to my liberal friends who say, "Hey, what's the big deal about the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Lighten up, man," try rolling around your tongue the words "Organization of the Christian Conference." Would you be quite so cool with that? Fifty-seven Prime Ministers and Presidents who get together and vote as a bloc in international affairs? Or would that be a theocratic affront to secular sensibilities? The casual acceptance of the phrase "the Muslim world" – ("Mr. Obama's now-famous speech to the Muslim world" – The New York Times) – implicitly defers to the political ambitions of Islam. And, if there is a "Muslim world," what are its boundaries? Forty years ago, the OIC began with mainly Middle Eastern members plus Indonesia and a couple more. By the Nineties, former Soviet Central Asia had signed on, plus Albania, Mozambique, Guyana and various others. In 2005, Russia was admitted to "observer" membership.It's not radical Islam that is the threat described in the piece, however: it's multiculturalism.
Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, "immigrant communities" were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo "female genital mutilation." So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They're not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a "ritual nick" to young girls.Great. So now the AAP is going to lobby for US doctors to be able to mutilate girls. When are they going to lobby on behalf of the actual girls?
This is of course the exact logic of making abortion "safe, legal and rare" because "they're going to do it anyway," so at least we can help them do it safely.
And where, may one ask, are the Womyn's Groups? (What would be the white feminine counterpart for the term "house negro"?)
I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at "FGM." After all, it's a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.Which reminds me I saved an article in my reader for comment when time permitted -- a must-read piece on how we're abandoning the women of Afghanistan.
As Patricia [commissioned to write some US AID success stories] prepared to leave, the women fluttered around her like moths, touching her sleeves and speaking all at once. "What are they saying?" Pat asked the young Pashto-speaking interpreter. "They are telling you to go back to your country and to ask your people not to abandon them. The women of Afghanistan don't want you to leave. They will quite literally die if the Taliban return," she said.And:
the current administration, despite its female secretary of State and its new Office of Global Women’s Issues, appears to be ditching the women of Afghanistan like a blind date gone bad. You have to go back 10 months to find any sustained rhetoric from President Barack Obama about the importance of assuring the security of women in Afghanistan. Since then, and especially since last year’s Afghan election, those fine words from a sitting president have all but disappeared. Many of the fine actions are gone, too. Push local shuras into including women in 2002? Yes. Push local shuras into including women in 2010? Forget it.This Administration's foreign policy is precisely analogous to the AAP's outrageous capitulation to FMG.
But who the hell cares? It's only women.
