Actually, one could make a solid argument -- both from observation and from historical events -- that it is in fact women in the Western world who have historically been treated poorly, while women in the Islamic world have been and continue to be treated like queens. The fact that women in the Islamic world are not treated as we happen to treat women does not mean they are mistreated; it merely means they are treated differently.
A feminist scholar once said -- and I agree with her -- that she would believe in the ancient oppression of women when she found evidence of a female revolution. None exists. If women were truly treated as poorly as we, in our arrogant contempt of our ancestors, chauvinistically like to tell ourselves, they would have revolted, just as women in the West did indeed eventually revolt. The fact is, they never did. In fact, the mere idea was so ludicrous to thinkers of the time that it was a subject of comedy. The play Lysistrata ("Army-Disbander") by Aristophanes, for example, centers around the efforts of Lysistrata to lead a sex strike. Basically, the women tell their men that they will refuse to sleep with them until they stop fighting their foolish wars. Of course, the punchline of the play is that the movement fails spectacularly, because the women find their men so sexy that they can't resist them -- and to a woman, they all rush back into their husbands' arms.
Likewise, there has never been a women's revolt in any Islamic country, not even the ones we point to as being the most oppressive (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.). The fact is that a lot of the practices we regard as "oppressive" are in fact promoted and enforced by the women themselves: veils, female circumcision (which the king of Saudi Arabia outlawed over the vociferous protests of his wives), etc. Indeed, in many Islamic countries, women are quite powerful: a recent vice-president of Iran was a woman, many women serve on the parliaments of both Iraq and Iran, and the list goes on. As one Saudi woman said to me, anyone who thinks Saudi women are oppressed has no clue how they live on a day-to-day basis. They get up when they want to, they go to the spa almost everyday, they get manicures and pedicures, they drive nice cars, they have maidservants, they don't have to work unless they want to, they have almost endless leisure.
In the early days of the Iraq war, it was not at all uncommon to see a woman walking unaccompanied down the streets of Baghdad in blue jeans. As the situation has deteriorated, however, they have been forced, for their own safety, to walk around in full niqab, accompanied at all times by men.
So I ask you, who has done the real oppression of women in that country?
"Nonstopdrivel" wrote: