Saturday, September 20th, 2014
Stephan: It appears, based on the evidence, that patriarchal fundamentalist religious societies are crippled, and always in the same way: the sexuality of women. It is a kind of existential issue that almost all societies suffer from to some degree, but in the Islamic world it has reached such a degree that it is like America's gun psychosis. And, as this essay lays out, it is becoming a major issue. Only a sexuality dysfunctional man would condone rape as a tactic and weapon.
The compassionate and life-affirming move, which I think will also prove to be the most successful option, would be for the U.S. to champion women very proactively, not just polemically. To think creatively about how these women could be helped. Clearly the model we have been using isn't working.
Islamic societies are as unproductive as they are in large measure because 50 per cent of the nation's neurons can't get on the board -- all the women -- and it takes about 7 per cent of the other half -- all the men -- to maintain that structure of suppression, as well as a cultural consensus. It doesn't leave much to move the national ball down court. And you can see it in the granting of patents: The entire Islamic world does not generate as many patents in a decade as Japan does in a year -- 54170 in 2013. Kuwait, from 1977 to 2013, 283 patents. Saudi Arabia, same time period, 855.
Of the many terrifying stories emerging from Islamic State-occupied Iraq and Syria, the violence directed toward women is perhaps the most difficult to contemplate.
The Islamic State’s (IS) fighters are committing horrific sexual violence on a seemingly industrial scale: For example, the United Nations last month estimated that IS has forced some 1,500 women, teenage girls, and boys into sexual slavery. Amnesty International released a blistering document noting that IS abducts whole families in northern Iraq for sexual assault and worse. Even in the first few days following the fall of Mosul in June, women’s rights activists reported multiple incidents of IS fighters going door to door, kidnapping and raping Mosul’s women.
IS claims to be a religious organization, dedicated to re-establishing the caliphate and enforcing codes of modesty and behavior from the time of Muhammad and his followers. But this is rape, not religious conservatism. IS may dress up its sexual violence in religious justifications, saying its victims violated Islamic law, or were infidels, but their leaders are not fools. This is just another form of warfare.
Why isn’t this crime against […]
