We have repeatedly said that Islam is an immoral and intolerable ideology and that the way to deal with it is to argue against it constantly and thoroughly. (See for instance our post How to defeat Islam, July 20, 2009.)

The ruling political parties of Europe refuse to admit, let alone deal with, the ruinous encroachment of Islam throughout the continent. As a result, they are driving ever-growing numbers of their electors into the arms of smaller parties that preach and may soon practice force against Muslims.

Opposition to an ideology – whatever form it takes, in this case a religion formulated in the dark ages – is properly verbal. Attack should be by words on words, not by people on people. If criticism and argument are forbidden, the attack of people on people will surely happen instead.

But governments in dhimmified Eurabia do not see this. They prohibit criticism of the monstrous ideology that is replacing their traditions and darkening their future.

For example, this happened recently in Finland:

Jussi Halla-aho, a member of the Helsinki City Council, has been found guilty of defamation of religion by the Helsinki District Court. He was ordered to pay a fine of 330 euros… Prosecutor Simo Kolehmainen said Halla-aho had publicly defamed the Islamic faith in his blog writings… The prosecutor said Halla-aho’s writings insulted Muslims residing in Finland and endangered religious peace.

Throughout the Western world, the political left denies the oppression, intolerance, ignorance, cruelty, and injustice that characterize Islam. Not a word of protest do we hear from the ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ about Islam’s treatment of women. The physical, mental, and emotional pain that is a woman’s constant condition of existence under the oppression of Islam (as detailed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for instance – see our post immediately below), does not in the least trouble those bleeding hearts, those humanitarians who claim that their high political mission is to alleviate the lot of the poor, the downtrodden, the exploited. Well, it’s not news to us that they are hypocrites.

But – mirabile dictu – there are those among them who actually extol the way women are forced to live under Islam.

The Communist writer Naomi Wolf has done just that. Phyllis Chesler – doughty warrior on the feminist battlefield – has been arguing with her. Anyone who has read the testimony of Ayaan Hirsi Ali must surely find outrageous Wolf’s defense of the subjugation of Muslim women most visibly evinced by their total concealment in black bags –  which Wolf declares to be ‘liberating’.

Here is a part of  Chesler’s comment:

Women in chadors are really feminist ninja warriors. Rather than allow themselves to be gawked at by male strangers, they choose to defeat the “male gaze” by hiding from it in plain view.

But don’t you worry: Beneath that chador, abaya, burqa, or veil, there is a sexy courtesan wearing “Victoria Secret, elegant fashion, and skin care lotion,” just waiting for her husband to come home for a night of wild and sensuous marital lovemaking.

Obviously, these are not my ideas. I am quoting from a piece by Naomi Wolf that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago. Yes, Wolf is the bubbly, feminist author who once advised Vice President Al “The Climate” Gore on what colors he should wear while campaigning and who is or was friendly with Gore’s daughter…

Wolf recently traveled to Morocco, Jordan, and Eygpt, where she found the women “as interested in allure, seduction, and pleasure as women anywhere in the world.” Whew! What a relief. She writes:

“Many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualizing Western gaze. … Many women said something like this: …’how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected.’ This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognizably Western feminist set of feelings.”

Really? If so, I’m the Queen of England…

Well, what can I say? Here’s a few things.

Most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families. Is Wolfe thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects? Has she forgotten the tragic, fiery deaths of those schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who, in trying to flee their burning schoolhouse, were improperly veiled and who were beaten back by the all-powerful Saudi Morality Police?

Most Muslim girls and women are impoverished and wear rags, not expensive Western clothing beneath their coverings. Only the pampered, super-controlled, often isolated, and uber-materialistic daughters of wealth, mainly in the Gulf states, but also among the ruling classes in the Islamic world, match Wolf’s portrait of well kept courtesan-wives.

Being veiled and obedient does not save a Muslim girl or woman from being incested, battered, stalked, gang-raped, or maritally raped nor does it stop her husband from taking multiple wives and girlfriends or from frequenting brothels. A fully “covered” girl-child, anywhere between the ages of 10-15, may still be forced into an arranged marriage, perhaps with her first cousin, perhaps with a man old enough to be her grandfather, and she is not allowed to leave him, not even if he beats her black and blue every single day…

And, by the way, the eerie effect, ultimately, of shrouded women is that they become invisible. They cease to exist. They are literally ghosts.

Wolf presents the West as anti-woman because it treats women as sex objects. Am I happy about pornography and prostitution in the West? Hell no and, unlike Wolf, I’ve fought against them – but to portray these vices as a “Western” evil, and one that the Islamic world opposes, is sheer madness.

It is well known that the Arabs and Muslims kept and still keep sex slaves – they are very involved in the global trafficking in girls and women and frequent prostitutes on every continent. You will find pornography magazines in every princely tent – those for boys as well as for girls. I am told that the Saudis fly in fresh planeloads of Parisian prostitutes every week. Perhaps they veil them before they conduct their all-night and all-day orgies. Or, perhaps they view them as natural, “infidel” prey.

Let me suggest that Wolf read … the works of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel) and Nonie Darwish (Cruel and Usual Punishment) for starters.

Then again, I suspect that Wolf is not necessarily looking for any “nuanced” truths about “female freedom” but is, rather … positioning herself within the Democratic Party. After all, what she has written in this brief article supports President Obama’s position vis a vis the Muslim world.