Isn't that a little like trying to teach good table manners to a pig?
Clinton and her State Department are delusional. Women's rights according to Clinton's version have existed for a long time in some Islamic countries and she believes her program is helping to expand that view. Perhaps she's thinking of Egypt, where women did indeed share nearly equal rights with men. But perhaps she has also failed to notice that there has been a revolution in Egypt which has placed the Muslim Brotherhood in charge. The revolution had many causes, but largest among them was the secularism of the nation which the Brotherhood declares a violation of the words of both the Koran and sharia. The Brotherhood has every intention of enforcing its own version of sharia law and to abandon the secular “mistake” of treating women as equals to men.
Prior to the revolution in Iran, Iranian women were among the freest and most influential females in the world. So much for that. Nobody with an ounce of brains thinks that as the Arab Spring progresses women are going to be better off. Muslim, but non-Arabic Iran will remain in the caves of yesteryear on women's rights pending a second great revolution. There's no "he said, she said" in sharia. If a woman says she was raped, she must produce four male witnesses to substantiate the charge. Most often those necessary witnesses would be the rapists themselves. If she makes the charge, and doesn't produce the witnesses, she will be convicted of adultery and stoned to death.
Never daunted, Secretary Clinton has cited “evidence” of her program's success. She tells us that one Afghan imam now asks the bride how old she is when he performs a wedding, and whether she consents. Other imams have said that after the training, they have tried to see that widows get a fair share of their husband's estate upon his death. Some imams have come to believe that women might even be entitled to an education like their male counterparts. Unfortunately for Hillary, as the slimy government leader Hamid Karzai continues to play footsy with the Taliban, fewer and fewer of these anecdotal tales emerge from Afghanistan.
Karzai has already approved a code of conduct proposed by the imams which allows husbands to beat their wives, reinstates segregation of the sexes, requires women to travel with a male guardian, and not to mingle with males outside their family. In order to put an exclamation point on it, when asked by an AP reporter if he personally agreed with the policy, Karzai replied “It is the Shariah law of all Muslims and all Afghans.”
Blithely ignoring that little gem, Secretary Clinton has said: “All over the world we see living proof that Islam and women's rights are compatible.” She then continued to report “news” from the last decade or before: “Muslim communities from Egypt to Jordan to Senegal are beginning to take on entrenched practices like child marriage, honor killings, and female genital mutilation.” She neglected to mention Nigeria, where the Islamist war has barely begun.
Obama truly believes that a secular, feminist view of women can be imposed on barbarians whose central tenet is hatred and jihad on all those who disagree with them. Oh, well, at least Hillary may have saved a nine year-old girl or two from being married off to an old man as his third of fourth wife, this week. But there's always next week and the entire future.
45 comments:
"Isn't that a little like trying to teach good table manners to a pig?"
INSENSITIVE!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not sure what this program is exactly, but if it's aiding moderate Muslims to swing people away from fundamentalist Islam, then I have no problem with it. That's something we should be doing.
Quite frankly, if the administration was that interested in protecting Middle East women, it would not have sought to tear down Mubarak's regime in Egypt. As Lara Logan can attest, those revolutionaries in the street aren't so big on the dignity of women (or anyone else).
liberals: That's my middle name. Law Insensitive Hawk.
Andrew: You can lead an Islamist to civilization, but you can't make him live it. In each country where the program is being tried, "moderates" have decreased and radical Islamists have increased. Egypt is just the best recent example, and I expect Syria won't be far behind. It's one of those "it looks good on paper" projects that divert vital and limited resources from programs that actually work.
T-Rav: Cleaning up the original version of the old saying, "it's like shoveling sand against the tide." Until Islam cleans itself up, this is an exercise in futility.
Right, just like all Christians are right wing nuts who want to enslave women and blow up abortion clinics. I guess religion is the problem isn't it?
Can you point me to ANY statistics to back the decrease in the number of moderates?
isn't there a koranic allowance for lying to infidels? I think I read that somewhere (no, seriously - not like HReid). if so, then you wonder how much is "lie so I get the infidel's money" and how much is legit "moderation"...
if there is legitimacy to the program, yay!
This whole thing is so quintessentially liberal - attempting to change imbedded characteristics through superficial actions; "we will change human nature because we can!"
rla, I've read that too--something like "lying is not a sin if it furthers the cause of jihad," though I don't know the verse or the exact translation or anything.
Just now, I would advise you to be careful with use of the word "legitimate."
T-Rav, is that a hate word too? my NewSpeak newsletter is always running late...
Andrew: Right wing Christians form a small minority of Americans, and they are nowhere near controlling the nation. Most Christians don't believe that all others must submit, accept dhimmitude, or die. Most Christians accept the concept of secular government with religious freedom. The core beliefs of Islam do not. There is simply no comparison in numbers, political philosophy or theology.
I understand that many Muslims in America may accept religious tolerance and exegesis in the Koran, but that's probably the reason most of them are in the United States and not in their original homelands. That is not even close to true throughout the Middle East and Africa. And even in the United States, radical Islamization grows daily.
If anyone is going to have a serious affect on the growing intolerance of Islamist in the Middle East and Africa, it's going to have to be those Western Muslim moderates. The primitives voting for and/or running the governments in the Middle East aren't going to listen to Hillary Clinton or her representatives.
I would ask instead how many Muslim mosques have been burned down with the congregants inside in America in the past six months in comparison to how many Christian churches have suffered that fate in formerly moderate Egypt.
Hillary's sunshine stories are all anecdotal, but the facts point elsewhere. The article is about the Middle East, not middle America.
rlaWTX: That "exemption" is contained in the suras. The program is entirely "legitimate," noble even, but largely futile. It is, indeed, quintessentially liberal.
If you're going to accuse 2 billion people worldwide who have a huge variety of views on their religion, the overwhelming majority of whom have never done anything nasty or anything wrong of being murderous primitives, then you better expect that others will use same the logic to prove that Christians are just like the worst Christians too.
T-Rav: In its legal form, "legitimate" simply means legal or allowable. Most people use it to mean allowable only. I can believe, for instance, that the administration's economic policies are legally legitimate and allowable, but if by "legitimate" I mean "good" or "efficacious," then I see them as illegitimate.
rlaWTX: See my comment to T-Rav (above).
LawHawk and rla, that's not what I meant. I was making a half-hearted attempt at humor from the now-infamous words, "legitimate rape."
They have the same program going at NASA to help Muslims to feel good about themselves.
Not to split hairs, Andrew, but there's no use for future tense: Everyone has been using that kind of logic against Christians for as long as I can remember. So, you know, "turnabout is fair play" and all that.
Andrew: I appreciate your defense of Islam, but I think you are missing my point.
First of all, I never said "all" Muslims.
Second, the article is about nations where imams are either in charge or extremely influential.
Third, I even responded that if there's going to be a change, it's going to have to be Western moderate Muslims who cause it, not do-gooders in the State Department.
Fourth, the Koran itself commands both submission and jihad. Those Muslims who may believe otherwise are those who believe in exegesis--which is most assuredly not mainstream Islam. I applaud them, but they have a long road ahead of them.
Fifth, I accused, and continue to accuse, the imams in the Middle East of being murderous primitives.
Sixth, if moderates are anything close to the majority in Egypt, how has the Muslim Brotherhood managed to win large majorities in the recent semi-democratic elections?
Seventh, aren't Christians, right here in America, already being accused of being murderous and primitive?
Eighth, what a majority of Muslims may believe in Pristina, Timbuktu, or Omaha has little to do with what the majorities believe or accept in the Middle East and in much of the increasingly violent Muslim areas of Africa.
Ninth, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Christians are being murdered and diminished at an astounding rate in the Middle East and Africa in the name of Islam. That kind of brutality hasn't existed in Christianity in over five hundred years (with the possible exceptions of the Balkans and Ireland, which have settled down considerably). Saying that mainstream Christianity is as violent as mainstream Islamism is one thing, proving it quite another.
I don't fear or diminish Muslims. I fear and despise Islamists (fundamentalist Muslims) who are rapidly building a unified front against the West and against civilization in the Middle East. Which, once again, was part and parcel of the article.
As for "all" Muslims believing the same thing, the bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites is proof that that isn't true. But then I never said "all" Muslims believe the same things.
T-Rav: Oops, I missed that. Sorry. My mind was elsewhere.
LL: I saw that a few days ago.
T-Rav, Does that fact make it any less right for Christians to do it to Muslims? Especially when we should be building bridges to try to solve these problems?
The problem is this. Islam is a problem the world over. And the only way to fix it will be to work with good Islamists to try to reshape these governments.
Yet conservatives get stupid and bigoted when they talk about Islam. They apply false "logic" which makes all Muslims guilty of the crimes of a tiny number, they name call and they spout bullshit about Muslim beliefs without any idea if it's true or not -- hey, don't they believe it's ok to kill people? Check out any blog that talks about Islam and you'll see the boogeyman all over it and foaming, ignorant bullshit being spewed in the comments.
It's like conservatives are intent on turning off the very allies we need.
Andrew: Perhaps we are working on the assumption that we are discussing the same religionists. I tend to use the word "Islamist" only when referring to the radical fundamentalist form of Islam which holds sway through much of the Middle East. When I refer to Muslims, I am only referring to those in the area being discussed, not to all Muslims. I picked it up in your comment to T-Rav. In my lexicon, there are no good Islamists, though there are many, many good Muslims and good Islamics. In that case, I agree with you that those Muslims outside of the Middle East should not be tarred with the same brush as the Middle East tyrants. It appears we are saying the same thing in different ways.
"Obama truly believes that a secular, feminist view of women can be imposed on barbarians whose central tenet is hatred and jihad on all those who disagree with them."
LawHawk,
He only says that when Valerie Jarrett or Michelle O is close enough to hear. ;-)
Lawhawk, That makes sense and I think it would be helpful to clarify that. I would say that of the 2 billion or so Muslims, 1.99 billion are probably decent people like everybody else. We need to befriend those people and get them to help us against the others who are in fact these violent, murderous, delusional monsters.
The problem I'm seeing all over the web is that conservatives are not making that distinction. They lump all Muslims together and end up alienating the very people we need to solve this problem. And they seem to be whipping each other up into this frenzy with intensely false logic -- like pointing to single instances or even rumors and presenting those as common traits.
That's the kind of thing that needs to stop. It makes it impossible to win the allies we need, it makes it impossible for us to analyze the situation correctly, and it leaves us with an impossible task and false task of "how do we defeat 2 billion people who want to kill us" when the reality is we're only talking about a few thousand very bad people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not fan of Islam by any stretch, but I think conservatives are making a huge mistake by just being stupid about this issue. They need to learn to do exactly what you just said -- separate the good from the bad and stop treating them all as bad.
Joel: Never mind the ridiculous charges that Obama is a "secret Muslim." Some say that Valerie Jarret is his secret love. He can say anything to her and Michelle. Notice the careful use of the words "some say." LOL
Andrew: I think your number of non-troublemakers may be a bit high, but I am in essential agreement with you on that. I also think the number of ignorant comments we see daily on other blogs about "all Muslims" is largely a function of writing about something they know nothing about. They're likely the same people who think all blacks think alike, or that all Hispanic immigrants think alike.
Andrew,
Dealing with radicalism is like dealing with the mafia, in the essence that yes, truly not all people are with the mob, but at the same time, you aren't exactly sure who is.
On that same note, however, I do agree that plenty of professed "conservatives" annoy me in the sense that they make no distinction, nor do they often actually question the possibility of possible attrocities committed in what is going on in the whole anti-terrorism operation. I don't condone the actions of 9/11, and I certainly feel that justice must be served, but I am worried about actions, because, for instance simply destroying Chicago to kill the mafia doesn't sound like a good idea. As I mentioned earlier, terrorism is very much like the mafia in the fact that it's a subset of a group that is secretive about even being affiliated with the group, not to mention carries out some horrific acts to deliver the message.
Wow! My wife and I just returned from seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s movie “Obama’s America: 2016.” I didn’t think I could dislike a human being any more, but eureka. As a man from colonial India himself, Dinesh goes far at describing Barry’s guiding principles, anti-colonialism and anti-neocolonialism. The big eared bastard makes some sense to me now, and illuminates further desperate need to fix the mistake of ’08! This enlightening little movie dovetails nicely with your article Lawhawk, you can hear the high minded intellectuals screaming about moral equivalency, where there is none. Allowing an entire region slip back into the Dark Ages, with hoity horseshit of, live and let live, when in truth they’ve (Islamist) vilified the West and would cut our throats the first chance they get. Though we should always hold open the option for discussion, whenever possible, Hillary is wasting time, and our money. However our problem is here at home, screw’em all.
Excuse my vitriol, that movie’s got me pissed.
Stan: Well, if D'Souza's movie has that much of an affect on enough others, we may have a landslide yet.
To tell the truth, I'm getting tired of hearing about dialogue and interacting with the Muslim world and all of that. I wish we could just ignore it unless their terrorists attack us, and then turn a few square miles of their sand to glass. Terrible, I know.
T-Rav: When one side is talking and the other isn't listening, it isn't a dialogue, it's a monologue. LOL
obiwan, That's a good analogy. The bad ones are like the mob. They generally blend in well with the population and in some instances have taken over governments (like in Southern Italy). And if you run around yelling that all Italian are mafia and we should wipe out Chicago or New York or Naples to get them, then all you're doing is proving that you're a bigoted fool. Unfortunately, as you have no doubt seen, there is a lot of that in conservative ranks these days.
And the result of that is that (1) the non-mob people aren't going to help us -- and they are the ones we need to solve this, (2) any solutions you offer will be ignored because everyone who isn't a bigot will see you as the bigot you are, and (3) you don't really have any decent solutions to offer anyway because you've so completely misdiagnosed the problem that all your analysis is a non-starter.
So it's problematic at best. And it's stupid for conservatives not to start culling these people from the debate.
Andrew and Obiwan: The biggest problem is that few people actually know many Muslims or much about Islam. They generally get their information from TV, talk radio, or the blogs. The liberals are wearing blinders and paint [nearly] all Muslims as saints. Simple observation makes that untenable. So they turn to the reactionaries and right-wingers who get it completely wrong in the opposite direction. The liberals will not disavow their la-la land pundits, but conservatives should. Radical Islam is a very dangerous thing, and it's important to know enough not to put all Muslims (particularly most American Muslims) in bed with the radical imams in the Middle East. We can't have an intelligent conversation with the liberals, because two sentences in we'll be called racists and bigots. But we can have the conversation with other conservatives and inform them of the facts. We need to work with the moderate elements in this and other Western nations, but that won't happen if we lump all Muslims together as terrorists.
Lawhawk, Exactly. Liberals are useless on this because they refuse to see any truth, but this whole cadre of stupid conservatives is no better. All they do is confirm the stereotype and whine when people who actually know what they're talking about try to come up with solutions.
Conservatism really needs to start calling these people out and pushing them away, just as they did with the racists and most of the sexists. Unfortunately, too many of these people are talk radio morons or professional bloggers.
I honestly find it stunning how little these people know about the things they talk about.
Off-Topic: TV is crummy tonight, but I turned on TCM just because I like old movies. After doing the article on Obama's claim that the Golden Gate Bridge was a government project, I suddenly discovered a movie I had never heard of. It's called Stranded, released in 1933. The plot revolves around racketeers trying to make some money in the protection racket during the construction of the bridge. So far, there have been some great shots of the bridge under construction.
I truly believe that Hilary Clinton is in the early stages of dementia (and I don't say that lightly).
The US State Department spent $117.2 million addressing gender-based violence worldwide? Obviously money well-spent, considering how women in the Middle East have LOST more of their rights while Obama has been in office. The only place that taxpayer $$ is going is into crony slush funds.
WriterX: I'm not being bitchy about this, but just her physical appearance makes me think something's wrong.
The money would be well-spent if it were doing any good. But as you say, women's rights are going in the opposite direction throughout the Middle East. Essentially, the only people gaining from the program are the extra State Department employees. It's part of the Obama jobs program.
Lawhawk
I think we need to understand it is not the Muslims as a collective group that are the problem in these countries nor is it they who are wasting this money.
It is the leaders of these countries that have the power. for the most part I think that many of the so called fundamentalist muslims reject what they are doing to some extent but are too afraid to do anything abount it.
In Iran if a women is accused of walking around without escort etc she is reported to the Brassiji (like a local police / gang) who then invensitgate her morality. Part of this investigation sometimes involves raping her so that she can be accused of adultery.
I doubt that the majority of Muslims really are happy with things like that. I think it is the influence of those in charge.
To your point though I think you are correct in suggesting that Huillary is wasting her time and this program is pointless.
The problem is not that "Muslims" don't understand women's rights or need to be educated. The probelm is that the people that run things are radical jihadists who use violence and terror to control their populace.
Any money sent would be sent to these people and would be used to promote terror. the best approach that I see is to do as little business as possible with countries that have fallen into this. This is one reason for developing Anwar and Oil shale.
It is also why despite the Muslim brotherhood taking over we should see the downing of Mubarik and other secular middle eastern dictators as a good thing. We in the west have to udnerstand that we should support democracy period. Let Egypt fall to these villians. let them take over and in a short time frame they will rise up with their own Green movement as they did in Iran.
The Islamists are able to get away with what they do because we have supported dictators that keep the country secular. The fact that Mubarik allowed women to go to school does not mean they were ever free in her regime. It the Islamists are the doctators they can't blame the west for what goes on in their country.
Indi: I agree with most of what you say. However, I believe we should encourage democracies, not try to create them or sustain those which are as oppressive as the dictatorships that went before them. I prefer a benign dictator to a malignant democracy. The dictatorship of the proletariat is, in theory, democratic. And then there's that old saying about democracies in transition: "One man, one vote, one time." And sometimes it comes down to "do you prefer our dictator or their dictator?"
We're going to be waiting a long time for the Iranian revolution to bear fruit, and even longer for the Egyptian. During that time, many very, very bad things are likely to happen.
Another reason I remain highly skeptical of any Clinton/Democratic outreach program is the inability of liberals to distinguish obvious friend from foe. The person who is most closely linked with the State Department-Imam-Women's Issues outreach is Clinton's closest department adviser on Middle East affairs, Huma Abedin. Abedin has reached a position of great influence—Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton. Abedin was a member of the Muslim Students Association—the original Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States—at George Washington University in the nineties. She later worked at the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, the journal run by her parents and funded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a financier of the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda.
Lawhawk
I agree with you regarding sustaining the democracy. My point is that I would rather it be "their" (the Muslims voting) dictator and not "our" dictator (some clown backed by the CIA).
If they are going to have an oppressive government there is nothing we can do about it however Kings have trouble maintaining their reign. Eventually when enough Islamists turn out to be the same apostates as the men they call to replace maybe there will be a change. Etiher way no one will be able to say it is the US government's fault.
Indi: Destabilizing hostile governments used to be a job the CIA did very well. The "one world" view adopted by too many administrations toward the end of the Cold War weakened the CIA's ability to do that, and now it's just another chucklehead agency of the happy face administrations. The rise of radical Islam has changed the formula even further. There will be no good change in the Middle East as long as Islamists control the "democratic" governments and we do nothing about it. The US is going to get blamed for every failure, and Allah for every success, so who cares what others think?
With an old-time effective CIA, proper use of our ally in Israel, and a president with a backbone we would have exploited the opportunity to overthrow Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs. Instead, the world now faces a delusional Iranian government with a nearly-completed nuclear program.
Excellent post and comments, LawHawk!
We will never defeat (or at least drive underground) radical Islamists if we don't even identify the enemy we are fighting.
And we won't win if we keep dealing with terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Hamas, etc..
They will gladly take our money, say goood things in english, and then say "death to Israel! Death to Amercica" in their own language and blame us for all their problems while taking credit for the money we gave them.
We have been offering too many carrots and not enough stick.
We should demand equal rights and liberty for all Egyptians, regardless of gender, race or religion before we start offering carrots.
And we shouldn't even consider brokering peace with Israel unless the country formally recognizes Israel and their right to exist.
The problem with democracies is they are subject to mob rule and become no different than a dictatorship.
I agree, some conservatives go too far and oversimplify a very bad way a very complex problem.
I can relate to their frustration but they need to do some more research before opening their mouths.
The biggest problems with the moderate muslims is that most of them are liberals, or lean left.
So a country that may have a majority of moderates can easily be bullied by a radical minority and they rarely fight back (for good reason, but they contribute(d) to the problem by not growing spines and wasting a great opportunity).
They have a victim mentality and they will never be free if they don't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. I hope they do, I really do, but I've seen no indication they will change anytime soon.
And why should they change? Obama and Hillary have been rewarding the victim mentality crowds, foreign and domestic.
Which is why the radical Islamist also use the victim meme. Works every time with Obama and he rewards them, bless his heart (sarc).
We will never defeat the radicals or provide incentives for the moderates to grow a spine if we keep rewarding bad behavior and not identifying what and who we are fighting.
I could go on and on about the mistakes Bush made, and the gigantic mistakes Obama has made, but I think you get my points.
USSBen: We can't even distinguish friend from foe domestically. CAIR is treated as a legitimate religious/political organization, even while it is on the Attorney General's suspicious activities list and has ties to organizations deemed terrorist both by DOJ and State.
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