Double Dose of
Intolerance
But it is her forays
into critiquing Islam that have garnered Manji the most attention. As a
lesbian, she faces a double dose of intolerance within Muslim culture, but
she has never backed down. Instead, she founded the Web site Muslim-Refusenik.com
and authored the groundbreaking book "The Trouble With Islam Today: A
Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith."
More recently, Manji
joined Salman Rushdie and 10 other journalists, writers and public
intellectuals in signing the "Manifesto
of 12: Together Facing a New Totalitarianism," a "call for
resistance to religious totalitarianism." This show of
solidarity came in response to a specific death threat from an Islamic Web
site in
Britain
frequented by radicals.
Another signatory to
the manifesto and one of the bravest of the bunch is Ayan
Hirsi Ali. Born in
Somalia
and raised a Muslim, Hirsi Ali escaped from an arranged marriage and made
her way to
Holland
. Embodying the immigrant success story, she eventually became a member of
Parliament.
From the very
beginning, Hirsi Ali set out to expose the oppression of women in Muslim
culture in a society that tended to look the other way due to the
self-censorship of multiculturalism. A longtime critic of the practice of
genital mutilation in Muslim North Africa, Hirsi Ali also collaborated
with the late Theo Van Gogh on the taboo-shattering film
"Submission."
For daring to address
the oppression of Muslim women, Van Gogh was murdered by an Islamist and
Hirsi Ali was threatened in note left attached to his body. She was forced
to temporarily go into hiding and has employed round-the-clock bodyguards
ever since. But far from being cowed by those who would seek to silence
her, Hirsi Ali has continued her quest to bring Muslim women's rights into
the spotlight.
Fallaci Recognized
Dangers
Lest it be thought that
only Middle Eastern women have tackled Islam, Western women have also
chosen to speak out. One of them is Oriana
Fallaci, an Italian journalist, war correspondent and author who now
resides in
New York
.
Although fiercely
independent, Fallaci leaned leftward in the early days of her journalistic
career. Yet she recognized the dangers of Islamic aggression early on. Her
epic novel "Inshallah," which told the bloody story of the
Lebanese civil war, opened with the 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombing that
killed 400 American and French marines.
After the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks on her adopted home, Fallaci, shaken to the core, penned
"The Rage and the Pride," a blistering statement on the
collision between the West and the Muslim world. The second book in
what promises to be a trilogy, "The Force and the Reason"
expounds on the Islamic demographic and cultural takeover of
Europe
. For daring to express such opinions, Fallaci has received death threats
and is currently being
sued in
Italy
for "defaming Islam."
Instead of coming to
her defense, the left has largely rejected Fallaci for her criticism of
Muslim culture. Her opponents are fond of dismissing her work by labeling
her a "racist."
Indeed, if one is
searching for Fallaci's books in one of
San Francisco
's venerable institutions of leftist intellectualism, City Lights
Bookstore, one is likely to be disappointed. It seems City Lights has
banned Fallaci's books because, in
the words of a bookstore clerk, they "don't carry books by
fascists." For a career spent fighting fascism, Fallaci has now been
labeled a fascist. Perhaps City Lights, once a bastion of Beats and banned
books, should look in the mirror.
Chesler's Break With
Movement
Another woman who broke
from the crowd to take on Muslim culture is professor, author and activist
Phyllis Chesler.
Chesler was a prominent figure in the American feminist movement, but when
she began to reject the anti-Americanism and anti-Israel sentiment that
had subsumed her colleagues, she was cast out of the garden. Chesler has
since become one of the feminist movement's strongest
critics and her latest book, "The Death of Feminism: What's Next
in the Struggle for Women's Freedom," is a searing indictment of her
former cohorts.
Chesler also provides a
powerful voice in the battle against Islamic sexism. As described in her
latest book in a chapter titled "My
Afghan Captivity," Chesler learned through personal experience
that all was not well for women in the Muslim world. Having married her
college sweetheart, a young Muslim man originally from
Afghanistan
whom she believed to be moderate, she received a rude awakening. When they
visited his family in
Afghanistan
, she was suddenly shrouded in a veil, had her passport confiscated and
was turned into a virtual prisoner. Only with outside help was she able to
escape and get back to the
United States
. She has since devoted herself to exposing such uncomfortable truths,
even if the feminist movement doesn't want to hear them.
In addition to the
brave women referenced above, there is another group that deserves
mention. While some merely talk the talk, it is the women
warriors of the
U.S.
military who are on the front lines bringing justice to the Muslim world.
They face challenges in
Afghanistan
,
Iraq
and beyond, but this does not diminish their accomplishments. If just one
girls' school is reopened, one woman goes back to work, one burka is
discarded or one stoning is prevented, we have made a concrete difference
in the lives of Muslim women. Restoring freedoms and providing medical
care, humanitarian aid and protection, women in the military are the true
feminists. So are the valiant men who work and fight alongside them.
Unfortunately, one will
rarely catch a self-proclaimed feminist willing to admit as much. To do so
would be to acknowledge that the
United States
can be a force for good, and this must be avoided at all costs, even at
the expense of women's rights. What they don't seem to realize is that the
war they oppose is a battle against the very forces of fascism they
routinely decry.
The oppression of women
in Muslim culture and the threat it poses to women's rights all over the
world is clearly the next frontier for the feminist movement. Either
feminists will rise to the occasion or be rendered meaningless by their
hypocrisy.
Cinnamon Stillwell
is a
San Francisco
writer. She can be reached at [email protected]
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