I could never get anyone in the American civil rights, anti-war, feminist, or post-colonialist movements to understand this. They needed to blame the Big Bad West for the world’s problems. They also needed to identify the developing world as intrinsically innocent, pure, victimized.
I escaped from Kabul long before the arrival of the lotus-eating hippies, the Soviets, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the American Marines. At the time, I tried to tell my American college friends about some of the awful sights I had seen: women in ghost-like sheets (burqas) who were forced to sit at the back of the bus; servants who slept on dirt floors and were treated as slaves; the considerable downside to polygamy; the normalization of cruelty towards women and children (sons too) which, when challenged, was met with utter indifference or fury, not because of the cruelty but because it was shameful to discuss or expose it.
Nearly a decade before the gay rights movement, I also tried to tell people that I’d seen men with rifles slung over their shoulders wearing lipstick and holding hands on the streets of Kabul. One such man wore a flower behind his ear. Another gazed lovingly at his partner. When I mentioned this to my Afghan family, everyone told me that Afghan men are not homosexuals, that such practices are forbidden by Islam. I was expected not to believe my own eyes.
Now, it is almost 2010, and many Muslims (and their Western sympathizers) still continue to deny that Islam or Muslims are in any way responsible for the crimes against humanity which they commit—most often against other Muslims. They claim that Israel made them do it. Naked western women, especially those in battle uniform (in Kuwait) with naked faces made them do it. A Jewish and Western presence in Muslim holy lands, beamed in via satellite TV or through the internet, forced Bin Laden to defend the umma’s honor against perverted Western values.
My people: Western feminists, leftists, gay liberationists, progressives, absolutely refuse to stand up to Islam’s subordination and bestial persecution of women, dissidents, and homosexuals. The same activists who easily condemn Christianity and Judaism as “misogynists” are hushed about Islamic misogyny in practice.
Western capitalism, colonialism, and the Judeo-Christian heritage has never forced Muslim girls and women to wear burqas, marry against their will when they were ten years old, join polygamous households, or marry men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers. Western laws have never decreed that thieves must have their hands chopped off or that prostitutes and alleged adulterers must be stoned to death. Although some Sikhs and Hindus do honor-murder their women, this is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. Islamic gender apartheid is caused and maintained by a treacherous intertwining of Muslim religious, tribal, and local laws and customs.
In retrospect, I have often wondered whether my western feminism was forged in Afghanistan and whether my passionate advocacy for the universal human rights of Muslim women and dissidents is an attempt to redress the tragic abuses I once saw, abuses which have only gotten worse over time.
Now I and a handful of others are trying to tell the truth about Islamic gender apartheid. Those of us who are raising the alarm are being demonized as “Islamophobes,” “racists,” and “fascists.” Yet, in my opinion, western civilization, beginning with Europe, will be won or lost on the issue of women’s rights.
Marxism is an atheistic doctrine; nevertheless, its adherents accept it with blind faith. Islam too is accepted with blind faith. There are the only two remaining systems of belief on earth that are acccepted with no questioning. That is one of the reasons why Marxism and Islam are natural allies.
There is a second reason: anti-Zionism. Despite the fact that Zionism post-dates both Marxism and Islam, it has become a central belief of both doctrines. It has led to a strange alliance of Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, and Hugo Chavez. None of these countries shares a border with Israel; none of them has any tangible quarrel with Israel. But all three deny Israel’s right to exist. Iran and North Korea are willing to take enormous risks to build nuclear weapons in order to fight a country that doesn’t threaten them.
In the movie, “Dr. Zhivago”, and possibly in the novel of the same title, when the title character, his wife, son and father in law leave Moscow, they come across a shackled Social Revolutionary. Even though he was shackled, the SR maintained he was freer than any of those in the rail car who were not shackled.
I think I get what he was referring to: he stood up to the barbarity of Lenin and crowd. The rest just fled. So, I am not at all surprised to see Phyllis refer to her time in Afghanistan pre-Taliban to inform the present, and hopefully shape the future.
Ms Chesler, You rock!
Now, if we can get the half of the civilized world most at risk by galloping Islamofascism to confront that reality perhaps we will prevail, yet. Where are the founders of the feminist movement?
Phyllis, Shalom, you are on a roll!
Sure that virus cleansed you out, as the great Nietzsche wrote: whatever doesn’t destroy me, make me stronger.
Yes, your story in Kabul is really like the story by Edgar Allan Poe “The Angel of the Odd”:
“You zee,” said he, “it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you shall know who I pe. Look at me! zee! I am te Angel ov te Odd!”
Simone Signoret? That beautiful Madame who ruined Ives Montand’s life? You certainly also discussed, but forgot to mention, Gérard Philipe in Fanfan La Tulipe, and Belmondo in Godard’s “À Bout de Souffle”.
This man, this Casanova, was most certainly not ordinary Afghan, ha, ha.
Phyllis, you’re right, of course, about Islam’s treatment of women being a key to that world’s poverty, ignorance, and malice. Thank you, for continuing to talk about this, and congratulations for finding another outlet for your work.
Perhaps not off topic, but what on earth does “MiamiMan” mean in his/her remark?
Dear Phyllis
Good to see you back in fine fettle, and to read your story of the trip to and escape from Afghanistan, a narrative that gains in resonance as the years pass and the reality of Islamict fanaticism takes hold across the globe.
Jose Faur argues that the essence of anti-Semitism is not theological but political, or rather lgeal, since Judaism teaches voluntary respect for the Law rather than submission, requires acts of charity as adherence to rational principles instead of irrational acts of blind faith, and above all teaches principles of social justice as fundamental morality and psychology.
Unfortunately, Judaism is misunderstood, not only by old-fashioned anti-Semites of the Right but also by new adherents from the Left–from varieties of that Marxism that is not like, that is a religion, a religion centred on the god that failed. Chavez et al stand for a revolutionary nihilism based on military power, and as has been said, formulate the first modern revolution without intellectuals, poets or artists. It is a psychotic state of mind, or: it seeks to create a state that is psychotic.
The litmus test for all politicians and for all political activists is where they stand on Israel. If they are viscerally opposed, the critique is invalid. If they have measured, rational points of difference, it is valid.
Norman
Southern and western Asia has many wonders and many horrors. It is as different from the west as another planet is different from Earth. The phenomenon of “multiculturalism” pretends that planetary differences are merely cultural differences. For this reason, many well intentioned westerners can’t see the horrible things that you describe. Because they can’t see them these westerners don’t believe the bad things exist – even though you insist that they do.
In spite of that, please keep insisting.
I would love to meet you in person just to give you a hug. You have educated me, honey.
Here’s one Western woman you won’t have any trouble convincing. I am
appalled by the white-washing of Islam, and amazed when I hear friends
tell me how awful Christianity is – ha! I just marvel at the blindness
of Western women (and gay men) who are most at risk from Islamofascism.
Please keep telling it like it is.
A very good article and one that should open a few eyes.
Heathermc: I meant “nada”, and why would that bother you?
It isn’t simply Islam as a religion. We must understand that Islam is first and foremost a socioeconomic and political system that emerged in and is rooted in a non-industrial sustenance or peasant style tribal economy.
The term ‘tribal’ means that the economic, political and social infrastructure operates by viewing people, not as civic or individual members, all alike, of a society. It views them within the status of their family, of that family’s hereditary kin connections in a hereditary tribe. You are a member by your kinship not by your citizenship.
Your social, economic and political power or lack of power is based on kinship. Nothing you can do as an individual has any meaning.
At the time, in the 7th c, this provided a great stability to these socioeconomic tribal groups. But, such a system is totally unsuited for a modern, urban, industrial society, for such an economy requires a civic rather than kin based alliance in a state.
An industrial system requires free-thinking, innovative, progressive, citizens who will innovate, compete as individuall businesses, invent new technologies, etc. All of this is disallowed in a rigid kin-based system.
Don’t ignore that Islam is only superficially about the metaphysical forces..notions which it took primarly from Judaism anyway. Above all, it is a repressive, 7th c primitive tribal mode of life, and its key problem is its inability to free its members to enable them to be non-kin and members of a modern society.
Oh wow, no way dude, Nada is Nada right??
Jess
http://www.anon-tools.mirrorz.com
You are an Inspiration with a capital ‘I’, Phyllis.
You have lead and continue to lead a fascinating and amazing life. Your bravery humbles me.
Thank you for all you continue to share and to DO!
Well that’s what you get for dating outside your race.
James: Not really. Hemingway’s Iceberg Technique. Sense of humor too subtle for Senorita Heather
“When we landed in Kabul, my American passport was confiscated and I discovered, for the first time, that my father-in-law had three wives and twenty-one children”
Phyllis, can you tell us how you got out of there?
Blackwater, I busted a gut on your comment!
I still can’t find one link in this article that relates the religion itself to the way Afghans are behaving. What you have witnessed is the culture of the country, and what has been made status quo there. Have you ever gone to other dominantly muslim countries? You may want to do a case study on Turkey.
20. Ash:
[You may want to do a case study on Turkey.]
Yeah, on Turkey, now that Thanksgiving is coming. After watching movie “Midnight Express”, and witnessing the greatest case of mass-murder negationism in recent history (aka Erasing Armenian Genocide). From the Bulgarian perspective and greetings from the town of Batak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak,_Bulgaria#April_Uprising_and_Ottoman_war-crimes
16. Blackwater:
[Well that’s what you get for dating outside your race.]
Yep, I agree with the judge from Louisiana; besides, I also believe Phyllis at 20 should had been in kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot with Icchak Cukierman and Zivia Lubetkin instead of wandering around them Muslim lands.
The thing is, you can’t 100% blame Islam for this. What you have is the gross mis-treatment of women by primitive tribesmen who happen to be Muslim. It’s not the faith that requires this mis-treatment. It’s a mis-reading of the faith that’s being used to justify the same mis-treatment which has gone on for thousands of years in these cultures.
You’ll find, upon reading the Koran, nothing requiring the wearing of a burqua. It’s enforced in these tribal societies as a cultural norm, but it’s not the faith that demands it.
Book 33 (The Clans), verse 59:
“O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
Highly recommend “While Europe Slept” by Bawer. Shows the ignorance and wrongheadedness of the PC Euros, and gives America a good warning that should be heeded.
I remember hearing snitches and snatches of that story when I was a G.P. in Red Hook.I am now a psychiatrist in Richmond, VA.
I am computer challanged. I don;t know what a URL is.
I did read your book “Women and Madness”
many years ago and liked it
“The most perfect of believers is the best of them in character and the best of you is the kindest to his family.”
Yes, civilization is won or lost on the the issue of women’s rights. Weak, marginalized women are a sign of societal decay- that applies to the hills of Afghanistan, to the night clubs of LA and to everywhere in between.
I encourage everyone to think about why they’re here, to read the Qur’an, to travel through the world and to try to shed tribal inclinations.
21. MiamaMan
Thank you for getting the usual tasteless thanksgiving joke out of the way.
Let me point out how off topic you are. This article is about how Islam (the religion, in case you didn’t know) subjugates women. I was pointing out that culture does not equal to religion and gave Turkey as an example of a predominantly Muslim country where women are treated equally without segregation. Genocide and war crimes are irrelevant to this subject.
Also, for your information, “Midnight Express” is only a movie. It is not a documentary. The caves used in the movie that were supposed to be prisons were filmed in Malta (not located in Turkey for the geographically challenged), using Armenian actors. It was obviously a hate movie created by a butthurt guy who was stupid enough to smuggle drugs into the country and blew the whole experience out of proportion.
“Won or lost on the issue of women’s rights”.
Allow me to give my take on that.
All ethical societies have species survival as their universal morality. Species survival in turn requires the ethic of “Woment and children first!” Nothing else will do.
What Phyllis experienced first hand goes hand-in-glove with what others have observed. In those cultures, women and children are regarded as and treated as expendables. In World War II, it was common for women and children to suffer heavy casualties digging up buried German munitions
so the men could use them as IEDs and loot allied vehicles/convoys.
Today, those people would suffer a drastic decline in their numbers were it not for the fact they can access western productivity.
Folks, if you want to make H Sapiens extinct or nearly so, just do things their way. We are in a fight for the future of the human race. Make no mistake about it.
Blackwater 16, MiamaMan 21,
I sure hope you guys are kidding. I’m pretty sure Blackwater was, but MiamaMan you sounded serious! This is ridiculous. Race is irrelevant. Racialism is tribalism. We will never have peace until this notion is utterly done away with. We can never discuss ISSUES intelligently as long as racial affiliations and historical injuries keep getting brought to the fore. It’s insane. Don’t add to that.
The same is true of dividing up violations of morality between those that are perpetrated against women and those that are perpetrated against everybody else. Violence toward the unborn, boys and men are no less evil than violence toward girls and women.
So long as these kind of divisions are made we will never have peace.
26. Ash:
[I was pointing out that culture does not equal to religion and gave Turkey as an example of a predominantly Muslim country where women are treated equally without segregation.]
Ouchh! Equally? You must be kidding.
Armenian genocide nothing to do with Turkey and Islam? Batak and the Bashi-Bozouk nothing to do with Turkey? You must be kidding.
[Also, for your information, “Midnight Express” is only a movie.]
Really? “Der Ewige Jude” was a movie too.
22. Jordan:
[You’ll find, upon reading the Koran, nothing requiring the wearing of a burqua. It’s enforced in these tribal societies as a cultural norm, but it’s not the faith that demands it.]
Therefore, the Taliban doesn’t follow the Koran, go tell them yourself, good luck. Saudi, Yemen, et al do not follow the Mein Kampft, I mean Koran, go tell them yourself, good luck!
@Jordan “The thing is, you can’t 100% blame Islam for this. What you have is the gross mis-treatment of women by primitive tribesmen who happen to be Muslim. It’s not the faith that requires this mis-treatment.”
Islam, despite the claims of some (including yourself) is not the literal word of the Quran.
Islam is the accumulated beliefs and actions of those who profess to be Muslims.
If the Quran says “Be kind and gentle to kittens”, and Muslims show a greater propensity than others to torture kittens, then Islam is cruel to kittens.
All this “religion of peace” and “Mohammad was a great advocate of women” talk is a smokescreen to distract from the simple fact that the practice of Islam here on planet earth benefits neither women nor the prospects for peace.
I was expected not to believe my own eyes.
It’s the shame/honour culture, and how very wrong that so many Western feminists back it up.
Interesting that your ex husband was so apparently Westernised when in the West. You hear about this time and time again, Muslim men who treat women like princesses until they’re married and back in their country of origin – then they treat them like slaves.
All correct and good, Phyllis. But you overestimate American women and, like them, underestimate their danger.
I don’t think I met you in the 50′s and early 60s when I was a liberal follower of Ayn Rand. But back then “liberal” was in the Victorian sense: individualist and classicist with a libertine tinge.
But had I met you, I would have known you and hated you. You would have told me all the Proustian and Sartrean gobbledegook about your Afghan lover, and I would have told you straight out about Islam and him. Having studied the one, I knew the other. You would have called me racist, reactionary and (gasp!) Republican, none of which I’ve ever been. Today’s Liberals still do. But they’re “liberal” in the current sense: narcissistic true believers of the demogogues of altruism and relativism.
Now I’m an old man, gone long ago to Libertarianism, now finally to an I-don’t-give-a-damn but don’t-throw-bombs anarchist, and watching you misunderstand it all still. They’ve followed you home, Phyllis. They’re coming for you, “you” as in all Americans, to our own country.
And they’ll get you, because you still think it’s about you and it isn’t. It’s about them, that we haven’t and won’t kill them first.
Logos: On the racial comment, I was kidding, but do discount race yet, not yet.
26. Ash :
“I [...] gave Turkey as an example of a predominantly Muslim country where women are treated equally without segregation.”
Ever hear of Ataturk? Ever hear of “Kemalism”? Google the terms, and educate yourself. The extent to which Turkey is somewhat better regarding tolerance or the treatment of women etc. is the extent to which Turkey is a secular nation and ignores the dictates of Islam and Sharia. You can’t have it both ways suggesting that Turkey is somehow a paragon as an Islamic nation and then ignore the foundational secularism of Ataturk which allows that tolerance to exist. Also, the steady erosion of Ataturk’s secularism probably guarantees that Sharia will eventually make a comeback in Turkey. Your example is completely WEAK.
It’s all about Islam. The cesspool conditions, barbarity, and corruption of most Islamic nations — the fact that the Arab Block with nearly half a billion Arabs and unlimited oil wealth still produces less GDP than Spain, and relatively poor EU nation with less than 1/10th the population. Please get a clue.
morton i think there will be a military coup in turkey before sharia can be mandated as the military is sworn to uphold anautks vision is it not?
and if the total subjugation of women in muslim cultures is news to anyone then they are blind, death and dumb. and please note i said mulsim culture not islam because islam does not sanction this (so i am told) but the muslim culture most assuredly does so i conclude that muslims do not follow islam…islam is a religion with no followers
please forgive my happy fingers…anautks should be ataturk of course
#22 Jordan – Apparently, you don’t understand what you’ve read in that passage. The Quran dictates the burqa in that passage. It tells them to cover themselves, to hide the shame of them being women. If they do so, Allah will prove Himself merciful. If they do not, they shall encounter trouble. (Their men shall stone them for harlots.) They must let themselves be known as ashamed for being women. The Islamic Fundamentalists DO understand the Quran. They are the ones who get it right.
One of the misunderstandings by the West of Islam, is that they believe that, since they are religious, they are politically on the Right. It’s not true. Like Marxism, they demand complete world dominance by any means. They are both political and religious philosophies. Marxism: the State is God. Islam: God is the State.
Communism requires suppression of religion to remain in power. Communism becomes the statd religion. Islam requires the co-option of religion to stay in power. In both cases, they are actually suppressing freedom via religion. Religion, a deep abiding faith which conquers your fear, is necessary to free oneself from one’s shackles.
Islam and Communism are both anti-God.
The Communists exterminate all legitimate religion. They stand with the Devil in this. Communists created Liberation Theology, which is nothing more than Communism dressed up in Christian clothing. This is why the adherents all hate America and its freedom. (see Rev. Wright and Goddamn America)
Islam worships a false God, the Moon God of Ur and the Morning Star (aka, Lucifer): The Moon and the Star. They’re very open about this. They claim to be derived from Judaism and worship the same God. This is false. They worship his Adversary. They have dressed up their Devil worship as Judaism.
Do they oppose homosexuality? Yes… in theory. In practice, however, it flourishes. They merely turn a blind eye. See no evil. With their power, they could end it in their regimes, but they don’t. Do they oppose abortion? Yes, but because they understand the power of numbers. They have actually conquered lands by immigration and out-breeding the locals. This is happening in Europe. (Communist China does this in Tibet and Mongolia.) The Islamists also oppose these things, because they must adopt at least some of the precepts of Judaism in order to maintain their disguise. They keep the things that promote their power.
Islam exterminates all other faiths. Convert or die. The exception is the People of the Book (Biblio = Bible = Book). They had to claim this, as they claim to worship the same God. As long as Jews and Christians acknowledge the superior status of Islam, they may continue to live. In practice, however, they are subjugated and exterminated. The Islamic hatred of Jews is intense. They are the Chosen of God. His Adversary hates the descendants of Adam and Eve.
They are both anti-God. The means are a bit different, but the ends are exactly the same. Both lead to the subjugation and murder of mankind. Look at their records. Look at the vast amount of out-and-out murder committed by each, which is not just condoned, but indeed, commanded by the leaders of their faiths. It is all Devil-worship. It is all on the political Left. It is power and control; subjugation and murder.
Islam is at war with the Twenty-first century. For centuries, as they lived in comparative isolation, they could practice their primitive tribal culture/religion with little interference from the outside world. Today, with the avalanche of information and the never-ending imposition of images and ideas from the West, the insular world of primitive Islam feels under attack. Most of the world’s religions learned long ago how to cope and adapt with changing times; not so Islam. As both religion and culture, they see either being threatened as an attack on both. Without both, they have nothing because in their eyes they are the same. As a result the fundamentalists see themselves in a struggle to the death with ideas that undermine the very foundations of everything they stand for and believe. They must either impose their ancient and barbaric views of the world on all of us or perish themselves. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center; I’ve experienced how far they will go. I have no illusions about this struggle and hope to make them regret not killing me when they had the chance.
I am fascinated with the notion of the liberation treatment to treat multiple sclerosis. From what data I can accumulate about doctors that offer treatment, I can only find one nebulous list repeated on a dozen websites. Is there a more preferable way to find treatment, per say in North America. There are places that offer Liberation Treatment for the United States that no one knows about, such as Liberation Treatment Now