Sanctity of Cultural Oppression

Islam seems to have been a perfect fit for a tribal culture. A culture truly primal in its masculine hierarchy of warmongering, revenge, the subordination of those outside the tribe, and above all, its ownership of womankind.

Although official Islam is clearly not as officiously derogatory and contemptuous of women as the cultures which have embraced it while adhering to their original customs, the status of women in Muslim countries remains fraught with inequality and danger.

Women are castigated if they demur and dare to assert themselves, so most do not. It is far easier to succumb and submit to the conditions imposed upon them by a hateful ideology of women-as-chattels. Having said which, they still have it better in some ways, than both men and women whose gender orientation has been confused by their gene-inspired "choice" of same-sex attraction.

Women are not imprisoned, tortured and murdered simply because they are women. This becomes their fate if they become intemperate enough to deny the demands custom and tradition places upon them to be heard on bare tolerance and certainly not seen. For gays and lesbians the line has been crossed once they become sufficiently incautious to betray their orientation.

The oppression of women begins with separating the girl children from the boy children and assigning them their definite places in society. The torture begins with clitoral-vaginal cutting, to the mandatory wearing of the burka and the niqab. And from the Arab world, to Africa and the Indian sub-continent the threat of disobedience becomes truly dire with the honour killings of indecorous, misbehaving women for whom the slightest whiff of dalliance means death.

The tradition of familial killing of women is bound to family honour. A slight to the honour of the family's good name merits death. To restore familial honour. There is nothing dishonourable or criminal in murdering one's own daughter, sister, niece, or wife. To overlook the act of ultimate defiance, the spurning of one's ancestors' demands on the place of women in society is to deliberately court death.

In the primitive culture that prevails, ostensibly through the faith of Islam, you cannot take the honour out of the killing. The restoration of honour can be achieved only through the death of the malefactor. This fine old tradition has been exported, has carried itself proudly into other countries to which Muslims migrate, including countries in North America. Where honour killings occur from time to time.

Pre-marital affairs also merit death, even if the affair took place before marriage with the very man whom the woman later married. While the husband might not have betrayed his wife, if his wife's family acquires knowledge of the affair, a family council will reach the determination that the outrage to their honour requires the death of the offending family member.

A country like Jordan, felt to be the most civilized of the Arab nations, recently enacted laws making honour killings a criminal offense, punishable by law. Which hasn't deterred the incidence of such killings. A woman fearful of her family's intent in the wake of her having behaved in a manner inconsistent with the requirements of a good Muslim woman may contact the authorities.

Whose only recourse to justice, with no evidence to incriminate her family members in a plot to murder her, short of finding her dead body, is to place the woman in custodial safety. Which is to say depriving her of freedom, incarcerating her - for her safety - in prison. Until and unless the situation somehow becomes resolved and fears for her safety no longer prevail.

The wonder of it is that, as has been pointed out by those critical of the left, of the intellectual and political left, of feminists cognizant of the situation, but whose sympathies appear to lie squarely with these very same practitioners of an ancient culture as being 'hands-off' for criticism - they remain complicit in their lack of outcry and demand for change.

So why is this? Cultural relativism is a fairly pathetic excuse for abandoning women to the fate of cultural oppression of this magnitude of order.