights and freedoms that women have won in the Western World are now being endangered by Islam. It is shocking that feminists are not paying heed or rising up against Islam; instead, they meekly and quietly surrendering their fate to be the chattel of men under coming Islamic domination. It’s well known that large numbers of kafir women are already being raped by immigrant Muslims in Europe, as Rape Jihad grips the European continent.
To prevent the enslavement of women, Sharia Law must be exposed and stopped. All anti-woman teachings of the Quran and Hadith must be condemned and rejected. The rights of women must be enforced and protected through the Rule of Law and a Constitutional Amendment: Universal Declaration of the Total Equality of Women. This Constitutional Amendment, to be submitted to all states and must be ratified by all. In this Proclamation, each anti-woman teaching of the Quran and Sharia Law are to be condemned and made legal. By doing so, and establishing these rights − denied by Islam − “Constitutional”, we are reinforcing our rejection of Sharia Law and the Quran, making it impossible for Muslims to undermine the democratic rights of women. This Amendment and rights of women must be taught to student in every school in all countries.
The battle of establishing the rights of women universally will also act as a key for defeating Islam. All Islamic nations must enact the following Constitutional Amendment granting their women total humanity and equality. Those nations that refuse to sign and implement the Amendments will be thrown out of the international community. Those of us, involved in the battle against Islam, must champion the worldwide movement for total and complete equality of ALL women with men. We are not in conflict with Muslims, but with Islamic teachings that Muslim men use to subjugate and denigrate women of their own faith and beyond. We must fight for their equal human rights and dignity.
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: DECLARATION OF THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all “Women” and “Men” are created equal; that they are naturally endowed with certain inalienable Rights; and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Women being the total equals of men would mean:
For copy of this amendment download free book; Jake Neuman is the author of “Islam and Sharia Law Are Treason: Jihad Is Treason” free download at http://www.islamreform.net His book ISLAM — EVIL IN THE NAME OF GOD ™ was banned in Malaysia.
“CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: DECLARATION OF THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN” is another progressive scam that will do nothing to stop Islam in America or help American women but will farther progressive aims of destroying American culture.
A Constitutional amendment separating the types of religions by pretensions of state and those with NO pretensions of state and the stance of the federal government toward both, WILL check Islamist aggression in America and WILL help individual women in America.
Any attempt at a Constitutional amendment to affect womens lives outside of America is flat insane. yes that means you.
That’s funny – one can declare all the things one wants but without an army it doesn’t mean squat. Lincoln could’ve declared the slaves free throughout all eternity. With an army, you can declare water is dry and people will say it and act on it.
“It also reveals the tactic that Islamic supremacists and their willing allies in the mainstream media have employed for years in order to demonize and marginalize those who have dared to speak out against human rights abuses that are sanctioned by Islam” — The sooner this religion is washed from the human species the better. unfortunately its going to take a great war to get rid of it and them.
99% of Islam joined under GREAT duress, threat of death. Most were and remain tribal. Humans of this sort do as the Arabists say “go with the strong horse”.
A Kaaba melted to green glass would wound Islam to it’s core. It would lose half it’s adherents in one day. The bulk of the rest would fade away after a few death throes. If their nukes were confiscated at the same time this would compete the coup. Primatives see a loss in war(especialy a loss of the central temple) as the god himself getting his butt kicked by the winners god.
Then they tend to go with the more powerful “god”. History is repleat examples of this.
This BS of a “nation-less war” where we had no nation-state to hold accountable for the 9/11 attacks is just that, BS. EVERYONE knows where the heart of Islam is. It’s run by yet another back-stabbing Muslim “ally”. The country with THE most influence in Pakistan is Saudi Arabia, They fund ALL Pakistan’s anti-US, anti-western, Anti-Christian madrases.
The REAL face of Suadi Arabia AND Islam is Pakistan today.
Islam is incompatible with advanced civilization.
I know I’m in the minority, but if I’d been Queen when 911 happened I would have nuked 4 islamic cities – 1 for every plane hijacked. Mecca would have been one of those cities and I wouldn’t have wasted one American soldiers life.
Yes, you are in the minority. Kabul, Ridyah and Mecca would have sufficed.
And here’s what it leads to
http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/muslim-child-rape-gangs-britain
I believe that Rivenburg is right-on. I have come to the conclusion that Islam is a Political System masquerading as a Religion. Look at all the corporal (vs. spiritual) legal “thout shall”‘s and “thout shal not”‘s in the Koran. We ignore this fact at our (and Western civilization’s) peril. To Anonymous — I would have added the base for Pakistan’s nukes. That makes four.
Time to haul out the _1984_ quote again: “War is peace, ignorance is strength, and two plus two equals five.”
This also reminds me of the Islamicist demonstrators in Britain with the sign: “Behead those who insult/defame Islam.” These fools need to be careful what they ask for. I’ll leave further responding to the three-headed giant in _Monty Python & the Holy Grail_:
“Quick, get the sword–I want to cut his head off!”
“Oh, cut *your own* head off.”
“Yes, do us *all* a favor!”