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Women

The dualism of Islam allows for two ways to treat women. They can be honored and protected or they can be beaten. Today Western nations allow Islamic women to be treated as Islam wants to treat them. In short, they are not subject to our laws and customs of equality. Why? Our politicians and intellectuals do not want to offend Islam by discussing the second class status of women in Islam.

Our next lesson is on women. If you're going to study Islam you have to study women as a separate category. And the reason for this is simple-Islamic doctrine denies that men and women are equal. The dualism of Islam separates women into a separate category. The Koran has whole sections devoted to how women are treated differently from men. Many hadith show women as a special category. Islam is very proud of how it treats its women and says that in the West our treatment of women is terrible, that they are not protected and honored. In Islam, women are protected and honored.

Let's examine the doctrine that underlies each separate case of how women are treated. Islam is a rational system of politics and culture. It always has a doctrinal reason for everything it does and this is one of the things that make studying Islam easy. If Muslims do it, there is a reason. There is very little creativity inside of Islam. It doesn't need to create, because Islam has a perfect universal and final doctrine. Its doctrine about women is perfect, therefore it doesn't need to innovate in any way. Islam even claims that it is the world's first feminist movement--that after Islam women had more rights than before.

Let's examine the subject of beatings. The Koran is clear. It says that if a woman does not obey her husband-that is, does not submit- she can be beaten. Let's see how this plays out. A Palestinian woman sued in a sharia court; what she wanted was this: a judgment that her husband would only beat her once a week. She said that currently he beat her every day and that that was excessive. So she sued in sharia court to have them direct her husband to only beat her once a week.

At the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, it was decided that everyone who crossed the border had to be photographed. The US military was doing this and since many of the people coming across the border were Afghani women in their full head-to-toe burqa- including the face veil-they were taken to a separate tent where a female soldier helped them get their burqa off and photographed their face.

Now this is merely anecdotal information that was passed to me by a soldier, and doesn't have any scientific evidence, but the women who did this work said that it seemed to them like nine out of ten women that they saw had been bruised in the face.

This goes along with what the Pakistan Institute of Medical Science reported. In a scientific survey of Pakistani women, about 90% of them said that they had been beaten by their husbands. In the country of Chad, in Africa, they tried to outlaw beatings, but Islam is quite strong in Chad. The imams and other Islamic leaders protested, saying that anti-wife beating laws were against Sharia law. The bill was defeated.

Some argue cynically, but practically, that since Islamic women are beaten from early on, by the time they are married they are used to this treatment and it does not seem to bother them. This business of beating wives is thoroughly established in Islam. This is not some sort of aberration. We've already mentioned that the Koran says that the beating of a wife is permitted. It also goes further to say, though, that if the woman submits she should be given food clothing and shelter, so those are also part of a woman's rights.

Mohammed left behind a great deal of information about the beating of women. There is one tradition which summarizes Islam and women. He said never ask a man why he beats his wife. We know that from one tradition (hadith) that he himself hit his favorite wife, Aisha, and we know that he stood by without comment when her father struck Aisha in his presence. But then again, Mohammed also stood by without saying a word when Ali beat Aisha's black female slave. Ali was Mohammed's cousin, son-in-law and the fourth caliph (supreme leader).

There's a famous hadith where a woman comes to Mohammed with a complaint about her husband. The hadith says that there was a bruise on her face which was green in color. Mohammed addressed the issue that she brought up, but he made no remark about the bruise on her face. Actually, at another time he left a hadith which said that when you hit women, do not strike them in the face. He also left behind one other piece of information on the beating of women. He said that they should be beaten lightly. This invites questions. What does it mean to beat lightly? Does it mean to use a small stick? And to use a stick, can you raise the stick above the head as you strike down at the woman? The Sunna doesn't describe this, it merely says that they are to be beaten lightly.

Now Islam is a dualistic system. Dualism means that Islam always has two contradictory positions. So if there is a statement that says that it proper to beat a woman, then somewhere else there will be a contradictory statement. So, in another hadith, Mohammed said: "do not strike Allah's handmaidens." That is, don't hit women. However, there are only one or two of these statements and there are many which describe how women should be subjugated. Of course, in Islam hitting a woman is not abuse because hitting a woman is allowed and not forbidden. If she's been trained properly she does not object to these beatings. Since Mohammed established very firmly that striking women was within the bounds of Islam, Sharia incorporates the Sunna of Mohammed into the formal structure of Islamic law. There are rules laid out as to the gradation of how the man makes the woman submit and the final stage is a beating.

Now let's look at another way that women are treated inside of Islam. In 2002, researchers in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found that half the girls were married by age 13. In an Afghan refugee camp more than two out of three second grade girls were either married or engaged! Virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. One ten-year-old was engaged to a man of 60. Fifty-seven percent of Afghan girls under the age of 16 and many as young as nine, are in arranged marriages. This is pure Sunna, the way of Mohammed. How do we know this? When Mohammed was in his mid-fifties, he was engaged to Aisha, a child of six. Then, when she was nine years old, he consummated the marriage. So, when the 60-year-old Pakistani Muslim is engaged to the 10-year-old it is Sunna, it is the way of Mohammed.

Now we come to a treatment of Islamic women which is not strictly Islamic doctrine, and that is "honor killings." An honor killing is when a man kills a woman because she has violated his honor. A Muslim male must control the sexuality of the females in his household or he is dishonored. It is one of his chief concerns. In Dallas, Texas two Muslim sisters were found shot to death in the back of their father's taxicab. The father is being sought by the police in conjunction with the murder. A friend who knew them said the father was very strict about the girl's relationships with boys, their talking with boys, as well as the type of clothing the daughter's wore. The sisters dressed in Western clothes and listen to popular music. The father was quite angry that his daughters were not acting like proper Muslim women.

Islam does not say kill the woman who does not obey instead, it brings the level of punishment up to beatings. However, once a woman is to be subjugated and that she can be beaten, it's not too far from taking the final step. Killing a family member over the issue of Islam is Sunna. We know at the Battle of Bader there is a story in which a son is remorseful about having killed his father, who was a kafir, but in the end he realizes that since his father was a kafir, even though he was a cultured man, it was better that he was dead. So it is Sunna for one family member to kill another to advance Islam.

The Koran speaks at great length about women's rights. Among them are these: that they are to receive half the amount of inheritance of a male, and that in a court of law it takes the testimony of two women to equal the testimony of one man. So, if a woman testifies against a man and he denies the accusation, then the testimony has no weight at all. In Islamic court this makes cases of rape almost impossible to prove.

Muslims will say: "Oh no, no, no! Islam teaches the equality of women!" and indeed, there are many verses which say that women are equal on Judgment Day. That's when they're equal. Then every person will be called upon to account for what they did and said in life, and in this matter men and women are to be treated equally.

Let's examine the fine print. It is true that the Koran says that women are to be treated equally on Judgment Day. They are to be judged on what they did in this life, and what they're supposed to do in this life is to obey the men, to submit to them, therefore, their "equality" on Judgment Day means that they will be judged on how well they submitted to men.

Mohammed commented that he had seen Hell and the great majority of its inhabitants were women. Why were they there? They had not fully appreciated their husbands. In the same hadith, he made the remark that women were spiritually inferior to men and that women were not as intelligent as men. Part of a woman's "rights" inside of Islam is that she's not as intelligent and she has a much better chance of going to hell.

But even if she goes to Paradise, she is still in for a second-class treatment. Paradise for men is a sexual playground, but none of that seems to extend to women, so that even in Paradise, women are not rewarded like men.

There's another interesting comment about women and worship in Islam. A man is to pray facing Mecca, the women are to be behind him in prayer. This is the reason why women always sit in the back in the mosque. Now it's interesting in the religion of Islam there are many things which can negate the power of prayer. One of those is if while you're praying a dog, a donkey or a woman should walk in front of you. So for the purposes of this tradition a woman is equal to a dog or a donkey.

Now let's take up the matter of the infamous burqa -the covering from head-to-toe which can even include the face. Some Islamic women say "Well, that is not really required." Others say that it is. So on this issue the Koran does display a dualism. We do know this: Mohammed made all of his wives wear a veil, and that everyone in the entourage around him did so. So although there is not a universal commandment that says women should wear a burqa, we do know that from the Sunna of Mohammed, his wives did that and all the women around him did. This is a powerful influence with regards to the burqa.

In the Muslim holy city of Mecca, a girls' school caught on fire. Naturally, the girls tried to escape, but they were driven back into the burning building because they were not wearing their face covering and full-body veil. They died because it was the decision of the religious police that better they should die than have their faces exposed in the public.

Another aspect of Islam is polygamy. The Koran is quite clear on polygamy. A man have one, two, three or four wives. It does not say that a woman can have one, two three, or four husbands.

There is also the matter of stoning. Now it can be argued that stoning is not Islamic, or it can be argued that it is Islamic. Here's a situation in Terhan, Iran which calls itself an Islamic republic. In 2008, two sisters, Zohre and Azar Kabiri, were convicted of adultery. They were sentenced to be stoned to death. The adultery is a crime punishable by death. The way this worked was, at first they were convicted of having illegal relations and they were given 99 lashings each. They were brought back into court and the same evidence was used to try them for adultery, whereupon they were sentenced to be stoned to death. The evidence? It was a videotape where the two sisters were caught talking to some men without adult family members with them.

There's an interesting thing about stoning, by the way. Sharia law is very technical about this, and what it says is that the stones should be chosen so they do not kill immediately. They have to be big enough so that when enough of them are thrown, they will kill the victim. Death by stoning is meant to be a torturous death that the entire community participates in.

Now we come to an important thing. We have just described Islam. We must now talk about our response to this, and our response to this is shameful. In this country, starting in the 1960s, we had a political movement called feminism which said women should be fully equal to men before the law, and a great deal of progress has been made in that. But on the issue of Islam, kafir women are shamefully silent. What we see here is indication of how our universities, for instance, have responded to Islam. They are silent. Universities should be a place where issues are discussed and described but no Women's Studies teach any of the Sharia law about women in Islam. Social workers do not report beatings inside Islamic families in Europe. The whole system has turned a blind eye to this.

What's happening in Europe-and it's starting to happen in America- is this: Muslim civil rights organizations maintain that Muslims should not fall under any aspect of family law in the West because our family law is based on ignorance of Allah's law. Therefore, there should be two sets of laws-one for kafirs and one for Muslims. So if a beaten Muslim woman shows up at the emergency room, the police would not be called. Or if she wishes to press charges, it would be in an Islamic court.

What is the response of Western women to this? Well, they don't want to be culturally insensitive. They don't want to be racist. So if this culture of Islam wants to beat its women, why should they say anything about it? They do not want to be culturally insensitive. Our universal human rights stop at Mohammed's door.

Islam has a precise doctrine of how to treat women. Other than after death, the Islamic treatment of women is that they are less than a man. That is dreadful, but what is worse is that we will not help Islamic women for fear we will offend Islam.