Burying Girls Alive

In the Islam of today, "women tend to be seen as subjects of the law, rather than its shapers".

A Sunni Islamic scholar, safely ensconced at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, but also a "working alim" who has fatwa authority, has found historic evidence of women as teachers and makers of holy law. It sounds like he is treading lightly, but persistently. NY Times (HT Ann Althouse, via Instapundit):

Akram’s work has led to accusations that he is championing free mixing between men and women, but he says that is not so. He maintains that women students should sit at a discreet distance from their male classmates or co-worshipers, or be separated by a curtain. (The practice has parallels in Orthodox Judaism.) The Muslim women who taught men “are part of our history,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you have to follow them. It’s up to people to decide.”

Neverthless, Akram says he hopes that uncovering past hadith scholars could help reform present-day Islamic culture.

Of course, the latest evidence cited in this story was from the 15th century. Got a little time to make up. More than a few generations of what Akram describes as "decline in every aspect of Islam" to reverse. Apparently women are not even allowed to pray in mosques these days. The alim counsels more real scholarship, less politics and seeks to persuade:

When Akram lectures, he dryly notes, women are more excited by this history than men. To persuade reluctant Muslims to educate their girls, Akram employs a potent debating strategy: he compares the status quo to the age of al jahiliya, the Arabic term for the barbaric state of pre-Islamic Arabia. (Osama Bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb, the godfather of modern Islamic extremism, have employed the comparison to very different effect.) Barring Muslim women from education and religious authority, Akram argues, is akin to the pre-Islamic custom of burying girls alive. “I tell people, ‘God has given girls qualities and potential,’ ” he says. “If they aren’t allowed to develop them, if they aren’t provided with opportunities to study and learn, it’s basically a live burial.”

Burying girls alive?!!!

We are left to wonder the whys of this custom. Apparently it has evolved into today's honor killings, according to this interpretation by an American Muslim woman. (This was written in June 2001, pre-Sept. 11th. She was on the board of CAIR then, obviously treading lightly there as well. She has since started her own group and is apparently carrying CAIR's water on supposed "hate speech". At The Volokh Conspiracy. )

Obviously this discussion is not merely an academic one. And as we have seen recently in Chicago, it is not limited to Islam. But this culture of cruelty toward women emanates most openly and destructively from today's Middle East. And that is where we need to confront it as best we can, and do what we can here in America.

Related posts: Hirsi Ali Speaks Up, The Multiculti Trap, They Call Me Infidel, This is Sharia, An Ancient Culture Extinguished