Womens Rights -- Are they for all women or just some women?

Frontpage Magazine has an interesting article on the clash of world cultures, focusing on the current events in Australia.

First an excerpt and then a set of questions:

My question is for liberal women of the first world.

How do you feel about this? Is this acceptable behavior?

Should all women of the world have the same right to choose their sexual partners as you enjoy? Or, should we simply accept these different cultural norms as being right for "those people"?

Do you feel that perhaps we should condone this behavior, because it's all relative and no one culture is better than any other - they are all just different?

When you choose your mates, do you consider factors such as this? Do you seek to mate with a strong male who condemns and fights against this behavior, or do you seek to mate with a male who takes the broader view that those women live in a foreign world and have different rights based upon their own cultural background? Who has the edge in reproduction, the moral absolutist or the moral relativist?*

George Bush, Tony Blair, and their fellows appear to be moral absolutists who believe in a basic set of human rights for all humans. Are they wrong? Is it wrong of them to attempt to impose their values of liberty, freedom, democracy, human rights, and sexual equality on the traditional cultures of the third world?

Or, should we sit back, listen to some music, and watch as one group in the third world continues to impose by force of arms and law its world view on the other weaker group in the third world? Is it morally better for us to let the strong attack the weak, or is it morally better for us to defend the weak by attacking the strong? Should we defend the women of the third world, or can we achieve moral superiority by abandoning them to their fate?

What do you think?


* Note: I am unavailable. My wife is a gun owner and I am a slow target.

 

I am sorry to be biaseed on this but that culture gives me an eerie feeling..

 

Women's rights are for all women. No boundaries of culture or raise. It is unfair for the women in Pakistan or in any place to be treated that way. It is OK to live by the norms of your country but not to the point you should be abused because of others actions or to be abused in any reason. It is true that we cannot imposed them new ideas about their culture but it doesn't mean we will not do something about it. We are not here to be protect only ourselves and our love ones but also protect others.

 

This is a wee bit embarassing, but I have no idea. I get almost all of my news through the Internet.

FoxNews has coverage of the riots, and I don't think that's just because of Rupert Murdoch.

It seems to me that the newcomers are in the minority and that they are going to be forced by Australian law to adjust their behavior to the Australian social mores.

The Australian treatment of women is fairly poor by U.S. standards, but I can't imagine the average Australian bloke putting up with the Muslim rules for the treatment of females.

That pretty much means that Australian females are only unsafe when they are alone.

It also means that when Australian girls are assaulted for being alone, the male population of Australia is going to be looking for some means to express its outrage at behavior which violates their standards of good conduct.

Thinking it through, I see what you mean. This could be really ugly for quite some time.

 

Woah, here's a can of worms being opened.

That Frontpage Magazine article is pretty inflammatory. I'm no expert on Islam (being a devout atheist myself), but my limited understanding of the Koran is that there is absolutely nothing that condones rape - in fact it is quite the opposite, because the virgin is one of the most sacred entities.

This case should be treated no differently than if there was some Christian sect who decided that gang-rape was acceptable - those involved (whether directly or by incitement) should be prosecuted. Attacking the wider community only serves to create increased divisions between Islam and the west, at exactly the time when we need to narrow the gap.

I don't think anyone other than the rapists themselves is questioning whether women should have the right to live their life without the fear of rape, and to try and associate problems such as these with the so-called 'war on terror' is irresponsible at best. Iraq was actually one of the more secular regimes in the middle east, which is one of the main reasons we in the west gave them so much weaponry and training to fight Iran in the 80s. And do I need to remind you that Pakistan is one of the allies of the United States and United Kingdom?

 

Yes, virgins are highly prized -- as long as they belong to you. Other peoples virgins, not so highly prized. Infidel's virgins -- open game.

Have you been following the case of Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman who was sentenced to be raped by five men as punishment for her brother's alleged illicit affair with a woman from another family?


As far as general Muslim treatment of women, my own lovely wife ran away from home because she didn't want to be forced into an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. This wasn't in some far off land -- this was Texas!

My wife was also accepted into MIT, but was not allowed to attend because her brother was not accepted. Without her brother, she would have had no chaperone in Boston. And, as a Muslim female, she was not allowed to go outside alone except for certain specific tasks.

And why are Muslim women not allowed to go out of the family home alone? Because it is expected that they will be assaulted.

And of course, if they are raped they cannot safely report it to the police. Their rapists can simply accuse them of zina, which is sexual activity outside of marriage. And what is the punishment for women convicted of having sex outside of marriage in most of the Muslim world? Death!

Here's a nice blurb from The National Catholic Weekly:

Let's make sure we all understand this. A woman comes to the police and says "I have been raped." If she cannot produce four male witnesses to corroborate her story, she is stoned to death. Of course, her testimony doesn't count for anything -- she's a woman!

And of course it is not just Muslim women who are subject to such legal tyranny. Consider the case of Touria Tiouli, a French citizen. Touria was held in the UAE for six months after she was raped by three men. Why? Because the men accused her of being a prostitute after she went to the police to report being raped. Why would a prostitute accuse her customers of rape? Why would a French accountant work as a prostitute? Why were not those three rapists executed? Oh sorry, no male witnesses.

What is the result of this legal nightmare? Rape victims are prevented from reporting their assaults for fear of being executed. What is the end result of that? Rapists are free to do whatever they wish -- as long as they don't do it in front of four male witnesses.

 

Merry Christmas from Pakistan

--------------------------------------

Pakistani Father Slays 4 Daughters in 'Honor Killings'
Sunday, December 25, 2005

MULTAN, Pakistan — A father, angry that his eldest daughter had married against his wishes, slit her throat as she slept and then killed three of his other daughters in a remote village in eastern Pakistan, police said Saturday.

Nazir Ahmad, a laborer in his 40s, feared the younger girls, aged 4, 8, and 12, would follow in their sister's footsteps, police officer Shahzad Gul said.

...

Hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan every year, many by male relatives, after they are accused of staining their families' honor by having affairs or marrying for love without family consent.

 

Pakistan is one of our allies in the war on terror, we are directly supporting their military dictator.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/18/AR2005091800554.html

He says people get raped for the money? Did I read that right?

 

So ferret, since the questions were posed to all of the girls, what are your thoughts?

Which way would you go if you had any power and authority?

Would you defend the weak, or avoid conflict?

And, BTW, just to clue you in, Musharraf is on this side of the modernizing influences in Pakistan. If it weren't for the hard and dangerous work of Musharraf, the women of Pakistan would have much greater troubles and so would U.S. armed forces in the region. Musharraf isn't perfect, but no politician is. Sure, we would all like to replace him with someone soft and cuddly -- but no one soft and cuddly would survive in his role. No one soft and cuddly would do anything useful for womens rights in Pakistan.

Apparently you did not read the article correctly. It states that Musharraf may have been misquoted as saying that.

 

actually the article says he wasn't misquoted

Is musharraf doing anything for the woman of pakistan?

 

Yes.

But as you can't read, I won't bother to write to you.

You also never bothered to ask answer the questions I posted twice.

You're a forum troll. Go away troll.

 

I thought your questions were rehtorical

I would try to avoid, propping up dictators. regardless if they are friends with us

Are we for democracy or not?

Which weak?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3641820.stm

There has been a genocide in Sudan, I would have approved sending some troops there, I don't think we sent any at all, in fact I don't even remember the president mentioning it. Maybe not 100s of thousands, we might have been able to stop that with a few gun ships, the killers where mostly on horseback.

 

Will I don't understand where you're coming from here?

Have you been to Australia?

I'm from New Zealand and I've been to the US and I'm living in Australia now. I'd say that the American's and Australian's treat women fairly similarly. Unless you're talking about the Lebanese gangs in Sydney specifically.

I would say however that an Australian male is more likely to be a patronizing chauvenist pig towards women where as an American male is more likely to be a supplicating wussy.

That's why New Zealand guys get all the girls where ever they go.

I'd say that American's in general are bit more prudish than both Australian's and New Zealanders.

I've been to visit Dubai. In Dubai whether you're a expat or a local, if you assault a woman you get thrown in jail. Dubai is an arab muslim country.

Women can go to the beach in Dubai and wear bikini's. I've even seen women at public beache's topless in Dubai.

Saudi Arabia is right next to Dubai and would seem to be at complete opposites to Dubai. My friend's family spend some time in Saudi as a teenager and his Mum and Sister were not allowed to have dinner with the men. They had to eat outside.

The Bush Administration and Blair are not in Iraq for liberty.

They're in there for two reasons:

1. World Oil reserves are reaching or have passed their peak now. When this has happened in local situations, like the US, reserves have quickly dwindled. This will happen even faster as China and India have greater demand for oil at exponential amounts.

2. Muslim birthrates are much higher than other populations in the world and by 2030 muslims be some 35% of the world population. It would be strategically beneficial in the long term for the US to have a relatively wealthy and largely populated arab muslim state as an allie.

 

This whole issue about women's rights is just a bunch of crap put together by global think tanks and feminists in order to destroy families and hurt communities.

I believe women should have rights, but at the same time a lot of Feminists encourage women to be "equal" to men. Women can't be equal to men because they aren't men.

And I don't know about the rest of you guys in this forum, but I don't want to marry a woman who wants to run the house and tell me what to do. I want her to be my backbone and support me. The man should be the bread winner.

But at the same time, I don't think a woman should be killed for "dishonoring" the family.

 

Hrmmm, Just out of curiosity Why would you think any woman with equeal education and career potential would ever want to marry you just to have you running (around) the house telling her what to do? Beats me

 

Whoever said I would tell her what to do? I never said that.

But in any household, their has to be a leader and a follower. When everyone tries to lead, things tend to fall apart. I guess that would explain why the US has the highest divorce rates in the world. Everyone wants to be the boss.

 

Maybe you didn't say it out loud, but you sure advocate it:

At least stand up for what you believe and stop pussyfooting around like a politician.

 

...kind of makes you wonder if invading Iraq was ever about freedom for it's people, doesn't it?