Why do extremist Muslims hate/fear women so much?

General General wrote: »

India has no oil.

Hindus don't talk about the restoration of the Hindu world empire, demand parallel courts, blow up people in western Europe & north America... nor do they tell us what we can & cannot say... or burn in hell for not being one of them.

Eh.

Grayson wrote: »

No, but neither do most Muslims. Hindus do have a separate legal system if i remember correctly. half of India is governed by village courts.

Grayson wrote: »

Indian extremists have been known to lock people in churches and mosques and set fire to the buildings. The violence perpetrated by Hindus against other faiths is horrible. But then again, you only said western europe. So you don't care how many are tortured and killed if they're not white?

Grayson wrote: »

And maybe if the US was bombing hindus every second day, they might want to blow up a few Americans.

Grayson wrote: »

It should also be remembered that Hindus also have a caste system. If you think they're soooo much better than Muslims or Christians, you should look up the word Dalit.

Grayson wrote: »

But to be fair, most groups in india have performed some type of ethic violence at some stage. Blaming a particular religion is rarely correct and really just racism.

The_Kew_Tour wrote: »

I'm no lover of Catholic church, but comparing them to these extremists is bit lol worthy.

It's one thing not to have women involved in church, another to give them no rights in day to day life.

FTA69 wrote: »

Up until the 1970s a woman working in the civil service had to quit her job if she got married. Similarly a woman also couldn't sign a contract. The mother and child health scheme failed after direct intervention from the church hierarchy. Women still today have no access to abortion if they so choose it. All of this was as a direct result of a Catholic influence in Irish society, basically rooted in the Church's belief that a woman's place is in the home pumping out new Catholics.

To suggest that official Catholicism didn't have a negative effect on women is "lols worthy."

Chronic Button wrote: »

I'm not a Muslim but I am interested in the welfare of women worldwide so I have done some reading on the subject. This is a way more complex issue than the western media would have you believe.

“Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and styles of a society.” - Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood. ‘Islam, Culture and Women’, in Islam for Today.

The debate regarding the role and status of women in Muslim society rages with intensity both within and without the religious community. Islamic men and women are not standing by uncritically. Although many Western feminists consider Islam a system patriarchal oppression that must be overhauled before any Muslim woman can truly know personal freedom, Islamic feminists are quick to assert that seventh century Muslim women were in fact afforded legal rights that Western women did not attain until centuries later. Further, the Prophet is widely considered by Muslims to have listened to women with compassion and respect, and to have treated his wives with love and kindness. His first wife Khadijah, his youngest daughter Fatimah and his second wife ‘A’ishah were women who played an important role in the narration of the Ahadith, with ‘A’ishah even being considered an authority on many matters of Islamic Law. ‘A’ishah and the Prophet were said to have spent many hours standing side by side in prayer together. In spite of this, there exists a well-taught Hadith that reads “The Prophet said that the dog, the ass, and woman interrupt prayer if they pass in front of the believer, interposing themselves between him and the qibla.” Mernissi suggests that the misogyny that many Muslim women endure in their culture could in fact be considered to be profoundly un-Islamic.

"All the monotheistic religions are shot through by the conflict between the divine and the feminine, but none more so than Islam, which has opted for the occultation of the feminine, at least symbolically, by trying to veil it, to hide it, to mask it. Islam as sexual practice unfolds with a very special theatricality since it is acted out in a scene where the hijab (veil) occupies a central position. This almost phobic attitude toward women is all the more surprising since we have seen that the Prophet has encouraged his adherents to renounce it as a representative of the jahiliyya and its superstitions. This leads me to ask: is it possible that Islam’s message had only a limited and superficial effect on deeply superstitious seventh century Arabs who failed to integrate its novel approaches to the world and to women? Is it possible that the hijab, the attempt to veil women, is nothing but the expression of the persistence of pre-Islamic mentality, the jahiliyya mentality that Islam was supposed to annihilate?" - Fatima Mernissi, Women and Islam (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 81

It is certainly true that under Shar‘ia law women generally had fewer legal limitations than they would have had in the West. Whilst Muslim women had the right to keep their surnames once married, to earn money and manage their own financial affairs, to inherit and bestow inheritance, by contrast, such restrictions on married women were only lifted under French law in 1965. However, this is not a clear-cut issue. Ruthven writes:

"Islamic law privileges the family over other institutions: the laws of inheritance, favouring males over females, are written in the Quran along with other discriminatory provisions, such as the testamentary inferiority of females in certain court proceedings. The law, however, is not always a reliable guide to actual social practice: slavery and concubinage, widely practised in pre-colonial times, are also the subject of detailed legal provisions and though permitted under the Shari‘a, both have disappeared (in theory if not always in practice) from Muslim societies. Unlike the hijab or ‘veil’ they are not among the shibboleths insisted upon by today’s Islamists."

It is foolish to imagine that because Western women currently enjoy many freedoms that their predecessors did not that Islam is therefore unique in its oppression of women: “the assertion of masculine power through violence, is by no means exclusively Islamic.” This is undeniable. Generations of women have suffered under the conditions of misogyny quite apart from any religious ethic. Islamic feminists argue that the scriptures of the Qur’an are in fact their strongest ally in their struggle for equity. What shape this equity might take however varies greatly according to the nature and convictions of individual communities. It is an equity that is rarely in line with Western ideas of egalitarianism.

The following passage from the Muslim criptures is often used to defend equality between the sexes:

The self-surrendering men and the self-surrendering women, the believing men and the believing women, the obedient men and the obedient women, the truthful men and the truthful women, the enduring men and the enduring women, the submissive men and the submissive women, the almsgiving men and the almsgiving women, the fasting men and the fasting women, the continent men and the continent women, the Allah-remembering men and the Allah-remembering women--for them Allah has prepared forgiveness and a mighty reward (Qur’an 33:35).

The view held by Muslims of the Western woman is complex. Ruthven points out: “In one polemic after another Islamist writers contrast the virtuous Muslim woman with her Western or Westernized counterpart – naked, unchaste, and corrupt, a potent source of fitna or strife.” However, there are also those who view Western women as prisoners of a corrupt over-sexualised commodification project. For them, Islam represents freedom. The Muslim woman must always be free to challenge the status quo. In the Qur’an you read of women who not only openly expressed their beliefs and convictions in the presence of the Prophet, but who also debated and argued, engaging in serious discussions with the Prophet and other Islamic leaders of the age (58:1), even at times standing in opposition to caliphs, who later conceded to the view of those women.

Geaves points out: "The Western media has focused on hijab (veil), purdah (female segregation) and cultural practices such as ‘honour killings’, ‘forced marriages’ and female circumcision. In such sensationalist reporting the attitudes of individuals movements such as the Taleban in Afghanistan are written about as typical of Muslim female experience. However, there are Muslim women who remain highly critical of discrimination and oppression of women in certain Muslim nations."

Our tendency in discourse is to focus on matters which in fact serve only to skew our standpoints rather than inform them.

Also, thousands of women convert to Islam every year. We've got to ask ourselves why.

Madam_X wrote: »

The didn't suggest that - they just said catholicism today is not as bad for women as islamic fundamentalism. And they're right.