THE UNVEILED WOMAN

A symposium at FrontPageMag.com explores the psychology behind an epidemic of rapes by Islamic youth in Europe.

It is filled with interesting insights, including the paradigm that Islam uses sexuality for two distinct purposes--one to fertilize women and thus increase the number of muslims; and the second to punish misbehaving women.

This paradigm expresses itself not only in highly standardized family patterns but also in an equally conformistic education system. All contents, in school and university of almost every Islamic country, are ultimately restricted and tied to Islamic purposes, thereby avoiding abstract thinking categories that could relativate and jeopardize the dogma's absolute uniqueness. By the same token, however, and this is the core of "modern" Islam's tragedy, the male controllers are confined to physical methods of "sublimation" whenever problems arise. Aside from the usual bombing "protest" against Western "arrogance" and "unbelieving morals", the current rape wave is the vital expression of an ongoing jihad against women who under Western influence may drift slowly out of the grip of male Muslim hands.

and

The survival and expansion of Islam worldwide is the main goal of Islam since its invention by Mohammed. In this respect, the history of Islamic conquest is self-explanatory. The other aspect is the lack of appreciation for the individual as such. For both, men and women, it is true, that there are no individual rights, but for women it is even worse.

It may sound harsh, but the distinction between "fertilizing" and "punishing" a woman is evident. On the one hand you have sexuality as a tool serving the expansion of Islam, and on the other hand there is sexuality as a weapon against disobedient and non-Muslim women, both categorized as "unbelievers". Against them jihad is the duty, and what to do with women "conquered" in jihad, this may be read in the Qur'an: they become slaves to be used by the victors.

Why is the raping of unveiled women, either Muslim or non-Muslim, now spreading widely in our countries?

Or this:

Of course, in a cultural environment where women are undermined, not to say considered as second rate citizens or even dangerous to the dominant male, the temptation to rape as a result to “ provocation “ is great. Female “provocation” in the Muslim society is usually a definition for the mildest behavior. Smiling, singing, talking, being alone for one minute in the same room as the rapist, having answered a question in an inappropriate way, wearing clothes which are not strictly in obedience with what is locally considered as the Muslim rules, all of these innocent behaviors are seen as a misconduct authorizing “revenge.”

In a society where sex is absolutely forbidden, taboo, and where separation between males and females is absolute, where in most cases marriages are not the result of love but of a financial arrangement between two families, the sensual or erotic aspect of any relationship between genders is, de-facto, suspicious, considered evil, and therefore an act of aggression. Sexual “revenge”, containing violence, can be naturally considered as the automatic answer to the “ provocations “ described above, and this for two reasons.

In Muslim society the male is dominant and almighty since he is made after God, when women have been created as a necessary evil to tempt males. In other words, the female body is the closest thing to the Devil, something which has to be dominated as a proof a faith.

And then there is this insight about the deafening silence of Western feminists regarding the behavior:

As far as the Western feminists are concerned, they seem to be hovering in other dimensions, in absolute arrogance, learned from ethnologues like Claude Lévy-Strauss. For them, freedom is that each "culture" may it be as inhuman as can be, is entitled to prosper even on our soil, and the next act in this surrealistic piece of stage play is the unlimited understanding the Norwegian Professor Ms. Unni Wikan shows for Muslims raping Western women: Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes, as they are not dressing and behaving according to Muslim understanding. The Norwegian women, in her view, are to realize that they live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it, as Mark Steyn reported already in 2002.

And the complicity of muslim women in their own subjugation:

I interviewed Muslim women who justified wife beating because it is “educational.” These women were probably brutalized as little girls and are unable to know NOT to blame the unveiled woman victim. Every Muslim male and female that I have interviewed has experienced being beaten as a child and have witnessed the beating of their mother.

Rape is learned behavior in the home. Peter is absolutely correct in describing the insidious sexual dichotomy of Muslim male supremacy over the lowly denigrated female. Pierre underscored the degree to which a family will defend its own rapist because of alleged “honor.” Why should it surprise us that they have moved out into the streets and feel entitled to rape?

Read it all. This is powerful material. One of the most damning aspects of the rapes of "unveiled women" in Europe is the acceptance--even encouragement--of the young men's families. As discussed in this seminar, these families are not only unconcerned with the violent rapes committed by their young men, but fail to understand why European authorities are making a fuss about them.

I continue to think that the treatment of women under Islam is not only the key to understanding the pathology of the culture, but also the key to developing an antidote to its most poisonous and toxic elements. Unveiling the women of Islam and eliminating their second-class status; empowering them in the oppressive Islamic countries where their individuality and self-expression has been crushed-- may cause a ripple effect that could eventually alter a family structure that encourages the development of generation after generation of dysfunctional and pathological men and women.

Some related posts from Dr. Sanity:

Where Have All The Mothers Gone?

Women subjected to institutionalized, societal abuse (such as what we saw under the Taliban; and what we see to a greater or lesser extent in almost all Islamic countries--where physical abuse is sanctioned; where women are sexually demonized; where they are deprived of education, as well as physical, social, economic and political freedom) are hardly in a psychological position to be able to provide effective "nurturing" to children.

Women whose own aggressive impulses have been savagely constrained by society and who have few options to sublimate those impulses, are at grave risk of encouraging aggressive and violent "acting out" on the part of their children on their behalf-- especially the male child who must be seriously conflicted about his love for and identification with a lowly-regarded woman.

In other words, such women will hardly prevent inappropriate aggression in their offspring, when such aggression vicariously meets their own needs. And the male children will have to assert their separation and distance from the debased female that is their mother, as aggressively and violently as possible.

Shame, The Arab Pscyhe and Islam

International Women's Day in Iran

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has more thoughts:

Recall Yale feminist Della Sentilles’ words quoted here yesterday: “As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another [...] American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends.”

And, Rand Simburg at Transterrestrial Musings, bluntly points out that the rape of the unveiled woman is the ultimate destination of misguided multiculturalism and moral relativism. I'm inclined to say that "misguided" is far to gentle a term to describe these enablers. If the women of American feminism are too uncomfortable to condemn the institutionalized misogyny of Islamic culture, then there is no reason to take them seriously as "champions" of women; in fact, they will have become nothing more than full partners with those who exploit and rape women.

This kind of despicable manipulation of reality is done quite simply to further their own totalitarian ends.

UPDATE II: (3/10/07) ShrinkWrapped adds some important analysis:

Beyond all the psychoanalyzing of the Arab mind lies this: The Arab world offers no other way for the Arab male to feel powerful except through the degradation and submission of the female who he fears and desires yet can never approach. And this is the field in which the "honor" of the angry Muslim rapist is nurtured.