Women Entombed

Entombed is, I think, precisely the right word to describe the condition of women under the authority of the Islamic “fundamentalists” in those parts of the world where Shariah law holds them in its grip—entombed in their houses, and entombed in their head-to-toe shrouds.

Where, on the subject of such women, are the voices of that significant faction of the Left, the feminists? Is the enslavement of some women acceptable to that faction? How about the rest of the package: genital mutilation, forced marriages replete with beatings and all manner of other abuses, “honor” killings, and stoning for (suspected) adultery? Do the feminists of the West simply regard such atrocities as part of the “culture” of Islamic societies and thus somehow beyond serious reproach?

Did Western women deserve their own emacipation from tired old restrictions, their individuality encouraged and cherished, their hopes nurtured and celebrated and regarded as a birthright—but not those other women? Some of us were under the impression that the aspirations of the feminists were universal (they kept telling us just that)—that all women sought the same degree of liberation, and deserved it, and had it coming.

The feminists evidently fought battles and scored what they regarded as victories not for WOMEN, but for SOME WOMEN. Women like them: women in the West—that is to say, women who had the good fortune to be born somewhere other than under the grim and suffocating cloak of Islamic tyranny.

“Sexism” is a word we used to hear with great frequency—as defined in the West as describing something akin to the malediction that “women don’t belong in ________ (fill in the blank)”. But if some males in the West harbored “Neanderthal” notions of women’s “place,” even the least evolved among us were absolute pikers compared to those who believe that:

“Allah made women deficient in religion, in intellect, and in emotions…” 

“…the righteous women are devoutly obedient…” 

“Scourge them and beat them…”

Those are just a few tidbits describing the attitudes of half a billion men in the so-called Muslim world, give or take a few (and of an increasing number of Muslim men in the West as well). There is of course a great deal more—a whole host of strictures regarding the insufficiency of women to conduct their own lives without brutal and uncompromising supervision.

Aforementioned are clitorectomies (too clinical a word for removing what are regarded as the dangerous parts of a female with a sharp rock or a piece of glass) without benefit of either anesthesia or antiseptics; forced marriages, often to much older men, and just as often to complete strangers, who are enjoined to “scourge them and beat them” if they displease in any way; “honor” killings, wherein a selected (male) member of the family is tasked with murdering a wayward female relative who has deviated from the “true path”—that is, from her prescribed obligations under the cruel rubric of medievalist dogma.

What have the feminists of the West to say about these lively activities? Is a pass given to such atrocities because they happen “over there” and are therefore none of the business of the inhabitants of the West? Wither the universal sisterhood? Did it never exist?

If not, then fine. But if Western progenitors of women’s rights are going to keep to their own backyard and their own provincial concerns—their very own rights and privileges, and no one else’s—they should bear in mind that as goes the rest of the world, so goes their little corner, too, thanks to the languid attitude among the chattering classes in the West toward the encroachment of creeping Islamism, and its attendant and inevitable barbarities.

Islamic fundamentalism is coming; indeed in some parts of Europe and North America, it is already here. Honor killings, to take one stark example, have occurred with ever-greater frequency in Canada and the United States in this, the 21st century.

It will happen again—as will many more incidents of the same sort. So the question remains: whither the sisterhood? And for that matter, wither the men of the Left, who marched in solidarity with the feminists, and called themselves feminists, too?

If the feminists of the West don’t care about women elsewhere—and evidently they don’t—what will it take to energize them to what will soon enough become their very own cause? Will they not protest, at last, until their own entombment is upon them?