The fact that Muslim women make up half of the Dutch abortion-seekers seems to indicate that they're already in rebellion against patriarchal Islamic society.

"Scoggins goes on to argue that Islamist misogyny is a higher-profile issue in western Europe than in the United States, owing to the former's greater social liberalism and secularism."

Wouldn't a more plausible explanation for this difference be the much larger muslim population of Europe, as well as the higher degree of integration achieved by US muslims?

Ironically, the perhaps most visible anti-social result of immigration in Europe is not extremist Islamic culture, but rather African American gang culture, adopted by disaffected immigrant youth (and disaffected middle -class youth for that matter...).

The Nation is on an anti-american crusade. That its writers would use the tragedy of muslim misogyny to promote its anti-freedom agenda makes a lot of sense. In The Nation, one relies on massive cognitive dissonance to keep "the faithful" in line.

Randy,

A custom phrased in terms of religious necessity is, in fact, a religious custom. Trying to disclaim responsibility for the less savoury elements of a religious culture because, well, they're not really part of the religion is a classic response by cornered reactionaries.

Well put, but I wonder if these aren't cornered pseudo-reactionaries rather than the real real thing.

The reason I say this is that (as usual) I always wonder whether we have the same types in the Jewish community. And I think this is one area where Muslims and O Jews do not equate. If you confront an O Jew with a deeply sexist aspect of Judaism, they'll just say it's God's word and there's no arguing with it. If well-educated in Torah, he'll throw in the cites. But there's no question of justifying it in human terms.

I do think that you had lots of this defensive reaction during the late 19th century and it was confined to what we would now call "Conservative" Jews, the uneasy modernizers.

So perhaps in this syndrome there may be hope: the reactionaries are a type that a culture deploys when it's on its last legs, about to be swept away by something it has no defenses against.

"There is a virtual Taliban down there. You tell people this stuff happens and they don't believe it,"


http://www.latimes.com/news/nati...-home- headlines

Fascinating article, Liv. And very sad. Guess that's one way to get rid of the competition.

Put that one on the first page - thanks Liv! :)

Haven't commented for a long time, sorry to Godless for rudely breaking off in the middle of an arguement (some time ago) but real life intervened.

I've been avoiding commenting on blogs because doing so is so time consuming, but one comment above is so wrong and in an exquisitely ironic way that I cannot pass it up. The comment:


"that genocidal anti-Semitism has nothing to do with traditional Christian proscriptions against the Jews."

if uttered in 1946 or 1947 when the events of the period were common and ordinary knowledge of common and ordinary people, would have gotten the utterer a 'what planet is he from' sort of look that one reserves for a lunatic. That that and the 'Pius XII was an anti-semite' line are now fashionable, when the events of the period are known mostly to academic types is another example, as if the world needed any more of them, that very few things are so simple and straight forward that an academic cannot screw them up.

Here's the ironic part. If you asked history's most effective genocidal anti-semite whose ideas he thought he was following he would not have said the Church's or Martin Luther, he would have said .... Charles Darwin! Hitler was a serious HBD enthusiast, and it's a historical fact that the last time western man spent a lot of time on HBD theory and research that the whole thing led directly to Auschwitz, Hitler was a eugenicist in a hurry, Darwin being far more about eugenics (HBD for use) at the time than anything else. That historical fact is why HBD has such a verboten subject since WWII.

I don't want to say that Hitler thought correctly about HBD or that Stalin wasn't a 'good Communist' or that Muslims aren't misogynist, but for a blog devoted to HBD you should be a little more sympathetic to someone who thinks their philosophy, ethnicity, or religion has been unfairly maligned. The thing about glass houses and stones.

if uttered in 1946 or 1947 when the events of the period were common and ordinary knowledge of common and ordinary people, would have gotten the utterer a 'what planet is he from' sort of look that one reserves for a lunatic.

So, you're saying that if Christianity from its earliest days hadn't emphasized the trial of Jesus by the Jewish hierarchy and the supersession of Judaism by Christianity, but instead as a kindred people who chose not to follow Jesus and were protected by their own covenant of God, we would still have had a Holocaust?

Note, please, that I'm not blaming the Church, or its leadership at the time, for the Holocaust. What am I saying is that there were connections fostered by the Church that created certain conditions which, in certain pathological circumstances, created others.

Christianity from its earliest days hadn't emphasized the trial of Jesus by the Jewish hierarchy and the supersession of Judaism by Christianity

They have to - that's the core. Like Reformist Christians emphasized their own rejection of Catholic hierarchy and were treated similarly to Jesus. And St. Stephen, for that matter.

instead as a kindred people who chose not to follow Jesus and were protected by their own covenant of God, we would still have had a Holocaust?

There was a lot of mutual bloodshed between various Christian branches - Catholics killed and burned reformists and vice versa. Catholics and Orthodox Christians killed each other on the Polish-Russian/Ukrainian border. Or what about the walls between Protestants and Catholics in the North Ireland?

So in this context I don't see Holocaust as something special. If one really takes his/her religion seriously, there's no place for another God. If I believe that Jesus was indeed The Messiah and Son of God, how can I look friendly at the religion, whose believers think that he was a heretic deservedly punished by death? For Christians, the Jewish covenant with God was dead and irrelevant the moment when Jesus came to Earth.

The recent increase in tolerance between various Christians, I'm afraid, is caused mainly by self-preservation instinct and the weakening belief. Basically, many churches are more about getting along with neighbors than about fervent belief.

There was a lot of mutual bloodshed between various Christian branches - Catholics killed and burned reformists and vice versa. Catholics and Orthodox Christians killed each other on the Polish-Russian/Ukrainian border. Or what about the walls between Protestants and Catholics in the North Ireland?

I'm not disagreeing with you.