Deadly Disdain, Deadly Denial About it: The Fate of Muslim Women

by Phyllis Chesler
Pajamas Media
March 17, 2009

http://www.islamist-watch.org/1557/deadly-disdain-deadly-denial-about-it-the-fate

Excerpt:

Sometimes, I despair of ever being able to convey the disdain for women that one may encounter in the Muslim world.

First, many Americans and Europeans simply do not want to believe it; they absolutely refuse to surrender their belief that all people are both "good" and the "same." Some westerners do not think it is politically correct, or even polite to say so–especially if people really are "different." Thus, for both reasons, westerners will deny the extent to which most women are despised, feared, controlled, and punished in the Muslim world. Some westerners also say: "Women are oppressed here as well. It's racist to single out an entire culture and people for the ways in which women are mistreated everywhere."

Many Muslims, who live both in the West and in Muslim lands, will deny, outright, that Muslim women are mistreated. First, precisely because this is true, they are well trained to deny it–it is shameful to say so; doing so, disgraces and endangers the family and the Muslim nation. Also, most people are trained not to "see" that which is normalized all around them.

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