What Muslims Around the World Think About Women's Rights, in Charts

[get the red out]

50. I have a question for you: Not hostile

My question is what do you want people to take away from your threads about women in Islamic countries?

Perhaps I have read you wrong, I have no problem admitting that, but I have read you as wanting support for well-behaved Muslim ladies who ask for more rights; laudable goal to be sure. However, it seems that you want people to voice support without criticizing Islam or the culture in very restrictive Muslim countries. I could be wrong, as I said.

My issue doesn't have anything to do with you personally, but it has to do with getting the impression overall in various liberal leaning online discussions (not all at DU by any means) that since George Buch was a wretched monster (we can agree on that I'm sure) and bombed the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan (two useless wars that should nave never been); that as a liberal I am supposed to give Islam a pass on how women in the majority of Islamic countries are treated that I don't have to give the Catholic Church in Latin America, and would be soundly and justly criticized for giving the Catholic Church, for instance (you could fill in the blank with various Christian Fundy groups in the US also, none of which I have a favorable opinion of, to say the least).

I have grown weary through the years of the "speak no evil of Islam" approach, which seems just as silly as when various conservatives are unable to speak out against racist Christian Churches, for instance. And I'm not even an Atheist! I just wish the belief systems that have become most popular throughout the world would allow women equal status and accept no excuses as to why they will not.

I doubt the existence of any actual democracy on this planet btw. We pretend to have one in the US, but it's really just all bought and paid for by large corporations so we are fooling ourselves that we have democracy simply because more people here have a better standard of living than in other parts of the world. We CAN however, speak out against religions and not face jail or execution by the legal system, or murder by our entrenched families (maybe some families, but not anything like the scale of other countries, generally Islamic countries, I apologize for saying.)

So there may be no hope for me adopting your point of view. But maybe I am just unclear as to what that point of view is.