Death Cult Women's Rights

Yesterday the Tribune covered the story of a young girl stoned to death in Iraq. (My initial post here.) Latest manifestation of the insanity (this is "ordinary") that pervades some quarters of the Muslim world, and the subhuman treatment of women. LGF on women in Palestine:

It’s another death cult press conference, featuring the women’s wing of the militant wing of the “moderate” Fatah party. Notice the camera in the lower right corner.

A little gentle coercion there, probably the latest twist on honor killings (either we kill you or you kill yourself) in a culture whose heroines are mothers or widows of suicide bombers.

Meanwhile in Iran a prominent Iranian-American scholar and "bridge-builder" has been thrown into prison. She gets some attention. WaPo:

Editorials in top American and European newspapers -- as well as publications ranging from the Daily Princetonian to Glamour -- have angrily condemned Iran's action. American academics have announced boycotts of Iran and called for demonstrations against Iranian missions around the world, while the 2,700-member Middle East Studies Association wrote Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warning of the "chilling impact" of Esfandiari's imprisonment on scholars worldwide. [snip]

Esfandiari's personal passion was women's rights. She had lately been conducting workshops in the Middle East to educate female activists on how to run for office, get involved in the economy and change laws that restrict the rights of women.snip Ebadi, the Nobel laureate who has taken Esfandiari's case, wrote in 2000 about her own stint in Evin Prison: "They took away all my belongings, even my spectacles, although there was nothing to read. Loneliness and silence could drive one crazy.

Iran imprisons the bridge builders. Let's talk?!! I don't think so. And where are the American feminists on all of this? They are largely silent. Christina Hoff Sommers, The Weekly Standard, "The Subjection of Islamic Women":

The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.

Writing in The New Republic in 1999, philosopher Martha Nussbaum noted with disapproval that "feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States." Too many fashionable gender theorists, she said, have lost their dedication to the public good. Their "hip quietism . . . collaborates with evil."

Those few feminists who speak up are ostracized. And what is NOW promoting these days? Love your body:

NOW has just launched a 2007 "Love Your Body" calendar as part of its ongoing initiative of the same name. The body calendar warns of an increase in eating disorders and includes a photograph celebrating the shape of pears. There is also an image of the Statue of Liberty with the caption, "Give me your curves, your wrinkles, your natural beauty yearning to breathe free." The calendar bears these inspiring words: "None of us is free until we are all free.

Wow. How vapid and airhead can you get. These feminists kinda give women a bad name.

Some food for thought for here at home. In the first Pew poll of its kind, a substantial majority of Muslim Americans want to mainstream and believe you can be successful here if you work hard. That is good news indeed. But disturbingly (as LGF points out) 60% don't believe groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11th attacks, and younger Muslims are more likely to think suicide bombings are justified. The Sun Times has a story as well. (Why do they leave out the stat on Sept. 11th? Too disturbing? Doesn't fit the PC victim template the story follows? Apparently the Sun Times thinks Muslim-Americans were the real victims of Sept. 11th.)

Previous posts: Burqa Babes on the Net, Iran the Great Satan, The Sublime Quran

UPDATE: Iranian women beaten bloody by the "Modesty Police". Video at Gateway Pundit.