Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
Stephan: This is an excellent appraisal by a Muslim writer of the defining tropes of Muslim culture, sex and the relationship between genders.
At the social level modern history shows that that this set of values destroys a nation's capacity for creativity. It isn't religion, because it is at core the same regardless of the religion. It be fundamentalist. It is social values. You can see the effect in the number of patents awarded, Japan is awarded more patents in a year than the entire Islamic world gets in a decade, the paucity of internationally successful books, poems, symphonies, and on and on.
If you won't let half the human race (females) participate equally, and it takes, as it does, 7 to 11 per cent of the other 50 per cent (the males) to maintain this structure of repression, it must inevitably follow that your country will be benighted. Fundamentally it is a question of neurons working in the national interest. Islam's collective social mental illness is why those nations are so backward, even when great wealth is available, and will never be anything more as long as this dysfunctional world view continues.
That said for Americans I think we should look at this not only in terms of Muslims, but in terms of ourselves. It is a teaching moment, in which the Muslim social laboratory has conducted an experiment and is reporting the results to the rest of the world. Christian fundamentalism correlating strongly with conservative political views, fear, and an intolerance for ambiguity is obviously a powerful factor in U.S. society. It is the Republican Party as every Presidential debate amongst that party proclaims. And like all fundamentalism it comes with a spectrum of dysfunctionality concentrated around sex, and gender equality. We are being warned to be aware of this and to take steps to counteract it lest our own capacity for success be impaired.
ORAN, ALGERIA — After Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity.
The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.
Sex is a complex taboo, arising, in places like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, out of the ambient conservatism’s patriarchal culture, the Islamists’ […]
