Multiculturalism trumps feminism. "Cautious criticism: A Growing Number Of Activists Are Hesitant To Decry Female Genital Mutilation," by Zosia Bielski in the National Post (thanks to all who sent this in):
Academia's fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women's rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice.Where feminists rallied against the operation from the pages of Ms. magazine in the 1970s, today's critics are infinitely more cautious, with most suggesting that the Western world butt out until Muslim African communities are ready to reconsider what they are doing to their daughters.
The shift in attitudes about the practice-- which in the worst of cases involves the carving out of a woman's clitoris and inner labia and can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and even death -- comes at a time when high-profile victims of the operation such as writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and model Waris Dirie, both Somalis, have launched very public campaigns against the practice.
The issue is so explosive, it has two names -- female genital mutilation, or FGM, to those most vociferously opposed to the practice; and female genital cutting, or FGC, to those in the less-condemning camp.
The latter includes the chair of anthropology at the University of Toronto, who has written a new book on the subject. Although not prepared to defend what she calls FGC, Janice Boddy defends women who undergo the operation and want the practice to continue in future generations.
"There are good reasons within the society for the operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Prof. Boddy, author of Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan.
Working through British and Sudanese archives, she looks at the history of FGC in that country, particularly European colonial interactions with the practice, from British nurses attempting to re-educate Sudanese midwives in the 1920s, to the country's outlawing of the practice in 1946 amid Western pressure.
"It isn't a happy situation by any means. I wouldn't want it to continue. But I think that up until this point, the West has not been particularly helpful in the way that it's gone about trying to assist in the eradication," Prof. Boddy says.
Of course, it's the West's fault. What isn't?
Feminist HATE Christians and restrictions on abortion, Thats what feminism is about, nothing more.
Here is one who has all the answers:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/miss_teen_us_on_the_problem_of_undereducated_teens/
Feminists are not about empowering and protecting the rights of women they are about blaming white men for all their problems. And yes they hate Christians with a passion. Islam putting women in trash bags and honor killings are ok with them. But white Christian men and women who like being part of a traditional family are their mortal enemy.
And another thing about them. Most of them are nothing but useless graduates of Ivy universities whom you won't find anywhere but in academia. They are emotionally too fragile and mentally too stupid to work in the 9-5 world.
It's the moral limbo! How low can you go?
Finally said the right way. FGM! The where calling it circumsion, BULL! When it is done to a man he comes out healthier not deformed! and unhealthy in soul and mind!
"...good reasons for this practice to continue..."
And Prof. Boddy views FGM as a way of the islamic society "protecting women's bodies." Since most feminists hate men, maybe they should seek such protection. Kind of like the burqa, male escorts, etc. are argued by muslims to be protective. From whom? It's a core admittance that muslim males are a bunch of baboons who cannot control their libidos.
You can bet that if the islamic cult had a religious path for women, i.e., convents or monasteries, they would be packed to the rafters.
The only state in life for muslim women is marriage and child production.
Self-hatred in the West is often an egotistical counterfeit of something good: respect for the Other.
The Jihad Awareness Project currently has 61 volunteers in 33 states.
WE STILL ARE SEEKING CITIZEN VOLUNTEERS FROM ALL 50 STATES, ESPECIALLY FROM THE FOLLOWING 17:
Alabama
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Kansas
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
Montana
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Utah
Vermont
West Virginia
Wyoming
I'm looking for at least two people in every state of the Union who would be willing to purchase a copy of Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't and mail it, on an agreed upon date, to one of the senators in your state. I'm organizing an effort to get the book simultaneously to all 100 senators, in order to send a strong message. If we get more than two people per state, books can also be sent to the House of Representatives.
If you’d like to be involved, please write to me at traehnam@yahoo.com under the subject heading “Senate,” and tell me the state your senator represents, an email address where I can reach you, and a nickname. No need for your real name. And I will never share your email address with anyone, not even with other volunteers for this project.
And visit www.jihadawareness.blogspot.com to get more info on this project and to leave comments other volunteers can read. You can also see there the growing list of participants in this project, and the states their senators represent. I’ll try to update the list at least once a day. I've also designed a graphic that might amuse. Scroll down when you get to the site.
Once we have at least two people from every state, we can agree on a mailing date and then each of us can mail a copy of the book on that date.
Right before each of us mails the book, we can issue a press release to various media outlets in every state, and in that way announce and explain the mailing. And perhaps we can come up with some other ways of maximizing the effectiveness of this project and gaining as much positive attention as possible.
One of the project's volunteers suggested contacting Rep. Sue Myrick, who started the anti-Jihad caucus in Congress. I'll try to coordinate this project with Rep. Myrick to maximize its effectiveness. I've also been calling various congressional offices to get advice on how best to go about this. And I'll soon contact Regnery, Robert Spencer's publisher, to ask their advice and to see if we can coordinate with them in some way.
Fear leads to rationalizing an absurd, immoral and untenable position.
That anyone can condone this practise for any reason is dispicable.
READ.....'The Hospital by the River' by Dr. Catherine Hamlin
In this book there are enormous reason tto stop the practise and to condemn it wholeheartedly.
That anyone can condone this shows the depths of idiocy, depravity and human degeneration that are occurring along with political apologism and OVER academization of Westerners.
They should be ashamed.
"Boddy aims to explore a culture from the perspective of the people within it, keeping her own cultural bias at bay..."
Why? What is wrong with 'her own cultural bias'?
"The simplest way to describe rural Sudanese women’s perspective on this issue is that female circumcision bestows womanhood upon a girl," explains Boddy. "It involves removing the part of the body – the clitoris – that is identified with masculinity, in order to purify women and deem them worthy of motherhood."
And this she seems to support on no better grounds than that it has always been done - than that it is tribal and, therefore, we have to approve it.
Academics like Boddy we can very well do without. She has no interest in the rights of man or woman, no position that we can describe as honourable. All she is interested in is observing what is and she dare not name or shame any position that runs counter to our accepted Wetern norms nor any position that is obviously wrong. For her, all is relative - a position deeply discredited by many academics over the last fifty years.
In that she is a coward. She seems to say that because she is only an observer then she has no right to interfere nor to tell us that there is a right or a wrong. We have to make up our own minds about FGM - as if there was a question here. We all know that FGM is a question about male dominated societies and male control but it seems that Boddy has completely failed to see the perspective and seeks only to rewrite history.
She is nothing more than a charlatan riding on the backs of the funding providers and exacerbating an already dire situation for Moslem women. But does she care about their suffering - of course not, just as long as there is a good paper in it to which she can put her name to.
Academics like Prof. Boddy deserve everything they get - regrettably, what they mostly get is increased funding by academic ignoramuses with no understanding of human rights! Worse, they have no understanding of the female perpective despite some of them being female themselves.
So, how should we view Professor Boddy, apart from as a dunderhead of the first order? I mean, how should we value her work? Does she have anything to say? Does she actually contribute to our knowledge of the malfunctioning Islamic world?
Well, obviously, no!
Observations and recording those observations is one thing. Apologising, as she does, for evil practises, excusing evil practises, as she does, on the bases that these are tribal necessities born from history and religion and that, therefore, they must pass without comment from her, is, quite simply, inexcusable and absurd.
She has a moral duty, an inescapable moral duty, to point out to her Western student audience (us), that such practises are objectively, by the standards of the Western enlightenment science that she professess to practice, simply unnacceptable. Does she do this? No!
Quite frankly, she is a charlatan existing only to serve her own ends and those ends are disreputable and dishonourable. She has no care or cure for those whom she observes, no concern for them and no sense that she is reporting to us, her students, any moral position. She sees herself as an objective, dispassionate and external observer in a situation where being objective is ridiculous, where being dispassionate is dishonourable and where pretending that one can be external is a betrayal of freedom.
Human beings, in this case female human beings, suffer physical mutilations and trauma but she, Boddy, is only interested in the cultural norms that cause this to happen. She is incapable of making any form of social judgement about the value of the value systems operating in a male dominated society.
Quite frankly, she has missed, quite colossally, the point. That this woman gains funding in the face of her incredible and enormous inability to see the real cause of what she is, in her amateurish way, attempting to investigate is, quite simply, a crushing indictment of the funding systems of Western academic institutions. She is investigating the cultural norms of the female whilst ignoring the dominant cultural norms of the male. How can she be so stupid? How can she be so blind? How can she ignore the fourteen-hundred years of male dominated history that have led to this point?
For her, females accept. It never crosses her mind that females might be cowed and dominated and violently discriminated against! Oh no! Females accept! What of the action of the male? What of basic biology? What of history and tribal necessity?
I've run up against Boddy before. She is a fool and a charlatan. She hides behind a faux-social agenda that is, at best, left-wing, and, at worst, an unreconstructed apologogetic marxist explanation for her perceived left-wing bias. She is deeply dishonest and unable to separate logical thought from fallacy. That she holds a tenured position is an appalling indictment of our academic system rather than saying anything about her preferred field of study.
There is a great deal to study. That she can do it is, however, open to question.
Having read Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Waris Dirie describing what it is like to undergo this horrible, sadistic, quite frequently murderous procedure (one of Waris Dirie's sisters DIED under the knife), and having also read Dirie's description of how it completely wrecked her ability to menstruate, urinate and give birth safely (imagine trying to give birth through an exit blocked by rock-hard scar tissue? imagine what that does to the baby, too? - prolonged labour, obstructed labour. brain damage...) I fail to understand how any woman who has had FGM done to her, could EVER inflict it upon her own little daughter.
'Hospital by the River' doesn't mention FGM at all, so far as I can recall - it just talks about a horrific rate of severe childbirth injury among women of all religious backgrounds in Ethiopia, and seems to connect most of it to very early marriage of girls who are already underdeveloped due to poor nutrition. But when you think about it, FGM would have to be THE major contributing factor, on top of everything else.
It is high time that FGM went the same way as the practice of breaking and binding little girls' feet in China (see Jung Chang, 'Wild Swans', for a description of what THAT delightfully quaint and incredibly culturally significant custom did to its little victims; there's another account in Gladys Aylward's memoirs, she was an early 20th century missionary who was employed by the Nationalist Government to unbind little girls' feet).
I think any 'feminist' who wants to support this 'cultural practice' should be made to watch video and audio of a little girl undergoing the procedure, sans anaesthesia. And a video of an infibulated woman trying to give birth. Or talk to people like Catherine Hamlin who have to deal with the fallout.
"There are good reasons within the society for the operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Prof. Boddy. So: for 'good' 'cultural reasons' Prof Boddy is willing to condemn millions of little black girls and Egyptian girls, for generations to come, to sexual torture; the risk of death by catastrophic haemhorrhage; massive psychological trauma; lifelong urinary tract infection and probable kidney damage, in societies where there is little access to antibiotics; excruciatingly painful urination and menstruation and agonising intercourse; and a much higher risk of dying in childbirth from obstructed labour; of stillbirth; and the misery of vaginal fistula, with urine and stool pouring uncontrollably from the body. I can only conclude Prof Boddy is a sadist.
When 'cultural reasons' kill and hurt human beings on this grand scale, there is nothing 'good' about them at all.
I would like to put Prof Boddy in the same room as Waris Dirie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and let her try to explain to THEM what a wonderful and beautiful cultural custom FGM is and how much it means to northern African women and why the West should not interfere with it. Phyllis Chesler might like to come along and assist them with the demolition job.
Nothing particularly new, about 10 years ago feminists in the UK in Europe were chanting,
“Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no!”
Last year a “veteran” Danish (?) feminist was saying, “Woman had to understand that we now had a multicultural society and they just could not go round exposing areas of bare flesh” and by implication should expect to be molested if they did. Gutless creep, how can anyone ever take them seriously?.
dumbledoresarm/
I would like to put Prof Boddy in the same room as Waris Dirie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and let her try to explain to THEM what a wonderful and beautiful cultural custom FGM is and how much it means to northern African women and why the West should not interfere with it.
Yes. Yes!
Tiptoeing through this carnage doesn't make it any less horrific or any less brutal, any less cruel or any less subhuman.
These Western apologists are even more sickening than this sadistic madness itself, because they know better, and are simply cowards posing as mediators.
(I guess their self-loathing trumps their shame.)
Fred/
My point, exactly. Well made, Sir.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali said it well. From 'Infidel':
(The quote on p140 made the biggest impression on me.)
p. 31:
Many girls die during or after their excistion, from infection. Other complications cause enormous, more or less lifelong pain.
p.140:
Excision doesn't remove your desire or ability to enjoy sexual pleasure. The excision of women is cruel on many levels. It is physically cruel and painful; it sets girls up for a lifetime of suffering. And it is not even effective in its intent to remove their desire.
p.143:
He gasped and shoved and sweated with the effort of forcing open my scar. It was horribly painful and took so long. I gritted my teeth and endured the pain until I became numb.
(end quotes)
FGM should be referred to as such. It is mutilation, pure and simple. It serves no medical purpose (unlike male circumcision, something I am personally against, but that is a different topic) and can even be medically debilitating. Feminists should be livid about this destruction of female sexuality. It is nothing short of control over a woman's sex.
Fred/
My point, exactly. Well made, Sir.
The west try to ended this fir over than hundred year with no succes in ending it. The Christian woman and pagon woman and muslim woman in that part of the world atr doing it and no amount of western pressure is going to change that. Saudic Arabaic is haveing better succes in reducing this practice in the woman population thought eductration not strong arm tactic. Woman in this apart of the world where doing this for the last 6000 years.
Maybe the good nun Karen Armstrong will be the first to submit to this practice, since she thinks so lightly of the headscarf, and it's liberating effects.
Ignore that errant apostrophe, infidels.
Feminists are only brave in their criticism when there are no possible negative consequences.
Being critical of people who are likely to hunt you down and cut your head off is not something they generally do.
Dear OliverPCamford,
Good to see you back. We were worried about you.
Can you tell us anything more about your brush with the law?
Are you going to face charges in court?
Do you still have £12,000 fine to pay?
""Womyn are doing this to themselves as a form of liberation from base sexual urges. We could, like totally learn from them, if we were only more tolerant and open-minded.
So, this whole clitty clitty bang bang obsexion is just a diversion from the REAL fact that womyn are only making 78 cents in Amerikkka, which is WAY more oppressive."
Posted by: Jauhara Al-Kafirah"
.....advise your nutty professor that she should seek out some Muslim whacko with a dull rusty blade, then have the Muslim whacko with the dull rusty blade perform the cut job on her....she could then totally learn firsthand and she could then become truly more tolerant and openminded...
.78 an hour?....blantantly a stupid comment...the professor should then show some evidence of women only making .78 (I assume the nutty professor is saying .78 per hour).
"Tonya Greipenweiner, who is currently teaching the Feminist Mystaque in the Middle Eastern Histrionics Department,"
....further proof the teachers Unions are destroying the quality education the American children used to get....like Ward Churchill, this professor should be fired.....
Ban Muslim Immigration.
"It isn't a happy situation by any means. I wouldn't want it to continue. But I think that up until this point, the West has not been particularly helpful in the way that it's gone about trying to assist in the eradication," Prof. Boddy says.
And I guess this genius' solution is to engage the Muslims in dialog. As if doing so has ever convinced them to give up even one of their barbaric customs.
This professor's comments are disgraceful, but scarcely surprising. The University of Toronto has always been a hotbed of starry eyed, left leaning, multi culti treehuggers.
"There are good reasons within the society for the [FGC] operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Prof. Boddy, author of Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan.
Bloody hell! I'm sure a similar moron said the same thing about footbinding in China back a century or so ago.
Its the West's fault Muslims wont end this barbaric practice? Shouldnt Muslism WANT to end it?
Wow, this Broddy woman scored a hat trick: she wrote a book about it, defended the women who perpetrate this practice, and then BLAMED THE WEST (she had to get that in there).
Idiot.
What next? A defense of suttee? Female infanticide--it's not so bad! Lord, have mercy!
Feminism is morally bankrupt and long past irrelevant.
It sounds like these girls who undergo this will never be promiscuous. I'm not making light of the brutality involved, but I think that is all matters to these barbarians.
Contrast that with the sex drenched society we live in the west. If chastity is held as a high virtue in their society, then such barbarism might be an effective way to ensure such from one's daughters. Has anyone ever shown them the good old chastity belts with lock and key from the middle ages.
It physically sickens me to read of the procedure-what is and does to the girl's body and of the long term effects. Yet, I still wonder--what ever happened to the ideal of chastity till marriage in our Christian society?? I know it exists--but those of us who believe in it are really swimming against the mainstream here.
Muslim "feminists" -- the sometimes sensible-sounding ones (Fatima Mernissi, less often Leila Ahmad) and the almost-never-sensible-ones (Abu-Lughod)-- have changed a good deal over the years. Now they are quick to sense that Islam is being implicated in the mistreatment by Muslim men, in Muslim countries, of Muslim women, and this is something they don't like, and there is a quick circling of the wagons to make sure that in no case is Islam itself to be blamed, but only "cultural practices." The fact that a manual of surgery, on the subject of partial or full clitoridectomies, is not appended to the Qur'an should fool no one. The text of Qur'an, the practices of the Sunna (derived largely from Hadith and Sira) inculcate a view of women, of their distinct differences from, and inferiority to men, which naturally gives men the right to interfere and to cut-and-paste, with the emphasis here on cutting, in order to create a More Perfect Woman, less menacing in her dangerous sexuality, which is also why she, that creature, must be covered up, for men are poor, weak, forked things, and need to be protected from those wiles and endless guiles and come-hitherings of women, who therefore must be covered up, just as they must be cut, here and there, to make sure that their centers of pleasure are removed otherwise there is no telling what they might do to entice men, or drag the honor of their families into the dust.
Does the general message of Islam, do the attitudes toward women that naturally flow from familiarity with, and deep belief in, the texts of Islam, do anything to encourage the practice of what is clumsily called Female Genital Mutiliation? Or is there no relation, as Fatima Mernissi et al. would smilingly, plausibly, sweetly (with the hysteria just underneath, ready to explode) have you believe?
What do you believe?
....I believe Muslim men fear Muslim women....
Here we go again with the liberal bashing. "Feminists hate Christians," blah blah blah. These kinds of generalizations are the reason why the posts on this site will never achieve anything beyond inane whining. I remember how much some people (Wellington, where art thou?) were up in arms when they thought I'd made a general comment about conservatives. Yet it's perfectly okay to tar everyone else with the same brush.
My advice? Grow up, people. You're far too old to still be making general assumptions.
Shall I post all the sickening links again?
Articles:
http://www.challenging-islam.org/articles/circumcision.htm
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk/DiscView.asp?mid=864&forum_id=2
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
http://middle-east-info.org/league/somalia/fgmpictures.htm
Article - scroll halfway down
http://middle-east-info.org/gateway/genocide/index.htm
Complete report:
http://middle-east-info.org/league/somalia/hosken.pdf
THIS IS GOING ON IN THE USA.
Can you guess why I as a woman have absolutely no truck with so called "feminists" hypocrits?
{o.o}
I am not in favor of a promiscuous society, but I don't see FGM as the solution. And this is a women's issue if there ever was one.
FGM is done to disarm a woman. She becomes a fertile eunuch. It's a way to control her. Islam has never been about free will, only control, suppression, and subjugation. Asking where the feminists stand on this issue is valid.
The same women who think it is fine to jab a pair of scissors into the skull of a partially delivered baby and suction out its brain are nowhere to be found on this issue.
They're in the tall grass hiding with their purse-holding hubbies.
"The same women who think it is fine to jab a pair of scissors into the skull of a partially delivered baby and suction out its brain are nowhere to be found on this issue.
They're in the tall grass hiding with their purse-holding hubbies."
That would make me a bad person, since I'm pro-choice. Not that I care what you or anyone else thinks.
GetBornAgain
If you want whining go over to Dailykos or Atrios where the liberals are in a perpetual state of bitchiness and whining over Bush's meanness.
And BTW Liberals do hate Christians unless they totally buy into the liberal agenda. Even then Christians are seen as rather stupid and primitive people by liberals because of their beliefs.
Prior to the '06 elections Christians were regularly vilified by the liberal blogosphere because liberals assumed that all Christians supported Bush.
And for the Feminazis, well when I see NOW vociferously condemn all the ways Islam puts down women and treats them as property then I'll start taking them seriously.
But they don't.
Instead feminists see the white Christian men as the source of all their problems.
Take a moment to read what "waltc" has written.
Take a good look.
Bilious, inarticulate and partisan fluff like that undermine Robert and Hughs' work.
waltc:
Glad to see you're not holding your wife's purse. The same cannot be said for others.
If you want ritual mutilation in Toronto, will the Canadian Government pay for it? Will Canadian hospitals perform it?
WaltC, I detect a lot of mean-spiritedness in your response. What's the matter? Daddy didn't hug you enough when you were young?
"Howdy doody, folks, I'm waltc. After prayin to a photo of Charlton Heston, I like to go shoot me some homosecs and some nigras too!"
Feminists don’t help women…with the (very) odd exception, feminists are so lost in rabid anti-Christian, anti-male ideology that they lose sight of everything else, including -- especially -- reality; they help no one, and often prove more harmful to women than anything else.
MP
Great question. If male circumcision is covered by insurance, it's not a stretch to wonder just when female circumcision will be a paid benefit. It's a choice, too. And a lot of people who value having a choice, no matter who is hurt, will go along with this.
German feminists only hate German Men.. and Americans of course.
Femi-NAZIS indeed.. LOL.. I guess Bloatbaugh was good for a funny phrase or two on occasion..
Just a little dose of reality people. While this foolish professor spouts her cultural relativist nonsense deserves the scorn that is heaped upon her, it is quite another to talk about “feminists” She clearly doesn’t represent anyone other than herself. I looked at the websites of several feminists’ websites and (no surprise) all of them are opposed strongly to FGM and have campaigns against it. So let’s go easy on “feminists say this…” We wouldn’t want the anti-jihadist movement to be smeared (as apparently Robert Spencer has experienced repeatedly) simply because some moron says that the solution to jihad is to kill Muslims. In a similar fashion, just because one loon says something provocative (no doubt partly for that very reason to gain attention) we should be careful about speaking broadly about feminism. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
So getbornagain, you support partial birth abortion?
I support...BEER!
Ill take that as you are too ashamed to admit it
Get Born Again,
Do you even for a moment, think you are helping the cause here? It's kind of amusing that you jump down Waltc's throat when you are doing exactly the same thing, just on the flip side. If you are really serious then before you take the splinter out of Waltc's eye please remove the Redwood from your own.
I use eyedrops, so my eyes are quite clear. No wood in them.
Getborn
I love being the bromide and flushing liberal trolls.
Actually I wouldn't have posted anything if the liberals and especially the feminists posting here would have posted something besides snark.
All you had to do is link to feminist groups showing they are against it and supporting those fighting it.
Even better if you had links to liberal groups fighting this and Islamic shariah.
IOW put up or shut up.
I've just had a thought. Maybe the NAZI's were right in what they did to the Jews. Maybe, they were only expressing cultural norms and if that norm happens to be genocide, so be it. Perhaps when Britain and the USA intervened, we were cultivating a culturalist hegomony(insert any post modernist drivel here, but use the word dialectic a lot, oh and nearly forgot, discourse, use that a lot too).
Perhaps if we'd given the Japanese the Atomic bomb, rather than dropping it on them, they'd have rewarded us by not slaughtering everyone they came across.
Why we allow these pseudo scientific disiplines in our institutes of learning I don't know. A bastion of the mediocre mind. With the exception of Biology, if it ends in "ology", get rid of it.
Doomed we are, doomed.
waltc, if you'd like to shut me up, you're more than welcome to try. You will fail--whether here or in real life. Conservatives like you are little more than cockroaches, and they should be disposed of the same way, if you ask me.
Ian, do you think your alternative-history suggestions are merely satire? I am ashamed to report that there is a great deal of sympathy in the academy for the sufferings of Imperial Japan during WW2.
At my former college, there were annual displays about the horrors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were never any displays describing the horrific Rape of Nanking, in which 300,000 Chinese were murdered by the Japanese in ways so atrocious that even Nazis in the city were repelled.
In my current college, they are going to study "Flags of Our Fathers", about the American fight for Iwo Jima. To balance the perspective, they will let us know how that battle felt from the Japanese perspective. No word yet on whether the Chinese will be invited to give their commentary on the joys of being victims of democide by the Japanese.
Regarding Ian's first alternative-history comments - several years ago, a Jewish acquaintance told me (a Jew who had gathered some friends for Rosh Hashanah) that she could not label the Holocaust as evil. Why? To recognize some actions as evil would legitimize the kind of thinking that allows other people to criticize abortion - and we mustn't allow that, of course.
I think there are some implications for the other debate taking place on this thread...
Oviously this is a classic case of cultural moral relativism when we have western feminists defending female genital mutilation!
Having researched the arguments for and against cultural moral relativism recently, I will quote from my own exploration of the topic:
http://islam-watch.org/CommunityServer/forums/thread/3175.aspx
"Since members within a society often hold differing views on moral practices, and since there are frequently dissenting views from the status quo, to whom does the cultural relativist point to as representing the ultimate moral standards for a given society and by what authority are they granted that status? And even if a society appears on the surface to be fairly uniform in its moral practices, under what conditions was that uniformity established? Presumably,
“…the standards that are authoritative for a society are the ones persons have agreed to follow as a result of some negotiation or bargaining process ….Still, it may be asked whether they really have authority or perhaps whether they have the right kind. For example, suppose the agreement had been reached in circumstances in which a few members of society held great power over the others (in the real world, the most likely scenario). Those with less power might have been prudent to make the agreement, but it is not obvious that such an agreement would create genuine normative authority — a point the dissident challenging the standards might well make.” href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/" rel="nofollow">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
"Because Islamic societies have a long history of brutally suppressing dissenting voices, it can be questioned whether Islamic societies as they are currently constituted have the kind of normative moral authority that moral relativists attribute to them. The culturally relativist assumption that they do have that normative moral authority often results in western moral relativists delegitimizing dissenting voices within the Islamic world itself, as demonstrated in the recent case of morally relativist (non-Muslim) Canadians supporting orthodox Canadian Muslims who wanted to implement Sharia law for domestic arbitration against the objections of many progressive Muslim Canadian women."
Shame on these western feminists for apparently not even entertaining the obvious idea that FMG has arisen within a culture in which women have obviously had little historical voice because they were subject to repression. Why aren't these feminists busy exploring the oppressive patriarchal context in which the voices of women endorsing this practice have developed? Why do they automatically cede the "moral authority" of these cultures to Muslim men, who have obviously resorted to violence and repression in order to establish that iron-clad so-called “moral” authority that western feminists singing the cultural moral relativist tune now point to as evidence of the “authoritative” moral standards for Muslim society? Why don't they grant any moral authority whatsoever to the dissenting voices from that status quo of women such as Hirsi Ali?
To defend this practice from a culturally relativist perspective is akin to defending 19th century slavery in the United States on the grounds that it was culturally accepted at the time (presumably everyone should have just "butted out") and in defense of that practice to find examples of slaves who were willing to defend the system that had subjugated them and then to take those two facts in tandem - the fact that it was a culturally normative practice for that culture and that people who had been raised within that culture who were altogether powerless were willing to defend it - while ignoring any dissenting moral voices - That would be the equivalent.
But of course that would seem absurd to most westerners - the idea that one would have defended slavery on culturally relativist grounds and on the basis that one could find apologists for the practice from amongst the ranks of the oppressed themselves who had been rendered powerless by the system! Most people now would laugh at the idea of considering the ruling Southern class of the time as the final arbiter of what was morally "right", (regardless of how they attained or maintained that authority) especially when backed up by the selectively solicited opinions of powerless blacks raised in the status quo and possibly subject to violent retaliation if they dissented from the status quo in condemning the system.
It would seem crazy that any modern liberal would accept and defend such a scenario. But that is what, by analogy, western feminists are doing in defending female genital mutilation.
I am a pro-lifer(all cases except when the baby can't be saved but the mother can), and active anti-Jihadist who attempts to represent the growing voice of those who are acting to strengthen original pro-life feminism.
I distinctly remember when feminists spoke out against FGM and conservatives told them to mind their own cultural business.
My, how things have changed.
Surak wrote:
"I am ashamed to report that there is a great deal of sympathy in the academy for the sufferings of Imperial Japan during WW2."
May I recommend to my fellow Jihad Watchers some interesting reading material:
THE RAPE OF NANKING by Iris Chang (warning: there are some photographs in this book that are not for the faint of heart.)
THE KEMPEITAI (damn, I can't remember the author's name.) The Kempeitai were the Imperial Japanese Secret Police and were on a par with their "colleagues" the Nazi Gestapo, SS, and the Soviet NKVD.
THE RIPPLES OF BATTLE by Victor Davis Hanson. Some interesting details from the Okinawa campaign.
Last but not least, do yourself a favor and get a movie on DVD: THE GREAT RAID, having to do with the rescue of American POW's held in the Phillipines by the Japanese. This movie actually follows the real events very closely (unlike the usual HollyWeird tendency to make a mess of historical fact to "improve" the story.)
People who try to spead lie and half truth about Saudic Arabia are getting out of hand. Even it the Saudic are cutting off the rip of the clioce of they female it calm then down and make then better wives and mothers. The women seem to be happy afterward and content with they lives. May-be this cutting off the tip of the women clioce might make some of our woman libber calm, happy and content with they lives.
"People who try to spead lie and half truth about Saudic Arabia are getting out of hand."
"Posted by: DefenderofIslam"
....please identify which lie or half truth you are referring to.....
Ban Muslim Immigration
In Indonesia, the practice of female circumcision has long existed, but information
concerning exactly where and how it is carried out has been limited.
In order to gather more information about the procedures in Indonesia, a relatively large study of female circumcision covering several major ethnic groups from the western to the eastern parts of the country, has recently been conducted.
The specific aims of the study were to provide
research-based information on FC customary practices and their socio-cultural determinants, and if possible, to assess the immediate and long-term physical and psychological consequences of the practices on women’s sexuality, reproduction, and reproductive rights.
The study used multiple data sources, including literature review, in-depth qualitative interviews with FC providers, community leaders, religious leaders, and mothers, and a household survey with a sample of 1694 mothers of female children under age 19.
In addition, empirical on-site observations of FC procedures were recorded.
Study findings indicate that in general Muslim communities support the continuation of FC practice, because they perceive it as both a societal custom or tradition,and a religious duty.
Religious leaders want the practice of FC to continue indefinitely,because of their common interpretations that FC is required act of faith, although when being probed, they admitted that the law varies from one mazhab to another, from “wajib”(obligatory) to sunnah (recommended but optional), while some placed it an even lower
level of religious duty.
Around 92% of the families visited for the survey expressed support for the continuation of FC not only for their girl children but also for future grandchildren.
http://www.synergyaids.org/documents/Indonesia_FemaleCircum.pdf
Esquared wrote:
"Just a little dose of reality people. While this foolish professor spouts her cultural relativist nonsense deserves the scorn that is heaped upon her, it is quite another to talk about “feminists” She clearly doesn’t represent anyone other than herself. I looked at the websites of several feminists’ websites and (no surprise) all of them are opposed strongly to FGM and have campaigns against it. So let’s go easy on “feminists say this…” We wouldn’t want the anti-jihadist movement to be smeared (as apparently Robert Spencer has experienced repeatedly) simply because some moron says that the solution to jihad is to kill Muslims. In a similar fashion, just because one loon says something provocative (no doubt partly for that very reason to gain attention) we should be careful about speaking broadly about feminism. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
Perhaps *the* most important post on this thread.
The level and quality of contribution by some posters has been, frankly, embarrassing.
Cutting off the tip of the clitoris is allow in Islam and it isnot as harmful as the other types. It done in medical climic and hospitals the risk of something bad happen is greatly reduce. Forceing Islamist Nation to rnd the pactice of cutting the tip of the clitoris will do more harm and good and it will be unenforceable law. The other type could be allow it only done under medical care with poper medical equioment. Than educuration program will be carry out long term to end the other type over than peroid of hundred's of years.
America is now talking about ending the war on drug than unwinnable war.
And up pops our Muslim troll, 'Defender of Islam' (Defender of Slavery; Defender of Tyranny; Defender of the Oppression and Abuse of Women)
He offers the revolting idea that sexual mutilation makes women "calm, happy and content with their lives". Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow kafirs - did you ever hear such vile, sadistic nonsense?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Waris Dirie underwent the most extreme form of mutilation - total excision of the clitoris, plus infibulation. Did it make either of THEM into a nice, tame, cud-chewing cow? Nah - they're both firebrands. And since the worst form of FGM doesn't 'tame' women, then any so-called 'lesser' mutilations are not going to do it, either.
As for FGM being difficult to wipe out - the Chinese, once they made up their minds to do it, managed to end the ancient and entrenched practice of breaking and binding the feet of little girls, to make them fashionably tiny. They did it in a few decades, even though the practice had gone on for a very long time, and men had been conditioned to want only girls who had been crippled. Legislation; enforcement of the law, with inspections by qualified females, in every village; and education.
So I don't see why the societies that practise FGM - most of them Muslim, though some are not - should not be able to get rid of FGM pretty quickly if they make up their minds to it.
Whatever form FGM takes, it's a sick, sick, cruel custom, serving only to feed the sick egos of selfish, cowardly males; it's high time it was consigned to the dustbin of history.
I agree with esquared that it is counter-productive at the least to say that ALL feminists are hypocrites, Chirstian-haters, man-haters, etc. Many are, but some aren't.
There is at least one very fierce feminist who visits this site occasionally named Natasha who fully recognizes what Islam means for women.
Nor does she hold back when confronting those feminists who choose to 'look the other way' when it comes to atrocities within Islam.
Have a look at her blog "What Western Women Need To Know About Islam" and you will see that there are some feminists who recognize the threat:
http://womenrightswatchislam.blogspot.com/
We need to expand our alliance, not constrict it.
dumbledoresarmy ban comeing doesnot emd it. From Jan 16,1920 to Dec 5,1938 American have the National Prohibition Act which ban the manufactume, transport or sell alcoholic beverages in the United States. This effector was than total failure as orginate crime make a load of money. Alphonse Capone makr in Chicage selling brooze 100 million dollar ayear which in today money would be equall to 10 to 20 billion dollar ayear and that was one city in America. FC which involse only the cutting of the tip of the clitoris is deeply ingain in Islam culture to even be ban by than military dictorater as he will have zerro support of the people and milirary rank and files. Are you going to check each muslim woman body for FC and arrest them hightly unlikely even in america. If than adult muslim woman want to have her tip of the clitoris cut off I hightly doubt she will be arrest even in america, the court will declare it her right to do so. In Saudic Arabia many educrate women want FC done to them in medical clinics. Even the america puppet in Pakistian wouldnot ban FC which involse only cutting the tip of the clitoris. FC doesnot worked on all woman but it worked on 99.99% of the women includring the other form of FC. As for Ayaan Hirsi is playing for the Woman Libber. Many muslim women came to america with FC done to then already than they are happly marraige an good wife and mother. Due to binge drinking of alchol in England the Englisg government is thinking of banning alchol like America did and do y7ou think it going to work.
Defender of Islam (Defender of FGM, Defender of the Oppression and Mutilation of Women)
You do not understand, do you?
Western women, millions of us, are chaste and faithful WITHOUT having to have bits of our genitals cut off by sadistic fools. Our virtue comes from within, from our soul and spirit, and is freely chosen. We do not live in terror of being beaten or even murdered in the name of 'honor', by our husbands, brothers, or fathers, or by our mothers or aunts, like so many women in Turkey, Iran, 'Palestine', Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc... We walk freely in the sunlight with our hair, our faces, our arms and our ankles, even our legs, uncovered; and if we are raped, the police put the rapist in jail, not us! We drive cars, on our own. Many of us work outside the home.
Millions and millions of us Western women keep our marriage vows, not because we fear flogging or stoning, but because we are free women who have freely and publicly given our word to be faithful, out of love for our husbands whom we have freely chosen. And our husbands rejoice when we enjoy, with our unmutilated bodies, ALL the pleasure that the good God YHWH created us to receive.
Defender of Islam. Before you started talking I despised Islam. Now I despise it even more.
You haven't 'defended' Islam. You have shown me, over and over during this 'conversation', that it is evil and stupid, and that it hates women and wants to enslave and destroy them.
I now know exactly why I want my government to stop letting Muslims into my country.
I do not want, in MY country, ANY more people like you, who think their religion tells them, or allows them, to cut pieces (big OR small) off a woman's genitals.
*holding up a lighter for dumbledoresarmy*
Dumbledoresarmy you arrenot than america citiz in my eyes anymore you are a bigot racist. If than moslim woman in america want to have the tip of clitoris cut off that her bussien not the bussien orf bigot raceist like you so leave america if you donot like my view. Go back to europe where you came come.
Uh-oh! Defender of Islam has his panties in a wad defending the despicable practive of FGM and has to resort to name calling because he's losing the argument. Dumbledoresarmy, you are no more a racist than Defender is a human being. But it is amusing how many times he resorts to name calling when he doesn't get his way.
Defender, repeat after me:
Islam is not a race.
Islam is not a race.
Islam is not a race.
There is one very simple way to end FGM. Begin by implementing a program in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. whereby there is a monetary reward for information on anyone engaging in the practice. When a young girl is surrendered to the procedure, her father must have the tip of his penis removed, along with a year in jail so that he is not free to earn money to support the family. Since Muslim men are pre-occupied with their privates, this ought to get their attention very quickly. And the mothers and kids aren't going to like it when dad is in jail and their income comes to a crashing halt. After this program makes the inevitable impact that it will, it can be introduced into full blown Muslim countries, one at a time. The message will be unmistakable and the consequences befitting the crime.
Since Defender of Islam is such an avid fan of cutting women I vote we start with his penis. After all, what's good for the gander is good for the goose. ; )
Well said dumbledoresarmy, and Isabellathecrusader.
DefenderofIslam isn't used to having his pathetic 'arguments' knocked down by strong, articulate women. It must by very humbling for him. Should be .
Hey idiot muslim:
This is being done to YOUNG GIRLS agaimst their will, not "women". IT'S AGAINST THE LAW AND PUNISHABLE BY JAIL TIME.
muslim men would be much happier with their lives and CERTAINLY much calmer if they were castrated and their penises dug out by the root, to the bone, as happens with females. Equality.
I wonder why it isn't their choice?